U48 Release Question
tomofhyrule
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I can’t help but notice that neither the U48 preview stream nor the PTS announcement article actually give a date for U48 to drop…
Is the team considering doing something different with U48 than they have with every other patch so far? I could imagine the idea is to drop U48 once each particular server gets to 100% in phase 2 of the wall, so there is a(n almost) seamless transition from Wall phase 2 to breaking it down in phase 3, and that would mean the timing may not be set in stone yet.
If that means the patch cycle could potentially be shorter, that also makes sense as to why U48 feels very light on content and looks more like an incremental than a full update. That also explains why we’re starting by testing the Heart’s Day event (which is logically one of the later ones we’d get right before U49) while the other events we’ve seen before aren’t needing to be retested.
However… if this is the case, please at least tell us that. Most of the consternation with this update is the fact that the balance is atrocious, and players would be more understanding if the team prepped us with “U48 will mostly be an incremental because the PTS cycle will necessarily be curtailed.” We’d be even happier if you threw us a bone in coming out with something like “we’re going to at least give you the combat section of the U49 patch notes immediately after all servers get U48 so you can already start offerring feedback which could be incorporated into U49’s PTS cycle starting in January.”
The ESO playerbase is tired of surprises. Give us at least some concrete things so we don’t just assume the dev team is going all Mean Girls on us and tee-heeing at all of us getting frustrated at the secrets you’re keeping. Players aren’t playing along, they’re leaving.
Is the team considering doing something different with U48 than they have with every other patch so far? I could imagine the idea is to drop U48 once each particular server gets to 100% in phase 2 of the wall, so there is a(n almost) seamless transition from Wall phase 2 to breaking it down in phase 3, and that would mean the timing may not be set in stone yet.
If that means the patch cycle could potentially be shorter, that also makes sense as to why U48 feels very light on content and looks more like an incremental than a full update. That also explains why we’re starting by testing the Heart’s Day event (which is logically one of the later ones we’d get right before U49) while the other events we’ve seen before aren’t needing to be retested.
However… if this is the case, please at least tell us that. Most of the consternation with this update is the fact that the balance is atrocious, and players would be more understanding if the team prepped us with “U48 will mostly be an incremental because the PTS cycle will necessarily be curtailed.” We’d be even happier if you threw us a bone in coming out with something like “we’re going to at least give you the combat section of the U49 patch notes immediately after all servers get U48 so you can already start offerring feedback which could be incorporated into U49’s PTS cycle starting in January.”
The ESO playerbase is tired of surprises. Give us at least some concrete things so we don’t just assume the dev team is going all Mean Girls on us and tee-heeing at all of us getting frustrated at the secrets you’re keeping. Players aren’t playing along, they’re leaving.
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LunaFlora✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭i also really want to know.
Perhaps they will tell us the update 48 release date during the Writhing Wall livestream, though we have no idea when that will be
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PlayStation and PC EU.
LunaLolaBlossom on psn.
LunaFloraBlossom on pc.1 -
MashmalloMan✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Logically, it wouldn't make sense to delay an entire patch due to an event when the majority of said patch is bug fixes and other base game improvements. What will most likely happen is the patch will drop in 6 weeks, Oct 27th for PC, then access to the eastern part of the zone won't become available until the event is complete. As they said, if you get access to the content pass this event, you still need to beat the western part of the story quests to have access.
My guess is, they can only string players along for 2-3 weeks before it starts to become a nuisance, they've done some calculations based on previous events and player numbers for 2025 to figure out how quickly this event should take. As it gets closer to a server unlocking the zone, they'll try to incentivise competition from the other servers to catch up with website articles. If a server lags too far behind the others, they'll mess with the numbers behind the scenes to pretend they caught up despite all odds.
There is absolutely 0 chance they would only unlock the zone if the event is completed when a server is clearly not going to meet their expectations. Can you imagine being a paying customer on a dead server and not having access to something you already paid for? It would be a PR nightmare. How exactly would that be a positive experience for the player on a dead server? What would be the end goal for that?
They want to make competition and drive engagement, but they don't want to lock you out of content for months at a time to punish you so you can bet they have failsafes for that.
This is all just speculation though, as OP put it, this is something they need to make clear for the playerbase. This isn't the time for guessing games with your 11 year playerbase. I'm seeing players dropping like flies with those patch notes, myself included. They're telling me 2025 is a transitional year, that this is a minor patch and the team is hard at work for 2026, okay, great, so I'll see you in 2026. You already got my money, but you won't get my time.Edited by MashmalloMan on 17 September 2025 20:340 -
tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think the progress bar for the Wall event is totally modifiable on the back end just like the progress bars from the previous events, and the three people who play on XBEU will still get to complete the wall event within a week of everyone else.
Still, the existence of the console patch certification cycles adds another wrinkle. If we assume this is a standard 6-week PTS cycle, it should release on PC on Oct 27, and then console around Nov 12. However, all of the servers are starting the wall event at the same time, so it’s highly unlikely that console will be forced to wait 2.5 weeks after they pass it to get their patch. Depending on when they want to patch everyone, the console certification teams will need the patch two weeks prior, and that means PTS needs to be over by then.
We don’t know what the team’s vision is for how long they want phases 1 and 2 to last, so we can’t predict when phase 3 (and thus the patch) would have to start, and then the console certification would need to start two weeks prior to that date as well. So if they are trying to get to phase 3 at any point before Nov 12, that would require a compressed PTS cycle to get the patch to Sony/MS in time.
It makes me feel the most minuscule amount better about U48 being light if we know the PTS cycle is abbreviated. However, “we know the current balance is a disaster, but we’ll fix it soon™️” is not going to hold us much longer, and definitely not if we have to sit in the dark until the January (non-)reveal. They’re putting so much weight on 2026 being amazing and trying their darndest to hype us up for it that if we don’t see two new Classes, perfect balance, no performance issues in PvP, the rest of Tamriel’s map filled, full deep branching stories and companions to rival BG3 each with a deep romance subplot, infinite housing slots, and hideable outfit slots and tassets all dropping at the same time, there will be a riot.
So yeah, there’s no way they can deliver to the extent they’ve built the hype…1