Any crossplay plans coming with the new servers changes?

ESO_player123 · May 26

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

@DenverRalphy makes a very pertinent point - trading & the economy on the consoles will take a massive hit with crossplay.

I would also be concerned about parity between pc & console users in dps, so for entrance into trial groups etc.

You may say that it would be fine, but pc have access to add-ins that consoles will never have.

Perhaps if crossplay was to happen, the only add-ons that should be allowed would be those available to all players? That would be fair, no?

If the cost of crossplay with PC if restricting the use of some addons, I'd say leave PC out of it. I do not want to play without addons I'm currently using.

Nemesis7884 · May 27

Since consoles now also have addons? Are there things they cant have / implement on consoles? Im playing with gamepad on pc and never had issues with the addons im using (but i also use about 10 essential ones).

fizzybeef · May 30

dont let this be forgotten

preevious · May 30

Crossplay will never happen.
Console players would be at a disadvantage because of add-ons, gaming rigs, paddles and the like. It would devolve in a whine fest with a level of toxicity reaching new heigths.
In PVP, it's self evident.
In PVE, I can foresee guilds refusing to recruit console players because they believe they will underperform.

Also, what of the trade guilds? Who gets to keep it's vendor? The XBOX guild? The playstation guild? The PC guild? What a mess that would be.

Twohothardware · May 30

preevious wrote: »

Crossplay will never happen.
Console players would be at a disadvantage because of add-ons, gaming rigs, paddles and the like. It would devolve in a whine fest with a level of toxicity reaching new heigths.
In PVP, it's self evident.
In PVE, I can foresee guilds refusing to recruit console players because they believe they will underperform.

Also, what of the trade guilds? Who gets to keep it's vendor? The XBOX guild? The playstation guild? The PC guild? What a mess that would be.

Console has access to addons starting in June and the only real advantage being on PC in PvP is in higher frame rate. A lot of players on PC in fact choose to use controllers, especially ones that started out on console.

Trader guilds would be no different than if we rewinded the game back to it's early days when the population was much higher. Combining all three platforms now with Crossplay probably wouldn't even reach previous high player counts on just PC.

Bokila · August 28

So quick update on my situation after i bought an xbox just to access my account and stuff i paid real money for.
PVP is completely dead. Max 10 players running around on each alliance and tops at around max 50 players per alliance in peak times.
This game definitely needs crossplay and cross save.
And about the lack of addons that many people specified on this thread, well, addons are now on xbox too.
Someone said that it would not be fair because of the performance difference between console and pc but if that would be a concern for zos they would not allow xbox one (which runs at 30fps) to play with xbox series players (60fps). You might argue that pc players can achieve over 120fps easly but the jump from 30 to 60 is more noticeable than 60 to 120.

MISTFORMBZZZ · August 28

Bokila wrote: »

So quick update on my situation after i bought an xbox just to access my account and stuff i paid real money for.
PVP is completely dead. Max 10 players running around on each alliance and tops at around max 50 players per alliance in peak times.
This game definitely needs crossplay and cross save.
And about the lack of addons that many people specified on this thread, well, addons are now on xbox too.
Someone said that it would not be fair because of the performance difference between console and pc but if that would be a concern for zos they would not allow xbox one (which runs at 30fps) to play with xbox series players (60fps). You might argue that pc players can achieve over 120fps easly but the jump from 30 to 60 is more noticeable than 60 to 120.

I feel you, on PS EU its quite the same, thought not as bad like we have 2bars each in prime time, sometimes 3 bars.

After vengeance we were down to 1 bar each for a bit but then mayhem brought a bit of life into it again.

Anyway, this is from yesterday

So there might be hope and i wish for us that they dont need to much time for it 👍

Elowen_Starveil · August 28

Twohothardware wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Crossplay will never happen.
Console players would be at a disadvantage because of add-ons, gaming rigs, paddles and the like. It would devolve in a whine fest with a level of toxicity reaching new heigths.
In PVP, it's self evident.
In PVE, I can foresee guilds refusing to recruit console players because they believe they will underperform.

Also, what of the trade guilds? Who gets to keep it's vendor? The XBOX guild? The playstation guild? The PC guild? What a mess that would be.

Console has access to addons starting in June and the only real advantage being on PC in PvP is in higher frame rate. A lot of players on PC in fact choose to use controllers, especially ones that started out on console.

Trader guilds would be no different than if we rewinded the game back to it's early days when the population was much higher. Combining all three platforms now with Crossplay probably wouldn't even reach previous high player counts on just PC.

I keep seeing calls for crossplay being rooted in the fact that "PVP is dead," and that it's needed to have enough people to make PVP interesting on consoles again. But you people need to realize that crossplay isn't going to fix this. PVP is dead because ZOS can't quit their monetization-driven addiction of adding sets to the game.

The problem with performance in PVP is that the "tree" of things that all have to be checked -- ON THE SERVER SIDE -- EVERY SECOND -- FOR EVERY PERSON IN THE FIGHT -- just keeps growing and growing. Every time I point out how ZOS needs to get rid of a whole bunch of sets to reduce this complexity, I get mocked for it. Every time I try to give an example of some niche set that surely no one uses, someone comes out of the woodwork to complain that they have some stupid solo RP character that is built entirely around the idea of that set, and thus it would be egregiously unfair and immoral to remove the set from the game. Regardless, this proliferation is what's killing PVP performance.

Maybe their new simplified PVP test will find a way to streamline what's usable in PVP -- and not run the remaining PVP'ers off -- and "prune" enough of the logic tree to make things performant again. But until they do this, just sticking what's left of you PVP'ers into two (US/EU) servers is going to... wait for it... exacerbate the performance problems all over again, and drive off another portion of you guys who won't put up with it... which will result in calls to combine the US and EU servers, which can't be done because of intercontinental lag.

To be clear, I want crossplay, but it's not going to "fix" PVP.

Elsonso · August 30

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

I keep seeing calls for crossplay being rooted in the fact that "PVP is dead," and that it's needed to have enough people to make PVP interesting on consoles again. But you people need to realize that crossplay isn't going to fix this. PVP is dead because ZOS can't quit their monetization-driven addiction of adding sets to the game.

The problem with performance in PVP is that the "tree" of things that all have to be checked -- ON THE SERVER SIDE -- EVERY SECOND -- FOR EVERY PERSON IN THE FIGHT -- just keeps growing and growing. Every time I point out how ZOS needs to get rid of a whole bunch of sets to reduce this complexity, I get mocked for it. Every time I try to give an example of some niche set that surely no one uses, someone comes out of the woodwork to complain that they have some stupid solo RP character that is built entirely around the idea of that set, and thus it would be egregiously unfair and immoral to remove the set from the game. Regardless, this proliferation is what's killing PVP performance.

Maybe their new simplified PVP test will find a way to streamline what's usable in PVP -- and not run the remaining PVP'ers off -- and "prune" enough of the logic tree to make things performant again. But until they do this, just sticking what's left of you PVP'ers into two (US/EU) servers is going to... wait for it... exacerbate the performance problems all over again, and drive off another portion of you guys who won't put up with it... which will result in calls to combine the US and EU servers, which can't be done because of intercontinental lag.

To be clear, I want crossplay, but it's not going to "fix" PVP.

It isn't going to fix PVP, no. I don't think PVP has been a main feature of ESO for most of the last 10 years. It has been sidelined with balance and performance problems, and is now suffering through paring back game play to try and boost performance. All crossplay will do is allow the remaining PVP players to get together in one place.

Crossplay will primarily be a PVE thing. Dungeons and Trials. Guilds. Housing. Social. Done properly, it could really benefit the PVE players.

I will be somewhat surprised if they even offer cross play in Cyrodiil and Imperial City. Battlegrounds, maybe. Dueling, sure.

amiiegee · August 30

Elsonso wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

I keep seeing calls for crossplay being rooted in the fact that "PVP is dead," and that it's needed to have enough people to make PVP interesting on consoles again. But you people need to realize that crossplay isn't going to fix this. PVP is dead because ZOS can't quit their monetization-driven addiction of adding sets to the game.

The problem with performance in PVP is that the "tree" of things that all have to be checked -- ON THE SERVER SIDE -- EVERY SECOND -- FOR EVERY PERSON IN THE FIGHT -- just keeps growing and growing. Every time I point out how ZOS needs to get rid of a whole bunch of sets to reduce this complexity, I get mocked for it. Every time I try to give an example of some niche set that surely no one uses, someone comes out of the woodwork to complain that they have some stupid solo RP character that is built entirely around the idea of that set, and thus it would be egregiously unfair and immoral to remove the set from the game. Regardless, this proliferation is what's killing PVP performance.

Maybe their new simplified PVP test will find a way to streamline what's usable in PVP -- and not run the remaining PVP'ers off -- and "prune" enough of the logic tree to make things performant again. But until they do this, just sticking what's left of you PVP'ers into two (US/EU) servers is going to... wait for it... exacerbate the performance problems all over again, and drive off another portion of you guys who won't put up with it... which will result in calls to combine the US and EU servers, which can't be done because of intercontinental lag.

To be clear, I want crossplay, but it's not going to "fix" PVP.

It isn't going to fix PVP, no. I don't think PVP has been a main feature of ESO for most of the last 10 years. It has been sidelined with balance and performance problems, and is now suffering through paring back game play to try and boost performance. All crossplay will do is allow the remaining PVP players to get together in one place.

Crossplay will primarily be a PVE thing. Dungeons and Trials. Guilds. Housing. Social. Done properly, it could really benefit the PVE players.

I will be somewhat surprised if they even offer cross play in Cyrodiil and Imperial City. Battlegrounds, maybe. Dueling, sure.

Lmao why would they leave out cyrodiil for crossplay 😂 Its not gonna happen. It will be for everything

Elsonso · August 30

amiiegee wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

I keep seeing calls for crossplay being rooted in the fact that "PVP is dead," and that it's needed to have enough people to make PVP interesting on consoles again. But you people need to realize that crossplay isn't going to fix this. PVP is dead because ZOS can't quit their monetization-driven addiction of adding sets to the game.

The problem with performance in PVP is that the "tree" of things that all have to be checked -- ON THE SERVER SIDE -- EVERY SECOND -- FOR EVERY PERSON IN THE FIGHT -- just keeps growing and growing. Every time I point out how ZOS needs to get rid of a whole bunch of sets to reduce this complexity, I get mocked for it. Every time I try to give an example of some niche set that surely no one uses, someone comes out of the woodwork to complain that they have some stupid solo RP character that is built entirely around the idea of that set, and thus it would be egregiously unfair and immoral to remove the set from the game. Regardless, this proliferation is what's killing PVP performance.

Maybe their new simplified PVP test will find a way to streamline what's usable in PVP -- and not run the remaining PVP'ers off -- and "prune" enough of the logic tree to make things performant again. But until they do this, just sticking what's left of you PVP'ers into two (US/EU) servers is going to... wait for it... exacerbate the performance problems all over again, and drive off another portion of you guys who won't put up with it... which will result in calls to combine the US and EU servers, which can't be done because of intercontinental lag.

To be clear, I want crossplay, but it's not going to "fix" PVP.

It isn't going to fix PVP, no. I don't think PVP has been a main feature of ESO for most of the last 10 years. It has been sidelined with balance and performance problems, and is now suffering through paring back game play to try and boost performance. All crossplay will do is allow the remaining PVP players to get together in one place.

Crossplay will primarily be a PVE thing. Dungeons and Trials. Guilds. Housing. Social. Done properly, it could really benefit the PVE players.

I will be somewhat surprised if they even offer cross play in Cyrodiil and Imperial City. Battlegrounds, maybe. Dueling, sure.

Lmao why would they leave out cyrodiil for crossplay 😂 Its not gonna happen. It will be for everything

Latency. Performance. If they have to strip the game down to the skeleton, in a manner of speaking, to get calculations down to the point where Cyrodiil works, what makes anyone think that adding the overhead of crossplay will be good? If they do it, my bet is that people complain about it more than cheer about it. If there is a Home Team then they will have the advantage, if it isn't a slide show that no one can play.

That is why I think this.

Kappachi · September 17

preevious wrote: »

Crossplay will never happen.
Console players would be at a disadvantage because of add-ons, gaming rigs, paddles and the like. It would devolve in a whine fest with a level of toxicity reaching new heigths.
In PVP, it's self evident.
In PVE, I can foresee guilds refusing to recruit console players because they believe they will underperform.

Also, what of the trade guilds? Who gets to keep it's vendor? The XBOX guild? The playstation guild? The PC guild? What a mess that would be.

All of this and more is problems in Final Fantasy XIV, yet it has no problem allowing cross-play. Yes addons aren't officially supported but it's very widely known that many PC players use addons nonetheless.

StihlReign · September 17

You guys have talked about Cross Play, but from the last interviews it sounded more like you are still in the exploring phase of it, rather than the implementation phase of it.

u/ZOS_JBurbb u/ZOS_Nickgiacomini u/ZOS__Susan

Where are we in this journy? Is it really only exploration phase and looking if it is possible or is there a roadmap?
Is the idea to have Cross Play over ALL Platforms? Or just spand across both Console Platforms?
Would the idea be to have Crossplay Around NA + NA Servers and EU + EU Servers, or do you have some kind of different model in mind?

ZOS__Susan
8d ago
Zenimax
We are actively in development on crossplay at this point. There's more levels of detail, but roughly, the plan is that it will be regional (EU/EU and NA/NA) with play spanning all platforms. It's going to take time though - the game wasn't fundamentally architected with this in mind, and there is a lot of design work going into making sure it remains balanced for all when we bring everyone together.

9/9/2025 Source

StihlReign · September 17

Microsoft maintains formal policy documents that enable and govern cross-network play.

The XR-007: Cross-Network Play, Data Usage, and Companion App Interoperation is a public-facing policy that allows titles on Xbox to enable cross-network play with non-Xbox networks. The policy specifies requirements including Xbox cross-network multiplayer implementation guidance.

XR-007: Cross-Network Play, Data Usage, and Companion App Interactions
09/08/2025
Version 2.0, 9/1/2025
Source - Microsoft Game Development Kit

The policy also provides the following example which might be interesting to ESOs player base:

Implementation Example:

Xbox Network Cross-Network Multiplayer Implementation Example: MMO

SkaiFaith · September 24

What I would like to know is if all the purchases I made on console will be accessible via PC right away.

I have 2 consoles in my home. Let's say I replace them with 2 PCs with RTX5090s... I could throw those GPUs in the bin if when I start ESO on PC I lose all the purchases I've done over the years on console.

I'd like to know this as soon as possible, because I'd have to decide if to wait to upgrade my consoles to the upcoming next-gen or if to invest in building couple PCs now...

EDIT: also, would I still need to play a Windows version of the game or could I play from a different launcher and retain my purchases?

Radiate77 · September 24

SkaiFaith wrote: »

What I would like to know is if all the purchases I made on console will be accessible via PC right away.

I have 2 consoles in my home. Let's say I replace them with 2 PCs with RTX5090s... I could throw those GPUs in the bin if when I start ESO on PC I lose all the purchases I've done over the years on console.

I'd like to know this as soon as possible, because I'd have to decide if to wait to upgrade my consoles to the upcoming next-gen or if to invest in building couple PCs now...

EDIT: also, would I still need to play a Windows version of the game or could I play from a different launcher and retain my purchases?

With most purchases acting essentially like a ticket to whatever you’re buying, instead of a download, you should have everything… assuming there is Cross Save with Crossplay, which is no guarantee.

Also; this necro aged like fine wine. I love all the people who said, “Crossplay will never happen” now knowing that it’s in development.

tomofhyrule · September 24

SkaiFaith wrote: »

What I would like to know is if all the purchases I made on console will be accessible via PC right away.

I have 2 consoles in my home. Let's say I replace them with 2 PCs with RTX5090s... I could throw those GPUs in the bin if when I start ESO on PC I lose all the purchases I've done over the years on console.

I'd like to know this as soon as possible, because I'd have to decide if to wait to upgrade my consoles to the upcoming next-gen or if to invest in building couple PCs now...

EDIT: also, would I still need to play a Windows version of the game or could I play from a different launcher and retain my purchases?

The only confirmation of anything we have is that they’re planning on keeping regions, so all NA servers together and all EU together.

As for cross save, that’s not as certain. It does depend on if they’re rebuilding everything as a cross save server or a server which keeps everyone separate on their original platforms (essentially the debate of “what happens to duplicate account names/can you just put an icon on there”). Logistically, I am not expecting merging accounts if someone has e.g. a PC and a PS account; those are likely to stay separate accounts.

If you’re considering swapping to PC when the PS6 drops though, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just keep your PS5 off in the corner until you want to play again. Remember, ESO still supports PS4 despite the last-gen consoles being out of production for like 4 years at this point and the fact that next-gen is already being expected in two years or so. There’s no way ESO would drop support for PS5 if they haven’t dropped PS4 yet.

SkaiFaith · September 24

Radiate77 wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

What I would like to know is if all the purchases I made on console will be accessible via PC right away.

I have 2 consoles in my home. Let's say I replace them with 2 PCs with RTX5090s... I could throw those GPUs in the bin if when I start ESO on PC I lose all the purchases I've done over the years on console.

I'd like to know this as soon as possible, because I'd have to decide if to wait to upgrade my consoles to the upcoming next-gen or if to invest in building couple PCs now...

EDIT: also, would I still need to play a Windows version of the game or could I play from a different launcher and retain my purchases?

With most purchases acting essentially like a ticket to whatever you’re buying, instead of a download, you should have everything… assuming there is Cross Save with Crossplay, which is no guarantee.

Also; this necro aged like fine wine. I love all the people who said, “Crossplay will never happen” now knowing that it’s in development.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

What I would like to know is if all the purchases I made on console will be accessible via PC right away.

I have 2 consoles in my home. Let's say I replace them with 2 PCs with RTX5090s... I could throw those GPUs in the bin if when I start ESO on PC I lose all the purchases I've done over the years on console.

I'd like to know this as soon as possible, because I'd have to decide if to wait to upgrade my consoles to the upcoming next-gen or if to invest in building couple PCs now...

EDIT: also, would I still need to play a Windows version of the game or could I play from a different launcher and retain my purchases?

The only confirmation of anything we have is that they’re planning on keeping regions, so all NA servers together and all EU together.

As for cross save, that’s not as certain. It does depend on if they’re rebuilding everything as a cross save server or a server which keeps everyone separate on their original platforms (essentially the debate of “what happens to duplicate account names/can you just put an icon on there”). Logistically, I am not expecting merging accounts if someone has e.g. a PC and a PS account; those are likely to stay separate accounts.

If you’re considering swapping to PC when the PS6 drops though, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just keep your PS5 off in the corner until you want to play again. Remember, ESO still supports PS4 despite the last-gen consoles being out of production for like 4 years at this point and the fact that next-gen is already being expected in two years or so. There’s no way ESO would drop support for PS5 if they haven’t dropped PS4 yet.

Yeah, at this point it's still uncertain how they will handle it.
The thing is everything is sooo expensive these days, consoles are kinda dying (Xbox) and just the idea that after investing tons of money on a gaming PC I could discover I'd have to reinvest 8 years of crowns etc... feels like I'll go insane.
Thanks for the replies btw