PC/NA - Blackreach - What happened?

EmperorRemanIV · November 11

After a long hiatus away from PvP, right around when the Battle of the Writhing Wall event started, I decided to jump back for some Cyrodiil action but then I found out that every single PvP campaign is dead, except for Gray Host. Can someone tell me what happened?

Of course, I know that Gray Host is almost always pop locked but Blackreach, on peak times, was also pretty full with plenty of action almost all day. Now it looks as dead as Ravenwatch. What happened my guys?

Btw, not talking about any alliance in specific, the campaign is dead for everyone, not a single soul around.

React · November 11

Population is at an all time low, and they aren't doing much to bring back any endgame players. Its unfortunate but barring new content, good balancing decisions, or crossplay - i think what you're seeing is the new reality of cyrodiil population.

MorallyBipolar · November 11

I know a lot of PvP mains that left because they believe vengeance mode will become mandated, so no reason to put any more time into ESO.

RaidingTraiding · November 12

i used to play in a medium sized group and because most folks couldn't queue early or we would get queue bugged whenever we tried gh, we mained br. there were a lot of good fights and high pop so didn't even think about going gh. this was like 2022 - 2023. in 2024 we started feeling a decline. our faction started getting way more populated than the others and fights were boring so we swapped factions and it was fine for a bit. a lot of guilds (both zergs and ball groups) at this point either left or swapped to gh. then fights started getting harder to find or create so we were forced into gh. it used to be at least populated on the weekends but now its a ghost town, only people there are those sitting in gh queue and now theres hardly ever a queue for my faction anyways (i imagine its the same for the other 2 factions).

i think a lot of it is due to balance issues. been sitting in the same meta for years and i think its just slowly draining the population. rush of agony being the meta for bombers, small groups, and ball groups i think is the biggest contributor, followed by the doubling down of the tanky ball group meta that has absurd amounts of shield stacking. it also sucks for newer players. just imagine pvping for the first time and you get pulled out of nowhere with no counter into instant death. if you feel there is no counter to a playstyle that's so rampant, then that discourages you from ever coming back.

i think vengeance and subclassing were the nail in the coffin. sub classing i think was a last ditch effort but it achieved the opposite effect because of how poorly they balanced it (shocking). also I'm seeing the same thing that happened to br happening to gh right now. gh population feels lower than it did in br in like 2022. if nothing changes then gh is going to be just as dead as br and no cp are now. well maybe not to same extent, but only because its the last campaign left, and there are some die hard gh players that will quit no matter what, but i think it might get pretty close.

Vulkunne · November 16

Although I haven't really been there in a while, over time I have paid some attention to Blackreach.

The server has been in decline for at least the last year. Some left for Grayhost, some new folks joined however there are small scale ball groups that are regulars and they can't be killed. You have emps and bombers single handedly wiping out entire factions. When the Guilds left, casuals and newer players couldn't handle some of the worst abusers of things like Rush of Agony, among other sets. The Sorcs were just unkillable. More than anything I think it is a balance issue. That's why everyone probably just went to Grayhost.

CameraBeardThePirate · November 17

It's probably because the only two things they've done to PvP in the last 5 years were:

A) Scrap the old BG format instead of putting in effort to fix it, drastically reducing the quality of the game mode.

B ) Threaten to scrap the Cyrodiil format by removing what makes ESO's PvP fun (i.e., theory crafting and the ability to adapt your build to how you want to play).

When the only two things you've done are things that objectively make the PvP less fun for the majority of players, you're going to lose a lot of PvP players.

SaffronCitrusflower · November 18

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

It's probably because the only two things they've done to PvP in the last 5 years were:

A) Scrap the old BG format instead of putting in effort to fix it, drastically reducing the quality of the game mode.

B ) Threaten to scrap the Cyrodiil format by removing what makes ESO's PvP fun (i.e., theory crafting and the ability to adapt your build to how you want to play).

When the only two things you've done are things that objectively make the PvP less fun for the majority of players, you're going to lose a lot of PvP players.

I concur.

xylena_lazarow · November 20

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

instead of putting in effort to fix it

Why didn't those devs think of that? Are they stupid?

just one more nerf bro. i promise bro just one more nerf and it'll fix everything bro.

/s

Durham · November 21

The Decline of Blackreach — A Community Perspective

This post isn’t meant to criticize any player, faction, or group. It’s simply a reflection on how Blackreach used to function, how the population shifted, and why the server feels so different today.

For a long time, Blackreach had a very unique identity in ESO PvP. It was primarily populated by casual players and casual guilds—people who wanted to avoid the constant ball groups and extreme lag of Greyhost. Each faction typically had one large PUG group made up of friends just playing the map, and the rest of the zone consisted of small groups of 2–5 players running in Discord each night. Many players weren’t running “group builds” in the meta sense; they were just playing together, assisting each other in fights, and enjoying the mix of open-field battles and small-scale engagements.

Every night was different, and that unpredictability is what made Blackreach fun.

The server usually stabilized at about 2–3 bars of population in a low-lag environment. Players who preferred map play, roaming in duos or trios, or occasionally jumping into a larger group gravitated toward Blackreach. Most of us didn’t enjoy the hyper-organized ball-group play that dominates Greyhost, so Blackreach became our home.

Typically, the server came alive around 5:30 PM EST and stayed active until 12:30 AM, giving about 7 solid hours of PvP action. It was also a place where lower-rank PvPers felt welcome—they could learn, experiment, and play without being instantly deleted by min-maxed groups.

But things began to change once word got out that Blackreach offered low lag, medium population, and a more relaxed PvP environment.

That’s when players from Greyhost—ball groups, sweaty small-scale players, and streamers—started rotating into Blackreach. Many of these players favored one faction and often ran together. They enjoyed the cleaner performance, but their presence had a major side-effect: fights became extremely lopsided.

When 2–3 highly skilled players can repeatedly wipe the same casual players over and over, those casual players eventually log out. When it happens night after night, they stop PvPing altogether. The environment that kept Blackreach healthy slowly began to disappear.

By late summer and early fall, guilds started leaving.
Yellow now has only one small guild that runs every night, with a few larger ones that appear occasionally.
Red currently has no guilds running consistently.

This didn’t happen all at once—it was a slow shift in population patterns and playstyles. But the end result is the same: the active, casual-friendly, small-scale-focused Blackreach many of us loved has faded.

Again, this isn’t about blaming individuals or factions. It’s about recognizing how server culture changes when different types of players move into a space built on a different playstyle. Many of us miss the version of Blackreach where anyone could log on, grab a friend or two, and enjoy seven straight hours of good fights.

RaidingTraiding · November 24

Durham wrote: »

The Decline of Blackreach — A Community Perspective

This post isn’t meant to criticize any player, faction, or group. It’s simply a reflection on how Blackreach used to function, how the population shifted, and why the server feels so different today.

For a long time, Blackreach had a very unique identity in ESO PvP. It was primarily populated by casual players and casual guilds—people who wanted to avoid the constant ball groups and extreme lag of Greyhost. Each faction typically had one large PUG group made up of friends just playing the map, and the rest of the zone consisted of small groups of 2–5 players running in Discord each night. Many players weren’t running “group builds” in the meta sense; they were just playing together, assisting each other in fights, and enjoying the mix of open-field battles and small-scale engagements.

Every night was different, and that unpredictability is what made Blackreach fun.

The server usually stabilized at about 2–3 bars of population in a low-lag environment. Players who preferred map play, roaming in duos or trios, or occasionally jumping into a larger group gravitated toward Blackreach. Most of us didn’t enjoy the hyper-organized ball-group play that dominates Greyhost, so Blackreach became our home.

Typically, the server came alive around 5:30 PM EST and stayed active until 12:30 AM, giving about 7 solid hours of PvP action. It was also a place where lower-rank PvPers felt welcome—they could learn, experiment, and play without being instantly deleted by min-maxed groups.

But things began to change once word got out that Blackreach offered low lag, medium population, and a more relaxed PvP environment.

That’s when players from Greyhost—ball groups, sweaty small-scale players, and streamers—started rotating into Blackreach. Many of these players favored one faction and often ran together. They enjoyed the cleaner performance, but their presence had a major side-effect: fights became extremely lopsided.

When 2–3 highly skilled players can repeatedly wipe the same casual players over and over, those casual players eventually log out. When it happens night after night, they stop PvPing altogether. The environment that kept Blackreach healthy slowly began to disappear.

By late summer and early fall, guilds started leaving.
Yellow now has only one small guild that runs every night, with a few larger ones that appear occasionally.
Red currently has no guilds running consistently.

This didn’t happen all at once—it was a slow shift in population patterns and playstyles. But the end result is the same: the active, casual-friendly, small-scale-focused Blackreach many of us loved has faded.

Again, this isn’t about blaming individuals or factions. It’s about recognizing how server culture changes when different types of players move into a space built on a different playstyle. Many of us miss the version of Blackreach where anyone could log on, grab a friend or two, and enjoy seven straight hours of good fights.

I agree with a lot of this because I've played in br a lot and ive seen you around enough to know that you know what you're talking about, but I think certain metas and overperforming sets, have made it so there's an even larger gap between casuals and sweaty players/groups, and add in the fact those playstyles have remained the same or even buffed for years now.

this really isn't the first time these more skilled players have tried out br, there's been phases where those types of players and groups came and went, but the difference i think is that when the casuals started leaving they never came back and no new groups of casuals came in to replace them.

similarly, ive seen periods of time when one faction would zerg and pvdoor that campaign and drive the other factions out, but the population would always recover. when the meta is so oppressive, people don't want to come back, new players try it once or twice then leave, and existing players feel less inclined on forming their own guilds and groups, be it casual or whatever, and even more so when there are no players to recruit.

If the game were better balanced then the pop would have recovered once the ball groups and streamers left, which they in fact did leave. but with the game at this low point of bad performance and bad balance people just don't want to play.