Maintenance for the week of September 15:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 15, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 16, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 16, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)

State of the Game Address

  • Loviotor
    Loviotor
    To those that are making statements regarding "too little, too late" have obviously never played a game at launch. Even the biggest MMO out there had such glaring issues for the first 3 months that the game was unplayable for many people. Database issues that caused players to get locked in the loot position requiring you to /quit out of the game to get back in and be able to go about killing things (they had all of the databases for the individual servers housed on one machine and it caused them to crash constantly), it took the developers close to 3 months to make it where the game was playable on a massive scale. Prior to that, everquest had such glaring issues with release that they actually gave a majority of players free game time for the troubles, and that was mainly just login issues because it was one of the first games to have hundreds of thousands of players on simultaneously, which they actually weren't prepared for.

    Fast forward through nearly every MMO that has come out since (and to the ones in the future), each game is going to have issues, especially once they actually get released. NO game that is released is ever 100% bug free, which is why they patch them. People out there that want cheats and hacks will do everything they can to find erroneous code and loopholes in the clients to take advantage of and people will write programs, scripts and or make trainers that allow for the client to be modified, allowing players of the games to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to do. This brings me to my next point...

    Gold Farmers, Gold Sellers and BOTS. These are going to exist in some capacity, regardless of how hyper-vigilant the gaming companies are. There is a huge multi-billion dollar industry in selling of game currency. It exists in every MMO, to some degree, and will continue to exist, as long as these companies have a client base to sell them the gold, a way to farm the gold and people willing to pay real-world currency for in-game assets. The only way to end the gold farmers, spammers and BOTS is to end their ability to make money. The only way to do this is to ban all accounts caught doing business with these companies, of which there are thousands. The problem with doing that is that it will cause problems for the game developers and companies as they will lose the revenue these accounts provide. The fact that this game is pay to play, costs $60.00 retail to purchase and $15.00 monthly kinda makes me believe that the gold farming companies are either making (or expecting to make) a lot of money off this game, or when the game play begins requiring payment to play it, a lot of it will taper off.

    ESO has been out for 3 weeks (for those of us who had early access), and is still in its infancy, as far as MMOs are concerned, with veteran games that are still running celebrating 15 years and, in some cases 18 years (Sierra's "The Realm" and Meridian 59 are both 18 years old this year. Everquest celebrated 15 in March, and both World of Warcraft and EverQuest II celebrate 10 years this upcoming November. Every game that I've played (some I continue to play) still have issues on occasion, and when they happen, the players provide feedback, bug reports and help the developers to fix them. Any time they patch something in a game or make changes on the server or client end, they have the risk of other things becoming broken or bugged, so it's a neverending process.


    In closing, if you're stating that the game is failing, will fail or otherwise just complaining that the game has issues, give them some time to work on things. Provide constructive feedback and report bugs as you find them, and help the game developers actually fix things, instead of doomsaying and/or just generally making yourself look like a complete idiot by thinking that the game should be100% polished and bug free less than a month into release. Yes, they had beta tests, stress tests and a long time to work on it, but until people out there don't try to subvert the system and cheat, there will never be a 100% polished game out there. Some people want the easy road to "win" a game that's supposed to be played for entertainment. Those are the ones that cause a majority of the problems for gaming companies.
  • reggielee
    reggielee
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    thanks for the update, i noticed a huge decrease in gold spammers and bots. keep up the good work
    Mama always said the fastest way to a man's heart is through his chest.
  • dem0n1k
    dem0n1k
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    Cheers for the update & good luck with your quest to ban all the spammers & campers.

    Great game & beautiful looking world. I love exploring & PVE.....
    but 90% of my game time seems to be inventory control & that is dead boring :(
    NA Server [PC] -- Mostly Ebonheart Pact, Mostly.
  • Milaga
    Milaga
    I don't mind buggy quests, as long as you can work around the bugs. You've done a great job on fixing those up. But there still are game-stopper quests. Messages Across Tamriel is still broken for some, which means we can't progress into Coldharbour (just do side quests) or into VR content. Please make these top priority, since right now I just log in to feed my horse and check on my research.

    When the bill comes due, I'm not going to pay to do that.
  • Necrocyte
    Necrocyte
    Not sure if this will even be seen...maybe it's the alcohol speaking but...I think maybe you should add some clause in the EULA that if your account is found guilty of such illegal activities such as farming gold for sale or gold spamming (put this into whatever legal terminology you must) that they are subject to pay fines in excess of $10,000...if it's in the EULA and they agree to it, and their activities are blatantly in violation of it...you have reasonable cause to pursue the fine/suit. This would make it a non-profitable venture to farm and sell gold in this game, assuming you follow through.
  • Darkmayne
    Darkmayne
    Thanks for the update! Great game and your hard work and effort are greatly appreciated. I cannot wait to see all the great adventures I will be able to go on in Tamriel!
  • accelastarub17_ESO
    Thanks for the update!! I noticed the huge drop in bots and spammers too today; something y'all are doing is working...! Anyways, good luck with everything you're workin on and thanks for your hard work, Zenimax. :)
  • Milanna
    Milanna
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    Carde wrote: »
    Oberon wrote: »
      [*] Remove all loot drops entirely from every public dungeon boss so that they drop no loot whatsoever. No soul stones, no gold, nothing.
      [*] Regular players can then get their public dungeon completions and not be faced with bots at Every. Single. Public. Dungeon. Boss.

      You should really think about what things do to a game before you start making suggestions. Scorched earth policy doesn't make good game design.

      It is an effective strategy of war though.
      Better burning the supplies than having them feeding the enemy. :smile:
      EU-server
      Mila the True (Aldmeri Dominion)
      Milanna the Cold-hearted (Aldmeri Dominion)
      Raphael the Cunning (Ebonheart Pact)

      NA-server
      Cassius Tanicius (Daggerfall Covenant)

      I just found garlic, you blood-suckers better stay clear
    • steveb16_ESO46
      steveb16_ESO46
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      Loviotor wrote: »
      To those that are making statements regarding "too little, too late" have obviously never played a game at launch. .

      I don't care if selling beta code for customers to test is industry practice. Besides, the gold seller and bot problems come from the game design. They left the doors and windows open and put warm milk and cookies out.

      Now they are belatedly scrambling to mitigate the impact of these original decisions.

      The better option would have been to design the game not to provide an infinite and effortless flow of bottable wealth in the first place.

      This is a great game, or will be once bots are gone.
    • knaveofengland
      knaveofengland
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      I have a lot of time for this type of game and can see where they are making a difference , but when they don't replace what they lost then game up , I mean I lost 40 bank slots 10k gold and they didn't replace what I lost I know if you brought something in a shop and they lost if they by law would have to give refund or replace
    • mcfishy69b16_ESO
      mcfishy69b16_ESO
      Soul Shriven
      Please fix the large raid group crashing bug for PvP. It makes it so hard to play with Guild members. And marking a leader would be really usefull as it really hard to follow a leader in PvP. Basic stuff we should have. Thx
    • Mythblaze_ESO
      I said in Nov of 2013 that this game should be free to play. Rethinking your choice now?
    • Sin_Dios
      Sin_Dios
      not sure where the appropriate thread would be for this, but i hope a dev see this. i, along with no doubt many adamant raiders and serious pvp'ers, would like the option to choose between abilities on the action bar to activate on button press, instead of the current default of button release. it may not seem like a large concern, but i know it would make a significant difference in our play styles.
    • k661977b14a_ESO
      First off I want to say thanks for a game that I am really enjoying. The fixes have been coming at a decent pace but a lot still needs to be done. Now with that said I have a question for the developers.

      Why can't a loot restriction be put in place to get rid of the bots and farmers in public instances/dungeons? Make it a loot main boss only once every 24 hours with a guarantee of their blue drop the first time killed. This is very easy to code and would stop the farmers from making public instances a joke. After a few months this could be brought back up to the way it is now if a drop in the farm bots is noticed.

      I know some people would be upset about this but it would let the people that actually want to do the instances and kill the final bosses to be able to without worrying about 15 or 20 farmers jockeying for the kill. You can't even get a hit in without an AOE most of the time.
    • knaveofengland
      knaveofengland
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      look at gw2 kill the boss good drop next time poor drop hardly any xp that works
    • Megachill
      Megachill
      I would love to see if you guys would fix grouping and develop something useful, like Quest Sharing and progress between group members! What is the point in grouping or being social if everyone of that group has to do their own thing anyways.

      Totally unsocial guys, if you can promise to develop this functionality I shall keep throwing monthly fees in your direction, if however major game systems like these are not in place soon, I'll wait until it's f2p ... This game has potential, don't go eff it up please...
    • Jade1986
      Jade1986
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      And not a peep on the EU servers actually being MOVED TO THE EU?! Really disheartening.....
    • jasterslegacy2000b14_ESO
      Always nice to know what you're doing with our money. I'm hoping in another months time a lot of the quest issues are resolved as well as the gold farmers. It's a good game but it's incomplete. Probably should've been held another 2 months before launch.
    • KerinKor
      KerinKor
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      laced wrote: »
      And not a peep on the EU servers actually being MOVED TO THE EU?! Really disheartening.....
      Not disheartening at all, I have no 'latency' problems playing from Europe and I much prefer the servers being local to ZOS until the current set of problems is sorted out.

      As usual, people are fixated on 'ping' times and blame everything on that, I see very, very few 'lags' situations and those I do are patently server-side and not due to the wire between they and me.
    • Jade1986
      Jade1986
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      ✭✭✭
      KerinKor wrote: »
      laced wrote: »
      And not a peep on the EU servers actually being MOVED TO THE EU?! Really disheartening.....
      Not disheartening at all, I have no 'latency' problems playing from Europe and I much prefer the servers being local to ZOS until the current set of problems is sorted out.

      As usual, people are fixated on 'ping' times and blame everything on that, I see very, very few 'lags' situations and those I do are patently server-side and not due to the wire between they and me.
      Not going to turn this into an argument, but on SWTOR and BF4 I have 10 ms lag, in this game, and I am NOT alone, I have a minimum of 160ms and a maximum of 600 ms in pve and near 1000 ms in pvp, have you checked your latency, I am guessing no. This is with 100 MB/s fiber optic. So it's not my, nor the other majority of the EU players' internet connections, it is the fact that we are using the US datacenters right now.

      Edited by Jade1986 on April 24, 2014 11:40AM
    • Aenra
      Aenra
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      @ZOS_MattFiror‌

      Please know that those of us that have been around for a bit know and can relate to your issues. We will -still- be here, subbed, posterior to this launch month.

      Please also know that our previous gaming experiences (while the cause of plenty a shout in these forums) are also a goldpile. IF taken advantage of. We support you. We remain. Give us a Bug subthread, give us a Feedback subthread. We will use it.

      Thank you for the non formal, non self-entitled tone of your letter. It is much appreciated :)
      Pride, honour and purity
    • Shimizu
      Shimizu
      ✭✭
      I think as far as launches go, while there have been problems and frustrations this is far from the worst experience; the amount of server up-time has actually been quite impressive for launch week.

      However, the team certainly has their work cut out for them to bring this game up to what would be an acceptable standard for a modern MMO.

      Botters & spammers of course are a problem - I don't mind having to delete a few mails from my box when I log in, but the dungeon camping problem is a big problem, and not fixed by simply adding a timer to the loot - this just cripples real players not botters who can just rotate in more accounts. Hopefully we will see some improvement here in the short term.

      Yes, there are bugs and broken bits but over the last few weeks I do keep seeing them getting fixed & sorted out, so kudos there.

      Larger scale problem that I see is the direction the economy of the game is heading. The guild membership for buying and selling was a good idea on paper, but what it has led to is guilds with hundreds or thousands of players who want nothing to do with each other and only exist for having a 'shop'. The 50-member requirement to even have a shop has exemplified this problem and led to spam inviting, and no thought at all goes into who these people are that you're inviting in. If the objective is just to get as many players as possible for this purpose, why not just have a global market? You could still allow guilds to have an exclusive market for members with lower prices. This ties in with the inventory issues, of which there are already hundreds of comments, and guild banks. Why a member limit restriction to even have guild storage? Why the hate for small guilds of friends who wish to play together and share items, indeed to offset the horribly constructed inventory system?

      Its a vicious circle currently. No inventory space means I'm not picking up anything I don't need which means I'm not selling anything except shopfeeding stackables, which means I don't have money to buy anything which leads to me trying to be even more self sufficient and trying to pick up everything to make food, glyphs, equipment ...which further worsens the lack of inventory space. I've heard the arguments about the inventory limit being the soft cap on your crafts, but honestly, even trying to level ONE tradeskill will take up 70-80 slots. I can't buy what I need easily as i've got to go through the broken, nonfunctioning guild store interface that can't really be searched, which means I have to find and join the biggest 'guilds' possibel full of people I don't really want to talk to or associate with but who might buy/sell something I need. A major overhaul of the inventory system is needed, sooner rather than later, as not only is the entire situation frustrating it will lead to further economic stagnation

      This does not encourage community and I feel is detrimental to the game as a whole, as people don't want to join a small guild of friends to quest together because they don't want to give up their 'market slots' and unless they can scrape up 10 people there's no shared storage and if you've got 50, well its no longer a small guild of friends. The market really needs to be globally streamlined and if you want to have guild exclusive stores, then keep them as a guild benefit.

      This is the only major problem as I see it. The class/skills system works, quests are interesting and innovative for the genre, travel takes reasonable time, etc. Sure there is room for tweaking/fixing these but overall - fine. Its just inventory management and guild management inasmuch as it pertains to inventory that are letting the game down.
    • kasdelfini
      A FEW SUGGESTIONS:

      1.) Gold Spam Issues. There probably is legal precedent for ESO to pursue said websites advertising gold for cash. Also, algorithmic detection of Gold Resellers on Chat based primarily on posts per minute and blacklisted words. UNLESS, it might be easier to Sell Gold via ESO website. Much like purchasing Palomino Horse or Imperial Edition. Thus getting rid of eso gold resellers. (players would much rather pay eso for genuine product vs third party illegal goods)

      2.) Customer Service & Emails. Today I finally received my invitation code for the forums. Going through current customer service platform was hell. The only way I got my invitation code was to have you guys finally call me. (emails were returned to sender) I suggest upon purchase and register for primary eso, forums account is activated using the same credentials. Also, your current customer service platform has to be changed. Something more along the lines of "Desk" could work.
    • mndfreeze
      mndfreeze
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      djodars wrote: »
      Any ETA on Australian servers? The latency is really a problem...

      @liam.dinsdalerwb17_ESO This will never happen... there isn't enough Australian players to warrant their own server. Maybe if the market extends to Asia you'll have a server then.

      sadly the market did extend to asia, just not the normal player types we want to see.....They should setup a seperate mini-megaserver/instance and anyone coming from all those shady goldfarmer counties get auto put into it, so they can bot and farm all they want but have no interaction with the people in the UK and states, so they just bot by themselves in thai-china-indo-whatever instance land.

      Yes I know really it wouldn't work thanks to simple proxies or even just having enough money (which they do) to just get a pipe VPN'd to an american host, BUT THE THOUGHT IS WHAT COUNTS.

      I'm all for a better implementation of the timer feature. Once you have killed the boss (which needs to be set to ALWAYS drop its same loot) it auto pops you into a new instance where the boss respawns but never drops anything or gives you xp again. Because even people shouldn't be farming the same boss over and over, legimate players or not because the end result is the same to the rest of us. Perhaps for mobs that are bigger and more unique/harder to kill, achievment type stuff, the timer can reset to say, once an hour or even once every few hours.

      For players that are trying to 'farm' you can always farm world mobs since that requires you to actually play the game, or at least play it more then just sitting at a boss spawn point. Or you can still farm bosses but will have to do it more the style of older mmo's where you finished doing one world boss and because the spawn time was so long, you set up a rotation of places you hit. So you do 8 dungeons, back to back.

    • Dekkameron
      Dekkameron
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      Thanks for the statement :)
      - Veteran Combat Librarian -
    • KerinKor
      KerinKor
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      kasdelfini wrote: »
      A FEW SUGGESTIONS:

      1.) Gold Spam Issues. There probably is legal precedent for ESO to pursue said websites advertising gold for cash.
      Since the sites themselves aren't in America's jurisdiction and since this is a civil not a criminal matter then the only way ZOS can try to get them closed down is to pursue claims such as Copyright and that's very hard, there's a reason one of the world's largest RMT outfits in in Hong Kong.

      The reason Blizzard is the only MMO developer who successfully shutdown a bot/hack developer was by winning a copyright case, the 'hacking' itself isn't a criminal offense and there is no civil law against it.

      Gold selling is a hell of a lot harder to pursue because it's not at all clear if any civil offense is being perpetrated beyond breach of contract with respect to the TOS. Again, there's a reason no RMT operation has ever been shutdown by legal means by an MMO publisher.

      Edited by KerinKor on April 24, 2014 12:58PM
    • xramirez535b14_ESO
      I'm bothered that you made no mention of the biggest issue with PvE that happens across the board... Phasing. Grouping is highly discouraged in this game with the way the phasing works. I would like to hear something from the Devs on this. Is this working as intended? Did you intend for this to be played mostly solo?
      Edited by xramirez535b14_ESO on April 24, 2014 12:59PM
    • slackmare
      slackmare
      ✭✭
      While it's nice to hear of this, I worry it's very little very late.

      why not go the extra step and just allow people the option to do public dungeons alone? Barring the stuff in Cyrodiil, of course.

      That said, it seems like Craglorn, while interesting to say the least, is going to be skipped over by a great many people in the same situation as myself. As this game is, as Angry Joe ever so eloquently put it, "Most unsocial PvE MMO game ever." it's been rather hard to find myself in PvE-centered guilds. I have yet to make any meaningful connections and I feel it's certainly a large part of the game design. While I've made many friends due to tanking dungeons, I have yet to ever be messaged by them again. Why? I feel they just don't know who the hell I am on their friends list because my tank name is different than my account name which shows up on rosters and friends lists. This all said, I know I'm not going to be able to have any meaningful progress into Craglorn or Trials. Is there anything on the back burner which is still going to keep people like me interested at end game? Or is there an expectation (and viability) to PUG?

      Im not entirely sure its the game.... perhaps no one messages you again because they grouped with you and see how your a negative Debbie Downer. Personally ive met so many people here that i meet up with daily..in my guild and in my friends list. The SOCIAL part of a MMO is what YOU put in to it. And sounds like you just spew a lot of garbage. Im sure they know your @gamename. They've probably already associated it with that guy that just complains the whole time.

      In your comment you spew wanting it to be social yet you come right around in the same paragraph and request the dungeons to be SOLO instances? Your probably the type that screams about all the bug fixes but FREAKS out when game goes down for maintenance to implement these said fixes. There is just no way to please you people. Complain if you do/ complain if you dont
      sad
    • slackmare
      slackmare
      ✭✭
      Leiloni wrote: »
      TGEK wrote: »
      [snip]

      Forums being dead is the biggest shock to me.

      I usually spend quite a lot of time on forums for a game I'm really into, but ESO's forums have never appealed to me since I first saw them back in September. I have transferred my time to Reddit as the format works well and a lot of people post interesting topics. I would however support these forums if they did a revamp to the format and hopefully more players would follow.

      Also I found this thread via Reddit. Js!

      Yeah you cannot find ANYTHING on these forums. I usually only come here to click service alerts and then head to Tamriel Foundry for their superb forums. Not to mention when the server goes down...threads pop up almost instantly giving insight of why it went down...Come to the forums here to find out? /crickets
      Nothing...nada.

      These forums are quit a joke indeed.

      [edited to remove quote]
      Edited by ZOS_Icy on June 15, 2025 6:02PM
    • castigulaub17_ESO
      Thank you for the update. The game is great, I am having a great time. The bots are out of control. The bots now own all the public dungeons. They are very easy to spot. They always huddle stacked on top of each other. Now in two groups of four.

      The bots are preventing players from looting and defeating the end bosses. I am glad you are aware and upset by the situation. The bot problem is getting worse, not better. Not just worse but drastically worse.

      My idea, assign GM's to patrol these bosses, and ban the bots on the spot. Again very easy to find. Look for bots stacked on top of one another, also look for the nonsense names: fsdghshf and dshsdlash, etc.

      This bot problem is the most detrimental to your game right now. This is your game killer. What ever you are doing, its not working. Change tactics and get aggressive. At the end of the day, if people can not complete content they will cancel their subs. This game charges a premium sub fee, as customers we expect premium service. Right now this is not happening. Certain content is not accessible due to bots.


      I want this game to succeed, I hope you take action, soon. The free month is almost over.
      Edited by castigulaub17_ESO on April 24, 2014 1:58PM
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