I have been getting burned out lately. Have ran most of the content and looking for something else to try which got me to thinking. When I first started, what was it about the game that kept me subscribing instead of trying a different game. I tried WoW for a few months, a few others but stuck with this one.

I started during the Summerset release and that zone especially Alinor was amazingly well done. I then recall seeing Wrothgar and the same can be said. The scenery was incredible, just loads of mobs, NPC,s quests, buildings. In Alinor you could go into almost every building and each one the inside was just as well done as the rest of the zone. I felt like I was really exploring! The interactions were awesome. The very first thing I did when signing in for the first minute was attack a guard by accident and in the process of running saw a random two wheeled cart along the road that had boxes in it. I have played other games and they just do not go into that level of detail.

Sadly for the last few years IMO the zones that have been released are not on par with anything pre Wrothgar. As a comparison go visit the zone, you cannot walk more than 20 feet without seeing an interesting terrain feature, a mammoth or some other mob, huge cliffs, cool WB, etc. Then go to a post Wrothgar zone take blackwood for example. The terrain isn't bad but you can tell the difference in feel. I think we all know the game population is not nearly as large as it once was. IMO this is why. Most of us did NOT stay playing at first due to the combat. We stayed for everything else. Too much emphasis has been given over to combat, skill, and armor set additions/changes.

If you want to keep players and attract new ones stop doing the things that are driving them away and start doing things that attracted them to stay in the first place. Take some of the older zones like Auridon for example, add a few new towns, add some new quests, add a new lake which was excavated by dwemer slaves for example, tie more things that occur in other zones into that zone like you are running Infinite Archive and pick up a loot box that has a candle in it that has to be taken to Auridon to start a quest that allows you to pick up a 5 hour IA buff or something(just thinking off the top of my head), then move on to a few of the other older zones. Or if creating a new zone, look back on the more popular zones like I mentioned earlier and try and recreate the "feel". In all fairness ZoS does do this to some extent, tied into mythics and other things. Ramp it up a bit! My favorite day would be to see patch notes that had no combat changes but LOADS of things like mentioned above. I think many of us would pay for an "enhanced" version of the older ESO zones.

It was NOT the combat that kept me playing. It was the attention to detail. The combat changes are the main reason most people leave this game. A significant change is made to a class, 10 people leave. The change is reversed 2 come back. Over time we are where we are now, population decline. The solution is to retain new players.


What kept you playing when you first started? What made you go wow this is cool?

If suddenly there were no combat changes would you keep playing?