The amount of players is decreasing (PC/EU)

Anfieldkris · March 2022

I don’t play on PC, I’m on PS EU. However, general feeling in the guilds I am involved with and friends in game (which is clearly a tiny sample) is that many long term players have drifted away, trader sales have been seriously low for the past few weeks, and the number of people joining the guilds is far lower than the number who have let us know that they are off to play new game x. We will see if they come back, but the reaction to the new season wasn’t good, and AWA really switched off a lot of the long termers. Beyond that, many of those who are still playing are collecting daily rewards, maybe dropping into cyro for a while etc, but spending far less time in game. However lockdowns are largely over, the weather is getting better and so on. Time will tell.

McTaterskins · March 2022

I was a 2-4hr daily player.

I've been on maybe 4-5hrs in the past 10 days.

Game performs worse every week. Fewer people on to do things. Upcoming changes are receiving consistent overall and staggeringly negative feedback.

Jumped on to tank a couple Vet DLC dungeons for the GF and spent the entire time irritated. Mob flash/bugouts, skill delays, etc. etc.

Didn't even bother getting our BG's in.

Guild lists? Mostly inactive. Had to hop a couple slots to keep traders going. Original 20 or so people we came to the game to play with back in 2020 (pre-greymoor)? Maybe 3 of us are left. Plus 1 or 2 that log on once in a great while.

beer781993 · March 2022

All people I know, don't play with randoms. We have our PSN groups where only very experienced players are invited. I do think many are past the beginner levels and learning the ropes. Can't stand playing with low dps and slow progress anymore.

Probably one reason why craglorn and queues are full with low cp, new players, vet first timers etc.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · March 2022

There is a few factor
1. The first dlc of the year is roughly 1 month later than usual. Its a known mmo fenomenon that lots of player leave at some point between content drop. Having one more month to wait could lead to more people leaving until the dlc drop
2. The world is slowly returning to a pre-covid state, meaning less and less people will stay at home
3. According to some people in the account wide acheivement feed back thread the game is about to have a mass exodus due to a change or another in this update. The real scale of this exodus remain to be determine, after the dlc drop

These 3 points could explain why there is a differance in the pre-q1 dlc time

SammyKhajit · March 2022

With everything that is happening in the world right now, khajit is too sad to play games.

EdmondDontes · March 2022

Too many promises with no results.

Amottica · March 2022

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

The numbers will shoot right back up when the expansion comes out.

And then right back down when people realize they can't get achievements any more on their alts, when random NPCs comment about their new characters already being the Heroes of Tamriel or all the other things they haven't done, when they are locked out of quests because the quest givers tell them they have already done it, when they look at the map of a new zone they've never entered and see everything already marked as complete, or when they see level 2 characters that are too low to even enter Cyrodiil wearing Former Emperor and Grand Overlord titles, or Flawless Conqueror, Godslayer, Master Angler, or what have you.

No, this time things will be different. Tamriel One was fun and engaging, Tamriel Once .... not so much.

Maybe. But I think more will like the new AWA vs having to re-do everything on a new character. That was very much a drag and now we will be able to see our real progress overall. I thought the repetitiveness was a poor design but we all are entitled to our own opinions.

Being able to see account wide progress in addition to individual achievements would have been an upgrade, but ZOS stated they were doing this primarily to free up data for the future, so adding something without taking something away isn't on their agenda. And while I understand that some folks would like all achievements conglomerated so they don't have to do content again, there are many of us who have already achieved everything we wanted to on our main, or multiple characters. So removing the ability redo the game from scratch on our alts is basically telling us there's nothing more left for us to do. And many of us will respond accordingly, and go find something else to do.

I have not seen where Zenimax said they were doing this primarily to free up data space. I have seen where they said it will do that and that players have been requesting this.

I do agree that having both account-wide and character-based would be an upgrade but it is very much a matter of perspective as to what opinion someone would have about character-based achievements vs account-wide.

Regardless, this change does not prevent us from playing through everything again on a new character. Plenty there.

Jaraal · March 2022

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

The numbers will shoot right back up when the expansion comes out.

And then right back down when people realize they can't get achievements any more on their alts, when random NPCs comment about their new characters already being the Heroes of Tamriel or all the other things they haven't done, when they are locked out of quests because the quest givers tell them they have already done it, when they look at the map of a new zone they've never entered and see everything already marked as complete, or when they see level 2 characters that are too low to even enter Cyrodiil wearing Former Emperor and Grand Overlord titles, or Flawless Conqueror, Godslayer, Master Angler, or what have you.

No, this time things will be different. Tamriel One was fun and engaging, Tamriel Once .... not so much.

Maybe. But I think more will like the new AWA vs having to re-do everything on a new character. That was very much a drag and now we will be able to see our real progress overall. I thought the repetitiveness was a poor design but we all are entitled to our own opinions.

Being able to see account wide progress in addition to individual achievements would have been an upgrade, but ZOS stated they were doing this primarily to free up data for the future, so adding something without taking something away isn't on their agenda. And while I understand that some folks would like all achievements conglomerated so they don't have to do content again, there are many of us who have already achieved everything we wanted to on our main, or multiple characters. So removing the ability redo the game from scratch on our alts is basically telling us there's nothing more left for us to do. And many of us will respond accordingly, and go find something else to do.

I have not seen where Zenimax said they were doing this primarily to free up data space. I have seen where they said it will do that and that players have been requesting this.

I do agree that having both account-wide and character-based would be an upgrade but it is very much a matter of perspective as to what opinion someone would have about character-based achievements vs account-wide.

Regardless, this change does not prevent us from playing through everything again on a new character. Plenty there.

It’s in the pinned AWA Q&A post. They stated that the data savings was “most important.”

Kesstryl · March 2022

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

The numbers will shoot right back up when the expansion comes out.

And then right back down when people realize they can't get achievements any more on their alts, when random NPCs comment about their new characters already being the Heroes of Tamriel or all the other things they haven't done, when they are locked out of quests because the quest givers tell them they have already done it, when they look at the map of a new zone they've never entered and see everything already marked as complete, or when they see level 2 characters that are too low to even enter Cyrodiil wearing Former Emperor and Grand Overlord titles, or Flawless Conqueror, Godslayer, Master Angler, or what have you.

No, this time things will be different. Tamriel One was fun and engaging, Tamriel Once .... not so much.

Maybe. But I think more will like the new AWA vs having to re-do everything on a new character. That was very much a drag and now we will be able to see our real progress overall. I thought the repetitiveness was a poor design but we all are entitled to our own opinions.

Being able to see account wide progress in addition to individual achievements would have been an upgrade, but ZOS stated they were doing this primarily to free up data for the future, so adding something without taking something away isn't on their agenda. And while I understand that some folks would like all achievements conglomerated so they don't have to do content again, there are many of us who have already achieved everything we wanted to on our main, or multiple characters. So removing the ability redo the game from scratch on our alts is basically telling us there's nothing more left for us to do. And many of us will respond accordingly, and go find something else to do.

I have not seen where Zenimax said they were doing this primarily to free up data space. I have seen where they said it will do that and that players have been requesting this.

I do agree that having both account-wide and character-based would be an upgrade but it is very much a matter of perspective as to what opinion someone would have about character-based achievements vs account-wide.

Regardless, this change does not prevent us from playing through everything again on a new character. Plenty there.

It was said in their official Q&A about Account Wide Achievements that it was being done to free up database space. And yes, you can replay "most" content on alts if you don't care about details like how NPC dialogue trees or random NPC encounters treat alts as you the player and not as an individual character, and you don't mind being locked out of a few achievement only quests which will never be repeatable again (screenshot that epilogue with Count Ravenwatch now, next update, you will never see that ending again on any alt).

jecks33 · March 2022

PC-EU is pretty dead atm.

Imagine waiting 5 minutes as tank for a normal dng at midnight... the 5 guilds i'm in have 35/40 online players in the prime time, cities have few people running here and there.

The drop is clear

jecks33 · March 2022

Amottica wrote: »

Again, our guilds are very small compared to the game. The only real information on a broader scale that we have to is steam charts, as I noted on the first page here. It shows growth overall and that is not an imaginary phenomenon.

Steam charts are not a good source because few players plays through that platform (litterally nobody in my guilds play with steam), this site ( https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline/ ) provides accurate population numbers and as you can see, in april 2021 there were 1 milion active players on eso, atm it's just 190k.

Eso has lost 80% of their players in 1 year and that's clear if you play the game daily

Vaoh · March 2022

Official Feedback Thread For ESO 2022 Global Reveal- High Isle (887 votes)
Very Excited - 20% (182 votes)
Mixed Feelings - 25% (225 votes)
Wanted Something a Different - 55% (480 votes)

There are less players on other servers too and it happened before Elden Ring came out. It’s because this year is shaping up to be the worst ever for ESO.

From large issues like the account-wide achievements situation or getting no new class/weapons/etc after 3 years (so it’ll take at least 4 years then?? 🤷‍♂️).... to even some smaller changes like the heavy attack sets nerfs (this got a a ton of attention), I cannot think of any other occasion ZOS has made so many consecutive mistakes at the start of the year which primarily upsets their target audience - casual questers.

Blackwood was the first chapter to have noticeably lower hype than the others. Now High Isle comes along with legit close to zero hype, whether on discord, ingame, forums, etc. 20% approval rating on their official poll which drags in only 887 votes....

Tandor · March 2022

jecks33 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Again, our guilds are very small compared to the game. The only real information on a broader scale that we have to is steam charts, as I noted on the first page here. It shows growth overall and that is not an imaginary phenomenon.

Steam charts are not a good source because few players plays through that platform (litterally nobody in my guilds play with steam), this site (https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline/) provides accurate population numbers and as you can see, in april 2021 there were 1 milion active players on eso, atm it's just 190k.

Eso has lost 80% of their players in 1 year and that's clear if you play the game daily

80% down in a year? Nonsense. Maybe in PvPers, or even endgame veterans, but not more generally across the board.
I've no idea what that site is or how they reckon to get their numbers, but you need to remove the closing bracket from the link for it to work.

In the previous post you mentioned few people running around cities. A lot of players have moved on from previously busy cities, places like Elden Root, Rawl'kha and Vivec City (crafting stations and armoury in houses being one reason), but others like Vulkhel Guard and Daggerfall remain at least as busy as before in my experience on both PC servers.

I agree with you that few players play through Steam, but those that do are probably representative of players generally so it's credible that any trend on Steam is representative of a wider picture. What the Steam charts suggest is that over several years there has been a steady increase in players overall but with periodic ups and downs according to content cycles, Covid lockdowns and other factors.

Update: Having looked at the site you linked I see that "The Players and Daily login numbers are estimations based on subscriber numbers and online sentiment." How do they know subscriber numbers? What on earth is "online sentiment"? How do they square their graph showing a massive decline with their summary that the game's health is "Good" and "The popularity of The Elder Scrolls Online is increasing. In the last 30 days it has increased in player size by 0.517%." I repeat - it's nonsense, but then it's based on pure guesswork. Nobody except ZOS knows the subscriber numbers, and there's no hard data in "online sentiment".

Jaraal · March 2022

Tandor wrote: »

In the previous post you mentioned few people running around cities. A lot of players have moved on from previously busy cities, places like Elden Root, Rawl'kha and Vivec City (crafting stations and armoury in houses being one reason), but others like Vulkhel Guard and Daggerfall remain at least as busy as before in my experience on both PC servers.

Visual population can be misleading, because there can be many instances (shards), each with varying numbers of players. For example, let's say, for illustration purposes only, that there may be a limit of 100 players per instance of Vivec City. Let's say there are currently three instances. Two could have 90-95 players, and the overflow instance only 15 players. Your perspective from being in the first two shards is, wow, the server is busy! Lots of players, the game is fine. But if you're in the third shard, you may think, hmmm, the game is dead, where are all the people?

Only ZOS has access to how many shards there are and what the overall population of the game is at any given time. However, there are some things we can use to get an idea of how many people are still playing. Cyrodiil is a good reference, as there are a limited number of campaigns (shards/instances), and each one has a population cap. Guild roster activity is another potential indicator. If you're in five top trading guilds, you can get a good idea of how many of the 500 players are on at any given time. You can also look at trader sales trends, to see how many people are buying or not buying and at what volume compared to earlier benchmarks. And seeing how many of certain gated items are for sale can be another clue as to player count health.

Mayrael · March 2022

To all saying it's because AWA just because you don't like it doesn't make it true.
1. Most players in game have no idea what's coming, they just casually play the game and don't track announcements.
2. Factors impacting palyer base decrease are multiple. Season of the year, political and economic reasons. Other games launches (New MMO games, cRPGs and many many more have launched recently). Burning out. Shifting to consoles etc. etc. etc.
3. Players amount floating is pretty normal thing. I bet that after launch of the chapter it will increase and after that it will drop again.

Theros · March 2022

In my case:
I play alot of hours every day. But in the last days i only can make one or two quests and i logoff.

1º It's very very hard find players to make Hard content unless you pay to them. (So i give up of trials etc...)
2º The last event (pvp **** one) was almost the end for me. I just hate pvp...
3º But i stay and go foward in story.... until i have to go Cyrodill\Imperial City. I can't understand what in the hell was story about, cuz its a pvp map.... I try to understand the story, a player come and kill us! i just go tired! And when i create a topic asking to ZoS explain how in the hell i can make the story of the game i pay without players kill me.... i got Warning of BAN!

So... I move out.
ESO was fun some time ago... but not now!

1º You need to pay to players for hard content
2º You can't even understand the story

So.... why keep paying?! no sence at all.

NerfSeige · March 2022

Pvp performance, elden ring, lost ark….

Lots of pvp streamers are now multi-game streamers. And with destiny and ffxiv having their best patch yet, eso with a card game is not really compelling to stay-in for the time-being.

At least in my opinion.

But I’ll be back in tamriel, when it gets better.

francesinhalover · March 2022

YantiParazi wrote: »

Since the last expansion reveal, I'm feeling there are less active players. As a 2 year player and a successful guild master, it seems this year's expansion was so unsatisfied that a lot of players don't have a reason to continue playing.
3 months ago, my guild ran trials and event we prepared as a guild (as a social guild and not a trial guild). Nowadays, it's bery difficult to find 12 players for a single trial. The overall amount of players in the guild didn't change, but the chat and discord has been dead silent and there are less online players per day.

Since i started playing Eso in 2020 I enjoy everything the game has to offer. From housing, antiquities, I've tanked all vTrials as OT and MT, PvP and even enjoy fishing. I don't wa t this game to die because of the disconnection of Zenimax to the ga.e and what is lacking in the game. As a MMO this game has so much potential to grow and overcome other games.

Why not make housing actually usefull with mini games or movable platforms (just ideas i had while i wrote this)?
Why not add more PvP options, like group vs group in defending+attacking a keep, official 1v1 arena with ranks that aren't just hold by private guilds, group vs group only ranged siege weapons?
Why not useful quest rewards? I enjoy quests only because of the lore. No challenge and the rewards just bum me each time I complete a quest.

These are just some of my thoughts. I don't want Eso to die and i really hope Zenimax and the developers will make some major changes in the game. They talked about better communications with the community. This is the time for that communication, otherwise everyone will lose.

What are your thoughts? Do you guys feel the same as me or I'm wrong and the game is doing very well these days?

Housing...could be interesting making a huge maze full of traps...

Pvp the serv are not ok and no pvp updates for 1 or 2 years while they fix it.

Glitches like dk leap exist for what... A year now? Why doesnt gliches get fixes

Theros · March 2022

and ofc

Rotation

Press 1 2times, 2 1time, 4 onetime rotate, press 1,2,3, rotation, cast ultima, rotation, press 5,3,1, rotation. Repeat all!

lols! What a mess!

Kessra · March 2022

My honest opinion, who cares about account wide achievements and tiltes anyway? If so, a skin for clearing vet content is way cooler than a title and those skins can be used on toons that never did that content.

I think people just need a ventile to moan about things and while I'm not a big fan of that card-game thing they add, I will also have to try it out first to give honest opinion on that. At least IMO ZOS could have spent their time on other, more important parts of the game instead, but let's give those new systems a fair chance first now that they have spent time and resources into them.

In regards to the actual topic of this thread: In almost any MMO out there the number of players variies throughout expansions. I.e. beofre and short after new content is released, numbers usually go up significantly and go down once all of the new content is done. That is natural. And not everyone values certain content the same. Some want to see more love for PvP, some don't like the darkwood/deadland stories, some joined ESO because of the dragons and their connection to ES5: Skyrim and some joined ESO as WoW was trending downward heavily. There are various reason why people join and leave a game

Kessra · March 2022

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Too many promises with no results.

You should hear the Star Citizen folks and then repeat your statement

Amottica · March 2022

Kesstryl wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

The numbers will shoot right back up when the expansion comes out.

And then right back down when people realize they can't get achievements any more on their alts, when random NPCs comment about their new characters already being the Heroes of Tamriel or all the other things they haven't done, when they are locked out of quests because the quest givers tell them they have already done it, when they look at the map of a new zone they've never entered and see everything already marked as complete, or when they see level 2 characters that are too low to even enter Cyrodiil wearing Former Emperor and Grand Overlord titles, or Flawless Conqueror, Godslayer, Master Angler, or what have you.

No, this time things will be different. Tamriel One was fun and engaging, Tamriel Once .... not so much.

Maybe. But I think more will like the new AWA vs having to re-do everything on a new character. That was very much a drag and now we will be able to see our real progress overall. I thought the repetitiveness was a poor design but we all are entitled to our own opinions.

Being able to see account wide progress in addition to individual achievements would have been an upgrade, but ZOS stated they were doing this primarily to free up data for the future, so adding something without taking something away isn't on their agenda. And while I understand that some folks would like all achievements conglomerated so they don't have to do content again, there are many of us who have already achieved everything we wanted to on our main, or multiple characters. So removing the ability redo the game from scratch on our alts is basically telling us there's nothing more left for us to do. And many of us will respond accordingly, and go find something else to do.

I have not seen where Zenimax said they were doing this primarily to free up data space. I have seen where they said it will do that and that players have been requesting this.

I do agree that having both account-wide and character-based would be an upgrade but it is very much a matter of perspective as to what opinion someone would have about character-based achievements vs account-wide.

Regardless, this change does not prevent us from playing through everything again on a new character. Plenty there.

It was said in their official Q&A about Account Wide Achievements that it was being done to free up database space. And yes, you can replay "most" content on alts if you don't care about details like how NPC dialogue trees or random NPC encounters treat alts as you the player and not as an individual character, and you don't mind being locked out of a few achievement only quests which will never be repeatable again (screenshot that epilogue with Count Ravenwatch now, next update, you will never see that ending again on any alt).

Again, their answer clearly stated that players have requested this feature as well as this change will help with server-side data. Nowhere in that Q&A does it say this is primarily to free up data space.

Q: Why switch to Account Wide Achievements?

A: We decided to move to Account Wide Achievements for two main reasons. First, this has been a requested feature by players for years and is a nice quality of life improvement. It gives players a lot more freedom to explore the world on any character, without the fear of missing out on getting achievements or making incremental progress on their “main” character. Second, as mentioned in the intro, this change will result long term maintainable database stability and performance. By reducing the amount of data we have to store, the database doesn’t have to work as hard so the time it takes to search, load and save data will be sped up, leading to a more consistent user experience as the years go by and more data is added to the database.

Yes, they start off talking about player-generated data, but this is their specific answer to why they are making this change. So my comment is 100% accurate and correctly pointed out the full picture instead of just focusing on data.

I for one am in favor of account-wide achievements and seriously doubt it will have a negative effect on the size of the player base. I am looking forward to this going live as it will be amazing.

Drammanoth · March 2022

Tbh, I don't mind ZOS making a mistake.

Let me explain - they may learn (again) that if they tell us "you don't have to play if you don't want to", people will leave, and find that other devs do actually keep their promises and care about their playerbase.

Let them learn from their mistake, because the one they made c. 7 years ago might have been forgotten.

Keeping my fingers crossed for you, ZOS - fall and rise

Leftover_Pizza · March 2022

Tandor wrote: »

jecks33 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Again, our guilds are very small compared to the game. The only real information on a broader scale that we have to is steam charts, as I noted on the first page here. It shows growth overall and that is not an imaginary phenomenon.

Steam charts are not a good source because few players plays through that platform (litterally nobody in my guilds play with steam), this site (https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline/) provides accurate population numbers and as you can see, in april 2021 there were 1 milion active players on eso, atm it's just 190k.

Eso has lost 80% of their players in 1 year and that's clear if you play the game daily

80% down in a year? Nonsense. Maybe in PvPers, or even endgame veterans, but not more generally across the board.
I've no idea what that site is or how they reckon to get their numbers, but you need to remove the closing bracket from the link for it to work.

In the previous post you mentioned few people running around cities. A lot of players have moved on from previously busy cities, places like Elden Root, Rawl'kha and Vivec City (crafting stations and armoury in houses being one reason), but others like Vulkhel Guard and Daggerfall remain at least as busy as before in my experience on both PC servers.

I agree with you that few players play through Steam, but those that do are probably representative of players generally so it's credible that any trend on Steam is representative of a wider picture. What the Steam charts suggest is that over several years there has been a steady increase in players overall but with periodic ups and downs according to content cycles, Covid lockdowns and other factors.

Update: Having looked at the site you linked I see that "The Players and Daily login numbers are estimations based on subscriber numbers and online sentiment." How do they know subscriber numbers? What on earth is "online sentiment"? How do they square their graph showing a massive decline with their summary that the game's health is "Good" and "The popularity of The Elder Scrolls Online is increasing. In the last 30 days it has increased in player size by 0.517%." I repeat - it's nonsense, but then it's based on pure guesswork. Nobody except ZOS knows the subscriber numbers, and there's no hard data in "online sentiment".

The site he linked is about the worst to use for gaming stats. The site even lists game activity on games that aren't running for years anymore.

Gaebriel0410 · March 2022

Huh, I play on PC EU and I see lots of people all the time everywhere.

It's almost like people check vague metrics and stats over and over again until they see something that could be interpreted in a negative, then extrapolate as far as they can to prove the sky is falling and everything is horrible. People have predicted ESO was dying ever since it came out.

Rhygam · March 2022

rauyran wrote: »

What platform are you on? The number of players on PC+steam seems very level over the past 3 years according to steamdb. https://steamdb.info/app/306130/graphs/

Are we looking at the same graph? Since the reveale you see a steady decline. Unsurprisingly...

zaria · March 2022

Kessra wrote: »

My honest opinion, who cares about account wide achievements and tiltes anyway? If so, a skin for clearing vet content is way cooler than a title and those skins can be used on toons that never did that content.

I think people just need a ventile to moan about things and while I'm not a big fan of that card-game thing they add, I will also have to try it out first to give honest opinion on that. At least IMO ZOS could have spent their time on other, more important parts of the game instead, but let's give those new systems a fair chance first now that they have spent time and resources into them.

In regards to the actual topic of this thread: In almost any MMO out there the number of players variies throughout expansions. I.e. beofre and short after new content is released, numbers usually go up significantly and go down once all of the new content is done. That is natural. And not everyone values certain content the same. Some want to see more love for PvP, some don't like the darkwood/deadland stories, some joined ESO because of the dragons and their connection to ES5: Skyrim and some joined ESO as WoW was trending downward heavily. There are various reason why people join and leave a game

This, and if you pug for an vet dlc trial and have an achievement you know that you are getting into and it will be harder and less forgiving than an guild run. You might want to bring another alt as he do more dps or bring utility than the one you did on the guild run who say wanted an necro for utility.
My issue with the account wide achievements is re doing quests and tracking that each characters has explored.

Folkb · March 2022

Everyone and their mom is playing elden ring. I haven't yet but I'm about to.

Mik195 · March 2022

Folkb wrote: »

Everyone and their mom is playing elden ring. I haven't yet but I'm about to.

I'm not and never will. Its too hard for me and will always be. ESO has lots of different difficulties and I can find something right on the area of my abilities.

Caligamy_ESO · March 2022

Personally for me it just got extremely stagnant. My entire pvp guild quit about 2 years ago and there has been absolutely no reason to return for them. I am still in their discords and the general feeling there is they would rather just play literally anything else. Got tired of promises and lack of progress I guess.

My pve group I ran dungeons and trials with really disliked Blackwood and Deadlands, companions were a huge let down, and the story seemed like it was written for.. well I don't really know who they were aiming for there.. children? It really doesn't help there hasn't been anything substantially new to ESO in years.

We were watching hoping for *at least* a new skill line, weapon, or class and instead its a card minigame with some bonus loot probably akin to excavation. That does nothing at all the alleviate the boredom of pressing the same 5-8 buttons ad nauseum in the same skill rotation for 2 years. Play another class? I have. All of them. In stamina and magicka variants and quite frankly.. the rotations are nearly identical for every class, and the homogenization of gear sets definitely didn't alleviate that, it just made it MORE prevalent.

In short none of us are getting whatever the next chapter ended up being called (and that's a first for me since I permanently own all previous DLC with or w/o sub, nor are we subbing anymore. Half of us ended up in FFXIV which has been eye opening in terms of quantity AND quality of expansions instead of one sacrificing the other, and the story is quite frankly phenomenal by comparison.

Where ESO struggled last December (at least in our eyes) with selling Deadlands, Square had to postpone sales of their expansion because too many people were buying it and every server they had was heavily congested with 1000s of players in queues for hours and hours, and even still... no one wanted to stop playing it. 1 DLC over there sells for around the same price ESO puts out a chapter for except it takes you days or weeks to clear it instead of 5-6 hours. If I am being honest.. I doubt any of us will return, but I keep looking for news of changes hoping something will feel inviting again.