SilverBride wrote: »

This thread is only one of many over the past 11 years, saying the population is declining, and the world is empty, and guilds are disbanding, and it's impossible to find groups, and ESO is dying, etc..

IF this were true then WHY would players be leaving beyond the normal fluctuations that happen in MMO's? There must be reasons, and addressing those reasons would be the only solution.

Yes, soooo many threads... And all of them true.

The numbers don't lie and don't care about feelings. Like it or not, Steam is a sizable sample of the player base. Basic principles of statistics suggest that the possibility that such a large sample (Steam ESO players) is going to show a trend that is meaningfully different from the population (all ESO players) is extremely, extremely low. Hanging your hat on such a low probability amounts to magical thinking.

ESO has fewer concurrent players than Skyrim. Given the massive amount of resources required to keep ESO going versus a 15-year-old game... ESO is failing. Consider that Microsoft has all the numbers we don't, and they don't exactly seem to be betting on ESO's future. A studio that can't hit the ball out of the park given the massive TES fanbase is going to struggle even more introducing a new IP.

I always hold out hope for this game, because I love TES. But I am also realistic about its problems and the leadership of this studio. They buried their heads in the sand for years and ignored player feedback. Including all those threads you mention.

The new leadership team is mostly just the old leadership, shuffled around, with one notable departure. I expect more of the same, though still hold out some hope of being surprised.

Most live service games don't actually shut down when they die. They just stop updating. They put in minimal resources to keep the service going to fleece the diehards, as long as the revenue stream is greater than those bare minimum costs. Then, they may finally shutdown many years later. It dies completely unnoticed, or if it gets press, most former players just say, huh, I thought that shut down years ago. Who knew. That is the territory ESO is entering if leadership doesn't make some drastic changes.

lostineternity wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't trust the accuracy of Steam because it doesn't take into account anything but those that play through Steam.

I hold a master degree in applied mathematics. My main specialization is mathematical statistics, with a particular focus on social mathematical statistics (everything related to societal trends, opinion polls, elections, etc.).
And It hurts to read your words that statistical inference can't be trusted due the reason "I don't feel like that" despite this is the only data we have.

Even if I were to concede and agree that Steam charts are accurate, it still doesn't tell us if the population is at a lower point due to game issues or just normal fluctuations. That is an important bit of information to know what, if anything, needs to be done.

You are right about the seasonal nature of the fluctuations, but what really matters is the trend of the peaks. As we can see from Steam data, peak values are becoming lower and lower each season.

This is what’s disturbing: new content brings fewer players back to the game (you can compare the months when content was released each year), and the player outflow after several months becomes more significant.

This is not a sign of a healthy population.

Yeah. The peak numbers consistently going down shows not only a lack of people regularly playing, but more and more are quitting altogether. If they were interested in the game still, they'd at least login and try out the new shiny thing.

We should compare similar time periods so let's look at the trend with June. I'll omit 2020-2022 because of Covid bubble slowly deflating as that was industry wide special circumstances.

June 2017
16, 788
June 2018
28, 296
June 2019
29, 029
June 2023
31, 129
June 2024
Peak 27, 405
June 2025
Peak 26, 467

People say oh they've been making these threads for years and that's true. But the game actually almost die once and it had to have a soft relaunch with One Tamriel. It was easy to refute after that because the population was growing back in the day. I remember pointing that out to folks back then. But now it is different because the trend is different on Steam Charts. Unlike before, this time we really are losing players.

Anecdotal, but I feel it in my sales. In the number of people I see around when there isn't an event. I see it on my guild list with once active guilds falling largely silent.

These things can be cyclical. It could just be a slump that ESO digs itself out of. Clearly more people are interested than actively playing. Let's hope that ESO turns it around.

But it's going to require them to be able to fix stuff and release new stuff at the same time. To listen to what the community wants and to understand the playerbase. 2026 has to be better than 2025 was.

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

[snip]

[snip]

Aside from the news already being reported elsewhere for many of us, a voice actor's death isn't something that will generate all that much engagement or discussion outside of "that is sad, I liked the acting" and something to that effect. Which, there will be only so much ongoing interest in such a thread. It's also just a sad topic, which some people avoid wanting to spend a lot of time on because ... well, it's sad. It's also the case that some number of players possibly simply have not encountered the character in-game, since the character only appears in specific story quests that a lot of people likely haven't done - whereas everyone here has played the game in general.

Topics like this get more engagement because there is more to actually discuss with one another and there is broader room for engagement in general.
[edited to remove quote]

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

IMO, the marketing is very lackluster. The overall market for what they target is saturated with RPGs that lend to deeper stories and scratch the itch better for solo RPG folk.

Then, you have ESO dropping trailers/cinematics of random new chapter/dlc characters know one knows. They never show gameplay or real combat.

I personally think they need to do something different with marketing, the name Elder Scrolls got them to a certain point but newer generations don’t recognize it and it’s not bringing enough people in with the name alone. I’d really like to see them get more involved with their community, both PvP and PvE. It would be a nice change of pace for the next focused season or chapter or whatever, to see more dev interaction with streams/raids/Cyro nights/etc. Post those clips into a montage showing people having fun while actually playing the game, market that. I mean really, the marketing has to change and when you look into dev gameplay ESO it’s not a positive thing, build the brand around the players, alongside the devs.

The catch, they’d have to work on balancing the game to capture the community having “fun”./spoiler]

I got vertigo the other day recalling that Skyrim came out... 14 years ago.

Nobody younger than their early 20s likely has any connection whatsoever to the TES franchise unless they are somehow individually interested in now-retro gaming or they have some cool family member who introduced them to it randomly.

Some day there will probably be tomes written about the actual reasons that Bethesda decided to go... two decades... of ignoring its core game franchise and insanely lucrative cash cow but that is... a choice... that they seem to have made. Unfortunately, in the absence of a core game release, the people who might try ESO because "it's an Elder Scrolls Game" is basically tapped-out because there are not new members of the fandom being minted in any appreciable numbers.

Which means that you have to sell the game on what the game actually does. You have to sell new players on the gameplay itself not vague nostalgia for the universe.

wouldnt surprise me if bethesda secretly licensed keen games insane voxel engine for es6 and they were waiting for that technology to advance for a fully destructible multiplayer environment. Otherwise it doesnt make any sense as you say.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't trust the accuracy of Steam because it doesn't take into account anything but those that play through Steam.

I hold a master degree in applied mathematics. My main specialization is mathematical statistics, with a particular focus on social mathematical statistics (everything related to societal trends, opinion polls, elections, etc.).
And It hurts to read your words that statistical inference can't be trusted due the reason "I don't feel like that" despite this is the only data we have.

Even if I were to concede and agree that Steam charts are accurate, it still doesn't tell us if the population is at a lower point due to game issues or just normal fluctuations. That is an important bit of information to know what, if anything, needs to be done.

You are right about the seasonal nature of the fluctuations, but what really matters is the trend of the peaks. As we can see from Steam data, peak values are becoming lower and lower each season.

This is what’s disturbing: new content brings fewer players back to the game (you can compare the months when content was released each year), and the player outflow after several months becomes more significant.

This is not a sign of a healthy population.

We should compare similar time periods so let's look at the trend with June. I'll omit 2020-2022 because of Covid bubble slowly deflating as that was industry wide special circumstances.

June 2017
16, 788
June 2018
28, 296
June 2019
29, 029
June 2023
31, 129
June 2024
Peak 27, 405
June 2025
Peak 26, 467

People say oh they've been making these threads for years and that's true. But the game actually almost die once and it had to have a soft relaunch with One Tamriel. It was easy to refute after that because the population was growing back in the day. I remember pointing that out to folks back then. But now it is different because the trend is different on Steam Charts. Unlike before, this time we really are losing players.

Agreed, we should be looking at year-on-year changes of each month, although I’d pick average instead of peak numbers. That way, one-off effects like events have less of an impact. If we do this with the Steam numbers, we get the chart below. Each bar shows how average player numbers changed compared to the same month the year before.



I would note a few things:

• Obviously, ESO is far from dead. Steam shows average concurrent players, so even with its current numbers, that‘s easily a few 100k active players just on Steam.
• However, numbers have been steadily decreasing. Seeing five years of almost constant decline makes me seriously worried for this game in the mid to long term. Yes, the game was in a similar state a few years ago and kept investing, but back then the numbers were trending up not down.
• Some of the decline was unavoidable, of course - COVID peaks were not sustainable in the long run. But in 2024, ESO started dipping below pre-COVID numbers despite all the attention around the 10-year anniversary. This year, every single month was lower than in 2019.
• Even the one quarter of increasing players in 2023 was likely a fluke. Elden Ring released in February 2022, which means player counts in those months were abnormally low, making it a lot easier for 2023 numbers to bounce back.

Ph1p wrote: »

Agreed, we should be looking at year-on-year changes of each month, although I’d pick average instead of peak numbers.

I agree when talking about understanding who's playing. But I think peak is better at showing who's interested in playing but may not be as regularly active.

Even the one quarter of increasing players in 2023 was likely a fluke. Elden Ring released in February 2022, which means player counts in those months were abnormally low, making it a lot easier for 2023 numbers to bounce back.

Nah. That's because of the new class. A good example of how interesting new content that people actually want can still get people in. Unfortunately they weren't able to sustain that because that same year they axed half the year's new content and there were a number of unpopular changes made since.

I agree with you on much of the rest of your post. Nothing much else to add. Very Interesting post.

Cross play will not solve the issues Im sorry, It will just help in the short term, while I would like to see it also I fear that the most important issue is ESO’s Endgame Problem and everyon is Paying the Price

One of the biggest issues facing ESO right now is the continued lack of meaningful action on long-standing systemic problems that affect both PvP and end-game PvE. Power creep—especially visible in PvP ball groups—has grown unchecked, driven by ability designs that allow excessive stacking of healing, buffs, purges, and movement speed. These same designs also create severe server latency and performance issues, particularly in Cyrodiil, but the impact is felt across the entire game. The unwillingness to make real adjustments has contributed to ESO’s reputation for poor performance in large-scale and end-game content.

At this point, ESO is a 10-year-old MMO, yet the barrier to entry for competitive PvP and end-game PvE is extremely high. While experienced players can level to 50 in a few days, new players still take a week or two—and that milestone barely scratches the surface.

Within the first week, most players realize that:

ESO+ is effectively required to play comfortably.

Numerous skill lines must be leveled, along with a massive number of skill points.

Even if your goal is PvP or trials, you are required to complete large amounts of PvE content—quests, dungeons, and exploration—just to be functional.

For players with full-time jobs, this isn’t a short grind. It’s months of consistent play.

Once that foundation is built, more layers appear. Systems like Scribing require collecting scripts before meaningful experimentation is even possible. End-game PvE adds its own expectations: optimized gear sets, rotations, class mastery, CP optimization, and encounter knowledge for trials and veteran dungeons. Many players are also encouraged to level multiple classes to 50, then repeat the process of leveling skill lines, passives, and gear setups.

Realistically, for an adult player with limited time, it takes 7–8 months just to reach a baseline end-game state—where you have a single character capable of participating effectively in veteran PvE content or competitive PvP. And even then, the learning curve is so steep that outside resources—guides, Discords, guild coaching—are essentially mandatory.

The problem isn’t that ESO has depth. The problem is that:

Power creep is rarely reined in

Performance issues persist in large-scale PvP and PvE

New systems are layered on without pruning or simplification

End-game expectations keep rising without reducing the entry burden

If ESO is meant to feel like a healthy, accessible MMORPG—rather than an experience only long-time veterans can navigate—both PvP and end-game PvE systems need meaningful review. Addressing performance, power creep, and the overwhelming progression path would benefit the entire game, not just one playstyle.

I think there are a variety of things that can be contributing to the population decline:

- Player retention issues
- Beginning game complexity
- Reward structure and progression for long time players
- Lack of guardrails & training prior to end game content
- Lack of quality and meaningful updates to PvP content
- Decline in story quality
- Speed with which combat is updated properly

I’m sure there are more reasons, but these all need to be addressed. I do like the tone of the new leadership as I was not a fan of the mentality often expressed in interviews and podcasts with rich and Matt of the more “trust us” mentality. The communication has been great. Looking forward to January 7 to see what the new team has cooking!

if you think steam is not representative of a trend then let me ask you this

why is it that eso's numbers are going down while gw2's numbers - a game with pretty much the same age - are going up and up; not only on the steam charts but in fact they just released a community message that they have more players than ever...

Whats the difference between the two? GW2 is releasing banger update after banger update where players think they get good value for their money...

And eso releases lackluster overpriced content of questionable quality control and then wonders why players are leaving - exactly the same as Bethesda as a whole - just releasing cash grabs with 0 quality control - so much that they have become a meme at this point...

...and yes I know ZOS and Bethesda Softworks are not the same team BUT the same parent company even before MSoft and imo share the same culture...

Pevey wrote: »

Most live service games don't actually shut down when they die. They just stop updating. They put in minimal resources to keep the service going to fleece the diehards, as long as the revenue stream is greater than those bare minimum costs. Then, they may finally shutdown many years later. It dies completely unnoticed, or if it gets press, most former players just say, huh, I thought that shut down years ago. Who knew. That is the territory ESO is entering if leadership doesn't make some drastic changes.

Didn't ZOS announce that they're not going to even try to work on GH Cyrodiil in the future?

SilverBride wrote: »

I feel that it is just an opinion that Steam charts are an accurate indicator of the health of ESO.

SilverBride wrote: »

If all of them were true the game would have been shut down by now. And I never said a thing about feelings.

🧐

I think some people might just forget what they have posted in the past since they post so often, I am guessing. Such as asking why there aren't threads about specific issues, when they themselves posted in all of those threads also.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Even the one quarter of increasing players in 2023 was likely a fluke. Elden Ring released in February 2022, which means player counts in those months were abnormally low, making it a lot easier for 2023 numbers to bounce back.

Nah. That's because of the new class. A good example of how interesting new content that people actually want can still get people in. Unfortunately they weren't able to sustain that because that same year they axed half the year's new content and there were a number of unpopular changes made since.

I meant the three blue bars in March to May 2023, which bucked the trend of constant decline. I don‘t think it was due to the new Arcanist, because it hadn‘t been out yet at that time.

Interesting point about peak numbers, however, which indeed went up in June 2023 compared to 2022, when the new class released.

2023 gave us Arcanist, which people were hyped for. But we also got significantly less new content, and we've had a number of unpopular updates since then that only compound the lack of content issue.

Don't get me wrong you can see unpopular updates causing problems even before 2023, but that's the type of thing that can be recovered with good new content and balance updates. Which we can see with people exiting over U35 in 2022 and then coming back for Arcanist in 2023. Only to leave because there was not much new to do and they weren't happy with what was already there.

I definitely think that Arcanist - even the announcement thereof - really played a part in increasing numbers.

I know that the 2023 reveal showing off Arcanist got me more hyped than ever for the game, and that was still 6 months out. There were a lot of people who spent those 6 months planning and prepping (i.e. farming for upgrade mats or getting things ready, or in the RP case of planning backstory and design). There was an explosion of new characters created then that also all needed to get set up.

Arcanist being the main thing creating a player boom from about April to August 2023 makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately, Fall 2023 was the first time they cut the Q3 dungeons for QoL updates... and that's shown in the numbers as well. For all of the "I want ZOS to just focus on bugfixes and QoL instead of new content" we get on the forums, that isn't shown in player numbers as a good thing. Really only updates - and big updates - bring people in.
And I'm biased as all heck, but "new Class" is one of the only ways they can really get in increase in player numbers. And even then, we see that it's not sustainable - once those players have their fun with the new Class, then they get bored of the game and walk.

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

if you think steam is not representative of a trend then let me ask you this

why is it that eso's numbers are going down while gw2's numbers - a game with pretty much the same age - are going up and up; not only on the steam charts but in fact they just released a community message that they have more players than ever...

Whats the difference between the two? GW2 is releasing banger update after banger update where players think they get good value for their money...

And eso releases lackluster overpriced content of questionable quality control and then wonders why players are leaving - exactly the same as Bethesda as a whole - just releasing cash grabs with 0 quality control - so much that they have become a meme at this point...

...and yes I know ZOS and Bethesda Softworks are not the same team BUT the same parent company even before MSoft and imo share the same culture...

One really big difference is that GW2 devs stopped the power bloat. Optimised builds in GW2 with the classes from the latest expansions typically do about 40% more damage than the base classes. Compare that to ESO in the Craglorn days when 30k dps was considered top end to today where 150k is the top. This limitation has allowed to the older content to remain challenging (albeit a little easier).

Equipment progression also maxes out pretty early and there are no new sets that keep coming out every year that everyone needs to farm. There is no 500+ sets in the game.

What GW2 has in horizontal progression that enhance the overall game outside of combat. The first major expansion gave them gliding, the second major expansion and successive expansions gave them new mounts. Each of these had skill lines that had to be developed. There isn't the great rush to farm an overpowered item that will break PvP.

@ToddIngram
Indeed, ZOS announced they couldn't fix Grey Host and that some time down the track they would make a new version with a smaller map for the lower population.
The sad thing is that they are using a false dichotomy of "If we can fix it completely then it can't be improved'. There were so many small changes they could have made to improve GH but the fact they haven't tells me that Vengeance wasn't really about testing.

I don't believe for a second ZOS can't fix GH. They created it, they can fix it. They're deciding not to make the investment by choice, not mandate.

My point was it looks like ZOS is trying to put Cyrodiil into maintenance mode. Rather than even try, they're just telling us it is what it is, take it or leave it, they're not even going to try.