Endgame - What ESO lacks. (compared with WoW)

Vaoh

Everything here is based on research I did on WoW. If I got some facts wrong please let me know. Pretty sure it's all sadly accurate.

WoW is an extremely successful MMO. Though I have never played it, I'd hope someday in the future ESO could have nearly as many active players. Of course, the treatment of PvP balance and (more importantly) *game performance* has unfortunateIy crushed any hope of this ever happening. One thing that has come to my attention though recently was the sheer amount of group content in WoW - specifically Dungeons and Raids (aka Trials).

Upon doing some research, I found some shocking facts about WoW's PvE endgame compared to ESO.

This is with regards to just how many Dungeons and Raids you can run in both ESO and WoW.

ESO

Base Game + everything up until the first purchaseable DLC: 16 Dungeons (half have Tier I & II versions), 3 Raids
Imperial City: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Orsinium: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Thieves Guild: 0 Dungeons, 1 Raid
Dark Brotherhood: 0 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Shadows of the Hist: 2 Dungeons, 0 Raids
Total - 20 Dungeons (28 if counting duplicate dungeons via Tier I & II), 4 Raids

WoW

Classic: 20 Dungeons, 5 Raids (more than current ESO)
The Burning Crusade: 16 Dungeons, 8 Raids
Wrath of the Lich King: 16 Dungeons, 9 Raids
Cataclysm: 14 Dungeons, 6 Raids
Mists of Pandaria: 9 Dungeons, 5 Raids, 18 scenarios
Warlords of Draenor: 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Legion: 11 Dungeons, 3 Raids
Total - 94 Dungeons, 39 Raids

They also use different player counts for group content.....

In ESO:

Dungeons: 4 players
Raids(Trials): 12 players

In WoW:

Scenarios: 3 players
Dungeons: 5 players
Raids(Trials):
10 players only (two raids)
25 players only (seven raids)
10 or 25 players (nineteen raids)
10-30 player w/ scaling based on amount of players (four raids)
40 player (three raids)

I fully understand that WoW has been out much longer than ESO..... but why is ESO so lacking on endgame content!? This is not due to how much longer WoW has been out, but rather the pacing of ESO launching endgame content. We have 4 raids and the fifth is likely coming with our future Vvardenfell DLC, due late 2017 or even farther. In other words, we will have 5 raids (if not still 4) in ESO at the end of 2017.

On top of this, WoW has included all of their expansions (each of which are larger than all of ESO's DLC combined) into the base game for free except for the most recent "Legion" expansion. Sometime when the next expansion releases, they will undoubtedly make Legion part of base game WoW as well. ESO will never do something like this with their DLC.

..... I guess the point of this post is this - why is ESO so ridiculously slow at releasing endgame group content? This is why the player count is far smaller right now than it ever should've been. ZOS crippled game performance (most notably in PvP) and forced the endgame for most players into PvE since PvP turned into a mess.

We have only 4 Raids and they're all too unrewarding for most players to bother with. The Group Dungeons are all easy for endgame players except maybe some of the DLC dungeons. You also lose gold when you run Trials because there's no BoE loot and you need to chug Potions throughout your runs. How can ESO's raid content maintain a healthy endgame playerbase when there's so little of it and it serves as a gold sink?

Looking up the content WoW contains has definitely put ESO's endgame in perspective for me. The base game was perfect in terms of content, but since then there has been a miniscule amount of effort put into endgame. I can think of tons of good players I know who would've never quit if even a quarter of the amount of dungeons/raids were released to ESO in the same timespan that WoW releases them.

Please tell me I am missing somethimg huge in all of this. As far as I'm concerned, ESO would do amazingly well if it had 4x the current amount of dungeons and 10x the amount of trials including those with 2-3x the amount of players in them.

I love ESO, but it's no secret how poorly the endgame community is doing. Trials are as empty as the PvP population now due to lack of content and incentive. Personally, endgame PvE is all that's left for me. Please revive the endgame community and revise your policy of 2-4 dungeons/1 trial (max) per year. Add more and be serious about endgame to guarantee some longetivity for ESO. The "Elder Scrolls" name can only carry this game so much farther when content runs unbelievably dry and PvP is painfully neglected.

....that is all

Foxic

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

JD2013

I would definitely like to see some endgame trials/raids more in the style of other mmo's (even WoW) because as it stands, the trials just feel like (slightly) longer dungeons with more people.

I would also like to see longer dungeons. You can faceroll them in 10 - 15 mins easily.

The big problem here is that they have repeatedly stated they're trying not to be like other mmo's out there. And so they design and do things differently. The problem with doing things differently is that it doesn't always work and it doesn't always keep your players busy. And make no mistake, we definitely need content to keep us busy and coming back.

So please ZOS do look to other mmo's out there and observe how they do things and take even a little inspiration from them. You don't have to copy them like for like. Just give us some longer content and more of Tamriel to love.

Khaos_Bane

OP : "I entirely understand that WoW has been out a lot longer, but why does ESO have less content than WoW ?"

LMBO ! Classic.

VDoom1

As you have said WoW has been around far longer. This year they celebrated their 12th Anniversary. So if you want an answer to why content is coming out faster in WoW. Then perhaps its because they have had a lot of practice, and they have way more experience. After 12 years they know exactly how to do things.

ESO is still kind of new, obviously not super new. But just comparing the standards, the bar is way higher. So maybe more time is required for better quality features. I can imagine that the quality alone is a big time killer. Wouldn't surprise me if it takes weeks or even months to make one new set of armor. So imagine how long it takes to make one new dungeon.

But if were counting DLC's. ESO has been out for over 2 years and has 5 DLC's. Sure they are not as big as the the expansions in WoW. But in WoW it takes about 1-2 years between every expansion.

However, once your lvl 50 and the main quest is done. I can agree that end game content is lacking.

Vaoh

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

That's because vMoL HM is extremely difficult. Only the very best players will ever beat it.

Our lack of a decent-sized endgame community is due to the lack of content. That I can assure you. Why would so many stick around when 1 new trial has been released in over a year? ESO is not making itself out to be a great PvP game (terrible PvP performance+balance) or PvE game (no new content at all+bad performance in trials).

I looked to WoW out of curiosity and found 10x the Raids -_- prompted me to create this thread...

Vaoh

Khaos_Bane wrote: »

OP : "I entirely understand that WoW has been out a lot longer, but why does ESO have less content than WoW ?"

LMBO ! Classic.

Nice troll comment.

If you bothered to read on a bit more you may have learned something, rather than sound like you have the attention span of a squirrel.

Smh.

Cencewolf

Advocating for ESO changes based on WoW is possibly the worst sales pitch. If i wanted to play wow i would.

Secondly (and lastly) they have catered enough to wow kids. The game is trivial and largely plays like a FPS,

-Tradeskills are trivial and maxable in about... 10 mins.
-levels,... Irrelevant, somehow the took the novelty out of "character advancement"
-gear,...fully farmable time sink. no skill required

So yeah, ESO is more like WoW than ever before.. Knock it off,

Am i angry? Noo. I am however dissapointed. Games lack challenge these days now including ESO, (the latest game i came to terms with loving to play) really only curiously waiting around to see the dawn of the next ice age. I hope its beautiful.

Vaoh

VDoom1 wrote: »

As you have said WoW has been around far longer. This year they celebrated their 12th Anniversary. So if you want an answer to why content is coming out faster in WoW. Then perhaps its because they have had a lot of practice, and they have way more experience. After 12 years they know exactly how to do things.

ESO is still kind of new, obviously not super new. But just comparing the standards, the bar is way higher. So maybe more time is required for better quality features. I can imagine that the quality alone is a big time killer. Wouldn't surprise me if it takes weeks or even months to make one new set of armor. So imagine how long it takes to make one new dungeon.

But if were counting DLC's. ESO has been out for over 2 years and has 5 DLC's. Sure they are not as big as the the expansions in WoW. But in WoW it takes about 1-2 years between every expansion.

However, once your lvl 50 and the main quest is done. I can agree that end game content is lacking.

The issue I'm having is the scale of content WoW is releasing compared to ESO. Yeah it takes 1-2 years per expansion, but they each contain more content than what was added to ESO since it launched.

ESO has released 4 dungeons and 1 raid since it began selling DLC. Compare that to any WoW expansion.

These numbers are NOT favoring ESO in the slightest and the community isn't going to wait 100+ years for ZOS to catch up. Things are not looking good. Only after doing this research did I realize it.

Vaoh

Cencewolf wrote: »

Advocating for ESO changes based on WoW is possibly the worst sales pitch. If i wanted to play wow i would.

Secondly (and lastly) they have catered enough to wow kids. The game is trivial and largely plays like a FPS,

-Tradeskills are trivial and maxable in about... 10 mins.
-levels,... Irrelevant, somehow the took the novelty out of "character advancement"
-gear,...fully farmable time sink. no skill required

So yeah, ESO is more like WoW than ever before.. Knock it off,

Am i angry? Noo. I am however dissapointed. Games lack challenge these days now including ESO, (the latest game i came to terms with loving to play) really only curiously waiting around to see the dawn of the next ice age. I hope its beautiful.

You are confused. I have no idea why you are comparing these parts of ESO to WoW.

I'm asking for much more endgame content, which ESO severely lacks. Otherwise the endgame community becomes very small.

Foxic

Vaoh wrote: »

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

That's because vMoL HM is extremely difficult. Only the very best players will ever beat it.

Our lack of a decent-sized endgame community is due to the lack of content. That I can assure you. Why would so many stick around when 1 new trial has been released in over a year? ESO is not making itself out to be a great PvP game (terrible PvP performance+balance) or PvE game (no new content at all+bad performance in trials).

I looked to WoW out of curiosity and found 10x the Raids -_- prompted me to create this thread...

I'm not arguing that there isn't a lack of content. But as someone who has raided in many mmos, the mmo raiding community is dead. That breed of mmo player is gone and there aren't enough of them left to sustain raid development.

I'm not trying to offend you, but saying only the best raiders can clear maw hm shows that you don't really understand the problem. Would you expect new raids to not be difficult? Compared to other games, maw hardmode is not that difficult. There are many guilds just skipping the fights main mechanic through dpsing rakkhat quick enough. Hell I've seen guilds burn him on their very first clear. Other mmos such as wow, aion etc have raids that take months/over a year to clear by players that are sponsored and play the game for a living.

Sotha_Sil

I think we all agree here that the only solution to make the endgame engaging and lively is by adding more content at a regular rate with great rewards and that 2 dungeons & 1 trial a year won't do it. But from a business point of view, raiders don't make money, casuals do. You bet what direction this game has been following from the start. I think it is pointless to expect big things with ESO and just accept that this game will never be the best Elder scrolls game - or MMO and play it without too much expectations. It's really hard to do and as a fan myself I have been disappointed a lot of times but it's all the ES we will get for the next years.

MaxwellC

It would be nice to get more dungeons and trials each patch, I honestly could careless for the housing coming next patch. I want a trial featuring another mundus avatar other than The Mage, The Warrior, and The Serpent.

Vaoh

MaxwellCrystal wrote: »

It would be nice to get more dungeons and trials each patch, I honestly could careless for the housing coming next patch. I want a trial featuring another mundus avatar other than The Mage, The Warrior, and The Serpent.

There are so many easy trials to make.

Red Mountain is perfect and is almost guaranteed as Trial 5.

They could easily create new lore and add in just about anything. Cool environments could be part of an Oblivion plane. Using that would allow any environment to be possible and lore-appropriate. Ice Palaces, Fiery towers like in the Deadlands aka Mehrunes Dagon's plane... whatever you can think of. All easily featured.

So much potential, but I'm afraid ZOS will never bother

Sausage

I think Achievements should be the long-term progression in ESO and reward is Elite Upgrades for your Gears, Elite comes after Legendary. Or alternatively you can win Elite Upgrades at Leaderboards.

Kolache

Vaoh wrote: »

Khaos_Bane wrote: »

OP : "I entirely understand that WoW has been out a lot longer, but why does ESO have less content than WoW ?"

LMBO ! Classic.

Nice troll comment.

If you bothered to read on a bit more you may have learned something, rather than sound like you have the attention span of a squirrel.

Smh.

If you had bothered to include any sort of time-line comparison regarding these numbers you might have explained it better. Instead, comparing a 2 year old MMO to a 12 year old MMO in terms of end-game content count, the vast majority of which came out every 2 years, does seem kind of silly.

dennissomb16_ESO

WoW simply runs a different model then ESO. WoW expansion are 2 years apart and you pay about $50.00 U.S. for each expansion. All the previous content from previous expansions become basically useless. It is nice to count the dozens of dungeons and raids from previous expansions except they mean nothing as they do not scale up so people only run them for old appearences and achievements (usually solo including raids)

When a new WoW expansion drops players get about a year of fun and then complain for a year about lack of content while waiting for the next expansion (and you see subscriptions start to drop).

In the end however it is simple money. WoW has had a much larger player base paying 15 dollars a month for 12 years then any western MMO on the market. Add in $250 million dollars a year from selling extras like pets etc (that number is on public records) and they can easily afford a much larger development team then ESO will ever have

RazorCaltrops

1 trial + scaling the old ones took almost a year for them which is kinda sad. And removing Bind on Equip gear with One Tamriel made things worse. And it seems except PC EU, the number of "end game pve" groups in any given platform is so small we can't even call that a community.

I can talk about this 24/7, but in a nutshell they don't invest into end game pve enough and everyday more players are either taking breaks, switching platforms or leaving the game entirely because of the reasons related to this problem.

BlackEar

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

I don't think this justifies hardly having any trial content. It is a positive feedback cycle. No raids mean no raiding guilds and it is selfenforcing. I would like 1 or 2 more in the near future. The dungeon difficulty is nice though and going 5 people is very rewarding.

Sausage

dennissomb16_ESO wrote: »

In the end however it is simple money. WoW has had a much larger player base paying 15 dollars a month for 12 years then any western MMO on the market. Add in $250 million dollars a year from selling extras like pets etc (that number is on public records) and they can easily afford a much larger development team then ESO will ever have

Thats why my idea is awesome. Zen doesnt have the money, so why not to use their Achievement system for it. Just revisit the achievement system, do it right, this time. They could add 300+ hour of content easily and most importantly non-repetitive what Raids are.

User_Name

Obviously Blizzard has had a lot of time perfecting the formula. They receive a lot of feedback from a huge player base (not just in the form of forum posts, but also player data compiled from a large population), which has also generated an income to warrant development of more PVE end-game stuff.

If we do away with the comparison and look at ESO isolated, yes there's not enough end-game content now that they killed PVP. Craglorn was made mostly soloable where they should perhaps instead have made it more difficult so you would need to be grouped with others for other reasons than activating switches.

Most of the ESO DLC is also quite lacklustre. Not a lot of content, and some more or less exclusively hinge on gimmicks like stealing or killing civilians, which some Elder Scrolls fans would have expected to be in the base game at launch. Personally I think IC is great and the type of ESO content that is sort of unique to this MMO.

I would like to see a "trial zone", like perhaps Craglorn was initially intended. A large open-world zone, extremely hostile and filled with tough minibosses and elite mobs that would flat out vaporize anyone who went in there solo, but with places to discover and get lost in. And juicy loot. I like The Elder Scrolls formula of open world/going where you please, rather than be locked in a linear dungeon.

Or just more trials.

Kolache

BlackEar wrote: »

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

I don't think this justifies hardly having any trial content. It is a positive feedback cycle. No raids mean no raiding guilds and it is selfenforcing. I would like 1 or 2 more in the near future. The dungeon difficulty is nice though and going 5 people is very rewarding.

Has taking a moment to focus on raiding ever helped an MMO? I know there are people that want it, but it sure didn't help GW2's numbers. It didn't make Wildstar a success. WoW made it easier like every expansion just to make it less like raiding and more like a pug mosh-pit cluster****. Raid instances in WoW have never seen as much use as they have since people could solo them for transmogs.

Just my opinion, but if it were up to me I'd throw PvP'ers a few more bones before I worried about my raiders getting bored with ESO. They just don't float MMOs.

danno8

Isn't the answer simply that WoW has a much larger player base, which nets much more money, which allows many more developers, which allows for much more content?

Vaoh

Kolache wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Khaos_Bane wrote: »

OP : "I entirely understand that WoW has been out a lot longer, but why does ESO have less content than WoW ?"

LMBO ! Classic.

Nice troll comment.

If you bothered to read on a bit more you may have learned something, rather than sound like you have the attention span of a squirrel.

Smh.

If you had bothered to include any sort of time-line comparison regarding these numbers you might have explained it better. Instead, comparing a 2 year old MMO to a 12 year old MMO in terms of end-game content count, the vast majority of which came out every 2 years, does seem kind of silly.

It is a L2Read issue. If you are somehow still confused to the point of this thread then you can look up all of the release dates yourself rather than argue and troll like you're currently doing.

I think comparing an extraordinary successful 12 year old MMO (with more endgame content at launch than ESO currently has) to a 2-3 year old MMO which is doing worse and worse in both PvP and endgame PvE each patch is not silly at all. And with each expansion crushing ESO in endgame? Well perhaps that is why the endgame community is terribly small atm in ESO and I wanted to compare it in terms of endgame content to a much more successful MMO.

Riejael

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

Having come from Legion myself, I can say this is false. If anything, the expansion put raiding at an all time high.

With that said however...

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

This unfortunately appears to be correct. You don't have to go far to see where the skill of the average player is in ESO. Frequently I've been in the queue with 600+ CP DPS players who still fail to take out adds when they spawn. Little things that should be automatic and damn near muscle memory. Half the time you can remind them and it goes smoothly, the other half and it goes on deaf ears.

And that's just on normal. If they're failing on normal, they're not doing vets. And sure not doing trials.

But there's another issue too. There's no incentive to doing trials. There's a couple pieces of jewelry for some builds. But most times you're using purple or gold gear of sets you put together for trials. And the gear that does drop isn't better than the gear being used.

There's no endgame progression. That's the real difference between WoW (or most MMORPGs) and ESO. There's no dungeon you do for gear to be able to do the next one. I mean how it is now you can literally gear a character out in normal (since you can upgrade many pieces) and vets and be done. Depending on build sometimes trials aren't even needed. And in that case your character is 'done' until a patch nerfs a piece a gear, adds a sidegrade that might squeeze out more performance, or a patch changes the class up.

But no patch is going to bring 'better' gear in harder content.

Should that change? I think it should, it might encourage players to be better. It might actually do that. Part of the reason people aren't doing trials is mostly because they don't really need to. Risk/Effort vs Reward doesn't exist.

thedude33

Khaos_Bane wrote: »

OP : "I entirely understand that WoW has been out a lot longer, but why does ESO have less content than WoW ?"

LMBO ! Classic.

lol no kidding.

Found this funny also ..." I can think of tons of good players I know who would've never quit if even a quarter of the amount of dungeons/raids were released to ESO in the same timespan that WoW releases them."

Good old fashioned hyperbole to support an opinion on a game he has never played.

Patouf

Vaoh wrote: »

You can not compare, really.

IronCrystal

While I agree that wow has much larger development team so its hard to compare, I would like more end game content. It's true that I haven't beaten vet MoL but there is a huge difference in difficulty between the three craglorn trials and MoL.

More than anything I wish there was a better incentive to run vet trials. I love the social aspect and teamwork requirements, but as others mentioned it really is a gold sink unless you are trying to get gold jewelry, which will take maybe 2-3 runs to get a full set.

I just wish I could make money I guess off of doing the hardest pve content. 12k per run (22k for hardmode) is hardly enough to call it worth my time due to the costs of running. To add to the fact the final reward is a bop ring, I always offer them away or sell to a merchant for 50 gold.

Vaoh

RazorCaltrops wrote: »

1 trial + scaling the old ones took almost a year for them which is kinda sad. And removing Bind on Equip gear with One Tamriel made things worse. And it seems except PC EU, the number of "end game pve" groups in any given platform is so small we can't even call that a community.

I can talk about this 24/7, but in a nutshell they don't invest into end game pve enough and everyday more players are either taking breaks, switching platforms or leaving the game entirely because of the reasons related to this problem.

Exactly.

This is the first time I've pinpointed it.

Our endgame content is miniscule and not being expanded on seriously.

What you see now will be almost exactly the same 2 years from now at this pace. Maybe they'll add a handful of dungeons and a trial.

WoW would've added like 16 dungeons and 8 trials or something crazy like that.

ESO just doesn't add remotely enough endgame content to keep people around or caring. This is before the fact that you lose gold by running Vet trails since One Tam -_-

Kolache

Vaoh wrote: »

I think comparing an extraordinary successful 12 year old MMO (with more endgame content at launch than ESO currently has) to a 2-3 year old MMO which is doing worse and worse in both PvP and endgame PvE each patch is not silly at all.

lol what in the world are you talking about? Did you even play WoW at launch? The only PvP was world PvP with no rewards. The only end-game content was a couple 5-man dungeons and a broken raid that 1% of the population experienced in the 1st year. I get that you want more end-game content, just please cease this tangent of nonsense.

BlackEar

Kolache wrote: »

BlackEar wrote: »

TotallyNotVos wrote: »

Because the endgame raiding community in all mmos is at an all time low. Most of the top wow raid guilds have all disbanded as well.

While I personally would like to see more and bigger raids, eso does not have the community to warrant zenimax spending all of that time on multiple raids per year.

A very very small percentage of eso raid guilds have even cleared maw hardmode

I don't think this justifies hardly having any trial content. It is a positive feedback cycle. No raids mean no raiding guilds and it is selfenforcing. I would like 1 or 2 more in the near future. The dungeon difficulty is nice though and going 5 people is very rewarding.

Has taking a moment to focus on raiding ever helped an MMO? I know there are people that want it, but it sure didn't help GW2's numbers. It didn't make Wildstar a success. WoW made it easier like every expansion just to make it less like raiding and more like a pug mosh-pit cluster****. Raid instances in WoW have never seen as much use as they have since people could solo them for transmogs.

Just my opinion, but if it were up to me I'd throw PvP'ers a few more bones before I worried about my raiders getting bored with ESO. They just don't float MMOs.

Yes, it has helped WOW immensely. Focusing on other stuff is what made the numbers decline. MMOrpg and raiding is intertwined and is the cornerstone of the MMOrpg genre. I disagree that they are not important. Pvp is important too, but is inherently second place to pve.