Will Microsoft make the game better, worse, or no effect?

ThorianB · April 2021

lazywhiteseal wrote: »

minecraft is a bit different. its a popular game that almost everyone in the world knows. even parents who dont play games know it in my country.

eso isnt known worldwide. it only has servers in 2 continents lol.

microsoft probably invest alot in minecraft since it was or is very profitable.

but other elder scroll series, the single player game, is a different story. many people would know skyrim but not eso. so they might invest more on upcoming elder scroll 6. who knows?

mega companies like microsoft care alot about profit. if there arent many customers why invest on it?

i think it will be same as usual since eso does have reasonable amount of players for an mmorpg.

You severely underestimate the value of this game, this franchise and zenimax in general. With minecraft, MS got a one trick pony. With Zenimax they got multiple studios and their libraries.

"Bethesda Fast Facts and Accolades

5 of 8 studios have shipped “Game of the Year” titles

#1 Ranked Publisher of the Year (2018)

“Game of the Year” winner 5 years in a row

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

RPG of the Year from IGN and others

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Consensus Game of the Year across all outlets

Fallout 3

Consensus Game of the Year across all outlets

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Consensus Game of the Year

Named Game of the Generation and #1 PC Game of All Time

Fallout 4

Over 50 Game of the Year Awards including DICE and BAFTA

Dishonored

BAFTA Award for Best Game, Best Action Adventure Game at the VGAs

Dishonored 2

PC Gamer Game of the Year, Best Action Adventure Game at the VGAs

Winner of more than 100 Best of 2016 awards

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

Best Action Game, The Game Awards

DOOM (2016)

Best Action Game, The Game Awards

Fallout Shelter

Mobile Game of the Year, DICE Awards and Golden Joystick Awards

Elder Scrolls Online

MMO of the Year four consecutive years"

That resume is worth a tad more than " Minecraft"

Elsonso · April 2021

BlueRaven wrote: »

Oh? This is a bit of info that is new to me. What servers are they using now?

At one point, I determined that they made use of Akamai for supporting services (CDN), like downloading the game and patches. Akamai also provides the DDOS protection.

The game itself is running on dedicated server hardware owned (or leased) by ZOS. Back in 2014, this game was built on HP Blade System hardware, and lots of it. If I had to guess, this hardware is located in Level 3 (CenturyLink) data centers.

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

If ESO gets moved to the Azure network, and we get new servers I can guarantee everyone of us will feel the difference. MSFT were the first company to host all of their studios games on independently hosted servers, going back to the Xbox 360.

Azure is a cloud platform. This is not a cloud game and I doubt it ever will be. I do not expect Azure to be used outside of support roles.

I can see them dropping Akamai for DDOS protection and distribution of the game and moving to their own technologies for this. Azure might be where this sort of stuff ends up.

They might move the game servers to Microsoft owned property, or they might leave them where they are.

As for new servers, from the statements that they made, the main goal is improved reliability, not improved performance. Commercial server hardware is only so powerful. Once you hit that limit, it does not matter who owns you.