LOL at all the doomsaying going on in here...

im not an ESO fan... but the fact is... as a player who played Almost ALL mmos out there and have one or multiple max level chars in all of them.... and still jumping arround mmos

i can say that Eso after all these years still pushing out more content then the majority of other MMOs out there....
Without invalidating your Time spend and Gear like other mmos do sadly....

Yes there are Quality issues
Yes it would be about damn time they fix some of the bug and issues all ready
Yes the expansion Zones got smaller

but its still really god damn far from dying or going into some serious Stagnating state like what many and i mean MANY mmos are in nowdays...

all these doom saying your people doing is laughable....

Bam_Bam wrote: »

Zordrage wrote: »

all these doom saying your people doing is laughable....

Some kind of amazing irony right there.

Im also a doomsayer if a game/Devs deserves it... but honestly look around on other mmos..
what devs doing here is heaven compared to allot of the others...

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Well, new chapters and dungeons are certainly better then old ones, so all this "vast ocean of shallow water" thing is mostly related to old content, so you can't say that game is stagnating. For example, March of sacrifice.. it's magnificent in terms of design, voicing, it's piece of art.

Cashgrab is certainly in place and ESO+ flourishes upon artificial limitations but as many people said there is no competition..
But on the other hand ZOS provided a ton of free stuff in recent half-year.. notable house, whole dlc, ton of crown consumables, amazing Indrik mount and so on.. even now with race changing cash grab, they provide 3 free race/name change tokens which is actually 10k crowns worth.

So answer is maybe that there is 2 different departments, one which is totally concentrated on cashgrab, and other which does it work with depth and quality of previous titles. So as second department continues to work, this game will live.

Also Dragon attack world events are also coming to add a bit more to the zones il hope they will add more type of world events.

TheBonesXXX wrote: »

So as long as this game caters to its investors rather than its players, this game will never like any other game ever reach its full potential.

So as long as the developers keep this attitude will you pay for access, and nobody sues them they'll keep getting away with this.

truthfully until you provide a lawsuit and you sue the whole entire gaming world, and stop letting the entertainment industry get away with unethical practices, nothing will happen.

It caters to the silent majority of its players already, that's why it's still hugely successful. The day it ignores both them and its investors and caters instead to the vocal minority of its forum posters (most of who either don't currently play the game or at least don't contribute significantly to its revenue) it will face closure as the company will go bust.

Ermiq wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

Done arguing with you rift built there own engine and has best dynamic content it broke molds it still function better then eso.Rifts still function far better and they are far more intersting then a dark anchor the soul system at the time was by far the most progressive class system . Rift did not age well and was poorly managed after Hartsman left. ESO did break the mold with Cyrodil though i will say even though performance is crap the theories and the design is awesome . PVP just does no make them as much money as the churn base PVE player. ESO needs to evolve or fade of into the sunset people will not stick around playing the same flat game with nothing new but new zone and new sets , people simply wont buy it.

Bahahahaha Rift is a modified gamebryo(barely at that). Rift didn't age well because they built it on a platform that was, I repeat, from the late 1990s. This is particularly hilarious to me after watching you go on a rant about FO76.

All this complaining about bugs in an MMO is hypocritical though. Name one that doesn't have a laundry list of long-standing bugs. Bugs are part of MMOs and no you won't get cosmetic bugs fixed all that often because they are COSMETIC. You playing with your balls while opening the crown store doesn't break anything or prevent anyone from playing. It's safe to ignore and so is ignored. Additionally for all you know its an animation issue that would cost an absurd sum to fix for a cosmetic issue. Do you want absurd spent on new content or antiballscratching fixes?

And wtf is eso built on lol . I'll take a modified gamebryo. We cant even swim in this engine lol

ESO is built on modified Hero engine. And you can make swimming underwear in any engine actually. Engine doesn't determine gameplay features. If devs want to make underwear swimming they can do that in any engine. If they want to do a first person shooter or target lock RPG, they can do that in any engine. Sure, some engines make it easier to make some features while others require more work to implement certain mechanics, but it's never not like "this engine won't let them to make %feature%".

Swimming underwear in the Crown Store, now there's a thought!

Did you perhaps mean swimming underwater ?

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

Thehartclan wrote: »

@nafensoriel I hardly see how you would classify many of the issues I've listed as cosmetic. UI errors are not cosmetic. Freezing when using certain wayshrines is not cosmetic. Getting stuck when reading a writ bounty board is not cosmetic. I'd also argue that cosmetics are one of the biggest cash components for ZOS in ESO. People spend hundreds of dollars on cosmetic aspects of this game, so why not seek to further enhance and improve upon it? I don't understand your point here.

Wayshrine issue? Never had one. Ever. If this is a console problem its most likely network related and not necessarily a bug. Consoles generally have... quirks that are impossible to work around. I've also never once gotten stuck on a writ board after 5 years and max chars doing them daily. 99% of bugs I've encountered can be cleared with /reloadui or a relog. That fundamentally puts them in the "cosmetic" category with an easy built-in fix.
Fixing something barely broken isn't remotely as cost-effective as fixing things that are broken... and frankly, you will never really know what's really broken because developers are under no obligation to actually tell you. So far the arguments against ZOS seem shallow and subjective. Considering they are currently considered the best MMO out there it stands to reason they must be doing something right eh? Let's let them keep doing that why don't we?

While I also have no idea what the wayshrine issue is, where did you get the idea that "they are currently considered the best MMO out there"? While it is the only MMO I have played, I think you are overly impressed by marketing. And reader polls.

Obviously, with the investment in the game, it will be in every top 10 MMORPG list. But people can debate all day about who is #1.

For several years now since 1T eso has won award after award and seems to be growing faster than its main competition(wow). Sure we won't get absolute figures but in this case, a simple trend can easily be seen. Frankly, as long as players are growing and money is flowing the game is considered extremely healthy. Bluntly name five other MMOs in the west with 3 million users.

Thehartclan wrote: »

I don't think simply because you have not personally experienced these issues you get to dismiss them as not a major flaw or problem that afflicts more than just a couple of people. Nor does a problem require a majority of users to encounter it to warrant a fix. If you have paying customers experiencing issues with your product then the expectation to have some sort of general acknowledgement about the overall lifespan of the game is no ridiculous thing to ask. I'm not asking for specific solutions. I don't know what combination of things need to be done to make people happy - that's really not the intent of my topic.

When I ask about the longevity of this game it's because I want to gauge how much more of a monetary and time commitment I'm willing to give. And to simply use my own personal experiences with game play issues is by no means out of the ordinary or unexpected.

All I want to hear is the studio give it's customers some broad insight into the future of this game. Period.

Define the majority. I highly doubt you have any issues that remotely touch even 1% of the player base. This is simple statistics.
It is very very easy to think your issues are the only problems and its a very dangerous trap to believe in.

Supposition time.
If you are correct and ESO is a moneygrab with bugs everywhere and *** poor gameplay run by devs who do not care why is it growing and getting publically voted as a good game more than a negative game?
This is the internet age. If the reddit brigades can't even be bothered to downvote ESO then it must be doing something right.

In short empirical evidence doesn't support your claims. Games fine, Devs care, and Life moves on.
They also do give you broad insight. Regular community communication is performed by this studio. Gina is an awesome community rep who interacts constantly with players. Just because you don't get the answers you feel you demand does not mean they do not give broad insight into the future of the game.

Oh. Also, they don't release content for games that are failing. It would be throwing good money after bad at that point. You invest in products that are succeeding. ESO is being invested in. Take that for what you will.

Thehartclan wrote: »

what we have here is a cash grab. they made a very big game with lots of things to buy. it is just not a deep evolving game . think of it as a massive ocean that is waste deep in every direction for miles and miles. this is the fastest ive ever seen a MMO go for a cash grab even EQ 2 kept evolving their game every single content addition for 8 years untill they went full cash grab.Hell even rift game out more content for free in two years then ESO charged for in 4

That's part of my point @Wifeaggro13 and I don't know about you, but I expect more from a game and studio that makes their single player games SO MUCH BETTER! The Elder Scrolls/Skyrim games are incredible, so why the lack with this subsidiary? Cash flow for a mediocre product can't be sustained forever. So thus the question: What is the future of ESO?

Mediocre? Youre calling a game that ive never stopped actively playing for THREE YEARS plus change, mediocre? A game with 90gigs of content, a quarterly dlc schedule, and on top of it all, an mmorpg without a required monthly sub just to play.

Also you should realize, Zenimax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios are two separate entities. ZOS had nothing to do with Skyrim, Oblivion etc. The comparisons are unfair.

lordrichter wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

Well, yes, I mean "underwater". Though underwear is also could be implemented in any engine, so both options are relevant in my post.

Unfortunately, because of the outdated engine that ESO is built on, we only get plain black modern underwear.

ArchMikem wrote: »

Thehartclan wrote: »

The Elder Scrolls/Skyrim games are incredible, so why the lack with this subsidiary? Cash flow for a mediocre product can't be sustained forever. So thus the question: What is the future of ESO?

Mediocre? Youre calling a game that ive never stopped actively playing for THREE YEARS plus change, mediocre? A game with 90gigs of content, a quarterly dlc schedule, and on top of it all, an mmorpg without a required monthly sub just to play.

Also you should realize, Zenimax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios are two separate entities. ZOS had nothing to do with Skyrim, Oblivion etc. The comparisons are unfair.

I agree, and will go a step further. ESO has completely wrecked the TES games for me (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and probably TES6). When I go back and play them, they are so static and take place in a barren, lonely world that requires a hundred well written mods to even get me to play out of sight of the starting location.

The community is definitely divided. For those want and enjoy MMO in traditional sense and are veterans of the genre .eso is a mediocre game. Its light on features, it has not evolved at all or provided emerging gameplay, or advancement .as a single player rpg I'd rather play skyrim or witcher honestly. Zos is making money of those that do enjoy it and that's fine. But for even those that enjoy it they realize they cant keep selling the same dlc with a different skin over and over.. you wont by it if it does nothing new.

@Zordrage People will always speculate as to what may or may not happen with a title like ESO. I don't think I myself am 'doomsaying' by any stretch of the imagination,I'm actually asking the most basic questions to the dev which is what their long term plan is for this title.

@Tandor how in any way is it the "silent majority" when I literally know HUNDREDS of people with the same issues. And do any of you naysayers about the quality of this game even bother reading through the forums, because I've spent days flipping through posts about various game play issues that are well beyond "cosmetic" and again I don't particularly care if the various issues I've mentioned (only as an example, because i'm again not here to talk about what's wrong with the game) because as I said before: paying customers deserve customer support - good business is if a user is experiencing issues with a product they receive some sort of effort to try and resolve it! Customer support on this game is an absolute joke.

@ArchMikem Yes. I called ESO Mediocre - as is my right based on my experience playing. It used to be by far my favorite video game to play, period - but in the last year the technical problems have gotten worse and worse and my experience has gotten worse and worse as a result. Not only does my lousy game play experience make this mediocre, but again the lack of support when reaching out for assistance/troubleshooting.

@nafensoriel I'm not even responding to you because you act like you have some superior knowledge of what everyone thinks and I can say with complete confidence that you are entirely wrong and your "statistics".... well, it doesn't matter. And frankly this entire topic keeps trying to fly off topic with unnecessary commentary like this.

@ALL Please PLEASE stop turning this into a discussion that it is not: It is not a platform to argue about what MMO is better or not. It is not an argument about if ESO is amazing or not. It's not about anything other than this. Let me say this again. Maybe slower... so you get it.

I have played ESO for going on three years and sunk a great deal of time AND money into this game. I love the game (mostly) but I worry about its longevity as I've watched and experienced the game get clunkier and clunkier - really over the last year. I am NOT looking for answers to my technical issues, but rather knowing I share these issues with a fair number of people (forum users and guild members alike) I question what the strategy is for maintaining and balancing old content with the continued release of new content. The technical game play issues I experience on a daily basis have gotten to the point where the game no longer feels immersive and there are times where it even feels unplayable and I have to switch to something else; and I know for a fact that I am not alone here. But again, i'm more curious if there is a plan for upgrading the old content and improving upon the overall experience moving forward. So when I tag @ZOS_GinaBruno asking for a response it's not because I'm looking to criticize her. I'm not saying anything ill of her or her team; on the contrary I think they're amazing and as such I look to them to be amazing and shed some honest insight into the future plans of this title. As mentioned before my initial post covered a lot of various EXAMPLES of challenges and issues I have encountered or areas where I feel there could be improvement, but truly that's just supporting information to my overarching question: What is the future of ESO?"

Ogou wrote: »

@Thehartclan I do think you have a legitimate question but it is very unlikely you'll get an actual answer from anyone at ZOS in this thread.

Thank you. I share the sentiment, but feel it's worth asking. I think it warrants a discussion about the longevity of ESO, but doesn't need to be an argument about how awesome ESO is or isn't or what's broken vs not. I love seeing the community engage in the topic - maybe the studio will see that and actually take the time to read it and provide some insight - even if it isn't a direct answer on this thread. Maybe we'll hear from them soon in another capacity, and that's fine - but yes, the question is legitimate and something many people wonder. I've had the conversation with numerous people time and time again about what the future of this title may look like, but I've yet to hear concrete information about this from the dev.

I remain hopeful that Zenimax will see this discussion and consider it's users that are plagued with regular, continuing issues and work towards a solution; but that would only make sense if they have long term plans for the title. And that's all I want to know. I'd like to be informed about the future of a game I shell out lots of real world cash into so I can make an informed purchase when I renew my ESO plus or buy the latest and greatest DLC/Chapter.

nafensoriel wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Unfortunately, because of the outdated engine that ESO is built on, we only get plain black modern underwear.

All engines are outdated the moment you start development. Tends to happen with 5+ year development times.

@Thehartclan Statistics are funny that way. So far your entire argument still is "ESO needs to tell me they are going to support this game in the future with upgrades and *Stuff*".
-For three years we've had major world updates with more scheduled every year.
-The update schedule accelerated.
-Communication has unilaterally improved.
-They integrated members of the community into their development cycle.

Seems to me they answered your fears already by action.

Additionally, as you said to @tandor you know hundreds of people... ESO has a player base in the millions. The technical support section of this forum is not loaded with hundreds of thousands of people each day proclaiming their problems. It's maybe a few dozen and most of those end in satisfactory conclusions for the player. In short, it's a statistical fact the majority of players are not complaining and instead are enjoying the game.

No amount of money you have sunk into the game matters. Why? Because everyone else did exactly the same thing. You are one of the millions.

Your idea the game got clunkier doesn't seem to resonate with the vast majority. Just your local minority. My HR staff would define this as "confirmation bias" due to your community of peers. A local majority is not a total majority. This is fine. It's not some crime to have your opinion shift over time. Just be mindful of when you are resonating with people and creating an illusion that a small problem is somehow much larger.

What a game feels like and doesn't is entirely up to you the person. ZOS has no control over that. If you are falling out of love with a video game move on. It's normal and perfectly acceptable. No one expects you to stay loyal to a form of entertainment.

Zos has already answered you by action. It's just your choice to listen or not.

There are not millions of active players in eso. Sorry it's just not the case. When Frior throws out 10 million accounts he is talking about trial accounts beta accounts and the such its total accounts made for the game. ESO active player base is likely between 500k to 750k . We will never know because no company will release that info. In their share holders conference call they will give revenue break down of how much money the game made . In that they will state the eso plus revenue . But your not gonna get a population # they wont reveal it

I don't know anything about Ashes of Creation, but Pantheon and Camelot Unchained are not Triple A games, they are crowd-funded titles produced by small teams headed by individuals with some successes (EQ and DAoC) and some failures (Vanguard and Warhammer Online). While Mark Jacobs was CEO of DAoC at Mythic, Matt Firor was Executive Producer of that game so it's fair to credit them both for DAoC.

Pantheon is an old-school game that will appeal to about as many of the modern gamers as Shroud of the Avatar is doing as a similarly crowd-funded old-school title produced by a small team headed by an individual with some successes (Ultima) and some failures (Tabula Rasa). Camelot Unchained is going to be a subscription-only PvP title with no viable PvE content. Both are intended for niche markets. As to whether any of the games will turn out to be Triple A quality it remains to be seen, it's far too soon to say.

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

There are not millions of active players in eso. Sorry it's just not the case. When Frior throws out 10 million accounts he is talking about trial accounts beta accounts and the such its total accounts made for the game. ESO active player base is likely between 500k to 750k . We will never know because no company will release that info. In their share holders conference call they will give revenue break down of how much money the game made . In that they will state the eso plus revenue . But your not gonna get a population # they wont reveal it

https://www.mcvuk.com/business/ten-million-in-tamriel-the-slow-build-success-story-of-elder-scrolls-online

2.5 million in 2017. Active. Monthly. Users.

Statistics again. Darn them eh?
I would agree with your assessment for an individual server of players who log in regularly. Trouble is that's not all players. People like to pretend MMOs have such tiny populations again because of confirmation bias. You don't see millions so you don't believe they exist.

bluebird wrote: »

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

ESO has skated by on the lack of competition. However 3 games are coming out in the next 18 months that will swallow their playerbase:

1. Pantheon - A game being developed by the creator of Everquest someone who has more MMO experience than all of ZOS employees combined. Will be a great game.
2. Ashes of Creation - Again another MMO that is pushing the envelope of creative and responsive action gameplay with MMO tenets.
3. Camelot Unchained - The Succesor of Dark Age fo Camalet being created by the guy who created DAOC in Jacobs. The game is about a year and a half away.

Not trying to drag those games or anything, but in what way are they innovative exactly? I've watched some recent footage of them (I was even hoping I'd potentially discover my next favourite MMO) but none of them seem likely to cover ESO's niche. Pantheon looks like an old-school fantasy MMO (which isn't in itself a problem, but it doesn't have the legacy and lore and pull of TES behind it), AoC looked really quite Asian, and CU is a PvP sandbox game... Neither of them seem to provide the story-driven Elder Scrolls experience that TESO delivers (correct me if I'm wrong ofc).

As far as I'm concerned, I play ESO because it's the only TES game that keeps getting updates and new content, and it has decent enough systems behind it to make the gameplay experience enjoyable, not because I couldn't find games with better PVP or better endgame or better combat mechanics right now on the market. Just imo ofc, others may find AoC-type games totally irresistable, so I can't speak for anyone else.

But if ESO fails in the next 2 years, it won't be because of lack of innovation, but because of lack of funding. There simply isn't enough manpower and money going around to produce a steady stream of varied content for ESO (same as SWTOR or GW2) while new MMOs get a lot of dev love and hype for potentially being the next 'WoW-killer' or whatever I'm just glad ESO's still going (even if 2 dungeon DLCs 1 chapter and 1 story DLC are a bit sparse for a year) when WIldstar and Co. have already failed.

then i guess you dont follow them closely Pantheon is doing some interesting things with dynamic questing , skills and multi cross class abilites, Dynamic weather that effects combat. Is it action hack and slash combat ? no its traditional combat and more of a team based experience with more roles then just tank heal and DPS. the only thing that will kill WOW is blizzard they are going through a massive restructure over their . they failed to really advance into next gen MMO ,s so i do see ESO really holding the crown for western MMOs at this point. Are the crowd funded games ESO killer ? not by a long shot but it will fill the need many of us want for a MMO game.