Is it time to bring back Blackreach already?

JustLovely · June 10

It's already time for ZOS to bring back blackreach. If we don't get into Grey Host before 15:00 EST we don't get in. With no blackreach to take the overflow while waiting for queue to GH to pop queues to get into GH are over 100 by 17:00, so people see that and just log out now.

ZOS, you are already losing customers by not supporting the PvP you've told us for a decade you were working on supporting. Now ZOS appears to be going out of it's way to not support normal live Cyrodiil.

Please, at least bring back Blackreach so we can play actual PvP while waiting to get into the main faction locked Cyrodiil campaign. Please stop giving us reasons to log out and not come back.

@ZOS_Kevin
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_GinaBruno

Maitsukas · June 10

It hasn't even been a full week yet...

Outside of Mayhem, when was the last time a non-GH campaign was poplocked?

tomofhyrule · June 10

The question isn’t “was BR ever poplocked?” (Which it did get to on weekends on PC)

The question is “are the people in long 80+ person GH queues more likely to go to Vengeance since there’s no queue, or quit the game since they aren’t able to get into their preferred mode?”

GH has a max of 360 players, or 120 per alliance. If the queues in GH are approaching 100, that means that there is sufficient demand for another standard-rules Cyrodiil mode to ipen another Campaign - even though those 100 people could go into Vengeance, there must be something about Vengeance that they dislike enough to choose to sit in multi-hour queues (or uninstall ESO).

Stamicka · June 10

No

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The question isn’t “was BR ever poplocked?” (Which it did get to on weekends on PC)

The question is “are the people in long 80+ person GH queues more likely to go to Vengeance since there’s no queue, or quit the game since they aren’t able to get into their preferred mode?”

GH has a max of 360 players, or 120 per alliance. If the queues in GH are approaching 100, that means that there is sufficient demand for another standard-rules Cyrodiil mode to ipen another Campaign - even though those 100 people could go into Vengeance, there must be something about Vengeance that they dislike enough to choose to sit in multi-hour queues (or uninstall ESO).

I haven’t seen Blackreach with a single bar in quite a long time honestly. I voted no, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to add it alongside Vengeance and Grey Host. It could just sit there and be dead all day. Why not I guess.

DoofusMax · June 10

How about "no strong opinions at the moment"?

Yes, I miss Blackreach as a regular 30-day, CP-enabled campaign that was not alliance-locked. I'm not horribly bent out of shape over it being removed, although I'm a bit perturbed that some of the normal PvE stuff in Cyrodiil is being impacted by the Vengeance ruleset. These are things that you don't give much thought to in regular PvE zones which aren't functioning as intended in Cyrodiil under Vengeance. For the time being, I'm mostly OK with that and am willing to give the devs a chance to fix those admittedly minor issues and they have been receptive to those when they get reported.

OTOH, I am not so serious a PvP'er that I'm willing to sit in a queue for however long just to avoid Vengeance. If that's your thing, then that's your thing. You do you.

Monte_Cristo · June 10

Yes

Can you enter delves, grab skyshards, or do town quests in Vengeance yet?

Gabriel_H · June 10

JustLovely wrote: »

ZOS, you are already losing customers by not supporting the PvP you've told us for a decade you were working on supporting. Now ZOS appears to be going out of it's way to not support normal live Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil does not work on a fundamental level. ZOS offered a solution. You just don't like it. That's them supporting the PvP, you just don't agree with how they are doing it.

JustLovely · June 11

Yes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

ZOS, you are already losing customers by not supporting the PvP you've told us for a decade you were working on supporting. Now ZOS appears to be going out of it's way to not support normal live Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil does not work on a fundamental level. ZOS offered a solution. You just don't like it. That's them supporting the PvP, you just don't agree with how they are doing it.

No. You couldn't have possibly presented a more dishonest interpretation of what's going on or what I do and don't like.

ZOS told us for more than a decade they were working on improving normal live Cyrodiil. So where are we at with that effort? Based on the evidence, ZOS never even tried to fix normal live GH. They still haven't even tried limiting heal and shield stacking. What have they done to improve normal live Cyrodiil like they said they were doing for over a decade?

The fumes are clearly too thick where your keeping your head for you to be able to think straight. ZOS ain't hiring now and they don't take applications via the forum even when they are hiring.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · June 11

No

People are tired of what is and has been going on in GH for a long time. Only Zos really knows what the true numbers are and it's not for us to know that. Nor should it be. Combat is totally out of control in GH. They are taking a basically ground up approach with Vengeance and it is good. They will eventually add proc sets and other things over time with small very calculated changes. This is the correct approach. So it doesn't get out of control as it is in GH. They've already stated they cant fix it so Im not sure why this comes as a surprise. Bringing back Blackreach wont change the fact that it is so.

JustLovely · June 11

Yes

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People are tired of what is and has been going on in GH for a long time. Only Zos really knows what the true numbers are and it's not for us to know that. Nor should it be. Combat is totally out of control in GH. They are taking a basically ground up approach with Vengeance and it is good. They will eventually add proc sets and other things over time with small very calculated changes. This is the correct approach. So it doesn't get out of control as it is in GH. They've already stated they cant fix it so Im not sure why this comes as a surprise. Bringing back Blackreach wont change the fact that it is so.

The correct approach would have been and remains to this day that ZOS does what they've told us they were doing for over a decade. Accepting anything less is horrible for the game and the studio. There is no credibility on any level until ZOS does what they've told us they were doing for over a decade.

Tallon_IV · June 11

No

Don't see the point. I never saw the bars above 1 on Blackreach. I would go in there during prime time Friday/Saturday nights when Gray Host had 1-2 hour queues, and it would be dead. The only people I could find were AFK. People would rather AFK for 1-2 hours to wait for Gray Host than play Blackreach.

JustLovely · June 11

Yes

Tallon_IV wrote: »

Don't see the point. I never saw the bars above 1 on Blackreach. I would go in there during prime time Friday/Saturday nights when Gray Host had 1-2 hour queues, and it would be dead. The only people I could find were AFK. People would rather AFK for 1-2 hours to wait for Gray Host than play Blackreach.

You seem to have Blackreach confused with Vengeance.

Tallon_IV · June 11

No

JustLovely wrote: »

Tallon_IV wrote: »

Don't see the point. I never saw the bars above 1 on Blackreach. I would go in there during prime time Friday/Saturday nights when Gray Host had 1-2 hour queues, and it would be dead. The only people I could find were AFK. People would rather AFK for 1-2 hours to wait for Gray Host than play Blackreach.

You seem to have Blackreach confused with Vengeance.

Haven't been in Vengeance.

Luneca · June 11

JustLovely wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

ZOS, you are already losing customers by not supporting the PvP you've told us for a decade you were working on supporting. Now ZOS appears to be going out of it's way to not support normal live Cyrodiil.

Cyrodiil does not work on a fundamental level. ZOS offered a solution. You just don't like it. That's them supporting the PvP, you just don't agree with how they are doing it.

No. You couldn't have possibly presented a more dishonest interpretation of what's going on or what I do and don't like.

ZOS told us for more than a decade they were working on improving normal live Cyrodiil. So where are we at with that effort? Based on the evidence, ZOS never even tried to fix normal live GH. They still haven't even tried limiting heal and shield stacking. What have they done to improve normal live Cyrodiil like they said they were doing for over a decade?

The fumes are clearly too thick where your keeping your head for you to be able to think straight. ZOS ain't hiring now and they don't take applications via the forum even when they are hiring.

I don't know, I have 20-60 ping in primetime, worst was 80 @ Gray Host. I've had that little bit of lag and good performance since ~3 years ago. So something did improve, it just didn't improve for everyone and they probably do not feel like looking into it.

But it's strange because people complain about the game lagging outside of Cyrodiil too. I seriously doubt it's only the server that's the issue, which is probably why they have trouble replicating it and finding a solution.

But it doesn't matter because the path they will take is the path they will take. The game has come a long way from freezing up all the time and people needing to relog over and over. At least for me, it rarely ever lags.

PeacefulAnarchy · June 11

Yes

I liked blackreach because
a) it's not alliance locked so I can drop in when I want on whatever character and get skyshards beat up some guards do some quests or do some pvp with a casual group on whatever alliance works for us.
and
b) I have my regular cp and skills and gear enabled. The gear and skill setup I guess could be ok in vengeance eventually, it's less of a learning curve than sweaty cyro, but it's still more work than just knowing my skills work the way they do outside. The CP is honestly the biggest annoyance, not so much the combat CP but the green tree that gives me faster movement and double node drops and mount stamina etc. There's a lot of little things you get used to in how things work that get lost in Vengeance.

I'm a casual and I'm not anti vengeance, but I miss having blackreach even if I only went there every week or two.

laniakea_0 · June 11

Yes

the alliance lock also poses an issue now. I'm fully in favor of keeping GH locked, but now that it's the only normal Cyrodiil campaign, you basically can't play Cyrodiil at all anymore with some of your characters if you already went there with a character of another faction that month. having non alliance locked campaigns available gave you an alternative and now it's gone.

Gabriel_H · June 11

JustLovely wrote: »

ZOS told us for more than a decade they were working on improving normal live Cyrodiil. So where are we at with that effort? Based on the evidence, ZOS never even tried to fix normal live GH. They still haven't even tried limiting heal and shield stacking. What have they done to improve normal live Cyrodiil like they said they were doing for over a decade?

They cut the player cap - it didn't help
They got new servers - it didn't help
The optimised the code - it didn't help

They have limited heal and shield stacking - it's called Vengeance.

There is no improving normal Cyro without changing the ruleset. So I'll repeat:

Cyrodiil does not work on a fundamental level. ZOS offered a solution. You just don't like it. That's them supporting the PvP, you just don't agree with how they are doing it.

And I'll repeat again:

I do not like Vengeance. I think there was a more elegant solution BUT that solution would still have required changing the ruleset and eliminating HoT stacking, DoT stacking, Shield stacking, Number affected by AoE, proc sets, and would still have left class imbalance.

Vengeance is now Live, not because they are done creating it, but because they need more data as to how it is operating and what they can and can't add in, what they can and can't change. That requires players to give feedback. That requires players to engage with the system.

Did you ever stop to think that if you'd engaged and given feedback in good faith, en-masse as PvPers, the ruleset would have been altered to be more to your liking?!

Estin · June 11

Stamicka wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The question isn’t “was BR ever poplocked?” (Which it did get to on weekends on PC)

The question is “are the people in long 80+ person GH queues more likely to go to Vengeance since there’s no queue, or quit the game since they aren’t able to get into their preferred mode?”

GH has a max of 360 players, or 120 per alliance. If the queues in GH are approaching 100, that means that there is sufficient demand for another standard-rules Cyrodiil mode to ipen another Campaign - even though those 100 people could go into Vengeance, there must be something about Vengeance that they dislike enough to choose to sit in multi-hour queues (or uninstall ESO).

I haven’t seen Blackreach with a single bar in quite a long time honestly. I voted no, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to add it alongside Vengeance and Grey Host. It could just sit there and be dead all day. Why not I guess.

This was PCNA Blackreach on Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 10:51pm.

This was PCNA Grayhost at the same time.

There was no event or golden pursuit happening. This was just the standard friday night for PCNA cyrodiil. As you can see, there was an hour wait to get in GH, and BR had 3 bars with EP pop locking. I don't know why people want to pretend that BR always had 0 bars, that's just plain ignorance. It was always the overflow campaign for GH and it always saw activity when GH had long queues. Obviously it's a necessary campaign to keep around.

Also I had provided this data during the PTS for u50 and it was ignored. I don't know what "data" ZOS needs by waiting 3 months to see if there is any need for an overflow campaign. Forcing players into vengeance when it's still in it's beta stage is only going to cause friction and player loss, unless that is the plan. There needs to be action, not reaction. Waiting for obvious data and then acting on it was the philosophy of ZOS prior to the new management change. Fumbling back to that behavior is leaving me concerned.

edward_frigidhands · June 11

Yes

Estin wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The question isn’t “was BR ever poplocked?” (Which it did get to on weekends on PC)

The question is “are the people in long 80+ person GH queues more likely to go to Vengeance since there’s no queue, or quit the game since they aren’t able to get into their preferred mode?”

GH has a max of 360 players, or 120 per alliance. If the queues in GH are approaching 100, that means that there is sufficient demand for another standard-rules Cyrodiil mode to ipen another Campaign - even though those 100 people could go into Vengeance, there must be something about Vengeance that they dislike enough to choose to sit in multi-hour queues (or uninstall ESO).

I haven’t seen Blackreach with a single bar in quite a long time honestly. I voted no, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to add it alongside Vengeance and Grey Host. It could just sit there and be dead all day. Why not I guess.

This was PCNA Blackreach on Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 10:51pm.

This was PCNA Grayhost at the same time.

There was no event or golden pursuit happening. This was just the standard friday night for PCNA cyrodiil. As you can see, there was an hour wait to get in GH, and BR had 3 bars with EP pop locking. I don't know why people want to pretend that BR always had 0 bars, that's just plain ignorance. It was always the overflow campaign for GH and it always saw activity when GH had long queues. Obviously it's a necessary campaign to keep around.

Also I had provided this data during the PTS for u50 and it was ignored. I don't know what "data" ZOS needs by waiting 3 months to see if there is any need for an overflow campaign. Forcing players into vengeance when it's still in it's beta stage is only going to cause friction and player loss, unless that is the plan. There needs to be action, not reaction. Waiting for obvious data and then acting on it was the philosophy of ZOS prior to the new management change. Fumbling back to that behavior is leaving me concerned.

Thank you for bringing some receipts.

jle30303 · June 11

Yes

On PCEU, I seem to remember Blackreach being *more* popular than Gray Host. It was always the one to cap out first.

Aces-High-82 · June 11

Yes

Voted yes just in hope the "Vengeance is bad" Karen posts lessen.

CalamityCat · June 11

Yes

I'm guessing ZOS will give it a few weeks to see if the GH queue stays a problem, but I'd really love to see Blackreach back again. Clearly GH can't accommodate everyone who wants to be in that type of Cyrodiil.

We lost the under 50 Cyro, no CP and Blackreach I believe? But there's no extra capacity in GH for those players. Individually Blackreach etc might not have been pop capped all the time, but when you make them all suddenly homeless (Cyro-less?) there's a significant bottleneck with the GH queue. Apparently those Cyros did have more than 10 players at a time! I think if their populations were accommodated in Blackreach, they'd combine to make a good population.

I do really like Vengeance, but it's no use for me in a warm up for GH, or for testing some GH builds/practicing because the ruleset and restrictions are too different and don't work for that. If I play Vengeance it's usually so I can have a casual PvP sesh with a PvE character without having to make her a build. I wouldn't bother PvPing properly with my arcanist, but in Vengeance she's quite fun.

BXR_Lonestar · June 11

No

Nah. Leave Blackreach gone.

Yes, it sucks not having the campaign and I hate the que times for GH, but I don't miss the toxicity of a non-alliance locked campaign.

By all means, bring Blackreach back, but make it alliance locked, and then perhaps it will get more play.

xylteh · June 11

Yes

Maitsukas wrote: »

It hasn't even been a full week yet...

Outside of Mayhem, when was the last time a non-GH campaign was poplocked?

As a daily cyro player (PC/EU) I remember waiting in the queue to enter BR before subclassing. Especially during the weekends. Also before dk pvp meta you could see alliances on 3 bars or poplocked at least a few times per week, I have screenshots/clips from february 2026 somewhere. It died because people got really bored of just one superior dk meta. No other class was able to compete without at least 1 subclassed dk line. And that was just extremely boring you played the same build for months and encountered people playing the same or similar build as you for months. Now after U50 and pure class buff I can see many people coming back to the game and cyrodiil since they are finally able to enjoy the game on their main classes and people's builds have much more variety. So yeah giving BR a second chance now would be a good idea.

Stamicka · June 11

No

Estin wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The question isn’t “was BR ever poplocked?” (Which it did get to on weekends on PC)

The question is “are the people in long 80+ person GH queues more likely to go to Vengeance since there’s no queue, or quit the game since they aren’t able to get into their preferred mode?”

GH has a max of 360 players, or 120 per alliance. If the queues in GH are approaching 100, that means that there is sufficient demand for another standard-rules Cyrodiil mode to ipen another Campaign - even though those 100 people could go into Vengeance, there must be something about Vengeance that they dislike enough to choose to sit in multi-hour queues (or uninstall ESO).

I haven’t seen Blackreach with a single bar in quite a long time honestly. I voted no, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to add it alongside Vengeance and Grey Host. It could just sit there and be dead all day. Why not I guess.

This was PCNA Blackreach on Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 10:51pm.

This was PCNA Grayhost at the same time.

There was no event or golden pursuit happening. This was just the standard friday night for PCNA cyrodiil. As you can see, there was an hour wait to get in GH, and BR had 3 bars with EP pop locking. I don't know why people want to pretend that BR always had 0 bars, that's just plain ignorance. It was always the overflow campaign for GH and it always saw activity when GH had long queues. Obviously it's a necessary campaign to keep around.

Also I had provided this data during the PTS for u50 and it was ignored. I don't know what "data" ZOS needs by waiting 3 months to see if there is any need for an overflow campaign. Forcing players into vengeance when it's still in it's beta stage is only going to cause friction and player loss, unless that is the plan. There needs to be action, not reaction. Waiting for obvious data and then acting on it was the philosophy of ZOS prior to the new management change. Fumbling back to that behavior is leaving me concerned.

I was on last Friday at like 9PM eastern. I disconnected from Grey Host and had to enter the queue again. I considered checking out Blackreach instead cause I didn’t feel like waiting, but I’m pretty sure it had 0 bars across the board.

I don’t think I logged in at all in April, so I never saw the day you’re referencing. I highly doubt that’s the norm unless it just so happens that every weekend I do decide to log on, Blackreach is completely dead.

Regardless, I already said it wouldn’t hurt anyone to add Blackreach back, so why not. I only voted no cause I thought that OP was saying they should replace Vengeance with Blackreach. Adding Blackreach alongside Vengeance and Grey Host is something I 100% support.

I think Grey Host queues will still be long and Blackreach will still be dead anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

BetweenMidgets · June 11

Yes

The fact that Blackreach was taken down shows that this was not thought through for the many people who don't like Vengeance. Or, they're trying to force us into Vengeance. Likely in the hopes they can remove normal Cyro down the line, but that is just my speculation with ZoS' track record.

There two big issues for me are:

I cannot play with friends who play on different factions. Previously, we could just play in Blackreach. And while I personally thing GH should not be faction locked, at least there WAS an alternative to be able to play with friends. Some people may argue that you can still do that, just in Vengeance! I'm sorry, Vengeance is not enjoyable as far as I'm concerned.
The GreyHost queue. I am not alone in disliking Vengeance. Of my entire smallman group, the core of which have played together for about 8 years now, exactly ZERO of us have any interest in Vengeance. So come Friday night, when it is time to PVP, we are going to log on at our normal time (because some of us have to work), and if the queue is over 80, we aren't going to PVP. None of us are interested in sitting in a giant queue, waiting ages for a queue to pop. As far as I am concerned, 80 is too much for me, but I don't want to let me group down.

While not something I wanted to mention as a BIG issue, the queue bug is also a concern to me, and it is something that ZoS has never commented on but all of us have experienced. You're in queue with your friends, and your queue stops moving entirely. Your friend's queue keeps dropping, and you're stuck at some number, and its probably under 20. In the end, you end up having to restart the queue and sit through all that again. It has never been acknowledged or addressed, so waiting through giant GH queues without any alternative is pretty unreasonable.

I have a hard time believing the outcome ZoS wants is for long time subscribers will leave the game. Maybe the expectation for ZoS is that without BR and no CP, they could raise the caps on GH. But if that is something they are hoping and analyzing, why not just communicate that to us. "The removal of these campaigns is temporary while we do these tests" as they've said countless times during the initial testing some 5 or 6 years ago, and when they were testing Vengeance previously.

In my opinion, removing the Grey Host overflow was quite short sighted.

CAB_Life · June 11

Yes

This feels like an obvious cynical ploy to funnel people into Vengeance. It won’t work. People like what they like and putting steak spice on an apple won’t make it a T-bone.

Gankform · June 11

Yes

I stopped playing eso at nights because GH is always full and i have to w8 more than 30-40mins...and there is no second option for me. bad..

Gankform · June 11

Yes

its 18:47 and we are aldy locked out

ToddIngram · June 11

Yes

This feels like and looks like ZOS taking away Blackreach to artificially increase the appearance of vengeance popularity. ZOS seems to be thinking people who can't get into Grey Host due to crazy three digit queues will go ahead and play vengeance since it's never over one bar population.

Hate to break it to you ZOS, but most of us will never touch vengeance again just out of basic principle. We don't like being lied to. Vengeance was never just a test and it looks and sounds very much like ZOS was lying about ever trying to improve performance in Grey Host now given how vengeance was rolled out and the only time performance improved in Grey Host was when new servers were installed.

It's fix Grey Host or we find a different game ZOS. Catch a clue why don't ya. It's what you always said you were doing, so do it.

@ZOS_Kevin

Yudo · June 11

Yes

Yes, GH queue became longer, with no alternative campaign to play while waiting. As a result I am not really participating much in the new veterancy system either. Current vengeance for me is not interesting. BR would have been good to have in this situation.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Is it time to bring back Blackreach already?

Is it time to bring back Blackreach already? 177 votes