Cyro was conspicuously empty last weekend, I agree. A number of things might be the culprit, including the new world beta attracting some players who are checking it out.

The UK lockdown rules have gone so businesses go open again and people are allowed to see each other again etc.
On top of that the really warm weather in a lot of places.

And other places had natural disasters occur like parts of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The floods litteraly took people's houses. Massive destruction.
Such a nightmare those poor people it is horrible.

So I think that is definitely part of that it slowed down. At least for the EU server.

It's completely anecdotal but I do remember a few years ago when Reddit "Advertise Your Guild" threads would have 50-100 different posts in them.

Over the last year the average is more like 10-15.

For what it's worth.

more than a year ago I suggested to scale the difficulty of worldbosses with the amount of players around, to compensate the exodus on xbox EU.
Many left because of lag that was massive after release of elsweyr, so less left to farm bosses, so even the last left tired of soloing them.

This did not happen, in contrast companion quests now spread out the people even further. While this brings back some life to old zones, it increases the problem, that you find no more co-players to farm bosses in typical regions like summerset or northern elsweyr.

As a result, now even on the far more populated NA server you can be forced to solo such bosses (the event right now is a welcomed exception of course).

In Blackwood, farming worldbosses is even more discouraging, they are stronger than others, and the daily rewards have no guarantee to drop Ivory Brigade Clasp. So this region quickly gets as deserted as it happened with Murkmire, where difficulty and no guarantee for hackwing plumage kept players away from the bosses there.

Just some examples, why people get tired and take out-times, as I do it myself more and more often (just login for endeavours, then switch to other things).

Jazraena wrote: »

Elsweyr bosses are usually packed with people on PC EU, even during mornings and afternoon.

Checking Blackwood world bosses almost 2 months after release while there is an Elsweyr event going on might not be the best indicator of population.

Neither is Ravenwatch. Ravenwatch specifically is being abandoned thanks to PTS changes; and I suspect people are also taking some downtime after Midyear Mayhem. I certainly am - and will then very likely change to Gray Host with the upcoming stuff.

PC-NA Ravenwatch has definitely seen its engagement crater in the last week.

All the guilds on DC have pulled out except for one (and even that one will likely leave when the campaign ends) and relatively early in the evenings it is single-bar for all factions with the same 5 players on one side fighting the same 5 players on the other at random resources.

This is not the portrait of a campaign with a healthy future.

ESO is mostly PvE players i assume.

Don't know, haven't logged on myself since... last Friday was it?

I guess New World is one reason - it looks like a fairly decent MMO that specifically plays like an MMO. Oddly enough, lot of MMO players look for that in an MMO. Plus it's a fresh new start, and after 7 years of ESO beta, lot of people might be interested in trying something new.

Summer is another reason I suppose. People go on vacations or just chill and laze about, since it's way too hot to do anything productive.

It doesn't really help that the game is a buggy mess, the servers spazz out all the time, and when they do work, lag makes everything aggravating [snip]. And then there are those upcoming changes looming on the horizon. Not looking forward to them either.

However, for me it's event fatigue. I just can't arse myself to log on and grind dragons [snip] I've done to death years ago, just for a low RNG shot for a piece of another new cosmetic shinie that I'm not interested in nor would ever use.

I know, I know, one can always ignore the event, and all the other daily checklist grind they've added to this thing over the years, but... Well, doing daily writs, and then the endeavors, and then go do the event stuff, is the most optimal thing to do - as far as reward vs. playtime is involved, so you have to consciously decide to go for the sub-optimal route. Furthermore, once you do decide not to bother with the latest bit of carrot they are dangling in front of yet another grind, what's left?

PVP is a mess, and something I can only really stomach once or max twice a week. I've never seen the appeal of grinding the same dungeons over an over again in hopes of getting lucky with that 1% chance of getting the bit of gear you want, and I couldn't care less about the arbitrary achievements. To me they've always felt equally meaningless and silly as "Finish dungeon X in under 10 minutes while standing on your head and yodeling the Swiss national anthem."

Housing is essentially locked behind a paywall and requires insane amount of grind for mats and recipes, or/and gold to buy all the bits you need, and is still woefully limited by the insanely low furnishing slots to bother with. And all the cool new plots cost gazillion tons of real life money. I get more fun out of building in say Conan Exiles or Sims or just doing custom interiors for Skyrim in the CK. (And I essentially bought all content for Conan in the summer sale for less than what it would cost to buy one of these ESO virtual houses...)

Everything else is a grind and farm of repetitive crud - like find x pieces of thing y that drop 2% of the time from mobs in public dungeon z. It's tedious, annoying and unrewarding, and most of all, not entertaining.

All that is left are the quests, and those are sorely lacking in quality these days. The year long formula of world shaking calamities has grown old, and it doesn't really help that you are just a passive observer in these stories. You are the hired muscle that kills all the baddies, so that the actual protagonists of the stories can then act out their scripted key moments and do all the important bits.

So last Satruday it was, I think, that in a listless mood I decided to hop on back to Enderal and continue my exploration of Vyn. I didn't really even notice that it's been several days since I last logged on ESO.

I'm still gonna do the story and quest content ESO has, that I haven't finished yet, but am in no real hurry to bother with them. And not caring about daily log in bribes, endeavors, or even the ever constant event grind makes for much less aggravating play experience. There's still plenty of worthwhile stuff to do in ESO, but I just don't feel a reason to log on each day anymore.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Also the celebration this past week has brought a lot of people to Anequia and Pelletine, even Alinor is pretty empty.