Thank you

Lord_Trurl · November 14

I have heard what commenters are saying; many players are frustrated and disappointed with bugs; that's perfectly valid.
Bugs do exist, and should be fixed. Players explaining that they're upset, is reasonable and their feelings are real.
The majority of folks who feel this way, do express themselves fairly about it.
I did not intend to target the majority of reasonable commentary, nor to make light of players' disappointment.

My intent was to highlight that I've seen some pretty extreme derogatory, hateful, and vindictive personal attacks by a small minority.
Please don't forget that the ZOS team trying to fix the bugs and communicate with you are real people, with real feelings and good intentions.
They worked hard on this event, and they now are working hard to fix bugs and learn from this.
I'm sure they want to fix it as soon as possible, so that you're happy, and they can go home to their families.
Please try to remember to be kind, or at least fair, to them.

To those ZOS employees who are working hard around the clock to fix this, I want to express my thanks, because I know it's difficult.

I've made this as an edit to my original post, else it would be lost in the many comments and since my original intent has been misunderstood by some. [/edit]

lillybit · November 14

Nobody is saying the idea/concept wasn't good. It was. It's the execution that was very poor. It was just too long with too few rewards for the effort it took. It was also a long time to be locked out of other content because of the random event bosses taking over. I lost a month of ESO+ waiting for things to go back to normal. The bugs actually made it a little more interesting in that it was at least something to talk about - as you pointed out, we like to complain!

If people just praise them for what a wonderful idea it was, they wouldn't know badly how it fell flat with the majority of players.

For context, I've been playing since console beta and this is the first event I've actively complained about. I don't even mind doing the same New Life quests a million times!

salander7 · November 14

I think your post is ragebait, however, I'm going to re-answer your questions.

Lord_Trurl wrote: »

[...]
It's a new type of event, a new type of content, and a new type of dungeon.

Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? Yes.

Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Yes

Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Yes.

Has it had some bugs, miscalculations? Sure, show me any software that didn't have a bug on first release.

Are you entitled to report the bugs and the team will fix them? Yes.

Are you entitled to whine about bugs existing, and the team not magically fixing all of them in the first hour they pop up? Well I can't stop you, but it's unrealistic IMO.

[...]

[*] Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? I don't know if you throw your money away, we paid for a new zone with a new trial. The new creatures, mechanics and whatnot, in plural, is a bit of an overstatement.
[*] Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Indeed, I've seen everyone agreeing this event has been the worst experience. It's the first time I've seen the sweaty pvper agree with the casual player and the hardcore pve player. Not sure it's a good thing the reason people are glad this is unique is because they are fed up with the whole thing
[*] Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Progress has been "adjusted" so many times everyone feels the community effort has been rigged from the start. We got server progression during a server wide maintenance. The whole Writhing Fortress feels like a really tanky Cyrodiil siege, it's not working as an army, it's mind dulling. Give me a break.
[*] Has it had some bugs, miscalculations? Wall was accesible on day 1 of U48, regardless of wall event. People were able to breach it even yesterday before Fortress went down. Main quest in Eastern Solstice is bugged. You can get stuck on death in a delve. You can't get any skyshards. It is not "a" bug, it's an ocean of them. Even by ESO standards, this is a massive blunder.
[*] Are you entitled to report the bugs and the team will fix them? God forbit we get content that works as intended, it's not like we paid real money for it, right???.
[*]Are you entitled to whine about bugs existing, and the team not magically fixing all of them in the first hour they pop up? We got charged 10 more bucks for a zone DLC with the excuse of getting the dungeons in the bundle (which is a middle finger to ESO+ players). The zone was split in two (this is not a different zone, it's East and West Summerset), and even with all the time they had, they didn't release properly playable content. Even by current industry standards, which are poor, this is a mess..

If this was a smaller company, I guess people would be more empathetic. We're speaking about getting bought by Microsoft, firing the team that was taken away from ESO to dev another MMO, and then sack even more personnel. It's not just a matter of "the devs don't play the game", it's a matter of blatant mismanagement of a product many of us love, and feeling we paid for a bad quality product. Categorising all valid and respectful criticism of ESO in 2025 as toxic knee-jerk reactions is an old thing, try better.

You can lick the boot, but there's no need to make a full meal of it.

Aliniel · November 14

None of this changes the fact this event has been a complete disaster.

kevkj · November 14

You sound like the dream employer, I would love to know where I can apply to join your team that has low (no) customer expectations and no need to demonstrate competence in order to retain market share.

If you really want to compare ESO to SaaS, especially in the B2B environment they would be eviscerated to a higher degree since there are competing options in the market.

colossalvoids · November 14

One thing to consider in the perspective is that nothing here is out of good will. It's a product, that wasn't meeting the expectations that were deliberately set by the company. You could carefully dissect words, deflect and parse player logic but some customers aren't buying snake oil the second time - that's the only fact here. And if no lessons were learned it would inevitably lead to less and less customers until the team goes out of business and no kind words or back pats would be enough.

valenwood_vegan · November 14

Certainly sounds like OP knows best! Though, it's unfortunate that what could have been the start of a discussion was instead framed from a position of supposed superiority and phrased as an attack on other players.

I'll pass, except to say that since I'm the one who decides where to spend my time and money, I'll continue to form my own opinions on whether a product is deserving of those things, and unless OP plans to reimburse zos for lost revenue from dissatisfied customers, the opinions held by those customers are equally important and equally valid feedback for zos to consider.

Rkindaleft · November 14

I'm really trying to say this in a way where I won't get banned, but lets actually lay out the facts of what happened - this event had:

1) Wildly inconsistent drop rates for quest items, causing player frustration
2) Generally terrible rewards overall
3) The very few "good" rewards, such as the purple furnishings or the Caltrops skill style, had horrible drop rates
4) The glitched Phase 2 world boss appeared earlier than intended, which when "fixed", caused Phase 2 to be meaningless for console players because they couldn't even fight it until their U48 update
5) Stirk wayshrine never worked when trying to travel from it despite reports
6) Event bosses replacing regular public dungeon and delve bosses meaning you couldn't obtain completion achievements for them, maybe an oversight, but shouldn't have happened
7) The same delve and public dungeon bosses had bugged antiquity lead drops due to this
8) The daily quest givers gave out dailies for Eastern Solstice, which couldn't be accessed
9) The antiquity dig sites directed you to Eastern Solstice, which couldn't be accessed
10) Phase 3 had/has multiple bugs preventing completion/progress while also being time-gated, so many people may be locked out from things like the outfit style permanently
11) Eastern Solstice has a plethora of bugs just by itself, including the storyline quests not progressing properly, the skyshards not being obtainable, and dying in one of the delves causes the player to get stuck

I don't agree with the bashing of the devs, but most of this stuff should have never gotten past QA. For something that we paid for, and was indeed sold as a key part of what you were buying with the content pass, the amount of broken stuff is admonishable - this whole event from start to finish has been a total farce.

TheMajority · November 14

First I'm going to start by saying that I don't think you are who you say you are.

-Fresh soul shriven forum account
-Only 18 visits to the forum overall
-No prior comments
-No real engagement with the community other than this post which clearly was built to inflame the issue/attempt to get people to argue with you.

If you are who you claim to be, then your conduct is incredibly unprofessional. Baiting and goading the audience of a popular game when they have an issue with a poorly constructed event is absolutely no way to engage with the community, and if I were ZOS, I'd block any further discussion with you regarding the matter. Your tone is an embarrassment and doesn't reflect well on the people you're trying to defend.

I don't actually believe that ZOS or their employees have ever spoken to you, or that they have anything to do with you, but they are far more professional than this.

twisttop138 · November 14

Another mystery random on the Internet who claims to know powerful people and have all the inside information. Gosh golly Mr. you must know best! Shame on this community. It must be hard to see from that high horse though lol. I'm old, so I don't know all the cool terms the Internet uses these days, but I read your post and understood what rage bait meant right away.

Koshka · November 14

Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? Yes.

That's just the bare minimum, though. It's like praising you for showing up at work regardless of how you actually perform.
And if they hadn't delivered this, they wouldn't be just criticized online, they'd be sued for not providing the product users paid for.

Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Yes

Objectively untrue. The storylines that change the zone's look existed since launch (many towns actually have different instances). And we had chapter celebration events where players worked together towards specific goals since Summerset at least.

Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Yes.

Alikr dolmen teams would like to have a word...

I'm not even going to reply to your strawman arguments about bugs and mishaps. Every rational person should understand that not all miscalculations are the same - it's one thing to spend ten dollars more than expected when shopping, but quite another to drive carelessly and hit someone.

Your post left me quite confused and I have a question - have you actually participated in the event or are you judging it based on that infamous ai-generated article about it?

Nemesis7884 · November 14

The problem is
A) the amount and quality of content seems to have been declining over recent years while monetization squeeze seems to have been increasing.
B.) player base doesnt feel listened too - for example many issues are raised on pts before but then released anyway.
C) we are not in a vaccum and can compare to other developers who seem to deliver simply much more at better quality levels.
D) Bethesda/ZM has by now gotten the reputation of having extremely poor quality control (proof: pretty much any of their projects released in the past 10 years from new games to updates or remasters or even merchandise released broken)

Jaimeh · November 14

salander7 wrote: »

We got charged 10 more bucks for a zone DLC with the excuse of getting the dungeons in the bundle (which is a middle finger to ESO+ players). The zone was split in two (this is not a different zone, it's East and West Summerset), and even with all the time they had, they didn't release properly playable content. Even by current industry standards, which are poor, this is a mess.

This ^ A product being subpar because of whatever reasons is one thing, but overcharging and overhyping it is quite another, so it makes sense players feel disappointed.

Katheriah · November 14

I could write a wall of words, but I'm going to shorten it to:
You've got to be kidding.

Radiate77 · November 14

That OP deserves an audible laugh aloud.
Truly, well done. 👏

Tra_Lalan · November 14

I'm a big ESO fan, been playing since 2020, love this game.
If you havent noticed the drastic change in the quality of the product we got this year then I guess we are playing a different game. I mean, we can all guess why it happened, but its really hard to just deny it.
The only reason that players are complaining on this forum is that they still care about ESO.
Puting a "hater" label on people expressing their feedback wount change the problems that this game has right now.
You speak of majority of quiet players having fun and the forums beeing place of "disgusting" comments. You should've seen the zone chat today when we entered the fortress (just after it was available for our server), and after 30 minutes got stuck at the final boss which was bugged.
People were not happy, and whats worse, they were not even suprised its broken.

bmnoble · November 14

I didn't even know about the forums when I first started playing back in 2018, it wasn't until I received the access to the PTS that I even went through the process of getting access to the forum via customer support, so that I could give feedback, this is the only forum I have ever had to jump through such hoops.

You say those whining on here are a small part of the community, then how about you give a direct way for those in game, to give their feedback on this event, a yes no prompt, did you enjoy the event yes or no.

There are tens of thousands of quiet players because they either don't know about the forums or can't be stuffed jumping through the hoops to gain access until something happens that spurs them on.

All this talk of a new historic event, it has felt no different in terms of scale of this army of players, than the Dragon rise and Lost Treasures of Skyrim events, the same kill the dolmen/dragon/world event over and over, only overly drawn out, lacking in rewards to match that length.

Any bringing the community together aspect was heavily undermined by the constant adjustment to the progress bars of phase 1 and 2.

I did the golden pursuit, did enough siege camps to unlock the achievement, the pet and bone skill style held no interest to me so didn't bother grinding for them, did a bit more in phase 2, then lost interest, event dragged on long enough for other games I was interested in to release, an event like this should make a player want to set aside their other hobbies and play ESO, for me this one didn't, it got me playing other games the exact opposite of what you should be aiming for.

All I can say as someone, who puts their money where their mouth is, that subscribes yearly, buys the chapters, bought this content pass, occasionally buys crown packs when they are on sale, is I am not feeling the same value for money as I did with earlier chapters and years content.

You can chalk it up to being a transition year, though that excuse is wearing real thin, after the year of performance year of this and that we have had one after the other the past few years.

But for me this content pass model, unless it is one hell of a showing next year, I will be holding off on buying or not even bothering until it becomes part of the ESO+ content the following year.

duagloth · November 14

Lord_Trurl wrote: »

As a senior professional leading teams in a similar area, I've watched the progress of this year and this content with deep professional interest as well as player interest.
I've followed the previews, the reports of testing, the news from our Community Liaison team.
I've discussed face-to-face with several very senior folks at ZOS all the way up to Rich Lambert.
I know something, and can guess a lot more, about the efforts that have been put in.
Efforts and investments which are vital for this event, but also will keep paying off for future events, and the challenges faced and solved.

I've watched some folks' comments here with horror and disgust.
This community is better than some of those comments; but these forums are not showing it the past few days.
So let me say...

If not for this attempt at change, the same noisy commenters would be complaining still,
"oh wow, another year of a trial, a few dungeons, and a zone with kill-mob and fetch-carry quests. Do something different"

It's a new type of event, a new type of content, and a new type of dungeon.

Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? Yes.

Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Yes

Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Yes.

Has it had some bugs, miscalculations? Sure, show me any software that didn't have a bug on first release.

Are you entitled to report the bugs and the team will fix them? Yes.

Are you entitled to whine about bugs existing, and the team not magically fixing all of them in the first hour they pop up? Well I can't stop you, but it's unrealistic IMO.

As a player, if you're upset about bugs existing, fine.
But no test in QA, in beta, in PTS, can compare to Live with hundreds of thousands of players doing weird actions.
The Dev team are fixing the bugs, worst ones first. They seem to be working all hours to do it. What else do you want them to do?

The Community team are communicating about it, long hours, and weathering abuse that they don't deserve.

It's not costing players anything but a day's delay in playing that one particular part of game, and the realization that some players set their expectations unrealistically high.

It'll be better tomorrow, I promise *pat pat*

Life is not perfect, and big things involving thousands of people, don't always happen perfectly the first time.
Nobody died IRL, nobody lost their property, not even their digital property.
Most people are having fun, and if *you* aren't, play a different part of the game, or even log off and go touch grass for a day
(that's not intended as a snarky cliche, that's 100% serious advice).
Then you can come back when you're ready, and the worst bugs will be fixed.

From and on behalf of the tens of thousands of QUIET players...
from we who don't normally go to forums at all, let alone to complain,
let me say what people don't say often enough:

Always remember, that when there are dozens or hundreds of haters, there are hundreds of thousands, maybe a million of us, out here having a grand old time.
Because of you, we can switch off from our day-to-day, adventure in a cool world, and enjoy time with our friends (wherever they are IRL).
Thank you Rich Lambert and the design, strategy, and leadership team, for having the vision to try a new kind of content.

Thank you Dev build team for building it.

Thank you Dev support team for fixing bugs and optimising.

Thank you Maintenance+Infrastructure team for keeping it up.

Thank you Community team for keeping us updated and treating us seriously and with respect. Even when some of us don't deserve it (especially Jessica, Kevin, Gina, and anyone else weathering the storm of comments on Writhing Wall)

Thank you to anyone I've missed who contributed. We wouldn't have a game without admin; CS to handle tickets, finance+accounts to handle purchases and make sure the devs get paid, etc.

OK, now cue the haters to say their bit / flame suit on /

Sorry your New World game didnt make it, maybe this team will hire you for advertising?

Radiate77 · November 15

duagloth wrote: »

Lord_Trurl wrote: »

As a senior professional leading teams in a similar area, I've watched the progress of this year and this content with deep professional interest as well as player interest.
I've followed the previews, the reports of testing, the news from our Community Liaison team.
I've discussed face-to-face with several very senior folks at ZOS all the way up to Rich Lambert.
I know something, and can guess a lot more, about the efforts that have been put in.
Efforts and investments which are vital for this event, but also will keep paying off for future events, and the challenges faced and solved.

I've watched some folks' comments here with horror and disgust.
This community is better than some of those comments; but these forums are not showing it the past few days.
So let me say...

If not for this attempt at change, the same noisy commenters would be complaining still,
"oh wow, another year of a trial, a few dungeons, and a zone with kill-mob and fetch-carry quests. Do something different"

It's a new type of event, a new type of content, and a new type of dungeon.

Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? Yes.

Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Yes

Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Yes.

Has it had some bugs, miscalculations? Sure, show me any software that didn't have a bug on first release.

Are you entitled to report the bugs and the team will fix them? Yes.

Are you entitled to whine about bugs existing, and the team not magically fixing all of them in the first hour they pop up? Well I can't stop you, but it's unrealistic IMO.

As a player, if you're upset about bugs existing, fine.
But no test in QA, in beta, in PTS, can compare to Live with hundreds of thousands of players doing weird actions.
The Dev team are fixing the bugs, worst ones first. They seem to be working all hours to do it. What else do you want them to do?

The Community team are communicating about it, long hours, and weathering abuse that they don't deserve.

It's not costing players anything but a day's delay in playing that one particular part of game, and the realization that some players set their expectations unrealistically high.

It'll be better tomorrow, I promise *pat pat*

Life is not perfect, and big things involving thousands of people, don't always happen perfectly the first time.
Nobody died IRL, nobody lost their property, not even their digital property.
Most people are having fun, and if *you* aren't, play a different part of the game, or even log off and go touch grass for a day
(that's not intended as a snarky cliche, that's 100% serious advice).
Then you can come back when you're ready, and the worst bugs will be fixed.

From and on behalf of the tens of thousands of QUIET players...
from we who don't normally go to forums at all, let alone to complain,
let me say what people don't say often enough:

Always remember, that when there are dozens or hundreds of haters, there are hundreds of thousands, maybe a million of us, out here having a grand old time.
Because of you, we can switch off from our day-to-day, adventure in a cool world, and enjoy time with our friends (wherever they are IRL).
Thank you Rich Lambert and the design, strategy, and leadership team, for having the vision to try a new kind of content.

Thank you Dev build team for building it.

Thank you Dev support team for fixing bugs and optimising.

Thank you Maintenance+Infrastructure team for keeping it up.

Thank you Community team for keeping us updated and treating us seriously and with respect. Even when some of us don't deserve it (especially Jessica, Kevin, Gina, and anyone else weathering the storm of comments on Writhing Wall)

Thank you to anyone I've missed who contributed. We wouldn't have a game without admin; CS to handle tickets, finance+accounts to handle purchases and make sure the devs get paid, etc.

OK, now cue the haters to say their bit / flame suit on /

Sorry your New World game didnt make it, maybe this team will hire you for advertising?

Seems more like something the T&L or Ashes PR defense force would cook up, if we’re being honest.

Onomog · November 15

I play early access games on Steam with far more polish and way less jank than ESO has these days. It's truly shocking.

UrQuan · November 15

Bottom line: they over-promised and under-delivered. Everything about this event has been a buggy, poorly thought-out mess. I spent years working on software implementations (banking software, not gaming), and I'm well aware that it's impossible to catch all bugs in testing, and once things go live there will always be some things that are broken, but this has been absolutely ridiculous. Has anything about this event worked correctly? As someone who's been playing ESO regularly since launch (almost every day), I've never seen the team fail so badly.

Vulkunne · November 15

@Lord_Turl

The Truth requires no explanation.

My advice is ZOS please listen to what everyone is saying because generally speaking the Truth points to itself. The event wasn't great. I'm not hating on anyone's ideas. But it was just as bad if not worse than the 10-year event. And that comes from my personal testimony based on gameplay experience, over 10 years of experience playing this game in fact.

JustLovely · November 15

Lord_Trurl wrote: »

As a senior professional leading teams in a similar area, I've watched the progress of this year and this content with deep professional interest as well as player interest.
I've followed the previews, the reports of testing, the news from our Community Liaison team.
I've discussed face-to-face with several very senior folks at ZOS all the way up to Rich Lambert.
I know something, and can guess a lot more, about the efforts that have been put in.
Efforts and investments which are vital for this event, but also will keep paying off for future events, and the challenges faced and solved.

I've watched some folks' comments here with horror and disgust.
This community is better than some of those comments; but these forums are not showing it the past few days.
So let me say...

If not for this attempt at change, the same noisy commenters would be complaining still,
"oh wow, another year of a trial, a few dungeons, and a zone with kill-mob and fetch-carry quests. Do something different"

It's a new type of event, a new type of content, and a new type of dungeon.

Did we get Solstice, wall, new creatures and bosses, new mechanics, quest stories, purchase rewards, everything they've promised? Yes.

Has it brought the ESO community together to change the overall nature of an entire zone in the world, for the first time? Yes

Is it a new scale of event for players to work not just as a dungeon team, a trial team, but as an army across an entire zone? Yes.

Has it had some bugs, miscalculations? Sure, show me any software that didn't have a bug on first release.

Are you entitled to report the bugs and the team will fix them? Yes.

Are you entitled to whine about bugs existing, and the team not magically fixing all of them in the first hour they pop up? Well I can't stop you, but it's unrealistic IMO.

As a player, if you're upset about bugs existing, fine.
But no test in QA, in beta, in PTS, can compare to Live with hundreds of thousands of players doing weird actions.
The Dev team are fixing the bugs, worst ones first. They seem to be working all hours to do it. What else do you want them to do?

The Community team are communicating about it, long hours, and weathering abuse that they don't deserve.

It's not costing players anything but a day's delay in playing that one particular part of game, and the realization that some players set their expectations unrealistically high.

It'll be better tomorrow, I promise *pat pat*

Life is not perfect, and big things involving thousands of people, don't always happen perfectly the first time.
Nobody died IRL, nobody lost their property, not even their digital property.
Most people are having fun, and if *you* aren't, play a different part of the game, or even log off and go touch grass for a day
(that's not intended as a snarky cliche, that's 100% serious advice).
Then you can come back when you're ready, and the worst bugs will be fixed.

From and on behalf of the tens of thousands of QUIET players...
from we who don't normally go to forums at all, let alone to complain,
let me say what people don't say often enough:

Always remember, that when there are dozens or hundreds of haters, there are hundreds of thousands, maybe a million of us, out here having a grand old time.
Because of you, we can switch off from our day-to-day, adventure in a cool world, and enjoy time with our friends (wherever they are IRL).
Thank you Rich Lambert and the design, strategy, and leadership team, for having the vision to try a new kind of content.

Thank you Dev build team for building it.

Thank you Dev support team for fixing bugs and optimising.

Thank you Maintenance+Infrastructure team for keeping it up.

Thank you Community team for keeping us updated and treating us seriously and with respect. Even when some of us don't deserve it (especially Jessica, Kevin, Gina, and anyone else weathering the storm of comments on Writhing Wall)

Thank you to anyone I've missed who contributed. We wouldn't have a game without admin; CS to handle tickets, finance+accounts to handle purchases and make sure the devs get paid, etc.

OK, now cue the haters to say their bit / flame suit on /

I'm not sure why you'd post something that so obviously does not reflect reality, but you do you.

For me I knew the event was going to be a fail as soon as they announced the event would be breaking a wall blah blah blah just like they took it straight out of Game of Thrones. Where's the creativity in copying a book/movie?

16BitForestCat · November 15

My intuition was pinging me hard reading the top post, so I checked out the poster's history, and sure enough...empty account.

A while back, another social site I hung out on did something that disappointed/enraged the community. They fired a bunch of their human staff (who were largely popular with the community) to cut costs, while denying they'd fired anyone. But the now-ex employees held and showed the receipts to reveal the lie. So people made a ton of angry posts calling out the site owner, who'd recently purchased the site, already made a bunch of terrible decisions that rendered the site more buggy and less user-friendly, and was behind the firings.

It didn't take long for an account that had never posted anything before to show up and start making posts that were condescending and insulting to the userbase, while overly praising the site owner and remaining staff, sometimes for doing nothing more than the bare minimum of their jobs.

Sound familiar?

The poster tipped their hand one time too many, so people figured out very quickly that it was either the site owner or someone connected to upper management who was smooching backside for personal gain. (They did figure out exactly who it was; I just can't recall myself at the moment, but I do know the site owner was somehow involved.) Of course, the account's posts were all "mysteriously" deleted, and the account itself "mysteriously" went inactive after that.

I'm not interested in dipping into conspiracy theories, so I'm not saying this thread was started by someone with something to gain personally from ZOS. I AM saying that if you don't want people to think you're a sockpuppet doing exactly that, you're going about it in entirely the wrong way.

Titler01 · November 15

Brand new account, just this single post; deliberate positive toxicity, thinly veiled abuse towards people with legitimate complaints; first user ever added to ignore list, all those claimed achievements in real life and such a sad waste of time and potential in just trying to annoy people who are the customers of the product he claims to love.

Ingel_Riday · November 15

Lord_Trurl wrote: »

*snip*

I've watched some folks' comments here with horror and disgust.
This community is better than some of those comments; but these forums are not showing it the past few days.
So let me say...

If not for this attempt at change, the same noisy commenters would be complaining still,
"oh wow, another year of a trial, a few dungeons, and a zone with kill-mob and fetch-carry quests. Do something different"

*snip*

Maybe, just maybe, if the community is almost universally disappointed and grumbling... the problem isn't the community?

This event went on for 43 days. 43 days of doing the same four dailies, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... and over.

Is it technically impressive that it even worked? Sure is. Games are a house of cards. It's a wonder at every moment when they don't collapse upon themselves. This game has tens of millions of lines of code. It's being run on massive server banks with millions of people logged in at any given time. From a programming, industry point of view, getting an event like this to run in an online game is a feat of engineering skill and acumen that does indeed warrant praise.

Praise that the community would give, if it wasn't so burned out from 43 days of running the same four dailies, over and over and over and over and OVER.

My furlough status ended. I spent 8 hours today proofing spreadsheets, reconciling accounts, and catching up on my bureaucratic backlog. I had more fun doing that than the Writhing Wall dailies. When ESO content is less exhilerating than crunching spreadsheets at work, that's a bad sign.

______________________________________
It's good to try new things. It's good to innovate and experiment. I'm sure a lot of the genuinely difficult work that went into making this event function will prove invaluable in the years to come. But confronting the brutal facts is important, too.

And the brutal fact is that this event was not well received. It had a lot of issues regarding excessive repetition, excessive duration, poor loot drop rates, and general lack of fun factor.

Personally, I defended this event when it first came out. I wasn't expecting anything more than a standard "holiday event" with a few extra bells and whistles, and that's what this was. Siege camps instead of dolmens, but the same concept and probably same underlying code logic. 4 dailies: one crafting, two fetch quest, and a dolmen equivalent. Bog standard MMO fare with a Coldharbour aesthetic. Fine. If the wheel ain't broke, don't fix it. I expected no more, and I was fine... until day 15. Then the realization of how wrong I was set in. This was awful. Day 15 became Day 20. The Halloween event happened simultaneously, had poorly curated loot as well, and became an additional grind on top of everything else. None of the daily endeavours ever synced up to either, so you had to go out of your way to do those, too. Just grind after grind after grind. I have 30 minutes to 45 minutes to play this game on average sessions. These grinds took up ALL OF THAT TIME.

43 days. It would have been even longer if the backlash wasn't so intense. Was this a technical success? Sure. Was it a success in providing fun experiences for the playerbase to keep us engaged and around? No.

There are lessons to learn here. Belittling the negative feedback is a great first step in learning NOTHING whatsoever. I don't recommend it.

Edit addition:

Always remember, that when there are dozens or hundreds of haters, there are hundreds of thousands, maybe a million of us, out here having a grand old time.

I find invoking the idea of a silent majority who are just LOVING the current thing in blissful silence supremely delusional. I've heard it too often and seldom seen it proven true. When your core aficionados are frothing at the mouth in vexation, I think it's a bad idea to just shrug and assume they're a bunch of foolish outliers whose grumbles have no worth. Within reason, they're your canaries. They're also probably your whales.

Signor_Rossi · November 15

are you joking? is this a joke thread?

Rishikesa108 · November 15

If you continue to mock player complaints, that's not the right path.
Players need to be listened to, cared for, and feel that you're working for their enjoyment, for their happiness.
Why such poor rewards, always? What do we play for... perhaps to eternally hope for a better RNG? No, we play to be happy right now, not maybe tomorrow or a month from now.
This kind of understanding, this closeness to the player base, is missing... it's a pity, really.

dcrush · November 15

This post reminds me of this

https://youtu.be/oSDxjJ15YII

Furyous · November 15

I respect the effort to recognize the developers’ work, but I think it is important to ground this discussion in actual player sentiment rather than assumptions.

I ran a poll on the event design with 204 votes. The results were clear:
- 32% said “I hate it, this grind makes me want to uninstall.”
- 48% said “I hate it, but I will keep playing the rest of the game.”
- 16% said “It is just a grind, some folks do not mind the hamster wheel.”
- Only 2% combined said they genuinely enjoyed it.

That means nearly 80% of respondents expressed active dislike, with only a statistical sliver reporting genuine enjoyment.

So while the dungeon content itself was well received, the structure and pacing of the event were not. Acknowledging that reality does not diminish the developers’ effort. It simply ensures that future events can be designed with both creativity and player experience in mind. Gratitude and critique are not mutually exclusive, and the healthiest communities make space for both.

P.S. It is also worth noting that the first two phases were absolutely miserable. They dragged on for weeks with repetitive tasks, underwhelming rewards, and appalling drop rates. That structure did not build anticipation, it only burned players out before Phase Three even arrived.

aetherix8 · November 15

The OP completely lacks any nuance; you cannot post something so clueless and dismiss players’ legitimate concerns as “hater’s whining”, like all the issues with this event weren’t real. I also appreciate that the devs tried something new, but that doesn’t change the fact that overall this event was a mess on an epic scale. It took too long, it was too buggy and disruptive (invaded delves making it impossible to finish guild quests etc), and it didn’t even offer a meaningful reward; getting access to a content players paid for isn’t a reward.

Players are right to complain about it, hopefully ZOS will live up to their statement that this was an unique, once in a lifetime event, and we won’t be seeing anything like that ever again (locking the content behind a month long repetitive grind with poor rewards is a bad design imo).