Finishing remaining unfinished story chapters on the second character and map completion. Then switch to gw2 or osrs

Ttree wrote: »

Were are you ?? as our numbers decline what are you doing in game to keep logging on ??

I log in to sit in a 80 man cyrodil que, knowing full and well that the campaign faction is locked at around 64 players. Yet for some reason nobody plays the secondary campaign even though we could fill it and probably dilute the ball group lag to tolerable levels.

Daily writs, master writs, some daily quests for styles pages that I can read or sell, housing, completing new provinces with my secondary characters and, lately, helping a one-month old player progress in the game.

Also I have a guild, when someone is in need for help, I respond. There's always something more to do.

Specializing characters for role play (creating a master thief). I finally finished Cadwell's Gold on my main so now it's time to have fun with some of my alts!

Housing
Crafting/trade
Experimenting with builds, pushing my limits
Always, trying to solo the "unsoloable"
When I'm bored I'll pvp or change games.

I've not been playing much recently for reasons that have nothing to do with ESO and everything to do with August being a very busy month for me. I don't think I've had a weekend at home this month, so video games get pushed back to odd hours I can spare in the evening.

But when I get time to play I'll be doing the same things as usual, mainly overland questing and exploration with random bits of other parts of the game.

I have a character who was just about to start exploring the Gold Coast and hasn't gotten beyond the Anvil docks.

join random queues to go ape on the party if they dont do enough damage or are not using meta or it looks like my arcanist will have to do more than just beam (joke)

Writs/endeavors, lots of ToT + currently leveling a new zoo sorc. Also, I do housing when I have a project in mind. Does not happen often, but when it does it takes most of my time.

Edit: also furnishing plan farming.

What am I doing in the game? Absolutely nothing. I don’t even log in anymore. But I still come to the ESO forums every day, just to watch the game drowning, since there’s no real alternative.
On the other hand, I’m happy with PoE, because GGG is doing an amazing job of keeping players engaged instead of driving them away.

Here in the northern hemisphere it we have one full month of Summer left with another month at least of "Indian Summer: after that (at least here in North America that's what we call it.)

So, it's likely that folks are out getting some Sun, doing some boating, camping, attending outdoor gatherings with friends and families while it's fun to do. This would be my guess as to where players might be. Come the end of October and beginning of November when being indoors is smarter than being outdoors (at least in the northern hemisphere) I think folks might be online more.

Be patient.

I haven't noticed any big decline in population on PCNA. Any game will lose some population the older it gets but I still see a lot of players around.

What I do is daily writs, master writs, surveys and endeavors on 7 characters. I just completed the Solstice map on all of my characters and started working on decorating the inn room. I'll start the house after that is finished. And I still have several zones to complete on 3 of my characters, so I am keeping very busy in game.

I play on two servers each day-- usually for multiple hours on each server, although on some days it's probably closer to an hour or so on each server, especially if there are any other games I'm wanting to play that day.

I have a few "must do" activities each day-- daily crafting writs on my two mains, plus on one of my PCEU alts; three matches against the Expert NPCs in Tales of Tribute on my two mains; daily endeavors, plus weekly endeavors and golden pursuits if there are any of those things to do; checking my available antiquities to see if any are "in the red" and need to be done before the leads expire; then running around doing whatever strikes my fancy.

Lately I've been doing at least one Imperial City district daily each day for the Siege of Cyrodiil Merit, although in days past I would often do all six district dailies to burn up my daily enlightenment. After doing a district daily, I'll usually run around in the Imperial City sewers to farm a few Tel Var Stones. And I've been going to Cyrodiil each day to do some resource capture missions and maybe help capture or defend keeps if anything like that is going on.

I've also been getting back into questing a bit-- working on the Eastmarch zone quests on one of my alts, wrapping up some unfinished quests in Wrothgar on my PCEU main, and I just finished up the High Isle quests on my PCNA main. I didn't find the main High Isle questline to be as engaging as I'd hoped, not so much because of the story itself but rather because I found the Investigator Vale lady to be kind of annoying. I'm looking forward to doing the Galen storyline next.

Player numbers stay about the same, and more gets added to the map every chapter/season/whatever. So there are less people in any specific place, i.e. wherever you are. It looks like less players, but they are just more spread out.

And more of them are in their own homes (more of those now, too) busy decorating.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Asikoo wrote: »

Numbers decline, as said in many other threads. Need Crossplay

SAID and ARE are not the same thing. ZOS doesn't release players stats, but what we do KNOW is that according to Steam Stats the number of players now is the same as they were in 2019. There was a spike in 2020 - 2022 (you know when people couldn't leave the house).

So that's my imperical evidence. Where's yours?

We all know that hard data can’t really be provided since it’s not public, but what’s the point anyway? ZOS could come out right now and say that ESO is doing better than ever and there’s a record number of people playing.

If players can’t get queues, find others to play with, or have their items sell, what does it matter? If the people actually interested in multiplayer activities can’t find anything, they’ll quit too. Seeing hard data won’t change their decision.

Also seeing raw player numbers doesn’t tell us anything about those players. Some people are here because they are Elder Scrolls players looking for a solo experience, others are MMO players looking for a multiplayer experience.

Even a technically populated game can feel extremely dead if most of the players left are exclusively solo players.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Asikoo wrote: »

Numbers decline, as said in many other threads. Need Crossplay

SAID and ARE are not the same thing. ZOS doesn't release players stats, but what we do KNOW is that according to Steam Stats the number of players now is the same as they were in 2019. There was a spike in 2020 - 2022 (you know when people couldn't leave the house).

So that's my imperical evidence. Where's yours?

July 2019 had 4k more average daily players and 6k more peak users on the Steam charts than July 2025. When you are talking an average player drop from 14.5k to 10.2k, that is a significant drop.