I'd say so. ESO content creation has definitely slowed down and most of the former big ESO content creators don't really cover ESO much anymore unless they want guaranteed views such as 'what is coming to (event name here)?'

I'm on PS5 and haven't noticed any difference in the amount of people I see around, as a very casual, solo player. Given, there are a lot in the event zone right now. I sometimes take long breaks, so I don't log in every day or with any particular consistency, but the population of the areas I frequent seems steady. New zones peak quickly and drop off sharply within about six months, along with the content they're connected to, but develop a reliable population after that. Mournhold, Alinor and Soliude always appears about the same. That's just what I see, anyway, without really interacting.

Erickson9610 wrote: »

I certainly hope that this game won't sunset anytime soon. We've been promised that there are still many years of stories left to tell in ESO, but there's been a noticeable drop in the number of balance changes these past few updates...

I'm looking forward to the next major update in Q1 of 2024, though. Maybe the 10th year anniversary of ESO will bring people back to the game and will revitalize this game's balancing, fix long-standing bugs, and add meaningful quality of life changes? It's a long wait from now, but only time will tell.

They stopped doing so many balance changes because the playerbase complained about how often things were getting rebalanced.

Panderbander wrote: »

My money is on the game being on maintenance mode at this point. The changes being put forward recently are so barren of substance and their implementation has often been so haphazard as to cause ludicrous problems (such as the feet of characters and mounts no longer indexing to the ground, causing everyone to slide around on a recent PTS). Heck, even the two big content patches a year is going away now on favor of a single expansion zone.

Either the team is suddenly staffed by folks with little experience or the team is too time-crunched to properly test things before pushing to PTS or live, which could be (I'm not saying is) a symptom of not having a large enough team working on it.

I think the latter might be the issue, ZOS taking ESO staff to go work on whatever new MMO they're doing (which is supposed to be Star Wars themed, lmao)

Speaking on the console side of this game manly the Xbox Series X/S version this game is basically dead the only thing keeping TESO alive on the Xbox is its on Gamepass and we don't have WOW or Final Fantasy 14 I really hope that someday soon they will allow us to port our stuff to PC kinda like Elite Dangerous did awhile back its needed

but its sad TESO is in the best shape its ever been in plenty of content and runs amazing on both console and my laptop and nobody cares.

I really hope they do a rebrand like The Elder Scrolls Online "Remastered" next year and release The College of Winterhold and The Winterhold Chapter they can cash in on the Skyrim nostalgia which will bring in alot of people new and old and show off just how far this game has come.

I do t think it’s on Life Support, but there are “some struggles”.

Yes, the player base has changed, but that’s usual.

Consider that:
- many players are now farming EA
- No need to socialise in Craglorn looking for trial zone posts, as there’s a new group finder
- Event means lots of Blackwood act it’s, and vRG farming
- more zones = more locations for players to meet up in = fewer meeting in ‘same old spots’
(If you like, call it geographical dilution…100 players + 5 zones = 20/zone…100 players and 20 zones = 5/zone)

ImmortalCX wrote: »

New World was/is eso like. But eso has 20x the content and !ore. Is New World dying?i cant imagine anyone picking that over eso.

I wonder what new ppl trying eso for the first time experience? What are the turn offs?

Wow is the biggest most successful mmo, and what eso lacks in comparison is vertical progression. If they could figure out how to create vertical progression, it would have a more serious feeling end game. Every expansion in wow added a ton of new raid content.

My gut feeling is that alot of ppl play eso like a sp game and have fun for a few weeks. But its a casual experience and they evertually quit because not enough carrots.

The devs deliberately went away from vertical progression. Vert prog is part of what drove me away from WoW and RIFT - and quite frankly, if ESO's devs head that direction, I'll be gone and never return just like what happened with WoW and RIFT: dropped all accounts subbed (10 in WoW, 7 in RIFT) and haven't ever been back.

The only thing I miss from either of them is RIFT's housing, which when I left in 2016 was the best setup in the gaming world.

I play on PS EU and there's always players for the content I want. The Group finder has actually helped with Trials a fair bit, there's often a group there waiting for players if I want to get involved.

The biggest problem on Console, as far as I can see, is the lack of Tanks/Healers, with everyone wanting to play DD. An alternative way of looking at that, is you get into random dungeons etc pretty much instantly. So changing to a Healer/Tank is something I'd recommend for most users to have. The open world always seems busy though, I'm always bumping into others, even in zones that are not event related.

And I was just noticing how full the starter islands are after I created a new alt on PS NA.
And on a Monday morning no less.

LunaFlora wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

My money is on the game being on maintenance mode at this point. The changes being put forward recently are so barren of substance and their implementation has often been so haphazard as to cause ludicrous problems (such as the feet of characters and mounts no longer indexing to the ground, causing everyone to slide around on a recent PTS). Heck, even the two big content patches a year is going away now on favor of a single expansion zone.

Either the team is suddenly staffed by folks with little experience or the team is too time-crunched to properly test things before pushing to PTS or live, which could be (I'm not saying is) a symptom of not having a large enough team working on it.

update 39 being focused on bug fixes and quality of life changes instead of two new dungeons is good.
a new system like the Endless Archive is different sure, but it's not some tiny thing.

the q3 and q4 updates didn't go away we still got all the content they usually get besides dungeons and a zone dlc, plus some extra stuff.
- houses, two in each update with one being an event house.
- furniture, structure and master writ plans in q3 and hundreds of furnishings in q4.
- a new tribute deck.
- new sets (more than years before with class sets btw).
- new antiquities.
- new pvp sets, which includes new 2 piece sets for cyrodiil.

entirely new things
- group finder
- grandmaster crafting stations
- the endless archive, which will definitely keep getting updated. there should be at least two more years of class sets so every class skill line gets one.


if a game is in maintenance mode it doesn't get new content.

this game studio said this about maintenance mode when their game actually went into it.
https://velagames.helpshift.com/hc/en/3-evercore-heroes/faq/56-what-is-maintenance-mode/
"Maintenance mode is a period in the game during which the experience will no longer receive any new updates in the form of new content, bug fixes, balance changes, etc."

Elder Scrolls Online is absolutely not in maintenance mode.

What year was it when PvP got new content or attention? 2018?

pvp?
it gets new item sets every year so it gets attention.
we get whitestrake's mayhem every year twice. and next year's Guilds and Glory celebration includes imperial city as well.

we got two new classes since 2018, that's relevant to pvp as well as you can't pvp without a class. aren't new skills useful in pvp?

the megaservers got their hardware replaced so it's likely we'll soon get bigger additions to pvp.


sure it's no extra battleground maps or other stuff that i can't think of,
but pvp is not the whole game so how is "What year was it when PvP got new content or attention? 2018?" a counter to ESO not being in maintenance mode?

A couple new item sets isn't content. Perhaps I should have said that pvp is in maintenance mode, or as close to it as it can be without the whole game being forgotten.

Edit: forgot to mention that one of our PVP events was nixed one year in favor of a PVE event. This year we ended up with two PVP events back to back at the same time as campaigns were extended in such a way as to rob people of the rewards they could normally get from two events happening at different times. This, of course, doesn't even account for the loads of mind-numbing PVE events that happen all year that are so uninspired that they literally all feel the same.

GooGa592 wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

My money is on the game being on maintenance mode at this point. The changes being put forward recently are so barren of substance and their implementation has often been so haphazard as to cause ludicrous problems (such as the feet of characters and mounts no longer indexing to the ground, causing everyone to slide around on a recent PTS). Heck, even the two big content patches a year is going away now on favor of a single expansion zone.

Either the team is suddenly staffed by folks with little experience or the team is too time-crunched to properly test things before pushing to PTS or live, which could be (I'm not saying is) a symptom of not having a large enough team working on it.

update 39 being focused on bug fixes and quality of life changes instead of two new dungeons is good.
a new system like the Endless Archive is different sure, but it's not some tiny thing.

the q3 and q4 updates didn't go away we still got all the content they usually get besides dungeons and a zone dlc, plus some extra stuff.
- houses, two in each update with one being an event house.
- furniture, structure and master writ plans in q3 and hundreds of furnishings in q4.
- a new tribute deck.
- new sets (more than years before with class sets btw).
- new antiquities.
- new pvp sets, which includes new 2 piece sets for cyrodiil.

entirely new things
- group finder
- grandmaster crafting stations
- the endless archive, which will definitely keep getting updated. there should be at least two more years of class sets so every class skill line gets one.


if a game is in maintenance mode it doesn't get new content.

this game studio said this about maintenance mode when their game actually went into it.
https://velagames.helpshift.com/hc/en/3-evercore-heroes/faq/56-what-is-maintenance-mode/
"Maintenance mode is a period in the game during which the experience will no longer receive any new updates in the form of new content, bug fixes, balance changes, etc."

Elder Scrolls Online is absolutely not in maintenance mode.

What year was it when PvP got new content or attention? 2018?

pvp?
it gets new item sets every year so it gets attention.
we get whitestrake's mayhem every year twice. and next year's Guilds and Glory celebration includes imperial city as well.

we got two new classes since 2018, that's relevant to pvp as well as you can't pvp without a class. aren't new skills useful in pvp?

the megaservers got their hardware replaced so it's likely we'll soon get bigger additions to pvp.


sure it's no extra battleground maps or other stuff that i can't think of,
but pvp is not the whole game so how is "What year was it when PvP got new content or attention? 2018?" a counter to ESO not being in maintenance mode?

A couple new item sets isn't content. Perhaps I should have said that pvp is in maintenance mode, or as close to it as it can be without the whole game being forgotten.

Edit: forgot to mention that one of our PVP events was nixed one year in favor of a PVE event. This year we ended up with two PVP events back to back at the same time as campaigns were extended in such a way as to rob people of the rewards they could normally get from two events happening at different times. This, of course, doesn't even account for the loads of mind-numbing PVE events that happen all year that are so uninspired that they literally all feel the same.

it definitely is attention being given to pvp.
and if your maintenance mode comment was referring to pvp which also isn't in maintenance mode it's still incorrect.
pvp does still get changes and does get content no matter how small it is to you.

nobody was robbed from event rewards, im confused by that.
there's always seven day campaigns during Mayhem and we can join campaigns with 20 characters, 18 during the may event.

We were told about the campaign changes in april via patch notes, but still most of the complaints about it happened after the release of update 38 instead.
if more feedback had been given during the pts cycle perhaps we would've had something different.

though i love that the campaigns now start when the month starts and ends when it ends.


the events were back to back because of the server hardware maintenance.
which im quite sure improved performance during the pvp events.

Elder Scrolls Online is primarily a pve game so of course most events are pve.

PvP has been in maintenance mode for at least a few years now. No denying it. And apparently you don't have much experience with leaving feedback for the PTS or you'd know how frustratingly unresponsive ZOS is to comments made during the PTS cycles.

This is absolutely correct

I definitely don’t think it’s on life support but there are a number of reasons for sure that we’re seeing a lower player base nowadays:

- A hell of a lot of people are inside the endless archive
- Plenty in the event zone currently as we are mid way through event season
- There are some incredibly fun games out currently - WoW Classic Hardcore, 10.2 for WoW (their update 40 essentially), BG3, Cyberpunk, and a number of others!

Another, slightly more negative reason, is that the reward structure in ESO is notoriously bad. While the game itself is pretty incredible, a whole half of end game (cosmetic collection) is negligible or not even present due to over-monetization. Update 40 and Necrom have surely improved on this by offering in game earnable mounts, but there’s only so many reasons to run content - people many times in all MMOs continue running content for achievements and cosmetics, but all of the cosmetics are just in the store.

Now there will be plenty of people that say “you don’t have to buy it” and you’re absolutely right, but there’s no prestige or anything in the cosmetics or mounts outside of about 7-8 mounts (dwarven ebon wolf mount, new berylglow nix ox steed, EA horse and then the 4-5 mounts no one outside of the top 0.0001% will get). The other HUNDREDS of mounts are in the store. Even the event mounts technically aren’t prestigious or interesting to get because they decided to sell event tickets in the crown store. Why grind an event when I can just log in at the end of the day of the last day of the event and get the tickets? Very unfortunate, but I myself who has thousands and thousands of hours in the game have started feeling burnt out due to these exact reasons.

I LOVE ESO - I really really hope they scale back on the crown store and invest more into the players and the fun we have IN GAME. Update 40 was HUGE and I absolutely LOVE the direction they’re going, but we’ll see with next year! Big/high hopes for sure