ZOS Deleted the Writhewall Assault… and Now the Story is Structurally Unsound

SugaComa · November 28

Look, we all know about the skyshard bugs in Solstice.
Missing shards, broken achievements, characters staring at empty holograms like “Achievement unlocked: Disappointment (Legendary).”

Bug reports submitted ✅
Threads posted ✅
Patience evaporated ✅
Therapy denied because the wall exists in game but not in spirit ✅

So yes, we know ZOS will eventually patch the bugs — probably sometime after the sun explodes and Cyrodiil gets rebalanced for fishing.

---

But here’s the part that really rattles my Aetherial siege engine brain:

They didn’t just break the story event…

They deleted it, then left a massive hole in the world where said story event used to narratively pay rent.

---

🧱 Western Solstice Story:

> “This terrifying supernatural wall splits our city! We must uncover its secrets, assault the spire that controls it, and heroically bring it down so Solstice can be ONE at last!”

ESO Gameplay Now:

> “Lmao, you can just walk through it, mate.”

The big dramatic assault on the spire?

🗑️ Gone. Vaulted. Deleted. Yeeted into the void.
No ritual. No climax. No server-wide spectacle. No skill point. No title.
Not even a “Congrats, you did a violence to masonry!” sticker.

Meanwhile, the wall itself now looks like someone attacked it with:

6 trebuchets

12 trial dummy parses

And one angry guar

but ZOS refuses to tell us who did it.

---

🕳️ What this leaves us with:

A hole in the wall you can trespass through

A hole in the story nobody can play again

And a narrative arc that now has the emotional integrity of a soggy biscuit dipped in a cold teabag

---

Because ask yourself:

If the whole point of Western Solstice is “bring the wall down to reach Eastern Solstice”…

And your alt character can just sprint through the breach like Sonic the Hedgehog role-playing a post-man…

Then story-wise, all we accomplished was:

> Investigating the wall’s feelings, not its hitbox.

---

🧠 Lore Explanation ZOS Forgot To Include

NPCs should now be saying things like:

> “The spire assault was miraculous! The wall was torn down by an army of champions, or maybe one very determined Vestige, or perhaps a QA intern who hit DELETE instead of FIX!”

Or at minimum:

> “We’re working on bringing the emotional impact of the wall down in a future update, please subscribe for mortar repairs.”

But none of that exists, so now the community is asking:

> “What happened here, and why does the city act like we did it?”

When the real answer is obviously:

> ZOS killed the villain off-screen and blamed the wall.

---

❗The Real Question:

Bugs aside, how are they going to fix the story?

Are we going to get:

A new ritual quest triggered per character?

A Spire Assault 2: Oblivion Drift Edition?

A title like ‘Wallbreaker’ for late players?

Or are we just going to keep walking through the breach like narrative squatters?**

Because right now, the story didn’t end with a bang.

It ended with:

> a patch note and a draft breeze through a load-bearing plot hole.

---

Final seasoning:

If you’re going to delete the moment we were supposed to earn… at least delete the rubble we now emotionally stub our toes on.

Either give us a wall we break…
or a story that remembers how we broke it.

PoveusRonin · November 28

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

Gabriel_H · November 28

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

They could have done both. In original WoW there was an NPC called Highlord Bolvar Fordragon who was the regent Lord of Stormwind, acting as a leader for the Humans in the absence of King Varian Wrynn and while Prince Anduin Wrynn is not of age.

In one of the expansions he is betrayed and (sort of) killed. It's a major part of the story, and changes a huge part of the open world. Players who had got to this point in the main quest saw the aftermath and the changed world, those who hadn't yet still saw the original landscape and mobs.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

tomofhyrule · November 28

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.

The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.
You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien
You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens
You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes
You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins
You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point
You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

ArielSira · November 28

I got the Season Pass a few days ago, so hadn't done anything in Solstice yet. But the hole was there from the start. Kinda weird and I agree with TS. Unless this is because I participated in the base game activities of the event.

I wonder if any account that *didn't* participate at all would still have the hole there too.

Soarora · November 28

I’m sure the hole is ZOS being afraid to break the “play anything in any order” mantra. But they should. Option overload is a real thing and group questing feels so bad.

xR3ACTORx · November 28

ArielSira wrote: »

I got the Season Pass a few days ago, so hadn't done anything in Solstice yet. But the hole was there from the start. Kinda weird and I agree with TS. Unless this is because I participated in the base game activities of the event.

I wonder if any account that *didn't* participate at all would still have the hole there too.

I didn't participated in the event. During phase one I was on vacation.
Then I heard how boring and unnecessary phase two was, so I skipped that one.
I logged on for the third phase with the bugged instances and didn't even hesitate to try just to waste my timing by being ported over and over again in bugged instances so I skipped this too and proceeded with other games.

There is a hole in the wall where I can go through to the soulless east side of Solstice.

ESO_player123 · November 28

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I do not know if it's an account wide thing, but my toons that did not do the "break the wall" quest (or any main quests in WSolstice for that matter ) can go through the hole to ESolstice. Which is great for me since I do not care about repeating the quests on the toons that are there only for fishing or skyshards. However, if it works like this for an account that did not do the quest(s) on at least one of the toons, then that would be weird.

Soarora · November 28

ESO_player123 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I do not know if it's an account wide thing, but my toons that did not do the "break the wall" quest (or any main quests in WSolstice for that matter ) can go through the hole to ESolstice. Which is great for me since I do not care about repeating the quests on the toons that are there only for fishing or skyshards. However, if it works like this for an account that did not do the quest(s) on at least one of the toons, then that would be weird.

Actually, on this point, that might be why. Dailies will be on both sides of the wall. Treasure and leads will be on both sides of the wall. Fishing and skyshards will be on both sides of the wall. Having to do a main quest (which we can’t even repeat) on every character that does overland would be a nightmare.

Gabriel_H · November 28

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

Me, on a brand new toon, stood in Eastern Solstice - accessed through a literal plot hole!

Exactly how Solstice works now:

Port into Solstice
Ignore all quests
Ride through big gapping hole
Enter Eastern Solstice

It flows from nothing.

ESO_player123 · November 28

Soarora wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I do not know if it's an account wide thing, but my toons that did not do the "break the wall" quest (or any main quests in WSolstice for that matter ) can go through the hole to ESolstice. Which is great for me since I do not care about repeating the quests on the toons that are there only for fishing or skyshards. However, if it works like this for an account that did not do the quest(s) on at least one of the toons, then that would be weird.

Actually, on this point, that might be why. Dailies will be on both sides of the wall. Treasure and leads will be on both sides of the wall. Fishing and skyshards will be on both sides of the wall. Having to do a main quest (which we can’t even repeat) on every character that does overland would be a nightmare.

Technically, we do have precedents: Coldharbour, Eyevea. They do not have dailies, but you do need quests on each toon to get there (yes, I know one can buy a house in Couldharbor and go from there, did that myself).

tomofhyrule · November 28

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

Me, on a brand new toon, stood in Eastern Solstice - accessed through a literal plot hole!

Exactly how Solstice works now:
Port into Solstice

Ignore all quests

Ride through big gapping hole

Enter Eastern Solstice

It flows from nothing.

And the alternative:

Make new character
Port to Solstice
Ignore all story quests
Get a WB daily on the other side
Go to the forum and whine about not being able to do that daily

Or also

Grab old character who is the antiquity character
Port to Solstice
Scry for something
Get a digsite on the other side
Go to the forum and whine about not being able to dig it up

There is a logical reason that the hole is there. But you will notice it's only one small hole in one place, not that the entire wall is down. You need to do the quests to bring the entire wall down.

Now I do think that this "multipart story" was a mistake from the beginning and ZOS should never try anything of this sort again. But the story of "bring down the wall" does flow, it just has a failsafe so people can rush to the other side and get things done without doing the whole story.

Gabriel_H · November 28

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

Me, on a brand new toon, stood in Eastern Solstice - accessed through a literal plot hole!

Exactly how Solstice works now:
Port into Solstice

Ignore all quests

Ride through big gapping hole

Enter Eastern Solstice

It flows from nothing.

And the alternative:
Make new character

Port to Solstice

Ignore all story quests

Get a WB daily on the other side

Go to the forum and whine about not being able to do that daily

Or also
Grab old character who is the antiquity character

Port to Solstice

Scry for something

Get a digsite on the other side

Go to the forum and whine about not being able to dig it up

There is a logical reason that the hole is there. But you will notice it's only one small hole in one place, not that the entire wall is down. You need to do the quests to bring the entire wall down.

Now I do think that this "multipart story" was a mistake from the beginning and ZOS should never try anything of this sort again. But the story of "bring down the wall" does flow, it just has a failsafe so people can rush to the other side and get things done without doing the whole story.

And in both of those scenarios ZOS could have prevented the Eastern dailies or scrying sites. They chose a literal plot hole.

Syldras · November 28

They could have just activated a wayshrine in East Solstice for everyone?

Xarc · November 28

The problem is that they want to combine a role-playing event with an MMO that has ended, and they want to leave it as is at the same time. That's not possible.

Soarora · November 28

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I do not know if it's an account wide thing, but my toons that did not do the "break the wall" quest (or any main quests in WSolstice for that matter ) can go through the hole to ESolstice. Which is great for me since I do not care about repeating the quests on the toons that are there only for fishing or skyshards. However, if it works like this for an account that did not do the quest(s) on at least one of the toons, then that would be weird.

Actually, on this point, that might be why. Dailies will be on both sides of the wall. Treasure and leads will be on both sides of the wall. Fishing and skyshards will be on both sides of the wall. Having to do a main quest (which we can’t even repeat) on every character that does overland would be a nightmare.

Technically, we do have precedents: Coldharbour, Eyevea. They do not have dailies, but you do need quests on each toon to get there (yes, I know one can buy a house in Couldharbor and go from there, did that myself).

Coldharbour you can teleport to someone else, same with Artaeum and Clockwork City. Eyevea* (and the fighters guild forge) as far as I know have literally nothing on it worth going back for (I’m still mad that the NPC I saved is still entranced. I lost a skill point for nothing!).

*Scribing, I know… but can teleport to someone in the scholarium too.

DoofusMax · November 28

tomofhyrule wrote: »

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I'm going to disagree somewhat with this assessment. Yes, for characters who have not progressed the zone story up to the point where the wall actually comes down, the wall is still there. "Still there except for the tunnel into Eastern Solstice right in front of Rampart" is probably closer to what's actually happening. It doesn't matter whether a character has completed the Western Solstice zone story (one of my characters), has only partially completed it (one of my characters) or hasn't even started it (six of my characters), they can all just waltz across the pass at Rampart into Eastern Solstice (maybe avoiding the siege camp if it's currently needing to be recaptured). The Meridian Lens is firing its beam into the wall, so getting the components and building the lens is are meaningless fluff and "we're cut off from Eastern Solstice" is just plain wrong.

TBF, all my PC NA characters participated in the Writhing Wall event, so that may affect what they're seeing at this point. But I checked in with my one and only character on PC EU who hasn't done diddly outside of their alliance starter zones and yes, the Lens is built, and yes, they can just walk right into Eastern Solstice (after discovering the Rampart wayshrine and siege camp). So yes, massive gaping hole in the story and small gaping hole in the wall for everyone.

alternatelder · November 28

Pretty sure I remember them saying during the stream that if you didn't participate in the event, the writhing wall coming down would still make sense during your questing, there'd b dialogue to explain it?

DoofusMax · November 28

alternatelder wrote: »

Pretty sure I remember them saying during the stream that if you didn't participate in the event, the writhing wall coming down would still make sense during your questing, there'd b dialogue to explain it?

The Western Solstice zone story does bring down the wall and there's a whole series of steps getting to that point with the last being a couple of short delves with boss fights before you pull the trigger and destroy the wall. The part that's just bad writing from my perspective is that anyone coming late arrives to find the lens already built. Getting the lens components and finding weaknesses in the wall that made the lens necessary was a chunk of the Western Solstice zone story. I'd have to go do the zone story from scratch on a character to check how it's currently being handled, but the Western Solstice zone story that existed before the event would need some massive story dialogue to cover for the lens already being there.

ESO_player123 · November 28

Soarora wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

This is why as cool as it sounded on paper, limited time events do not work well in the middle of a zone story. It just ends up with a hole in the story once the limited is gone. Pun intended.

ZOS could have easily done the same thing with the wall. And for players/characters who hadn't reached the part of the zone story where the wall comes down could have had a couple of quest stages to bring it down (instead of the whole event).

But... that's exactly how Solstice works now.
The wall still exists for any characters who have not taken it down.

You to WSolstice until the Colored Rooms and get back Darien

You meet with Azah at the Rampart camp and look at the lens

You meet Darien in Sunport to go over Gabrielle's notes

You investigate the north and south shrines to break the cahins

You go into the Fissure Ruins to disrupt the final binding point

You activate the lens and the light breaks through the wall.

It flows logically and with a quest. The only then that it not included in the flow is "please wait for three weeks and grind dailies endlessly"

I do not know if it's an account wide thing, but my toons that did not do the "break the wall" quest (or any main quests in WSolstice for that matter ) can go through the hole to ESolstice. Which is great for me since I do not care about repeating the quests on the toons that are there only for fishing or skyshards. However, if it works like this for an account that did not do the quest(s) on at least one of the toons, then that would be weird.

Actually, on this point, that might be why. Dailies will be on both sides of the wall. Treasure and leads will be on both sides of the wall. Fishing and skyshards will be on both sides of the wall. Having to do a main quest (which we can’t even repeat) on every character that does overland would be a nightmare.

Technically, we do have precedents: Coldharbour, Eyevea. They do not have dailies, but you do need quests on each toon to get there (yes, I know one can buy a house in Couldharbor and go from there, did that myself).

Coldharbour you can teleport to someone else, same with Artaeum and Clockwork City. Eyevea* (and the fighters guild forge) as far as I know have literally nothing on it worth going back for (I’m still mad that the NPC I saved is still entranced. I lost a skill point for nothing!).

*Scribing, I know… but can teleport to someone in the scholarium too.

Yes, and they could have done the same here. The wall is closed for those who did not complete the quest(s), but they can still get a ride to a wayshrine. It would be a less glaring plot hole, albeit an inconvenience for dailies and such.

Ilsabet · November 28

This seems like the kind of thing that you shrug and write off as a gameplay mechanic and just pretend the hole isn't there while you're doing the story.

SugaComa · 12:48AM

There was a simple solution to all

Keep the wall intact until the main story brings it down, add in an NPC to give you a mini quest that opens part of the wall just small enough for a saboteur to pass through as prologue quest, this then allows access for dailies fishing skyshards and leaves the story intact

Zos if you need a UAT person to make sure all the links line up and work let me know ... I need. A job.