Rather how small of a percentage.

Tbf, I'm not sure we have access to the real number of active players to start with - and how to determine what "active player" means: log in daily? monthyl? play for at least 1 hour per week? everyone seems to have a different definition - as not everyone uses Steam to log in and that's the only publicly available source of info on in-game activity rates.
So it would be difficult to have a basis of comparison with the forums.

Let me put it to you this way, I didn't know how to be able to post on the forums until I got an email invite to take part in the PTS for Elsweyr earlier in the year.

After that I realized I needed an invite via customer service to be able to use the forums, which was quick within 24hrs of creating a ticket in game I was able to use the forums.

Only those that are genuinely interested in the game or those that have had a grievance are going to go through the effort of looking into how to be able to post on the forums and seek out the invite afterwards only some will hang around afterwards.

The vast majority that know the forums exist are just going to browse topics relevant to them without ever bothering to join.

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

i would say with some of the threads and views ect ect its over 10k anything over that hard to say

Views not necessary means active accounts in forum since anyone can view posts without even being registered.

TelvanniWizard wrote: »

Only the best percentage

Speak for yourself, I'm horrible . (just ask anyone who ever got lumbered with me in BGs)

We don't know, but I can guess that its pretty low in the grand scheme of things from two examples on the English forums.

Look at your Badges. Check out that drop off from 1 comment to 10 comments. And then recall that the badges are for all forum users, ever, not just the active population. The drop off in badges awarded gets pretty severe the higher you get in comments. (If someone wants to look at higher badges, Gina Bruno's profile has most of them.)

We also know from ZOS' comments on the Developer Deep Dive into Class Identity post in response to a complaint that they posted it on the website instead of the forums that:

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

The_Lex wrote: »

Agreed. Interesting that they posted it on the website and not the forums. They won't engage people who will: (1) challenge their views, and (2) know how to play the game better than they do.

Actually, it's quite the opposite. We chose to post this on the website because it gets significantly more views than the forums and our goal here was to try and get this message out to a wide audience. It also allows us to put out the message in more than just English.

That thread had 7k views on the forums, which includes duplicate views.


Patch Notes tend to get higher numbers of views. Using the PC notes, Dragonhold had 54k, Scalebreaker had 73k, Elsweyr had 77k, and Wrathstone had 80k. Again, that's including duplicate views, but that probably gives a decent look at the amount of players who use the forums for reference at big events like a new base game patch and content update.


The forums - the players who post and that players who view them - seem to be a pretty small portion of the playerbase. More players will use it as reference for big events like the patch notes of a new content release, but that doesn't seem to carry over to the forum population.

Mariusghost84 wrote: »

Are there any indicators to how big percentage of the player base uses the forums?

It's generally accepted that for any game the forums account for less than 20% of the player population at best.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever actually pull direct figures though. It's just eyeball math with forum figures and player figures.

My guess is somewhere in between 0.5% to 1% unless you add in those who will google one thing and land here never to post. That probably brings it up to 5% to 10%. Active posters though ... it’s likely just 1 for every few hundred players.

In all activities the most hardcore fans act like “everyone” agrees with most of their general statements when in reality it’s usually just a handful of people in an echo chamber.

Asys wrote: »

redlink1979 wrote: »

Players who use the forum are a small part of ESO community. The vast majority, casual players or not, doesn't hang around here.

pls some proof

Between 10-15 million accounts in ESO, acc to ZOS.

"We’ve just seen the launch of a new Elder Scrolls Online expansion, and the game’s had a big year. ESO has picked up 2.5 million new players in the past 12 months, bringing the total player count up to 13.5 million players over the game’s lifetime just after the release of Elsweyr. That counts players across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

Publisher Bethesda tells USgamer that the number does not include free trials, though it does include people playing through an Xbox Game Pass subscription – and, presumably, people who’ve picked the game up through collections like the Humble Monthly bundle. Either way, it’s an impressive figure, especially after the game’s lackluster launch.

“It seems like ever since our One Tamriel update back in 2016, which leveled out the leveling curve and let everyone play with everyone else, that’s when the game really started taking off,” game director Matt Firor says. He adds that there was an especially big explosion in new players from late December 2018 to February 2019 that took the developers “off-guard.""
https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-elder-scrolls-online/player-count

redlink1979 wrote: »

Players who use the forum are a small part of ESO community. The vast majority, casual players or not, doesn't hang around here.

And some that do aren't active players.

I imagine that more PC players than console players frequent the forums, as although console players may have PCs and phones with which to access the forums it's a lot easier and more intuitive to switch between the game and the forums if you're sitting at a PC.

No way to know actual numbers since most MMOs never give real numbers when it comes to active players etc. Generally it is considered to be a pretty low % of the actual player base.

Closest I can come to any real examples was from a couple years ago. Was chatting with guild members and there were 42 members online at the time. I started to talk about some notes on the PTS and realized no one knew what I was talking about. I simply asked at the time how many of them use the forums for information etc. and of the 42 online only 2 beside myself had ever been to the forums.

Sometimes it seems more people who have quit the game use the forums to snipe at the game/devs....

I play... most days when I have a little time or at least on my days off.... I have noticed over the years a lot of the ‘old crowd’ on the forums have drifted away....