Official Feedback Thread For 2026 ESO Reveal

Gadamlub14_ESO · January 7

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Everyone! Thanks for tuning in to the 2026 ESO Reveal Stream. If you missed the live show, the VOD is available to be viewed here.

With the reveal stream finished, we now want to hear from you! Let us know what you think about what's in store for ESO in 2026. The things you like, dislike, or have general questions about. This is your thread to communicate your initial thoughts about the new Seasons Model, New Systems (like Tamriel Tomes and Gold Coast Bazaar), Quality of Life changes, etc. with the forum community and ESO Dev team. We will use commentary posted here as a reference point for communication between now and Season Zero/ Update 49 release.

We also have a longer survey for those interested in giving us feedback on how you feel about the stream generally and the content plan for 2026. You can fill that survey out here.

Your constructive feedback* and questions will let us know what information we can better clarify leading up to launch and beyond. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of the 2026 content! Also feel free to participate in the poll as well!

*Friendly reminder to keep the Community Rules in mind when replying. Thank you!
PC Players, remember you will be able to check out Update 49 on PTS this coming Monday! We look forward to hearing your feedback there as well.

a trending positive poll- a first in a while! very excited about the reveal Kevin- major props to you and Nick and Susan for hearing players out.

well of course its trending positive. there are no actually negative options to select.

MasterSpatula · January 7

I don't remember hearing a thing about new story content, and everything else in the game is gravy for me. No matter how many improvements to gameplay you make, if I don't get some storytelling, there's literally nothing in the whole wide world to make me have even the slightest interest in engaging in those improvements. To continue giving this game my money, I'm going to need to hear a lot more about story pretty soon.

Also, I really don't get how ZOS plans on monetizing anything. That makes me nervous.

licenturion · January 7

Lots of good quality of life changes for new and existing players. Also, a lot of low hanging fruit to win back community favour like battleground, guild trader times, shared outfit slots, simultaneous patch dates etc.

But at the end I have the same feeling I had when they announced Overwatch 2. Most is just business model changes, with some great updates for new players and a few new additions and visual refreshes here and there.

But for a player like me who just completed all quests and the sticker book, there doesn't seem to be new story content and new vistas to discover. The focus seems mainly cosmetics and a battle pass system that seem to look a lot like Marvel Rivals.

After this packed showcase I still feel like I 'finished the game'. But that's okay. I have a huge backlog and I will probably revisit when there arrives a season that contains a new zone. And if I understood correctly, from now on there will be no DLC so these zones will be free for everyone too, which is great.

Still a great showcase for the state of the game and refreshments and I am happy for all the people that got some of their most requested features (back), but not great for people who want some actual new non-cosmetic stuff. And I already have enough mounts, styles and animations already anyway.

JeroenB · January 7

Lots of potentially interesting developments that might hopefully turn my recent impression of the game's declining direction around.

Until the demo of the dragonknight aesthetic revamp... This makes me very concerned that all the rest might come to naught unfortunately. I want less obnoxious glowy stuff in my fantasy world, not more. And if it's not only the odd other player's sparklefarting mount, recall, or costume but even my own character's combat skills, I suspect that will sap my remaining interest in playing very quickly.

DragonRacer · January 7

Additional thought - what is happening to our saved up event tickets and endeavors? Will they be converted to equivalent tome bars in the new seasonal currency or...?

DenverRalphy · January 7

So, Premium+ is $30/season, which will total $120/year, and that's without ESO+ subcription?

Faltasë · January 7

L_Nici wrote: »

I am very unhappy with how ESO Plus gets treated here. Sure nothing got taken away from it officially, but if all old DLCs get added to the Basegame over time, all ESO Plus has left is the crafting bag. It would have been way better if ESO Plus would just have covered the Premium Pass (the middle one not Premium+) in its entirety, just being able to get 1 Season Pass for 12 months of ESO Plus is not fair treatment at all.

Yeah I think this makes ESO plus feel like garbage. You are telling me that we are going to be paying like 100 USD a year for eso plus to get access to dlcs and classes and some crowns... but yet cant even be bothered to give us more than the battle pass. If an eso plus player utilized the 12 month for 1 free premium pass, that means we would still have 2 more passes to purchase. That means if you wanted to get the full experience, you'd have to pay 100+ a year for eso plus, plus another 35-50 dollars give or take.

And while sure, we can still get free things, I guarantee the free things will be bad. For most free battle passes, good cosmetics happen like twice a year. I wish we could go back to the days where everything was earnable based on different challenge types. Not 75% of things needing to be bought outright with crowns or straight money.

spartaxoxo · January 7

Will the battle pass be available for crowns?

If we purchase a year of ESO+ upfront, then will that instantly give us access to a paid battle pass? Or will we actually have to wait a year to be able to claim it?!

If we have to wait, do we have to actually login at least once for each of those 12 months

Gadamlub14_ESO · January 7

DragonRacer wrote: »

Additional thought - what is happening to our saved up event tickets and endeavors? Will they be converted to equivalent tome bars in the new seasonal currency or...?

endevors remain as a currency just earned through the battlepass now.

Tickets are being removed in favor of their bazzar and trade bar thing. but you will have tickets converted to "an appropriate amount of bars"

baratron · January 7

Personally, I think switching from Daily Login Reward/Daily Endeavor/Weekly Endeavor to Tamriel Tomes is amazing. I'm sick of days when I log in and all I get to do is the flipping dailies. And I'm sick of days when I don't really feel like playing but feel that I have to log in to get the Daily Reward and do the easy Endeavors, or weeks when I don't quite finish the Weekly Endeavor before the week rolls over. I'm really looking forward to being able to catch up with story content, and get the Tome endeavors done at my leisure.

However, ZOS need to make it VERY clear that an ESO Plus membership already includes the first tier of the Premium Tamriel Tomes. I saw a ton of people in the stream chat, and a few people in this thread, who don't understand that and think they're being asked to pay two separate subscriptions. I saw a lot of people complaining about having to pay US $30 a month from now on instead of the $15 a month they are accustomed to.

Big Simple Text on a website that we can point people at when they are confused, please!

AVaelham · January 7

Some thoughts I had during the stream:

I don't really care about the seasons, at least we're moving faster from a bad story and won't have to endure a whole year of X;
The Daily Challenges and Endeavours reworked into a new system is cool, reducing FOMO is brilliant
The Night Market though? Feels like the Infinite Archive meets Craglorn. Not my thing.
Overland Difficulty? Didn't really care about this, but I'm lowkey intrigued.
Dragonknight,Two-Handed, Werewolf reworks? Very cool!
Various Quality of Life - improving time sinks, weird limitations etc - cool!
Solo Dungeons - finally! I thought it would apply to new dungeons at first though?
Dynamic World Events - interesting
No new zone and only two questlines - seriously? this is the bread and butter of ESO for me and it is so little this year; and it's Thieves Guild and Sheogorath, two aspects I'm not really excited about right now. WHERE IS MY MERIDIA-TURNED-VILLAIN EPIC? SMH.

So uhhh...we'll see. So far I'm a bit ...whelmed? Whelmed.

Wup_sa · January 7

New animations look bad. Hopefully we get to also keep the old ones.

Ruthless · January 7

This is great to see honestly, if we got a new zone, then it would a 10 / 10 but now its a 9/10

TheSherryOnTop · January 7

MATH_COW wrote: »

Where is communcation about the missing french voiceover of half of 2025 Content pass?

I second this. And are we getting French voiceover for 2026 content or not (because this will influence my decision to buy)?

kumenit_taeynav · January 7

the battlepass makes me wanna puke. does anyone else remember when seasons were first introduced last year and a lot of people were upset by the possibility it might be a battlepass? what made zos think itd be a good idea to actually release a battlepass for real? id prolly be over the moon about the extra furnishing slots and solo dungeons if i werent dreading the battlepass

Tandor · January 7

Gadamlub14_ESO wrote: »

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Everyone! Thanks for tuning in to the 2026 ESO Reveal Stream. If you missed the live show, the VOD is available to be viewed here.

With the reveal stream finished, we now want to hear from you! Let us know what you think about what's in store for ESO in 2026. The things you like, dislike, or have general questions about. This is your thread to communicate your initial thoughts about the new Seasons Model, New Systems (like Tamriel Tomes and Gold Coast Bazaar), Quality of Life changes, etc. with the forum community and ESO Dev team. We will use commentary posted here as a reference point for communication between now and Season Zero/ Update 49 release.

We also have a longer survey for those interested in giving us feedback on how you feel about the stream generally and the content plan for 2026. You can fill that survey out here.

Your constructive feedback* and questions will let us know what information we can better clarify leading up to launch and beyond. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of the 2026 content! Also feel free to participate in the poll as well!

*Friendly reminder to keep the Community Rules in mind when replying. Thank you!
PC Players, remember you will be able to check out Update 49 on PTS this coming Monday! We look forward to hearing your feedback there as well.

a trending positive poll- a first in a while! very excited about the reveal Kevin- major props to you and Nick and Susan for hearing players out.

well of course its trending positive. there are no actually negative options to select.

I'd have thought the third option - wanting something different from the reveal - was pretty negative, and the last option wasn't exactly positive either.

ZOS_Kevin · January 7

metheglyn wrote: »

johnjetau wrote: »

So is this new Tamriel Tones system a one off payment to cover the full year or is it a payment each season - thus 4 times a year.

I ask because it says that the $29.99 version is in USD. As someone living in Australia that converted to AUD at the current exchange rate is approx $45.00 AUD.

And if we pay for each season - 4 Seasons - than that is going to be almost $180.00 p/year.

You don't have to pay for the tiers if you don't want to; you can just participate in the free one. But I believe each tome/season will cost separately.

This is correct.

MincMincMinc · January 7

QoL fixes are all huge, getting rid of endeavors, event tickets, and daily logins was a good change to reduce the UI bloat and confusion.

With all these animation changes.....will we even see them in combat? Right now there are so many procs and animations because skills and item set procs do multiple animations. The combat of the game is starting to look like a diarrhea of particle effects.

Bringing back 3 sided BGs is a start, but no mention of actual mmr fixes. MMR reset basically ruins queing since every reset you get stuck mass murdering brand new players who are low mmr for a week straight. Its not fun for either side.

I have to wait to see the spawn camping fixes, but considering they only mentioned two maps I have my doubts.

Getting around cyrodil is hardly an issue, we can tp to every keep and mount speed has nearly 5x since the start of the game. The problem is the massive dead space all over the map. While also all the incentives grouping factions up into one or two groups. Zos needs to prioritize smallman objectives to break up larger groups and spread out the possible lag interactions. We have been saying this since around IC or clockwork.

CaptainVenom · January 7

I must confess I was expecting someone to say something about weapon animation fixes. Idle resto staff animation is particularly atrocious: the character doesn't even look straight ahead when equipping it, but I really hope we get some love on the PTS next week.

Desiato · January 7

I think you dropped the ball by failing to address the onboarding experience and failing to improve the value proposition.

Trying to maintain both ESO+ and introduce the Battle Pass is a key error. The B2P live service market is more competitive than ever and much of the western world is experiencing a cost of living crisis.

Let's face it: ESO was engineered to present players with inventory issues as an incentive to sub to ESO+.

I recently started over with a new account which gave me some perspective on the new user experience. It's awful. I could manage it because I'm experienced and know what every item is, but that is not so for new players. The sheer number of items the game throws at a player is insane and must leave them confused and distressed about what to keep, sell and destroy -- in addition to full inventories constantly interrupting their adventures.

I think many players who do not currently play ESO will scoff at buying the game, battle pass AND sub.

IMO, your focus was too much on maintaining ARPU instead of making ESO actually fun instead of just addictive.

Syldras · January 7

First impression: "That's a very long stream for announcing that there's not enough work force for both real chapters as well as bug fixes and base game additions, so they remove chapters and shove monetarisation to a battle pass instead".

More later.

Renato90085 · January 7

few month ago,I am in 2 am watch stream,the stream very short ,and there tell us have a big event,one life only one time, QoL only swim mount is good
wall event and subclass very suck,I lost half of my friends(60+ppl) with me play game,my time zone game very quite this 3month,pug alway is 10-20 same player there
I know the content about a month earlier from some friend,my bad mood turn into hope,and buy some crown and solstice in new life event
maybe someone will feel battlepass and no new zone is too greed ,but I still feel this time stream is in right way
but I not sure,I still need check PTS and new dev will listen us feedback first
this game won't get worse for me.

Gadamlub14_ESO · January 7

Tandor wrote: »

Gadamlub14_ESO wrote: »

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Everyone! Thanks for tuning in to the 2026 ESO Reveal Stream. If you missed the live show, the VOD is available to be viewed here.

With the reveal stream finished, we now want to hear from you! Let us know what you think about what's in store for ESO in 2026. The things you like, dislike, or have general questions about. This is your thread to communicate your initial thoughts about the new Seasons Model, New Systems (like Tamriel Tomes and Gold Coast Bazaar), Quality of Life changes, etc. with the forum community and ESO Dev team. We will use commentary posted here as a reference point for communication between now and Season Zero/ Update 49 release.

We also have a longer survey for those interested in giving us feedback on how you feel about the stream generally and the content plan for 2026. You can fill that survey out here.

Your constructive feedback* and questions will let us know what information we can better clarify leading up to launch and beyond. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of the 2026 content! Also feel free to participate in the poll as well!

*Friendly reminder to keep the Community Rules in mind when replying. Thank you!
PC Players, remember you will be able to check out Update 49 on PTS this coming Monday! We look forward to hearing your feedback there as well.

a trending positive poll- a first in a while! very excited about the reveal Kevin- major props to you and Nick and Susan for hearing players out.

well of course its trending positive. there are no actually negative options to select.

I'd have thought the third option - wanting something different from the reveal - was pretty negative, and the last option wasn't exactly positive either.

thats a "i'd rather have something else for dinner" Instead of "i hate this" option

Vedova · January 7

There was a lot of stuff not talked about or shown, what is the high seas of tamril, was a survey question, but i heard nothing in the stream about it ?

Defiantly need a lot more info, ideally another stream showing everything in action and the like, like they used to do.

Also was not really much other shown in the stream, no fancy cinematics, very bland sorta presentation, I dot know i jsut not feeling any thing much nowadays for ESO.

imaslowlearner · January 7

Will the account wide outfit slots retroactively be awarded for people who already purchased outfit slots?

More importantly will they also do this with armory slots?

Ezhh · January 7

@ZOS_Kevin Why does the longer survey need our group age for participation? If we're old enough to play, why does this matter?

Some of the questions also feel a bit meaningless. I don't know how to say how well I understood things that I feel we've not been given much info about. It's a weird survey.

Beyond that it's nice to finally see some changes going through that really should have been done years ago.

esotoon · January 7

Tandor wrote: »

esotoon wrote: »

You lost me at Battlepass. COD: ESO is not what the players want. It is what Microsoft shareholders want.

Just as well the free option is there then, it seemed pretty extensive.

Yes, if you look at it from the marketing speak's point of view, the free option sounds perfectly reasonable.

Now look at it from the players point of view when it comes to content and the rewards you get. Up until now, all players completing the same content would get the same rewards as each other. And every player that logged in the same number of days each month would get the same daily rewards as each other. Now, despite completing exactly the same content, and logging in the same number of days, some of those rewards are being withheld from players, and only being given to those who pay extra for them.

Danikat · January 7

I'm another confused/disappointed story-focused player.

It doesn't matter how many shiny things you wave in front of us if there's nothing to do with them. I play ESO for the story, the lore and the chance to see more of Tamriel, the items are at best a novelty on top of that.

Being told the scraps of new story we may or may not get in each season are only going to be available for a short time (and it sounds like for the first release we can only play 1/3 of it in that time, then another 3rd later on) but actually that's fine because we can pay for permanent access to items (something we've been able to do since the crown store was added in 2015) doesn't sound great to me.

Yes some of the QoL improvements may be good if they actually happen and in the way players imagine they will, but again it doesn't matter how great the QoL is if the underlying game is forgotten.

At the moment my plan is still to finish playing through the DLC I've already got then assess whether I stick around in spite of ZOS and the game design or finally listen to the very strong message that I'm not the kind of player they want and take my time and money elsewhere.

spartaxoxo · January 7

What was the criteria for getting the survey? Was it random?

zsitvaij · January 7

PC patches are now delayed to console cadence. Does this mean four-five weeks for the last PTS build to go live with zero changes?