BlueRaven wrote: »

Necrom felt like a “Dear John” letter to casual players, and it decimated the ranks of many of the guilds I am/was in.

Of course this is just a small sample, but in general to me it just feels like there is a lot less people playing in general now.

How did Necrom impact players negatively? except the usual pvp balance issue with new class.

Well... the "world event", a.k.a. Bastion Nymic, being instanced group content and not to mention the Seekers that roamed around the overland, along with several bosses that were rather tough. Add to that the requirement to do a public dungeon just to recruit the companions.

That's what I gathered from the forums at least (I don't have Necrom and have no interest in it beyond Naryu's quest).

BlueRaven wrote: »

-They turned world events into a group only semi-dungeon.

This was my biggest complain with Necrom. I still don't enjoy a thing about the World Bosses there.

I'd like to add a couple more to your list.

- The Companion quests were way too long and involved Public Dungeons, both of which I found difficult, especially trying to find my way around in Gorne.

- The main story quests were frustrating because of trying to find my way around in all these ramps and platforms, and whatever you do don't fall in one of these.

I'm on the opposite end of the scale and liked Necrom. World Bosses that need a group, Nymic is a nice mini dungeon with a peculiar quest flow. Overland was different which at this age of a game is a good thing.

Archive I sort of appreciate, but no saves means it's a one arc on a Saturday only deal. I also understand the companion quest complaints, but only use one character so it never effected me.

As for OP question, the game still has a lot of players just in newer zones. We're also spread out more due to so much content. Reading steam charts (yes, yes, I know, not reliable) shows ESO is holding its average player count. Cyrodiil has also been on the rise again recently. PC EU Greyhost seems to back to 30+ queues weekdays, and even Ravenwatch has had queues again this week. An events just finished as well so imagine a lot of folks have that odd post-event malaise where they don't know what to do next.

Everyone migrates to the newest zone typically, which would be Telvanni Peninsula. The problem with player activity in older zones - in my opinion - is a lack of evergreen rewards which will always remain useful or relevant to new and old players alike. So far most reward systems have consisted of redundant armor sets and style motifs, which most players typically complete their collections for and quickly forget about. Dragons at least have valuable PvP alchemy ingredients which will always remain relevant to the gameplay loop (a good example of an evergreen reward) but you may just be playing at non-peak times of the day/week if you don't see anyone around for those.

Regarding the newest zones, I did several runs of the Bastion Nymics during the Necrom event, but quickly lost interest because there's simply nothing in there that interests me enough to deal with unoptimized pugs. I did have a few good runs where everyone was on top of their game and everything went swimmingly, but it seems rather pointless if you're not in it for the styles, furnishings, or subpar overland sets; so I would have to assume many of the 'abandoned' zones is simply due to the lack of useful rewards. It's kind of a bummer too because the Necrom content itself looks extremely interesting, but doesn't really have the rewards to keep you there.

I’ve been seriously considering returning to another MMO and dropping ESO. I would play both, but I literally can’t afford both subscriptions, and I refuse to play ESO without a craftbag.

I’m really torn about it. The other MMO offers so many more things to do every day. With rewarding systems. Things to chase/work towards/accomplish. It has sooo many more things that give players that dopamine boost, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s been around so long. Too bad the game is absolutely hideous, imo.

I don’t want to leave ESO and all the things I love about it… but it’s not been entertaining me for 6+ months. For so long, I’ve logged in to do the bare minimum and then log out immediately. Sigh.

moo_2021 wrote: »

Just noticed there aren't dozens of players beating poor dragon or the flying goat in summerset anymore, and obviously I can't do it myself.. What are the popular zones these days?

Right now? I would say that Infinite Archive is sucking the life out of some parts of the game.

There is a lack of content that you can do in the world that is entertaining and gives you rewards (not everything is about fighting NPCs).
For example:
It gives the freedom for players to have businesses in the game and do missions to export products in exchange for rewards.

That players can obtain many more skill lines in the world.
The bard skill line for playing instruments around the world (this skill line can be learned in the large cities of Tamriel).

The Flesh Craftsman and Flesh Summoner skill lines, which allow you to construct and summon beings made of flesh (these skill lines can be learned on the plane of Molag Bal).

Be a vampire, have a blood collector in your house, capture people around the world and take them to your collector to have a limited supply of blood so you can pretend to be another one in the cities without raising suspicions (as happened in The Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim).

And many other things that can be added to give life to the game.

I actually saw a surprising number of people running around High Isle.

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

I’ve been seriously considering returning to another MMO and dropping ESO. I would play both, but I literally can’t afford both subscriptions, and I refuse to play ESO without a craftbag.

ESO is playable without a Craft Bag. When I’m off ESO+, I usually dump crafting mats into the bank until they get to the max stack size, then shuffle the stack into chest storage/the inventory of an alt I’m not playing. I sell more things instead of deconning them so I don’t end up with tons of trait stones cluttering up my inventory. I don’t do Crafting Writs as frequently. I’m pickier about what I loot. But it’s doable. It’d be harder if you only have one or two characters (I have seven), but easier if you’re more prompt than I am about completing surveys and digging up treasure maps. 😉 The Anniversary event might be a little rough since that usually drops dozens of distinct style materials, each of which takes up an inventory slot.

Now that said, if ESO isn’t doing anything for you taking a break is perfectly healthy, I’ve done it myself.

I spend most of my time in the older zones. Basically if I can't solo it, I ignore it so older zone group dungeons and WBs are in and DLC equivalents are out. I find those older zones too crowded - especially in cities. I struggle to remember the last time I did a delve for Bolgrul and had the delve's boss to myself.

As far as helping other players, it is sad that zone chat is so full of spam that I choose to turn it off. I'd be happy to help others with WBs and such if zone chat was freer of guild ads, sellers and plain old spam.

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

I actually saw a surprising number of people running around High Isle.

Was going to say this. On PC EU High Isle seems to be a continuous hub of activity. Necrom is still a paid chapter (not included with ESO+) so I wouldn't expect the same population levels at this time of year.

ghastley wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Right now? I would say that Infinite Archive is sucking the life out of some parts of the game.

IA is designed to take the players out of circulation for as long as possible. It’s not quite turning the game back into a single-player one, as you can do IA with a group, but players who take their character in have every reason not to come back out and participate in anything else. I don’t understand why this was added, unless they are trying to reduce populations somewhere for performance reasons.

I think they added it because they saw a demand for small group (2 player) and solo challenging arena content and figured that people would use it. I don't think they were wrong, but the very nature of such a thing pull people out of visible parts of the game.

the main reason a lot of people dont (or at least i dont) is that while DLC WBs provide a good solo combat challenge, there is not a lot of incentive to actually farm them

the gear sets in many of these zones are mediocre, so nothing really worth selling, and with the curated collection book, theres a limit to the number of times you really have to kill the WBs

most DLC WBs usually have significantly more health than non-dlc WBs (sometimes upwards of double) so the only thing that usually incentivizes killing WBs is events

if i see someone needing help with a WB i will usually go help

dragons are more lucrative in the drops such as dragon rheum, but they also drop a significant amount of junk too so the bad tends to outweigh the good in this sense, they also dont drop anything but jewelry so its kind of difficult if your trying to work on gear collections