Fan Sites Are Dead

Maverick827

Has anyone else noticed that pretty much all fan sites for this game are dead?

Tamriel Foundry forums are so slow. Topics frequently go days without responses. In-depth discussions of mechanics and builds are slowing to a trickle.

MMORPG forgot about this game on April 4th.

Dulfy articles for ESO frequently have zero comments, whereas GW2 articles typically have dozens and SWTOR articles have hundreds.

ESOHead is clearly far worse than WoWHead. These sites rely on users to submit data, so it stands to reason that the quality of these online databases is proportional to the number of users.

I suppose the ESO subreddit is fine if you're looking for screenshots of Pacrooti's mail text, or screenshots of amusing glitches, or screenshots of "missing" textures with the title "does anyone know what this means?!?!?

Are there any fan sites that are still alive?

yodased

you are missing esoui.com which is the largest other than tamriel foundry.

The game has been out for 3 months, other games for years.

These things take time.

Perphection

The population should have grown with release though. In ESO's case the fan base has significantly dwindled, there were more fans in Beta.

yodased

We don't honestly know that though. The amount of people complaining and rage quitting have definitely increased, many people have said they see less people in the game, but we don't actually have numbers to compare.

RazielSR

ESO based fan sites and guild sites plus guilds are dead. I really can't understand whats the poing of ZOS regarding this game. It is hurting TES name and brand if they don't fixt a lot of things.

Doctoruniverse

Problem with ESO is that its tedious and boring.

And everytime developers touch the game it isnt because they want to make it more fun, its to make it last longer so that subs can run for longer thereby making it more boring then before.

Ofcourse most people have seen through this little stunt and are running for the hills.

I made the mistake of buying 6 month sub which I tried getting back on the argument that I was poorly informed because I had not reached 50 yet at that time.

Now I check in every 2 or 3 weeks to see if they have made any progress. At this point I dont have the highest faith in Zenimax as a MMO developer.

dcincali

yodased wrote: »

you are missing esoui.com which is the largest other than tamriel foundry.

The game has been out for 3 months, other games for years.

These things take time.

Esoui has stuff out of date for weeks... of my 23 addons, 11 are up to date..

yodased

they completely changed the way the API works. These people write the software in their spare time. They have to re-configure their software to work with the new API. That doesn't happen over night.

Immediate gratification is not an actual thing people, you understand that right?

htoncic

The game is doing fine, it's just that nobody is playing it. Can't figure out why...

Wolfshead

You have reminder that all mmo lose a lot of player under summertime even old mmo but it is not as notice as in new mmo but trust even GW2 and WoW lose subscribe also so i would worry that much right now but if is this bad in september then maybe we should start worry.

GreySix

The game is fine.

Remain Calm!

Woogawoman

I'm too busy playing to visit a bunch of fan sites.

Thavie

Eso-fashion is quite alive and tamrieljournal too.

liquid_wolf

If you want to find out if a game is doing well, then you look inside the game. Not at the fan sites, or the wikis. Go direct to the source.

From what I can see these forums move pretty quickly. Go hop on by the Ryzom forums and see how many posts they have sometime.

ebondeath

Many of us don't ever bother with fan sites. I occasionally visit esohead if I need to look up something, but the bulk of my time is spent actually playing the game. And if I'm not playing the game, I'm here on the official forums. I don't feel the need to visit other sites, and given how many people don't even come to the forums, I don't feel like fan site population is an accurate representation of the game's.

hk11

The class build section of tamriel foundry has been "coming soon" for a very long time.

discosoc

Maverick827 wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed that pretty much all fan sites for this game are dead?

Tamriel Foundry forums are so slow. Topics frequently go days without responses. In-depth discussions of mechanics and builds are slowing to a trickle.

The only reason TF saw any real traffic was because the official forums were such a mess. Reddit is also in the same boat.

MMORPG forgot about this game on April 4th.

That site is a cesspool. It's basically one big excuse to serve ads for Asian F2P games. The community forums generally focus attention on games that haven't been released yet. Once a game gets released, the initial hype and excitement drop drastically.

Dulfy articles for ESO frequently have zero comments, whereas GW2 articles typically have dozens and SWTOR articles have hundreds.

Dulfy's site has always been overrated, if you ask me. She does seem to cater to the "cosmetics" crowd well enough, though. Unfortunately, that's not really a big part of ESO. Also, it appears that her focus has shifted to Wildstar.

ESOHead is clearly far worse than WoWHead. These sites rely on users to submit data, so it stands to reason that the quality of these online databases is proportional to the number of users.

Same thing for TORHead. Basically, the *head *** children that ZAM spews out in hopes of capitalizing on wowhead's popularity are largely useless unless the game has an addon system that allows them get users to provide context to the stuff they datamine (drop rates, locations, etc..). Without that context, manual submission is literally the only option. Without the manual submissions, there is no reason for a community to sprout.

I suppose the ESO subreddit is fine if you're looking for screenshots of Pacrooti's mail text, or screenshots of amusing glitches, or screenshots of "missing" textures with the title "does anyone know what this means?!?!?

That subreddit has had a huge drop in traffic in the last month. Much like TF, the official forums not working was a primary draw for it. Plus, we got fairly regular posts from dev's and stuff, leading up to the release. Those aren't very common at all now; at least not with any real information to give out.

Are there any fan sites that are still alive?

I think you've covered the main ones with any real traction. Unfortunately, thriving fan sites require either a very active playerbase for the game, or stuff to talk about for the game. We don't know what the subscription numbers are like, but with the various phasing and grouping issues, and overall lack of social options, the playerbase does feel very fragmented.

And without meaningful communication from the dev's other than rare and vague acknowledgements from community managers about "looking into it" there's very little to talk about as a community, aside from direct game experience. Which, at this point, the game experience has been pretty poor for an awful lot of people it seems, so naturally that's what gets talked about.

icengr_ESO

it's still early. in any mmo launch there are a ton of people at launch. a significant portion of those people will leave after a few months. it's only then that the real work of getting subs start. IMHO ZOS has a lot of work ahead of them on fixing the game and getting new/returning players. only time will tell. the fan sites are along the same lines. most of them crop up pre-launch to collect pre-launch info. once the game launches those sites are usually not updated. it takes a really dedicated group to keep a fan site updated post-launch.

Flynch

Can you honestly say that you're surprised that in this day and age, fewer people are visiting and commenting on games forums?

I think many players would rather shoot themselves in the foot.

edit: weird typo

Tandor

The success of fan sites is generally in reverse proportion to the official forums. In this case, these forums are well-attended and the fan sites are therefore less well populated. The PvE side of the game is pretty active, I can't speak for the PvP side but PvP'er's are renowned for flooding into a new game expecting it to be DAoC2 only to head off again when they discover that it isn't.

Things are not helped by the performance issues, for sure, but they don't affect everyone by any means and there's no indication yet that this game is turning into another Vanguard or Warhammer. The PvE will support a healthy population for a good long while especially as the Elder Scrolls crowd are soaking up the lore and not in any rush to "endgame".

I don't expect the PvP to offer long-term appeal but then it rarely does, and I never did understand why the PvP'ers thought it would be the core part of TESO. I'd expect the game to settle down into a pretty steady PvE game with plenty to offer the Elder Scrolls and traditional MMORPG players as well as decent enough PvP for those with the patience to hang around while the balancing and performance issues are resolved.

Amsel_McKay

I stopped playing as much as I did at start because I have been playing skyrim again... Its a weird thing that ESO makes me want to play skyrim instead!

Mortosk

yodased wrote: »

you are missing esoui.com which is the largest other than tamriel foundry.

The game has been out for 3 months, other games for years.

These things take time.

No esoui isn't a fan site, it's the site we go to for addons to make the game bearable. If all we had was the native UI this game wouldn't be worth playing.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

yodased wrote: »

they completely changed the way the API works. These people write the software in their spare time. They have to re-configure their software to work with the new API. That doesn't happen over night.

Immediate gratification is not an actual thing people, you understand that right?

Most of the addon developers have quit. Most addons are maintained by a few people right now. There are addon authors that have taken on the task of maintaining multiple addons from authors that have ditched the game. If these few people quit there will be no updates at all.

I understand the denial for those of you that don't want the game to die but the cold, hard reality is that the majority of players have quit playing. We're down to the dregs and casuals still left. There is some activity in 1-50 zones as people are finding copies of ESO in the bargain-bin and giving it a bash.

No one is playing in Vet levels. They've all quit. My guilds are dead. They've all quit. Their subs will run out. PVP is about to die. That was the last bastion for VRs. Then what for ZOS? Time to face reality. It's not an "unknown". It's staring you in the face.

Redlag

I visit fansites every 5 to 10 minutes while playing ESO. After all I do need something to do while the overly long quest npc dialogues prattle off at each other in order to give me the big time out timesinks.

Maybe they could start developing ESO for fun instead of ... Hey, I need this quest to last 15 minutes.. Get to work.

ShedsHisTail

It's funny... I seem to recall a lot of crying at release that there were -too many- people running around ruining immersion and so on.

I wonder sometimes if a lot of you folks are playing the same game I am. I'm in a really weird timezone (HST) and typically only play in the evenings,which, for mainland players is like Midnight to 2AM. Regardless of what level toon I'm on VR or otherwise, there's always chatter in zone chat, I always encounter folks in the field, and I rarely have any issues finding groups when I need one.

If I want to kill a World Boss, I just shout in Zone chat that the boss has popped and wait five minutes for people to show up; then we kill it. The game has never felt deserted to me

Ltankb14_ESO

I only visit here and reddit. MMORPG.com is a cesspool.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

@ShedsHisTail‌
What faction are you in? It's dead in DC - all VR zones.

Nyghthowler

liquid_wolf wrote: »

From what I can see these forums move pretty quickly.

Very true. There's a new Rage or I'm quitting post every few minutes.

AelyinESO

Everything is dead, when you talk about ESO, including ZOS.

What I'm pretty sure is not dead or even far, this forum.

Falmer

You can't really compare numbers easily. A HUGE fan base of people likely bought the game upon launch. A good 60% of those will likely leave or have left within the first few months. Not everyone buys a single game with the intention of it becoming their new lifestyle.

I myself love ESO, but probably only see myself playing it for a month or two more. I can guarantee that I will be putting it down this fall when Dragon Age releases.

However, like good books and movies, I also return to play good games again in a year or two. I will likely be completely sick of this game by September, unsubscribe for a year, then maybe pick it back up again, when there is more content to consume and I get that "itch" to replay all the old content as well. This is why the VR content right now is such a terrible design. I am not in the mood currently to replay all the content again so quickly with high level characters. My other classes and characters already have that covered.

My guess is you will see numbers for ESO drop off pretty dramatically when the 90 day subscribers time is up in about a month. Then you will likely see a slow but steady increase from there on out.

Right now, there is lull between all the MMO-players who were quick to jump on the game, realized it wasn't WoW and are leaving in droves and the Single-Player gamers, who stayed away initially because they don't like MMOs, but will slowly hear about it from friends that it plays a lot like a single player game.

ShedsHisTail

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

@ShedsHisTail‌
What faction are you in? It's dead in DC - all VR zones.

My main is EP, but I've got alts in all factions.

Oddly enough, I have a harder time finding groups on a Saturday morning than I do on a Tuesday night.