Why can't ESO appeal to the general TES fan or the greater gaming public?

colossalvoids

francesinhalover wrote: »

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

It is clear that your average skyrim fan is the one and only audience ZOS is trying to attract at the moment. You can see this clearly by the direction the game's heading, braindead easy content with YA fanfic writing is pretty much 99% of what we get now.

And they are willing to sacrifice and screw over PVPers, endgame PVEers, etc to get that audience. Sure, ZOS might throw us a bone or 2 once a year or so, but casual skyrim fans are what the devs want.

But the general TES fanbase still pretends that ESO don't exist, just look at the elder scrolls subreddit (r/elderscrolls). Pretty much zero ESO coverage there.

ESO's not popular with the greater gaming population as well, having practically zero YouTube or twitch presence, etc.

What do you think ESO did wrong? ZOS tried so hard to get that audience.

Teslore Youtubers Seem to insist eso either doesn't being anything important lore wise , or isn't canonical.

Depends on a community you're into, best one lore wise I found was Selective Lorecast by rottendeadite and this part of a community absolutely includes eso. General teslore reddit also was never critical of it as far as I remember. So it's really not that one sided.

SilverBride

francesinhalover wrote: »

Other elder scrolls games also have speedruns, and mods, adult mods etc.

Comparing Elder Scrolls Online to The Elder Scrolls is apples to oranges. ESO is a multiplayer game based on The Elder Scrolls games, but is its own entity. TES games are single player so there is no way to make a fair comparison between the mechanics of the two.

VaranisArano

francesinhalover wrote: »

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

It is clear that your average skyrim fan is the one and only audience ZOS is trying to attract at the moment. You can see this clearly by the direction the game's heading, braindead easy content with YA fanfic writing is pretty much 99% of what we get now.

And they are willing to sacrifice and screw over PVPers, endgame PVEers, etc to get that audience. Sure, ZOS might throw us a bone or 2 once a year or so, but casual skyrim fans are what the devs want.

But the general TES fanbase still pretends that ESO don't exist, just look at the elder scrolls subreddit (r/elderscrolls). Pretty much zero ESO coverage there.

ESO's not popular with the greater gaming population as well, having practically zero YouTube or twitch presence, etc.

What do you think ESO did wrong? ZOS tried so hard to get that audience.

Teslore Youtubers Seem to insist eso either doesn't being anything important lore wise , or isn't canonical.
I mean it's understandable non of the blizzard story devs work on eso.
The main game is a forced online, and people play Elder scrolls because they enjoy the deep role play the games have.

The combat gameplay is kind of boring on eso. Citys barely have npcs and are small etc. plus players, it's immersion breaking.
People can't just max out something fast and focus on story, eso has lvling up and you need a big ammount of time before you can even craft armor. The fact most world bosses require other players to help you also kills the power fantasy immersion.

Now it's hard to say the majority of es fans don't like eso, i mean didn't eso have like 1 million players + or at least registered users?

Other elder scrolls games also have speedruns, and mods, adult mods etc.

Not to be rude to the youtubers you allude to, but if they admitted that ESO was canonical and important lore wise, then they'd have to brush up on A LOT of new content.

ESO is quite important lore wise. It's established a huge amount of lore for Argonians, Khajiit, and Altmer - three races who's homeland had never been seen in the main games. It's built up a fair bit of lore that's been touched on before with the Ayleids, the nature of Daedra, Trinimac/Malacath, the moons, and much more. And for the meta-lore fans, the ideas of "the Vestige as Paragon" and "the Vestige as Prisoner" break the fourth wall and offer new ways to understand our characters.

Just because the Bethesda story mods didn't work on ESO doesn't mean that this game is non-canonical or that we don't understand a lot more about Nirn and Tamriel than we did before.

DMuehlhausen

rpa wrote: »

Because it's a MMO. Other genre audiences overlap a bit but are definitely not same.

Yeah I don't understand why people don't get this.

For the deep RPG character leveling experience you have your single player TES games (maybe not deep but you get the idea)

For people that enjoy grouping and talking to others we have this. The world overlaps, and there are features that will, but they can't expect ZOS to just make Skyrim Multi player.

Lumsdenml

18,000,000 accounts not enough?

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Imagine calling the cities in this game small when most are on pare with at least skyrims lol . Markarths 1 to 1 lol with more buildings

Scale feels different though, and it's not only because of 3rd person.
Markarth was not impressive to me for example. I still haven't bought it after visiting it whilst my ESO+ was up.

I don't know..I can't compare it to previous games from the same franchise honestly. It can't really be compared, can it? I think revisiting the nostalgia route wasn't great though, because it wasn't done well.

Tandor

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

rpa wrote: »

Because it's a MMO. Other genre audiences overlap a bit but are definitely not same.

Yeah I don't understand why people don't get this.

For the deep RPG character leveling experience you have your single player TES games (maybe not deep but you get the idea)

For people that enjoy grouping and talking to others we have this. The world overlaps, and there are features that will, but they can't expect ZOS to just make Skyrim Multi player.

I agree, it's strange that some TES players don't really get that ESO is a hybrid RPG/MMO and not simply "Skyrim with friends", whatever that means. I think a lot of the TES players' criticisms of ESO come from people whose entire playing of TES began and finished with Skyrim. Most people who have played every TES title since Arena in 1994 have a balanced view of the series, often preferring one of the earlier games to Skyrim, and see ESO as an entirely separate and different game within the TES family, no more and no less than that.

These sorts of discussions always remind me of my favourite forum posts, they're the ones that say something along the lines of "I've sunk over 12,000 hours into Skyrim and the thing I hate most about ESO is the grind"!

TwinLamps

Ton of performance issues
Not balanced enough
Also, not competitive.
That is why most people avoid ESO

Nova Sky

2014 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2015 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2016 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2017 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2018 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2019 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2020 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2021 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

***

Uh-huh, yup, sure looks like it, year in and year out.

ADarklore

TwinLamps wrote: »

Ton of performance issues
Not balanced enough
Also, not competitive.
That is why most people avoid ESO

Says of a game that's super successful and still going strong with numbers continuing to increase!! Go figure.

hcbigdogdoghc

Lumsdenml wrote: »

18,000,000 accounts not enough?

Hoe many of these are actually active and not bots?

Also reminder that eso pvp is literally the exact same 300 people duking it out, over and over. And it's the same 200 people that is competing for trial leaderboards.

tripp

ADarklore wrote: »

Says of a game that's super successful and still going strong with numbers continuing to increase!! Go figure.

I think by "people" he meant Gen Z kids addicted to social media and twitch. ESO seems to be much more popular among 30+ year olds.

waterfairy

Nova Sky wrote: »

2014 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2015 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2016 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2017 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2018 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2019 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2020 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

2021 — "ESO is on its deathbed."

***

Uh-huh, yup, sure looks like it, year in and year out.

lol doesn't mean it's in good shape...DCUO is still somehow alve and well

Iluvrien

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Imagine calling the cities in this game small when most are on pare with at least skyrims lol . Markarths 1 to 1 lol with more buildings

Most of the cities in ESO don't appear in Skyrim, so I am not sure how you are making that comparison, @grizzledcroc .

But if we want to do direct comparisons, lets compare TES3 and ESO (as I did in this thread over a year ago). I compared the size of Ald'ruhn and Balmora. Two iconic locations that I enjoy in both games.

In TES3, Ald'ruhn had about 28 interactable (enterable) locations, and that was including Skar as a single location. In ESO is has about 14, and that is counting each tent as a single building. 2 of those 14 locations are locked after quest completion.

Ald'ruhn is demonstrably smaller in ESO.

Some might say this is unfair because in TES3 Ald'ruhn has not yet been settled by the Great Houses and turned into a city. So let's compare settlements in the same place, under the same administration (Dunmeri Great House), occupying what seems to be the same geographic volume: Balmora.

In TES3, Balmora had about 42 interactable locations (I just double checked this in game). ESO provides about 14 enterable locations, some outside, with 2 locations locked after quests. And 6 locked doors.

Vivec city in ESO has four of the nine cantons/structures that exist in TES3. That is 5 complete cantons, with all of the separate rooms within them missing.

What is your conclusion about comparative size here?

waterfairy

grizzledcroc wrote: »

Imagine calling the cities in this game small when most are on pare with at least skyrims lol . Markarths 1 to 1 lol with more buildings

true but in skyrim you can ride from markarth to solitude then riften without having to cross load screen zone lines or buy extra dlc to unlock areas

Red_Feather

People like action and challenge in their open world games. It's cool that ESO has so many quests and overland is mostly safe, but it wouldn't hurt to develop a new type of open world zone that is busting with action and challenge and showcase it to the public and see how it goes. I know it's a risk, but it's been years since craglorn was released and the foundation of the game is quite different than what it was back then. Maybe it will be very attractive to players looking to check out ESO.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I must say some did leave because of performance...we can't deny this and it is what is perhaps stopping newer people too.
It's very themepark (easy overland) orientated too these days, so getting anything other than an ES lore fan is going to be harder.

Tandor

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

18,000,000 accounts not enough?

Hoe many of these are actually active and not bots?

Also reminder that eso pvp is literally the exact same 300 people duking it out, over and over. And it's the same 200 people that is competing for trial leaderboards.

Let's just suppose that 95% of the accounts are inactive or bots. That still leaves just shy of 1 million active and actually playing. That's not my definition of a dying game, and pre-supposes that "95%" is an accurate figure. As for PvP and Trials, they hardly represent a large proportion of the various playstyles.

trackdemon5512

ThePianist wrote: »

Multiple big names have tried to promote ESO...Shroud, Summit1g...

I don't know about pve but this is my opinion on pvp.

From the perspective of the general public, Summit basically explained why the game's combat sucks, especially pvp. ESO pvp will never be balanced because zos always puts a catch 22, like slottable cp, and bad rng into farming item sets (like masters dual weild).

If the 1vx community want pvp to be competitive. This game is going to have to cater to casuals and actually have real balance. Just like in call of duty where 100,000 other people who are using the same gun as I am, are using the same gun with the same stats.

WOW had a pvp competition where real money was put in the line, and other mmo's too. When was the last time ESO had a pvp competition where real money was put in the line? Ill wait. The same 1vx streamers who stream everynight and have the same 60 people watching, have dreams of being an "ESO Athelete".

I get the fact that pvp requires skill, and you have to put time and effort into developing that skill. There's a lot of very competitive pvp'ers who give it all they got for nothing, there's no money in the line lol, not even clout. Eso casual pvp also doesn't feel good. You have ESO Atheletes that call anything that moves in Cyrodiil, a zergling or a bot. Yall can have it, the only reason why I log into Cyrodiil is because of the large battles.

I wouldn't invite my drunk friends to come sit on the couch and watch me play pvp tbh.

The “Multiple big names” don’t really matter because they don’t bring in the general public which is arguably more important. Sure they have their fan bases and contingents but that doesn’t translate to explosive growth.

Skyrim unlike the previous Elder Scroll games was riding a serious wave of good press by two smash hits from Bethesda/Zenimax: Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It also was released around the same time of HBO’s Game of Thrones and the popularity of the gritty fantasy atmosphere transferred over.

ESO came out without the fanfare, Game of Thrones dying, and poor marketing. That has continued to today after 7 years. I can bring up the game in conversation with players who love to play a ton of games and many have still never hear of ESO.

Personally I’d fire the entire marketing department and start anew with a short blitz ad campaign focused on just getting the name out rather than these grandiose stories.

mekops_ESO

the big trick here is to actually like mmos at all in the first place and to manage your expectations coming from a single player ES title

Folkb

Red_Feather wrote: »

People like action and challenge in their open world games. It's cool that ESO has so many quests and overland is mostly safe, but it wouldn't hurt to develop a new type of open world zone that is busting with action and challenge and showcase it to the public and see how it goes. I know it's a risk, but it's been years since craglorn was released and the foundation of the game is quite different than what it was back then. Maybe it will be very attractive to players looking to check out ESO.

I rather liked craglorn. I just finished it like two weeks ago. My character felt strong but some fights weren't cake walks.

Although I remember not liking it at release.

jle30303

People who want "1vX pvp to actually be fun" have to consider that for the X, it is not fun, because the X are the ones who are going to lose out.

If you want it to be "balanced", then in a 1v1, the player with less skills and gear has to have an actual concrete chance of still coming out on top. Like, even if it isn't a 50% chance, it needs to be something like a 10-20% chance, *minimum*. Otherwise you are just cannon fodder, and it's no fun being cannon fodder. If you want to play 1vX, then the X should always be the favourites. 5v1 should nearly always result in the 5 winning, even if they lose a man or two in the process, even if it's 5 rank amateurs v 1 professional.

Like you would have to really, really drastically dumb down everything to make the kind of level where a newbie player actually has a chance.

And remove most or all of the Tel Var penalty in Imperial City. At the very least, make it impossible for the attacker to take any Tel Var without risking his own: if you do not carry, you can't steal. Carry 10, and 5 is the maximum you can steal, as well as the maximum you can lose. If you want to steal 1000 in one steal, you must carry 2000 and risk losing 1000 yourself.

Of course, none of the necessary level of nerf (with the possible exception of the Tel Var loss ratio being adjusted, and I wouldn't hold out hope even on that) will ever happen. And thus, the majority of people who try PVP will get sick of losing and getting killed all the time, and drop out after a few weeks. Only to return to Cyrodiil or Imperial City when events force them to go there to get event tickets.

Parasaurolophus

Honestly, I'm on the verge of disabling my subscription. I'm tired. I'm tired of waiting for some kind of funny content. I suddenly discovered for myself that I was logging into the game just to complete the craft daily. And then I go to Craglorn and read the chat, as if I'm waiting for someone to create a party somewhere ... But when I see how raids are going, I understand that I don't want to go through trials with randoms.
There is absolutely nothing to do in this game. Yes, new content comes out regularly. But I complete all new locations in four or five evenings. And then again this emptiness, again there are only craft daily. Sometimes I have raids where we trying triple achievements. But this is no more than three RTs a week for 2 hours. I would like to play eso more, but it is empty. The game does not have any interesting and complex crafting system. There are no sandbox elements in the game. There is not even an interesting fishing system. She just offers you a few nights of visual novel what is called questing and that's it.

karekiz

I just kind of wish the devs clearly laid out their vision for what they want out of the game. They have flip flopped on entire stat lines, started processes to seemingly abandon them, and rush systems out the door before clearly unfinished.

Ken_Koerperich

My take, being a "returning" player from the days of Vet14, and it taking you, as a casual, over a year to reach that level, as there were NO people high enough to "speed" you through the game.

I left right after Malestorm was added, after reaching the #2 spot as a NB Archer...

I digress, anyway, first thing everyone should do, is STOP listening to Twitcher's/YouTuber's....It's an opinion. Maybe people should buy the game and play it for themselves. That's the real problem w/ gaming these days. People listen to someone else's opinion(s) instead of making their own INFORMED decisions.

Now, as to the game....

Remember, I used to play back at Vet levels, and when the "grind" was REAL in this game.

It drove off more players than it kept. Example, doing "writs" was a chore. You actually had to go spend days "farming" nodes, or do it each day, just to be able to do them. Now you got people that "bot" all that stuff, and can do 18 characters a day worth in 30 minutes. It used to take an hour + back in the day. You also had to pay for ESO+, there was NO CHOICE in it...Now, I prefer it as is...makes players choose, space & convenience over "hoarding" ala "WRIT's" made easy peasy....

PvP always was, and always will be, for most, a sore subject. Your try hards will never be happy, your casuals will avoid it, and your "meh" players will do it for a change of pace. I'd rather see it be dumped from the game, and those area's just become pure PvE. Example, Imp City sucked unless you were in a ZERG boss running, Cyrodill was impossible as every DB around would kill you, even if you were minding your own business. Took me 3 months of "sneaking" to get those shards...So, I'd rather see it be tossed/changed. Again, an opinion...

The grind now is much easier and better fitted for the casual player. That's what ZOS is after I believe. "WE" play when we can, do what we want, and if we get stumped, ala Crown Store it...So ZOS wins. They have a player, and they are "paying"....Smart business...yeah??!!

PvE, Vets/elitists constantly crying for "harder" content, rofl. Go back, play the game as a Level nothing, No CP having, and sorry, you will hate this, trea it as you have NO Knowledge about "weaving"....Which I still can't do worth a diddly on Console, especially on the haptic controllers, when a button mash can translate into 2 or 3 auto hits.....Or the lag on bar swapping making you stand still for 5 seconds, doing nothing, and getting dead. To each his own....Again, my opinion.

Most of "us" prefer the new & improved grind. "We" can burn up content at our pace and not feel like it's a slog.
Vets, you're just that, vets, why are you in overland anymore? You should be in dungeons, those were made as the "hard" content.Trials where added to challenge you also. Maybe if you'd quit chasing "meta" and "super" numbers, content wouldn't be so easy. Just saying, again, an opinion....Which leads to, maybe it's time for you to "find" a game you will quit crying about.

ESO has made it 7 years, and I prefer it now, over what it was back in the day. Grinding is satisfactory for me, I no longer am forced to do "crafting" as I'm here to Quest & Chat w/ others...Not "WORK" at it. Was so annoying back in the day, that if you wanted to be "on top" you needed 8+ hours of straight running around, farming for writs, then farming "Dailies" to get "BiS" to do the one and only Trial.....And it still took "us" that were in the Top 10 months to figure it out how to beat the content, and get the "gear" required.

Now you got people cake walking Dungeons "solo", which was a feat 7 years ago. Now it's common, and people/players treating this as the standard....And due to this, many "toxic/elitist" attitudes even in NORMAL. Man, "we" just want to run our daily, and learn as we go, not speed run it, or have you yelling/spam chatting we "suck"....Take your 1200+++ CP tush on over to Vets and treat them like that. "Your" the reason people quit, don't do dungeons, and others of us have to spend up to an hour+ waiting to do them.

When you "require" people/players to reach "blah blah" before you won't kick them from party, IMO, it's time for you to go.

Games are supposed to be fun, and being dictated to by "toxic elitists" just ruins it.

Remember it's just a game.

ZOS, I like it as is, leave it alone. It's working, and making you money. These "others" need to move on to "something" that fits their "BILL" as a game...

As for "Lore" meh, everybody I've ever played w/ didn't give a rats tush about it. We played to play. Story was just that, button mash through it all, move on to next "story"...Only "die hard" players actually sit, read, listen to all that drivel being spewed.

Again, it's just a game for most of us, NOT our job nor our life. It's a "break" from R/W bs.....

Maybe you should treat it as such also....Just sayin'

Enjoy!

FlopsyPrince

Destai wrote: »

And I agree, the timed sales are just so unattractive. There's been some things in there I really want, but nope, I refuse. If you can't leave it in, i can't buy it sorry. So you're not the only one that resents that. There's been so many times where I see something that I'd buy from the crown store, but can't, because it's not available. And I don't want to wait for endeavors or whatever else. I want to literally give ZOS money for something and I can't. That discourages me from wanting to invest in the game beyond basics like outfit slots and bank slots. @ZOS_RichLambert Hope you're listening!

I am quite annoyed that all the mounts/houses/etc. I bought or earned are gone since I had the gall to switch to the PC.

That is eating at me quite a bit now.

Iccotak

Tandor wrote: »

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

rpa wrote: »

Because it's a MMO. Other genre audiences overlap a bit but are definitely not same.

Yeah I don't understand why people don't get this.

For the deep RPG character leveling experience you have your single player TES games (maybe not deep but you get the idea)

For people that enjoy grouping and talking to others we have this. The world overlaps, and there are features that will, but they can't expect ZOS to just make Skyrim Multi player.

I agree, it's strange that some TES players don't really get that ESO is a hybrid RPG/MMO and not simply "Skyrim with friends", whatever that means. I think a lot of the TES players' criticisms of ESO come from people whose entire playing of TES began and finished with Skyrim. Most people who have played every TES title since Arena in 1994 have a balanced view of the series, often preferring one of the earlier games to Skyrim, and see ESO as an entirely separate and different game within the TES family, no more and no less than that.

These sorts of discussions always remind me of my favourite forum posts, they're the ones that say something along the lines of "I've sunk over 12,000 hours into Skyrim and the thing I hate most about ESO is the grind"!

Skyrim with Friends

As in it has the same engine & gameplay as Skyrim (without Shouts) but you can play with others. Not as many people in the same instance as we would see in an MMO but you can still play with people. Sure, it would probably have a different skill system but not the class system we have right now. I think you get the idea.

I've also seen TES veterans say they would have preferred that approach - also saying "Morrowind/Oblivion with Friends"

We cannot go back at this point but this is what people mean when they say "Skyrim with friends"

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

PvE, Vets/elitists constantly crying for "harder" content, rofl. Go back, play the game as a Level nothing, No CP having, and sorry, you will hate this, trea it as you have NO Knowledge about "weaving"....Which I still can't do worth a diddly on Console, especially on the haptic controllers, when a button mash can translate into 2 or 3 auto hits.....Or the lag on bar swapping making you stand still for 5 seconds, doing nothing, and getting dead. To each his own....Again, my opinion.

1. it's not primarily "Toxic Elitists" asking for this - I consider myself pretty casual and most times the topic comes up many casual and new players point out that they also find the general questing/overland combat boring, not-engaging, and too easy. People with No CP and mismatched gear. (most of my friends that I introduced to the game left and listed this as one of their big reasons as to why)

The only places that are actually dangerous being Dolmens and World Bosses. - maybe consider that these people also want the game to Be Fun and this is Not about "Elitism"

2. If overland is only engaging, hard, or slightly a challenge for those who are completely in the blind as to how the game works then that makes the majority of the questing in the game, and paid expansions, anti-climatic and a bit of a bore for anyone with a skill set above beginner.

There actually is a demand for hard questing - not just hard endgame challenges - but for Questing, the Story itself to actually Be Hard. Where combat puts players in positions to think about what they are doing - this is especially true for Main Story content where we are dealing with a Threat to Tamriel, or even the Universe.

Like it was said earlier

tonyblack wrote: »

I came to eso after skyrim hoping for engaging solo content but stayed for pvp, dungeons and trials. Overland in this game offers no challenge, it’s not engaging or rewarding and it’s not even repetitive for most parts. Skyrim has difficulty slider but eso default on novice and to have some solo challenge in this game you can do 2 arenas or solo content intended for groups. I just can’t enjoy the story if everything pose no threat and balanced around new lvl 10 players with mismatched gear and wrong skills.

Skyrim and fallout 4 on highest difficulty was really fun (as long you don’t abuse console commands), required at least some thinking and i could actually immerse myself to the quests. In eso i just read dialog, go to point a, oneshot any enemy on the way, return to read more dialog, go to point b, instakill more mobs and boss, return to npc and claim tiny amount of gold and useless piece of gear.

Which is why people asked for the Option so then they can enjoy the story - because just like making something too hard can make it not fun, so too can be making something too easy.

A TES fan pointed out an aspect of ESO questing that makes it disappointing for them - maybe the best response is not "Then Go Play Something Else" When what they are saying is not that radical...

3. I would say again what I asked you previously - if the lag on bar swap is so bad that its a risk of death to your character then there is something wrong on your end because I have never had that issue.

AdamLAD

They haven't added anything remotely interesting in years. Same boring Dungeon, Chapter, New overland zone method for years. I am all for new locations but come on give us a bit more substance. Give us guild wars, world trader, more to PvP. Theres an abundance of options but zenimax will not do it because they are set on that boring methodology

SilverBride

ESO is not for everyone. No game is. But it works for a lot of players. Changing a working formula would not be a good business move.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

VaranisArano wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

hcbigdogdoghc wrote: »

It is clear that your average skyrim fan is the one and only audience ZOS is trying to attract at the moment. You can see this clearly by the direction the game's heading, braindead easy content with YA fanfic writing is pretty much 99% of what we get now.

And they are willing to sacrifice and screw over PVPers, endgame PVEers, etc to get that audience. Sure, ZOS might throw us a bone or 2 once a year or so, but casual skyrim fans are what the devs want.

But the general TES fanbase still pretends that ESO don't exist, just look at the elder scrolls subreddit (r/elderscrolls). Pretty much zero ESO coverage there.

ESO's not popular with the greater gaming population as well, having practically zero YouTube or twitch presence, etc.

What do you think ESO did wrong? ZOS tried so hard to get that audience.

Teslore Youtubers Seem to insist eso either doesn't being anything important lore wise , or isn't canonical.
I mean it's understandable non of the blizzard story devs work on eso.
The main game is a forced online, and people play Elder scrolls because they enjoy the deep role play the games have.

The combat gameplay is kind of boring on eso. Citys barely have npcs and are small etc. plus players, it's immersion breaking.
People can't just max out something fast and focus on story, eso has lvling up and you need a big ammount of time before you can even craft armor. The fact most world bosses require other players to help you also kills the power fantasy immersion.

Now it's hard to say the majority of es fans don't like eso, i mean didn't eso have like 1 million players + or at least registered users?

Other elder scrolls games also have speedruns, and mods, adult mods etc.

Not to be rude to the youtubers you allude to, but if they admitted that ESO was canonical and important lore wise, then they'd have to brush up on A LOT of new content.

ESO is quite important lore wise. It's established a huge amount of lore for Argonians, Khajiit, and Altmer - three races who's homeland had never been seen in the main games. It's built up a fair bit of lore that's been touched on before with the Ayleids, the nature of Daedra, Trinimac/Malacath, the moons, and much more. And for the meta-lore fans, the ideas of "the Vestige as Paragon" and "the Vestige as Prisoner" break the fourth wall and offer new ways to understand our characters.

Just because the Bethesda story mods didn't work on ESO doesn't mean that this game is non-canonical or that we don't understand a lot more about Nirn and Tamriel than we did before.

Just to clarify,
ZoS is in communications with Bethesda Game Studios on what they can and cant do. So yes, ESO is canon.
To the response about YouTube Lore streamers not considering ESO canon lore, Imperial Knowledge, Fudgemuppet, Zaric Zhakaron, Lady Scrolls, and so many more accept ESO as canon. And so do Imperial Library and UESP.

People have said the game is doomed since closed beta before launch, and every month since launch.
"Game is dying". Well, it's still here and yes, it's lore is canon.
My two drakes. Huzzah!