in the long term zenimax online doesnt have much of a future. With no new game, unless major changes are intended to revitalize eso, the company will just keep getting smaller and smaller till its gone to maintain profits. In the short term though i see eso becoming the focus once again and thus more vigorous development for the next few years. Future investment will only be in AI so as bad as games are these days.. itll get worse. lol.

Elsonso wrote: »

I think ESO can easily last longer than WoW, but perhaps WoW isn't the game that should be used for comparison. As a former WoW player, my feeling is that WoW is on a multi-year decline. They seem to have lost their way.

I am also worried that the ESO team has gotten lost, as well. It just seems like their rudder is broken and they haven't noticed yet because they haven't plowed into the river bank. As an Argonian might say, ZOS is just letting the current pull them down the river.

No, WoW shouldn't be used for comparison because only FFXIV has ever rivaled WoW. You are best off to compare ESO with DCUO and SWTOR, as they all came out roughly around the same time and each has their own niche theme. With ESO being from the Elder Scrolls franchise, SWTOR being from the Star Wars franchise and DCUO being from the DC Comics franchise. All three are still around and getting updated content, even with lower populations.

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Simply put, I worry that ESO's future is in jeopardy due to the recent layoffs. I know it's easy to reassure the consumers that things will keep moving forward — and they might — but we've seen incredible talent be dismissed even after releasing financially successful projects.

I just hope ESO will survive for a few more years at least — even if it means doubling down on monetization to keep ESO financially relevant for ZOS.

someone will say other wise cause they couldn't accept what reality is

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

I personally have no confidence in the future development of ESO, not at least on par with what was created in previous chapters.

Landmark was nothing but a grain of sand on a beach compared to ESO, but when Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was bought out by Columbus Nova and restructred as Daybreak Games, they let go of the creative vision and lead for Everquest Next and Landmark, Dave Georgeson. They appointed his right hand man Terry Michaels as the new lead (sounding familiar yet?) The development for Landmark slowed down drastically, longer periods between updates, less communication by the dev team who were previously putting out videos at least twice a month if not more.
Eventually they started releasing game packs with armor skins and material packs for like 20 bucks as a cash grab. It only took two years after they let go of Dave to shut the game down.

ESO makes more money, has a much larger player base than Landmark did but at the end of the day the corporate bean counters are going to make the call.

My bet is that the lesser performing IP's get sold off, possibly even Elder Scrolls if the $ is high enough. Zenimax will be shut down (its costly to do business in Rockville Maryland).

Austin may stay afloat (Tx is cheaper to operate in, its why so many businesses are relocating there turning it into California 2.0), but will be absorbed into another company or just rebranded something Xbox Microsoft.

The only way to prove to Microsoft that ESO is worthy is to spend a ton of money on this game. I myself can not do that any longer. Its too expensive for the return in entertainment it gives.

I wish Matt the best, I don't think he deserves this in anyway shape or form, and I say this as someone who does not belive RvRvR (DAoC) in works in the modern day and have always thought it was the wrong decision for ESO. He was the man who got the ball running, but then again Zenimax as a culture has a habit of letting go of the guy who started it all (Robert Altman ran off his co-partner Christopher Wheeler who started Bethesda) so in an odd way it seems fitting. I do wish him the best though.





And Kevin, its good to keep a positive outlook and hope for the best, but your statement has to real value because it does not matter what Zenimax wants, its all about papa Microsoft now (as evidence of what has transpired recently with the layoffs).

THIS IS IT!!! This is exactly what I’ve been noticing, there’s a clear pattern here, and this example proves it. I’m switching to 'don’t do anything' mode, because spending too much money on a game that could end up like this would be pointless. It lines up perfectly with what’s happening right now

Wow, lots of people in here who have zero clue what they're talking about. It's always the sweaty PvPers claiming that ESO is dying or in decline. Clearly, the game is doing fine as it was not caught up in this most recent bloodletting of layoffs by the ever greedy Microsoft.

Secondly, no, they are not "dedicating more resources to ESO" now that the other MMO is cancelled. They were on completely different teams. It sounds like everyone who was working on the other MMO was flat out fired, which is an inexcusable tragedy.

P.S. The "seasons" format so far has functionally felt exactly the same as a chapter. Realistically, I don't think Seasons represent less content, I think it's more of a "lets make the same amount of content but release it in pieces rather than dump it all out there at once" - and that doesn't really constitute a chapter anymore so you have to call it something different.

Rungar wrote: »

i imagine zos will start hemmoraging good people now because no one really wants to be blindsided by endless rounds of layoffs that come whether the company is profitable or not.

Of course they're not revealing anything that violates NDA's, but multiple people on ESO at ZOS were saying (away from official channels), "My job's safe for now, but I'm spending my 4th of July weekend updating my resume. Just in case."

That "for now" is pulling some heavy duty here. People have lost confidence and faith in the place they loved to work.

There are a lot of people at ZOS on LinkedIn with the OPENTOWORK badge. Are they all from this cancelled project? I would love to hear from Matt to find out what really happened and why staying on for ESO wasn't enough.

https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=ZeniMax Online Studio&origin=TYPEAHEAD_ESCAPE_HATCH&sid=OWY

16BitForestCat wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

i imagine zos will start hemmoraging good people now because no one really wants to be blindsided by endless rounds of layoffs that come whether the company is profitable or not.

Of course they're not revealing anything that violates NDA's, but multiple people on ESO at ZOS were saying (away from official channels), "My job's safe for now, but I'm spending my 4th of July weekend updating my resume. Just in case."

That "for now" is pulling some heavy duty here. People have lost confidence and faith in the place they loved to work.

That's what comes across as wild to me.

No sign of things to come, no consultation, no notice period, nothing. You wake up one morning to find out that your employer has effectively 'ghosted' a bunch of your colleagues overnight.

I get that 'job security' is a somewhat necessary fallacy that we need to buy into, not unlike the concept of 'infinite growth', but situations like the present really stretch people's capacity for suspending disbelief.

Rungar wrote: »

in the long term zenimax online doesnt have much of a future. With no new game, unless major changes are intended to revitalize eso, the company will just keep getting smaller and smaller till its gone to maintain profits. In the short term though i see eso becoming the focus once again and thus more vigorous development for the next few years. Future investment will only be in AI so as bad as games are these days.. itll get worse. lol.

If they arent going to develop any new game, the next step is to combine ESO maintenance with any other similarly downsized company. Its possible they could merge ZOS with some other studio. With online work, physical location doesn't matter as much.

Why would they do this? To save on support staff costs.

Subclassing was already so half baked that to me is seems like a last gasp effort that lacks vision and testing. They had to have known about the layoffs months ago. The game was underperforming and they have to have known that.

My guess is they will merge ZOS support with another studio. Artists are interchangeable and they will have some Malaysian artists cranking out new costumes and mounts which they will sell. ESO is part of the xbox game pass, so it will live on there as a free game, and they will probably lower the price of DLC to entice people to buy them.

IOW, make it free, put the DLC on big sales, attract new players through GamePass and monetize it with cheap asian labor making new art assets. Essential personel will be able to continue in their role remotely until the day they inevitably get a pink slip.

Frayton wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

i imagine zos will start hemmoraging good people now because no one really wants to be blindsided by endless rounds of layoffs that come whether the company is profitable or not.


to those that stay though its in their interest to make eso the best it can be, if for no other reason than to keep the studio open and their jobs intact.

There is a massive amount of truth/wisdom in your post and something I have not seen many (including myself) discuss.

I left a design studio in Hollywood because the CEO was trimming back and I saw the writing on the wall early on. He stated that the company needed "Fresh new talent" (which is CEO speak for cheap labor, not necessarily talented labor) just months after his first visit to China. I will never forget the day he walked through the front door when got he got back. The man never smiled, but when he was talking about their labor and how inexpensive it was and was grinning ear to ear. I'll never forget it, I knew right then and there the future direction he wanted to establish for the company.

I left within 3 months. Within about 18 months, most of the long time talent had left for other competitors. He continued to employ inexpensive labor and started losing many of the bids for work, becaue the talent was not there.

The company shut down within a few years.

Also note. Many talented designers/artists will not put up with subpar management into a product that is failing and will look for work elsewhere if for anything to ensure their portfolio has a strong image. No one wants to be seen working on the "failed project". It does not look good when looking for a new employer. Some remaining artists/designers may jump ship if they see that the product is heading south, they wont want to be associated with it. In other cases they will follow their old leadership. For example if Matt started a new company, he could absorb some of the real talent from ZOS.

Rungar wrote: »

i expect big changes to position it away from wow/standard mmo formula and more toward elder scrolls high adventure. These games shouldnt be competing against eachother and they are different enough that they dont have to.

I'd expect the same, but without real investment into people, it won't happen. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I think the player/customer version of this is happening.

Plausible. As the studio makes changes that are not confidence inspiring, customer confidence goes down as will their spending. This can lead to a downward spiral. The best scenario is for the studio to double down and make the investment to make the best game possible to increase customer confidence. However, that is difficult to achieve when the parent company lays off thousands of employees.

Customers and most likely the devs see it this way, the game needing increased investment. Unfortunately the bean counters are often too afraid to take the risk, which makes the decline a self fulfilling prophesy.

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

There are a lot of people at ZOS on LinkedIn with the OPENTOWORK badge. Are they all from this cancelled project? I would love to hear from Matt to find out what really happened and why staying on for ESO wasn't enough.

Reports are that Blackbird had a couple hundred people working on it. It was a full MMO project that had just received a positive response from XBox management a couple months ago and they were starting to build out for a 2028 release.

This is why a lot of people are saying that ZOS got blind sided. I doubt anyone at ZOS imagined that just weeks later the project would be canceled and hundreds would be let go. It is sad. Not for the unreleased game, but for all those people.

I am starting to read between the lines a bit in a lot of the news articles as well, and how a lot of entertainment industries are working presently.

Point is: video games, movies, and the like - those are luxuries. And any economist will tell you that when people are strapped financially (like they are now, because this is like the 5th “once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis” we’ve had in the past 30 years) luxuries are the first thing that they cut from their budgets. A lot of companies therefore would want to stick to franchises that they know are going to bring in money - that’s why even though people complain nonstop that they’re tired of Hollywood putting out sequel after sequel instead of original projects, it’s proven that using an existing IP will be a safer bet than an untested one.

I’m sure Microsoft is thinking the same way. This “Blackbird” was going to be a new IP. Untested. Unknown if it’d succeed. And new IPs have not been doing well in the video games universe lately in the first place - see the massive false start of things like Concord. If daddy Microsoft is going to be throwing more money at AI (the PR of which is a topic for a different thread), it has to come from somewhere, and an untested luxury product is probably the easiest to cut.

This does mean ESO, as an established game from an established IP is probably safe. For now.
But only for now.
Daddy Microsoft is still watching…

ZOS definitely has meetings with the suits to tell them the same thing they tell us - the millions of players, the big plans they have for the future, etc. And we know how well we believe the PR statements, so I’m sure the suits are thinking along our lines. If ESO hits a point where it becomes no longer profitable, Microsoft will pull the plug. So it’s in ESO’s best interest to be profitable.

Now we don’t have official sales figures, but at least from forum rabble, it does seem that Solstice didn’t sell as well as Gold Road… and Gold Road didn’t sell as well as Necrom. That is not a good sign. Even more dire, the “big Chapter feature!” of Gold Road just went free. Solstice’s “big Chapter feature” was free from the start. That means that there’s also nothing driving people to buy the content either.

Sure, we can all say “if they only fixed Cyrodiil, then me and all my friends would come back!” Or “if they only made Crossplay!” Or “harder overland!” But would that get more people to open their wallets, or just get them to log in and do that one thing? And how many people would that bring back? It’s all about spending, so if people aren’t paying, the suits aren’t gonna care much.
Now note that I’m not arguing against those - ESO should totally do those things. It’s just that I don’t see those as monetizable. A bunch of players logging back in but spending no money isn’t going to impress the executive board as much as a bunch of casuals who drop $50 per for something new.

If I were in charge of ZOS, I think the best thing I could do to make sure my game (and my employees!) still had a home was to fast track something that a lot of people would be willing to pay real money for. I’d also make sure that my microtransactions shop was getting new things on the regular, not just a handful of returning things a month.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m really on board with a new Class in the future, but it’s also because that would really be a good way to fix the above. Let’s face it: before today, how many people did you see around the world using a Scribed skill? Before today, the only way people could do that was by buying Gold Road or the Premium Season Pass. Now let’s consider how many people you’ve seen in the past three years shooting a green beam. DLC Classes can only be bought with the Chapter or Premium Pass, or a la carte from the Crown Store - so everyone with Arcanists needed to have put some money down for it. Call it P2W if you want, but Classes sell. I can’t think of too many other features they could add that would almost guarantee most of the playerbase would open their wallets for it, and especially if it was something that looked cool, matched with the existing lore, and/or was easy to play.

I do love ESO. But with companies like Microsoft cutting jobs left and right (and then making the ones who don’t get cut scared and likely to leave on their own accord…), it all comes down to money. I hope ESO can last for years to come, but I know it will only last as long as the money is still flowing in at a decent rate. And I’m nervous that the income is slowing down.
I really hope that ZOS can bring out something sooner rather than later that inspire a lot of people to open their wallets, and then we can all - players and devs alike - feel a lot safer about the future of this game.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I am starting to read between the lines a bit in a lot of the news articles as well, and how a lot of entertainment industries are working presently.

Point is: video games, movies, and the like - those are luxuries. And any economist will tell you that when people are strapped financially (like they are now, because this is like the 5th “once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis” we’ve had in the past 30 years) luxuries are the first thing that they cut from their budgets. A lot of companies therefore would want to stick to franchises that they know are going to bring in money - that’s why even though people complain nonstop that they’re tired of Hollywood putting out sequel after sequel instead of original projects, it’s proven that using an existing IP will be a safer bet than an untested one.

I’m sure Microsoft is thinking the same way. This “Blackbird” was going to be a new IP. Untested. Unknown if it’d succeed. And new IPs have not been doing well in the video games universe lately in the first place - see the massive false start of things like Concord. If daddy Microsoft is going to be throwing more money at AI (the PR of which is a topic for a different thread), it has to come from somewhere, and an untested luxury product is probably the easiest to cut.

This does mean ESO, as an established game from an established IP is probably safe. For now.
But only for now.
Daddy Microsoft is still watching…

ZOS definitely has meetings with the suits to tell them the same thing they tell us - the millions of players, the big plans they have for the future, etc. And we know how well we believe the PR statements, so I’m sure the suits are thinking along our lines. If ESO hits a point where it becomes no longer profitable, Microsoft will pull the plug. So it’s in ESO’s best interest to be profitable.

Now we don’t have official sales figures, but at least from forum rabble, it does seem that Solstice didn’t sell as well as Gold Road… and Gold Road didn’t sell as well as Necrom. That is not a good sign. Even more dire, the “big Chapter feature!” of Gold Road just went free. Solstice’s “big Chapter feature” was free from the start. That means that there’s also nothing driving people to buy the content either.

Sure, we can all say “if they only fixed Cyrodiil, then me and all my friends would come back!” Or “if they only made Crossplay!” Or “harder overland!” But would that get more people to open their wallets, or just get them to log in and do that one thing? And how many people would that bring back? It’s all about spending, so if people aren’t paying, the suits aren’t gonna care much.
Now note that I’m not arguing against those - ESO should totally do those things. It’s just that I don’t see those as monetizable. A bunch of players logging back in but spending no money isn’t going to impress the executive board as much as a bunch of casuals who drop $50 per for something new.

If I were in charge of ZOS, I think the best thing I could do to make sure my game (and my employees!) still had a home was to fast track something that a lot of people would be willing to pay real money for. I’d also make sure that my microtransactions shop was getting new things on the regular, not just a handful of returning things a month.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m really on board with a new Class in the future, but it’s also because that would really be a good way to fix the above. Let’s face it: before today, how many people did you see around the world using a Scribed skill? Before today, the only way people could do that was by buying Gold Road or the Premium Season Pass. Now let’s consider how many people you’ve seen in the past three years shooting a green beam. DLC Classes can only be bought with the Chapter or Premium Pass, or a la carte from the Crown Store - so everyone with Arcanists needed to have put some money down for it. Call it P2W if you want, but Classes sell. I can’t think of too many other features they could add that would almost guarantee most of the playerbase would open their wallets for it, and especially if it was something that looked cool, matched with the existing lore, and/or was easy to play.

I do love ESO. But with companies like Microsoft cutting jobs left and right (and then making the ones who don’t get cut scared and likely to leave on their own accord…), it all comes down to money. I hope ESO can last for years to come, but I know it will only last as long as the money is still flowing in at a decent rate. And I’m nervous that the income is slowing down.
I really hope that ZOS can bring out something sooner rather than later that inspire a lot of people to open their wallets, and then we can all - players and devs alike - feel a lot safer about the future of this game.

i think they need to do alot more than that. They need a tectonic shift in gameplay. Enough of the busy work ..provide the content. How much more of a wake up call do they need lol.

ADarklore wrote: »

TBH, it wouldn't surprise me if more higher ups start leaving ZOS as well. I'm shocked that Rich didn't get promoted, as he was with ZOS from the very beginning with Matt... can't imagine this won't leave some lingering hard feelings.

Last year, Rich was promoted from Creative Director to Game Director.

I’m happy to keep paying to support this game, if they produce quality content. They might want to rethink that season pass model - it has not brought us timely updates and quality yet. Also paying up front for promised content later is not a sure sell.