State of the Game Address

human151 · April 2014

TGEK wrote: »

keondre.branchcub18_ESO wrote: »

forums dead, economy dead, company dead, game soon to be dead.

Forums being dead is the biggest shock to me. I would love to see how many subs they have, and how many they are going to lose when the 1 month is up.

The game won't die, but it will definitely go F2P within 12-18 months.

You say the game will go F2P, as if it is some insult....lol

If the business model has to change then so be it, but did you know that SWTOR is F2p and made $139,000,000 in 2013?

I know youre trying to be snide and almost wanting the game to fail because for one reason or another it does not meet your expectations, but when was the last time you invested over $100,000,000 to create a product?

THis game is peoples livelihood here. People work there and are able to pay their mortgage and feed their families because of this game....and you want it to fail?

Humans suck.

timborggrenlarsenb16_ESO · April 2014

We dont need open world pvp, but cyrodill need to be busted, when it comes to wildlife the place is simply dead, and to safe to travel in.

KerinKor · April 2014

human151 wrote: »

TGEK wrote: »

keondre.branchcub18_ESO wrote: »

forums dead, economy dead, company dead, game soon to be dead.

Forums being dead is the biggest shock to me. I would love to see how many subs they have, and how many they are going to lose when the 1 month is up.

The game won't die, but it will definitely go F2P within 12-18 months.

You say the game will go F2P, as if it is some insult....lol

Two ways to look at it.

First, it can be an insult both to the game and the players who play it, many 'pro' gamers think anything available for 'free' without a subscription is for the 'casuals'.

However, it's also a potential dire warning.

When Turbine made LOTRO a hybrid many were dismayed and feared the "type of player" the game would attract .. which is also part of the 'insult' aspect.

Truth be told that didn't turn out to be a major problem, the small rise in jerks playing soon went away and in general the F2Pers didn't have the negative impact those pre-F2P predicting doom and gloom for the community were predicting.

The fear I and many others has however was more insidious, that over time the game's design would change and the Store, which started out as they all do (Rift was the same) offering cosmetics and fluff would begin to dictate how the designers and developers produced content.

Sure enough, it soon became obvious that content that used to be part of the game became only available in the Store, either actually or practically due to the in-game method of their acquisition was made so mind-numbingly tedious to drive most people to take the easy way out or go without.

It took a few years but now the phrase "nickel and diming" is so easily applied to LOTRO because Turbine made it like that. In Rift, Trion have already strayed too far that way for some.

For me, that remains the fear when a game goes F2P, it becomes the preferred way to 'drive' Store sales.

Let's face it, we have an RMT plague due to the legions of gold buyers this game has, it's easy to see how the bean counters in ZOS will want some of that action eventually.

Vanguard1 · April 2014

Thanks for the update Devs, I would like to say while we understand that the game launched with a lot of problems, and your working hard to fix them. We have already seen about 10% of our guild quit the game because of the lack of customer service. When customer service does respond, they don't read the actual ticket and give a generic response. The call back system is not being used at all, no one I know has got a call back in days of putting in a request. These tickets should be prioritized and handled accordingly. For example If someone is unable to access the game, they should be the first one's handled and customer service should work with them until they are in, not some random message that ignores the issue and they move on, and CS should have the ability to unban falsely banned accounts. Second should be quest that prevent progress, a work around should have been given to CS by now that allows CS to give the next quest so the player can at least continue until the issue is resolved. 3rd should be gathering exploits for the developers to look at and fix during maintenance. 4. should be banning gold spammers. The fact is gold spammers will always be around, just like every other MMO, they don't prevent progress in game, they are annoying yes but no one is blaming ESO for their existence, everyone can put them on ignore and making ignore list bigger may be the issue. This is one area you can take your time and get rid of them. Right now customer service is killing this game and it's a shame because you guys have made a really great game here.

Ri_Dariit · April 2014

@ZOS_MattFiror can we get a Podcast of this speech with cheering between the breaks just as the annual state address with similar name? This one just read it to his mate (proud, accomplished voice-over added), and she enjoyed the "entertainment value" on it immensely.

Vanguard1 · April 2014

If the business model has to change then so be it, but did you know that SWTOR is F2p and made $139,000,000 in 2013?

Lets not confuse Biowares profits with how much swtor is making. The problem with swtor was it didn't have hardly any end game content at launch and subscribers dropped off quickly, many never to return. Due to swtor going free to play it no longer shows who has left the game because it just moves them players to permanent f2p status. I do agree going f2p saved swtor, it wouldn't of happened if the end game content was there and their customer support would have been better in the beginning. I played swtor for many month's during beta and for the next two years after that before finally leaving and I can say F2P ruined the game, the cartel market was nice at first but later all the crafters got alienated and everything ended up on the cartel market was better. Better looking gear, better dye packs, better color crystals and so on. Swtor like this game has great potential, now what they do different is what's going to decide the fate here, right now ESO is failing horribly at saving customers due to the lack of customer service.

AJ_7861 · April 2014

Zerg-PvP is bad.

Aoife32001 · April 2014

Damn people are impatient. The game is a month old. Give it some time. If you're so annoyed by current issues, take a break and come back in a month or two. I personally have had very few problems in the game, other than some phasing issues. I suspect customer service is a bit overwhelmed at the moment. If they don't add more support in a few months, then you can complain. In the mean time, show some patience.

largusmeansb16_ESO · April 2014

Can we please have at least at statement on some kind of incoming fix for DK PVP. This is sick, and AoE of 6 will not change what is shown here. The class is so broken and OP that it's completely game breaking and will destroy PVP. One player regardless of how good they are should not/cannot/will not be able to wade through endless masses of opposing players and survive. But it is happening......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

david.haypreub18_ESO · April 2014

PLEASE just give us the option of making each dungeon-- including the public ones-- a private instance for each character or group. This simple step would solve so many problems. You wouldn't see the bots, your immersion wouldn't be broken by seeing the Big Bad Evil Guy killed every 30 seconds by a horde of farmers, you would have endless dungeon content for your small group of friends.... it would be so much better!

Volkoth · April 2014

Today you rolled out patch 1.06, and while most of the improvements are welcome, there is one which is NOT. Loot timers and diminishing returns on delve bosses. Ever since the creation of MMO's there has been a past time called farming. You sit and camp various mobs for loot and XP. You aren't cheating, you aren't botting, you are just spending your time and $14.99 a month how you want. No you have a problem of people using BOTS. This is a violation of your End User Agreement. You choose to fight this by hamstringing your game? I went into a dungeon today, killed the boss, got my loot. Then waited 7min or so for the respawn, killed it and got NOTHING. Then I figured ok, I'll move on to the next dungeon, kill the boss once and no loot! Apparently the loot timer is linked to all major mobs. What is the sense in paying to play a game if you have taken out the feature I find enjoyable, killing bosses for loot??? We can look over the bugs, spammers and bots, but this is too much. I know I am not alone in the opinion of this addition to the patch. There is a mass amount of players who don't bot but legitimately kill bosses both in delves and in world who are effected by this. Don't pull a SWG and not listen to the masses. If you want to combat BOTS, do it an a way that doesn't impact legitimate paying customers, otherwise we will refuse to be your customers.

Tripp3r · April 2014

Vanguard1 wrote: »

If the business model has to change then so be it, but did you know that SWTOR is F2p and made $139,000,000 in 2013?

Lets not confuse Biowares profits with how much swtor is making. The problem with swtor was it didn't have hardly any end game content at launch and subscribers dropped off quickly, many never to return. Due to swtor going free to play it no longer shows who has left the game because it just moves them players to permanent f2p status. I do agree going f2p saved swtor, it wouldn't of happened if the end game content was there and their customer support would have been better in the beginning. I played swtor for many month's during beta and for the next two years after that before finally leaving and I can say F2P ruined the game, the cartel market was nice at first but later all the crafters got alienated and everything ended up on the cartel market was better. Better looking gear, better dye packs, better color crystals and so on. Swtor like this game has great potential, now what they do different is what's going to decide the fate here, right now ESO is failing horribly at saving customers due to the lack of customer service.

Dude, i played SWTOR for a 5 months, and i agree everything you say is true, but this is different, this game has active forums, active devs content planned, active and vigilant customer support, and legions of willing fans due to recent successful games unlike star wars with most of the hardcore fans dropping off after the original saga, than the newish fans liking both sagas (only movies) and than the small portion of them willing to play a star wars game.
this have has five previous games set in one continent (mainly) and a solid decade of success in the industry backing it.

TL;DR Comparing this to star wars is ridiculous, get outa here.

Tripp3r · April 2014

Volkoth wrote: »

Today you rolled out patch 1.06, and while most of the improvements are welcome, there is one which is NOT. Loot timers and diminishing returns on delve bosses. Ever since the creation of MMO's there has been a past time called farming. You sit and camp various mobs for loot and XP. You aren't cheating, you aren't botting, you are just spending your time and $14.99 a month how you want. No you have a problem of people using BOTS. This is a violation of your End User Agreement. You choose to fight this by hamstringing your game? I went into a dungeon today, killed the boss, got my loot. Then waited 7min or so for the respawn, killed it and got NOTHING. Then I figured ok, I'll move on to the next dungeon, kill the boss once and no loot! Apparently the loot timer is linked to all major mobs. What is the sense in paying to play a game if you have taken out the feature I find enjoyable, killing bosses for loot??? We can look over the bugs, spammers and bots, but this is too much. I know I am not alone in the opinion of this addition to the patch. There is a mass amount of players who don't bot but legitimately kill bosses both in delves and in world who are effected by this. Don't pull a SWG and not listen to the masses. If you want to combat BOTS, do it an a way that doesn't impact legitimate paying customers, otherwise we will refuse to be your customers.

Also, i somewhat agree with this...
make the timer specific to the mob at least... sometimes i enjoy running from dungeon to dungeon i don't use it to farm, i usually get side tracked but still the fact that i can't do this is making me rethink my subscription fee a little bit, he has a point, i am paying money to continue playing this, and if you're going to restrict the players ability to do what they want while exploring like that... it's not really tickling my fancy... i understand that it was with good intentions to stop the bots, and i know you're experimenting with techniques to come up with something good, but can you do this on a player test server soon?, the bots, gold farmers and spammers are an inconvenience to say the most iv'e managed to have fun up until now, focus on the major bugs, like the vampire passives not working on death for some players, and the state of cyradiil in high populated campaigns, things that are hindering the players ability to actually play the game, once this is fixed use a test server, and test your anti-bot-spammer-gold-farmer-thingy there so you can as you say "keep this as far away from the player as possible".

TL;DR Focus on stuff that hinders the players ability to play and enjoy it, make a test server and test your anti bot systems there.

Reavan · April 2014

I believe this public address is the thing that makes me sub the game.
Was unsure before but communication is the way, props to zen for it.

Goldie · May 2014

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

As it’s now two and a half weeks since we officially launched on April 4, I think it’s a good time to bring everyone up to date on The Elder Scrolls Online service, maintenance windows, and what we’re doing to add content, make the game better, and address some issues that are near and dear to the community.

First and foremost, please know that we are doing everything we can to combat the gold spammers and bots – especially ones that “camp” dungeon bosses – that you see in game. I play the game every day; I see them too, and yes, they drive me crazy. We have had a daily running battle with them ever since the game launched – moving them from global chat, to in-game email, to creating bogus guilds and inviting players – and we continue to take measures to keep them away from players, even when it isn’t always apparent that we are. Most of the battle has been on the back end of the game – we regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity – our teams are working on better systems to identify those accounts and characters that are doing black market activities, and we’re also working on some game feature refinement to make it harder for them to acquire gold in the first place. Fighting black market activity like gold selling spam and farming bots is a marathon, not a sprint, but we will do whatever we can to reduce their impact on the game.

The scope of the black market activity accounts for up to 85% of Customer Service emails/calls. Because of this huge influx of contact relating to this one issue, our CS team has been slower to react to other problems than planned – our sincere apologies if you have been held up for a long period of time waiting for CS to respond to you. Again, our goal is to keep this activity away from you so you don’t have to contact Customer Service in the first place.

Also very visible was last week’s gold “duping” (duplication) bug – where players could manipulate stacks of items in their inventory to create copies. We fixed the problem and banned the accounts of the worst offenders And yes, we erroneously caught up some legitimate accounts in that ban, for which we apologize – all erroneously banned accounts were reinstated within about 8 hours. Contrary to some reports, exploitation of this bug did not result in destabilizing the ESO economy in any way. We did turn off guild banks to limit the spread of the problem, but that was only until we put up a new version of the game that fixed the exploit later that evening.

All of these fixes have resulted in several more maintenance periods than we planned for – we know that everyone wants to play the game and hates downtime – but please be aware that every time we take down the servers for maintenance, it is either to fix a problem or put up an update that makes the game better. We are working on shortening the length of maintenances, this will get better over time.

So, here’s the list of our more prominent fixes since launch, as well as info about ongoing support that we’re doing for ESO:
Fixed the bug where a small percentage of players lost their expansion bank slots.

Fixed quest-blocking bugs, especially ones in Coldharbour, that prevented players from completing either a main quest step, or the Coldharbour zone.

Fixed many other quest bugs not related to the above where items/NPCs didn’t spawn properly.

Fixed the Greenshade (Aldmeri Dominion zone) problem, which caused the zone to crash every few hours. This one was fixed on 4/4, but was a problem during early access.

Fixed two dupe issues: the above one involving stacked items, and another (on a much smaller scale) involving crafting hireling emails.

Put many back-end fixes and procedures in place to block black market gold farmer activity.

We still have much to do – there still other quest problems on our fix list, most of them involving the situation where they become “de-synched” from the zone and don’t spawn their items or NPCs properly. We are in process of putting up our first major update to the game on our Play Test Server (PTS), which includes many updates to the game, including class and weapon ability tweaks, content fixes, and updates to almost all game systems. It also contains our new end-game Adventure Zone, Craglorn, with Veteran content aimed at 4 and 12-man groups. So stay tuned for PTS patch notes for all the other fixes that we’ve been working on. This is a major update to the game, so it will be on PTS for at least a week or 10 days for testing before we take it live.

We’re working on fixing problems, we’re combatting black market gold farmers, and we have a hefty new patch coming shortly. ESO is already an awesome game, and it will only get better from here. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you in Tamriel. - Matt

We have all seen the videos of the OP Dragon Knight builds, where the vampire Ultimate Procs about every 5 seconds, and if you have not seen it, then watch the video included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

What this is doing to the PVP population is incredible! I have watched at least 50 players Rage Quit because of this build. Any other builds for average players, (especially ones that don't know much about perfecting builds, even at Vet10), do NOT stand a chance. I have watched as these players take keeps by themselves, with 0 team members, or in some cases a healer in tow. In my opinion this is totally killing PVP first of all because of the HUGE imbalance between certain builds and especially levels.

Sure, you can join PVP campaigns at level 10, but who would want to? I would direct you to listen to the testimonies of others, but good luck finding them, they have quit and cancelled their subscriptions to ESO.

And before all of you elitist hounds jump all over this post, and attack me in your subtle smart-assery, let me just say... save it. No one cares for your off topic comments.

Goldie · May 2014

How about separating VET levels from the rest of the population in PVP? You people had better do something or I will be the next customer that you lose...

I run 4 Guilds with a total player population of around 3000 if you count the other guilds we allied with. I know for a fact, that at least 50 of them have cancelled, and that 50 grows by about 1 player every couple of hours.

NoMoreChillies · May 2014

largusmeansb16_ESO wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

This video makes me sick. It keeps me away from PVP and the story i can only play once then it gets boring. Looks like i need to find a new game if this isnt fixed.

KerinKor · May 2014

Tripp3r wrote: »

Dude, i played SWTOR for a 5 months, and i agree everything you say is true, but this is different, this game has active forums, active devs content planned, active and vigilant customer support, and legions of willing fans due to recent successful games unlike star wars with most of the hardcore fans dropping off after the original saga, than the newish fans liking both sagas (only movies) and than the small portion of them willing to play a star wars game.
this have has five previous games set in one continent (mainly) and a solid decade of success in the industry backing it.

TL;DR Comparing this to star wars is ridiculous, get outa here.

It's not at all ridiculous, except to you as it doesn't conform to your agenda. You're also comparing the state of a game in its 4th week with one you last played two years ago after 5 months of existence, not exactly a valid comparison by any yardstick.

What you're conveniently ignoring is that at the same time in its life SW:TOR was EXACTLY like ESO in terms of player 'demographic', in that most players were the pre-orderer 'fans' who bought into the hype .. and I did too both in TOR and ESO, so I'm not saying I'm any better .. and then discovered the reality.

The 'depth' of the franchise argument again is subjective, in fact the SW franchise was a a lot deeper than you make out. All that really matters is that both games started with a huge 'hardcore' fan-base. In fact your argument here goes against ESO as you're implicitly saying that TES fans are more gullible and will stick with a lemon, if ESO turns out to be one, whereas TOR's 'fans' recognised a lemon when they saw it and left.

I don't subscribe to that idea but it's the logical conclusion of your argument here.

In its 4th week of life TOR's forums were just as active as ESO's are now, probably moreso because frankly ESO's forums are pretty unloved by many and are not welcoming for discussions and the building of any sort of forum 'community'. Looking at TOR's forums right now they're still pretty active it seems to me.

You're clearly very hostile to the idea of comparing these two games, probably because you fear ESO may follow TOR's path of decline in player numbers, leading to who knows what, so you try to discard arguments which show in fact ESO is very much like TOR was at the same time in its life.

TOR declined due to a lack of end-game, that decline in turn lead to an abandonment of some of Bioware's core ideas .. the killing off of the 'your story' concept which was fundamental to the story side of the game they hyped.

ESO's decline, if it happens, may be something else if/when it comes, but you can't wish away the possibility, there are several parallels between player EXPECTATIONs of these two game in spite of your dismissive argument there aren't.

mdziur · May 2014

I don't like PvP.

Voodoo wrote: »

thanks for the update! ..and no it does not need world pvp ...I think a zone the size of 2 TES games combined is large enough.

remraub16_ESO · May 2014

So here comes my 2 coppers on state of the game and what needs to be done:

1. Balance Vampire skills in general, the ulti especially. My Suggestion would be that the ulti can not charge while being in use.

2. Shield Bashing has several issues. Something is wrong when people run around attacking with their shield only and not using weapon swings. The damage on Shield Bash is ridiculously high, this needs to change. It should be use for interruption only, not for damage. The Endurance cost could be higher as well so people can't spam it all day long. Oh, and why do you still block while you bash? Makes it impossible to injure someone that bash-spams.

3. Dragon Knight. There are several balance issues with this class in comparison with other classes, but the biggest issue is that the Talons do not trigger Immunity when you break out of it, meaning that the current Meta for DK's is to get in melee, drop Caltrops and Talons and then Bash-spam you to death and you can do nothing about it.

4. Templars Puncturing Strikes has a similar problem to the DK's Talons. If you get spammed with it you're simply locked down by the knock-back with little to no chance of retaliating or fleeing. This is the skill all Bots abuse on boss-farming as well.

5. Version 1.06 Boss timer. - I see the reason for this, but it is poorly designed. As many others have already mention it limits a certain game play that many people enjoy. And the fact that the timer is global and not only per dungeon makes it even worse. I have some other suggestions on how to combat the bots (but I don't have all the details on how they operate so bare with me).

A. Have the bosses spawn on a few different locations in the dungeon. Not only will this make it harder for bots, but it would be a bit more fun to roam around looking for them than knowing where they are all the time.

B. Diminishing drop table. Instead of totally remove drop chance once the boss has been killed, simply reduce the chance for a drop each time the boss is killed (by the specific character). Start with a low % diminish to begin with, say first 5 kills only drops the loot chance with 5%, but then exponentially increase the diminishing. This would mean that players that enjoy farming dungeons can still do so, but needs to move around some form dungeon to dungeon.

On the topic of bots how ever, I have seen them teleporting around in open world space, without the animation the rest of us have when doing so. Have they found away to abuse the teleportation in the game? I've seen them pop in and pop out from quest givers and quest objectives in a very odd manner. Could this be combated some how? (I'm guessing this is how they get enough gear to be able to farm the bosses?)

/Rant off - For now

Thanks Zenimax for the Best MMO in a LOOONG while

6point6b16_ESO · May 2014

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO wrote: »

Saint-Ange wrote: »

Mind your own business, that will have you live a longer time. Where I stay, if you put your nose where you should not, you'll won't live more than a week.

No need to threaten other people... seriously...

Where does he threaten anyone? he is just making a statement about how dangerous it is where he lives, and that candy kids would get themself whooped for talking like they do today.

tim_barteneb17_ESO · May 2014

Volkoth wrote: »

Today you rolled out patch 1.06, and while most of the improvements are welcome, there is one which is NOT. Loot timers and diminishing returns on delve bosses. Ever since the creation of MMO's there has been a past time called farming. You sit and camp various mobs for loot and XP. You aren't cheating, you aren't botting, you are just spending your time and $14.99 a month how you want. No you have a problem of people using BOTS. This is a violation of your End User Agreement. You choose to fight this by hamstringing your game? I went into a dungeon today, killed the boss, got my loot. Then waited 7min or so for the respawn, killed it and got NOTHING. Then I figured ok, I'll move on to the next dungeon, kill the boss once and no loot! Apparently the loot timer is linked to all major mobs. What is the sense in paying to play a game if you have taken out the feature I find enjoyable, killing bosses for loot??? We can look over the bugs, spammers and bots, but this is too much. I know I am not alone in the opinion of this addition to the patch. There is a mass amount of players who don't bot but legitimately kill bosses both in delves and in world who are effected by this. Don't pull a SWG and not listen to the masses. If you want to combat BOTS, do it an a way that doesn't impact legitimate paying customers, otherwise we will refuse to be your customers.

This isnt true.
I can loot bosses in delves for 30 times in a row even with 1 min spawns. A whole other mechanic is making you able to loot or not.

Get ur facts straight.

Iluvrien · May 2014

remraub16_ESO wrote: »

5. Version 1.06 Boss timer. - I see the reason for this, but it is poorly designed. As many others have already mention it limits a certain game play that many people enjoy. And the fact that the timer is global and not only per dungeon makes it even worse. I have some other suggestions on how to combat the bots (but I don't have all the details on how they operate so bare with me).

A. Have the bosses spawn on a few different locations in the dungeon. Not only will this make it harder for bots, but it would be a bit more fun to roam around looking for them than knowing where they are all the time.

B. Diminishing drop table. Instead of totally remove drop chance once the boss has been killed, simply reduce the chance for a drop each time the boss is killed (by the specific character). Start with a low % diminish to begin with, say first 5 kills only drops the loot chance with 5%, but then exponentially increase the diminishing. This would mean that players that enjoy farming dungeons can still do so, but needs to move around some form dungeon to dungeon.

Actually, I welcome the global loot timer precisely because it cuts down on the ability of farmers to farm. Why would I take such an obviously unpopular position? Because their activities do have an impact on my game experience.

A concrete example: Triple Circle Mine. Setting aside the fact that I walked from one end of this area to the other without encountering a single live mob, there were several players (players not bots, I checked levels and name structure... I had time) standing around the spawn point for Bonetooth. It was only on the 4th spawn that I was fast enough to get in a single hit... which was enough to get me the achievement.

This is what farming gets you. That experience has been repeated in pretty much every mini-dungeon and delve in both Stonefalls and Deshaan.

You don't want the timer coming in and preventing people from playing the way they want to? How about stopping them from doing the same to the rest of us without it?

Xaei · May 2014

Before they do any balancing, I really would like to comment that PvE and PvP should always be balanced separately, something that's very powerful in PvP might not be in PvE, and vice versa because the 2 game modes play very differently, therefore if you balance them under the same blanket, it creates a very frustrating experience.

frwinters_ESO · May 2014

Goldie wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

As it’s now two and a half weeks since we officially launched on April 4, I think it’s a good time to bring everyone up to date on The Elder Scrolls Online service, maintenance windows, and what we’re doing to add content, make the game better, and address some issues that are near and dear to the community.

First and foremost, please know that we are doing everything we can to combat the gold spammers and bots – especially ones that “camp” dungeon bosses – that you see in game. I play the game every day; I see them too, and yes, they drive me crazy. We have had a daily running battle with them ever since the game launched – moving them from global chat, to in-game email, to creating bogus guilds and inviting players – and we continue to take measures to keep them away from players, even when it isn’t always apparent that we are. Most of the battle has been on the back end of the game – we regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity – our teams are working on better systems to identify those accounts and characters that are doing black market activities, and we’re also working on some game feature refinement to make it harder for them to acquire gold in the first place. Fighting black market activity like gold selling spam and farming bots is a marathon, not a sprint, but we will do whatever we can to reduce their impact on the game.

The scope of the black market activity accounts for up to 85% of Customer Service emails/calls. Because of this huge influx of contact relating to this one issue, our CS team has been slower to react to other problems than planned – our sincere apologies if you have been held up for a long period of time waiting for CS to respond to you. Again, our goal is to keep this activity away from you so you don’t have to contact Customer Service in the first place.

Also very visible was last week’s gold “duping” (duplication) bug – where players could manipulate stacks of items in their inventory to create copies. We fixed the problem and banned the accounts of the worst offenders And yes, we erroneously caught up some legitimate accounts in that ban, for which we apologize – all erroneously banned accounts were reinstated within about 8 hours. Contrary to some reports, exploitation of this bug did not result in destabilizing the ESO economy in any way. We did turn off guild banks to limit the spread of the problem, but that was only until we put up a new version of the game that fixed the exploit later that evening.

All of these fixes have resulted in several more maintenance periods than we planned for – we know that everyone wants to play the game and hates downtime – but please be aware that every time we take down the servers for maintenance, it is either to fix a problem or put up an update that makes the game better. We are working on shortening the length of maintenances, this will get better over time.

So, here’s the list of our more prominent fixes since launch, as well as info about ongoing support that we’re doing for ESO:
Fixed the bug where a small percentage of players lost their expansion bank slots.

Fixed quest-blocking bugs, especially ones in Coldharbour, that prevented players from completing either a main quest step, or the Coldharbour zone.

Fixed many other quest bugs not related to the above where items/NPCs didn’t spawn properly.

Fixed the Greenshade (Aldmeri Dominion zone) problem, which caused the zone to crash every few hours. This one was fixed on 4/4, but was a problem during early access.

Fixed two dupe issues: the above one involving stacked items, and another (on a much smaller scale) involving crafting hireling emails.

Put many back-end fixes and procedures in place to block black market gold farmer activity.

We still have much to do – there still other quest problems on our fix list, most of them involving the situation where they become “de-synched” from the zone and don’t spawn their items or NPCs properly. We are in process of putting up our first major update to the game on our Play Test Server (PTS), which includes many updates to the game, including class and weapon ability tweaks, content fixes, and updates to almost all game systems. It also contains our new end-game Adventure Zone, Craglorn, with Veteran content aimed at 4 and 12-man groups. So stay tuned for PTS patch notes for all the other fixes that we’ve been working on. This is a major update to the game, so it will be on PTS for at least a week or 10 days for testing before we take it live.

We’re working on fixing problems, we’re combatting black market gold farmers, and we have a hefty new patch coming shortly. ESO is already an awesome game, and it will only get better from here. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you in Tamriel. - Matt

We have all seen the videos of the OP Dragon Knight builds, where the vampire Ultimate Procs about every 5 seconds, and if you have not seen it, then watch the video included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

What this is doing to the PVP population is incredible! I have watched at least 50 players Rage Quit because of this build. Any other builds for average players, (especially ones that don't know much about perfecting builds, even at Vet10), do NOT stand a chance. I have watched as these players take keeps by themselves, with 0 team members, or in some cases a healer in tow. In my opinion this is totally killing PVP first of all because of the HUGE imbalance between certain builds and especially levels.

Sure, you can join PVP campaigns at level 10, but who would want to? I would direct you to listen to the testimonies of others, but good luck finding them, they have quit and cancelled their subscriptions to ESO.

And before all of you elitist hounds jump all over this post, and attack me in your subtle smart-assery, let me just say... save it. No one cares for your off topic comments.

Part of this I agree with. when game launched, and us more hard core pvp'r got into the game at level 10, it was the best time. Everyone seemed on an equal footing. then i had to move IRL, off the computer more then a week so yeah way behind in level and already V1's on the field. Still wasn't to bad. The next week when the vampires and more VR's hit the field and I'm still now in my 30's, utter chaos. Most of my guild will not PvP now until they reach max level and I know a lot of other people saying the same. That balance it seems you were looking for to bolster everyone to be the same is no longer there. I feel I will have to become a vampire in order to have any chance of contending in PvP and I never wanted to become one ever. Vampires and werewolves in the game as a choice is awesome, but when the majority of the population, I may be wrong but it feels like the majority, is one that's an issue.

steveb16_ESO46 · May 2014

If there is a loot timer that universally covers all bosses then that will penalise botters as they cannot just teleport around a boss carousel.

If it stops farming as well, that is a bonus. It will be nice to actually get to fight a boss occasionally rather than just try and get a hit on them.

User3rr0r · May 2014

I've leveled 2 50's so far as well as leveling 6 alts together through the zones. My first 50 encountered numerous bugs which got my blood pressure rising to the point I almost wanted to quit the game.

My second 50 only encountered 3 bugs 2 of which were fixed with a relog or /reloudui and the 3rd bug was patched the next day. I am extremely satisfied with the rate that bugs are being fixed and can't wait to see where this game takes me.

P.S. Player housing please.

n.englishb14_ESO · May 2014

So.....console release is gonna be delayed a lot. Hope they real rebalance PvP

Goldie · May 2014

Hows this... After my current sub runs out I'm Done. I am a lifetime Elder Scrolls fan and have played since 1994, when I got the game Arena, in Easter instead of Xmas, due to Bethesda missing their announced release date that year. This PVP, Boss Loot Timer, and Sooo many bugs has seriously put mo off to the point I HATE this game.

I would like to send a whole Hearted F**K you out to Zenimax, for pushing the Devs to release the game before it was finished.

The state of the game is ***. So broken, so off balance, and so far NOT WORTH WHAT YOUR CHARGING!

Good luck, I am among the 1000's of dedicated Elder Scrolls fans that has had enough, after barely a month...

"play how YOU want to play" I believe is what I heard announced towards the release date, and so far, its been more like, play how we want you to, because we can't control bots or spammers...

Scorpion1959 · May 2014

I don't know if this is the right forum, but:
I think the banking system is a bit of a mess. Is there a technical reason for restricting bank space. Is there a reason why we have to pay so much for additional space. I have expanded to 100 spaces, The next upgrade will cost in excess of 20,000! At the moment 80% of my space is taken up with runes. Can't use them because of the lack of aspect runes.
Would it be possible for the in-game ITEM SOLD mail to tell us what item and what guild store it was sold in?
My son has a lot of problems with his character falling into objects: try to go over a bridge and fall through it, try to go up some stairs and walk through them, try to stand on a boulder and fall into it. On many occasions he has to die and resurrect, costing gold he is saving for bank/inventory space, because of item degradation. However, in Cyrodil this does not work. He cannot log out and in to solve the problem. He is just stuck until customer support can move his character. Can something be done about this?
For my part, I thought the game was pretty mediocre when it first went live. I was wrong. I love it. I think you chaps are doing a great job (other than the above). Keep it up.

FOR THE QUEEN!