metheglyn wrote: »

No, that's not how it'll be. The Night Market is a thing that will be around for a short duration and then return at a later time, but content like storylines and zones will be permanent. The Night Market is experimental at this stage, and they said if players like it well enough, it could also become permanent.

Ok then. Maybe I didn't understand the article correctly. I haven't seen the reveal, and the article info is a bit confusing.

Syldras wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Depends where the new story is set, does it not?
Given the sister company released Oblivion last year I wouldn't be surprised if we get the Shivering Isles.

It would surprise me since companies usually use things that could excite their target group as a selling point. Or, worded differently: If a new zone was planned for the quest content, they would have surely mentioned it.

I'd have been very worried if they had mentioned a new zone. What they had to sell today was a new content model that interests players to keep coming back.

Focussing on a new zone would have been an indication they didn't believe in their own content re-vamp. Werewolf and 2-H lines being re-worked is pretty huge news, that they very much kept to themselves. The possibility exists that the same is true for a new zone - I certainly don't think it will be chapter sized - but I'm willing to wait until they flesh out the details for Season 1 in March/April.

For now, I'm happy they are focussing on Season 0 - which is where their focus should be, because if it fails the game fails.

Edit: Typos

metheglyn wrote: »

You're right; that does seem like a contradiction. Perhaps because it falls under the more 'experimental' type of thing they're trying out they don't include it with the other permanent content.

If it includes meaningful TES lore, I'd rather not see it disappear again. Although I've been wondering now how they'd include such an experimental and possibly always changing map lore-wise. Maybe they somehow relate it to Ithelia? Or it's just supposed to be some dream world or vision anyway, so whatever happens there is not part of real Nirn lore anyway? But probably I'm just thinking too much now and that aspect might not even have been taken into consideration.

New content in old zones ?

Prepare for "prologues" level of content

"Hidden doors" in known dungeons that will add small zones where you do 2 clicks and then leave for the other side of Tamriel for no reason, to do the same thing. Repeat 3 times. End of questline.

Syldras wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

It obviously is a further decline, don’t be fooled about that. But, and this is important, it‘s free stuff you don’t have to pay for. The argument of less content had weight to it when you needed to pay for it. Now you get it for free, so any content is a positive, even if the quantity is less.

But how exactly does that help? "You barely get any content, maybe nothing interesting at all, but hey, it's free!" isn't exactly an argument to keep me interested. And I think I'm not the only person who would leave (for a break or for good) once there's nothing interesting to do anymore (for now I think I'd replay Morrowind/CWC/Summerset another time, but what's after that...? I don't know).

Help whom? It might not be for you and that’s okay. People were complaining about Chapters, their content, their price. Understandably in many cases. They moved away from it and all coming content is free now.

Sorry, you cannot complain about free content in a game that has no subscription and where a battle pass isn’t necessary to access said content. I‘m usually not one to defend ZOS, but in this case it seems like they cannot win.

i don't feel that "no new zone" -has- to equal no new quests/story/furniture style/antiquities/delves/etc. they -could- add these things in. they -could- add thieves guild inspired furniture/antiquities/etc. they have added new dungeons/antiquities to maps before. i'm sure they could do the same with delves.

HOWEVER... -will- they do that? based on what we've seen in the last few years, i'd be skeptical. the general consensus with solstice was "oh, it's a transitional year. let's give them a chance." but i never felt that way because they told us the SAME THING with gold road the year before. they just didn't call it a transitional year so it slipped by a lot of ppl. but having just completed the necrom storyline... i see that it goes even farther back than gold road. the last eso+ freebie we got, i went through the gold road storyline only to get to the end and feel like it wasn't a real ending. then come to find out it was NOT the ending because you had to finish necrom first in order to get the rest of the story. which i thought was odd because they never did that with chapters before. they were always stand alone and, other than some really minor things in dialogue, it didn't matter what order you did content in.

it became BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that west weald was meant to be the dlc zone for the second half of the year for necrom.

another thing that worries me is when they say all the game content will be free... it's -implying- that that is true for everything. all zones/dungeons/etc will be unlocked. but the -actual wording- in the official articles they released says only "upcoming" zones from now on. it certainly -seems- like what they mean is that yes, the old zones will be unlocked for everybody, too. but i guess we will just have to wait and see with what they do or if they clarify on that before it gets here.

bobsontpm wrote: »

Night Market seems like BS now that they revealed it will be active for 7 weeks in the first half of the year... I hate it. Where is the "play the way you want" and "all content stays forever"?

They have already stated it's an experimental zone, that could become a permanent feature if players like it.

Soarora wrote: »

Until I read the article, I thought the zone was just going to be somewhere between a trial and a public dungeon. I’m a bit worried about there being quest content. Questing in this game is terrible with multiple people yet the stream made the market seem like it’s an area for experienced players to group up for. Not that videos of people light attacking in first person inspired a lot of confidence. Makes me wonder if it’s experienced in a manner of “this person can solo a world boss” and not “this person does hard mode group pve content”. The overlap of people who would want to group up and do hard overland-style content and people who want to quest I think is pretty small. I quest and I sure don’t want to group to do it.

I expect it to be another iteration of the Writhing Fortress. You accept a quest, you run around, loosely cooperate and kill bosses together. Just that this time, there will be several groups that compete who gets it done fastest (like if there had been a competition in the Writhing Fortress on whether the East wing or the West wing gets completed first(, or kills most of the bosses, or whatever. At least that's my interpretation based on what I heard in the stream, and read here and in that linked article.

Seraphayel wrote: »

Help whom? It might not be for you and that’s okay. People were complaining about Chapters, their content, their price. Understandably in many cases. They moved away from it and all coming content is free now.

They were mostly complaining about a quality drop while the same price was charged since Morrowind - smaller zones, decreased quest number, worse writing quality, lack of creativity. The solution would have been to improve that, not to remove it altogether.

Seraphayel wrote: »

Sorry, you cannot complain about free content in a game that has no subscription and where a battle pass isn’t necessary to access said content. I‘m usually not one to defend ZOS, but in this case it seems like they cannot win.

Of course I can complain about questionable decisions and the lack of meaningful content. I can also criticise a free book for having been badly written, or say that a completely oversalted soup given for free might have been a nice gesture, but it tasted horrible nonetheless.

Generally, I know producing good content is costly and I was always willing to pay for that. Nothing about my stance on that has changed.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

They have already stated it's an experimental zone, that could become a permanent feature if players like it.

Yes, and it was already stated in this thread that it still contains lore and story content, and some people don't like lore and story content to disappear again, experimental content or not.

Here are my thoughts.

I currently sub with a few accounts - I’m stopping that.
I currently run a Trade Guild - I think it’s time to stop that too.

2025 was just plain awful and I was really hoping for good new content to keep me interested. A Summerset or Orsinium or anything! Sadly, we’re being sold QoL improvements and bug fixes and told anything new might be an experiment (which I’m reading as, it might be broken).

Typical Microsoft TBH.

AzuraFan wrote: »

They said that some seasons will include new zones. If skipping a year for a zone means that the zone we get next year is better than the last few have been (though I liked Necrom), then I'm all for it.
I've seen a lot of complaints about the size and quality of Solstice and Gold Road. With the team they have now, it's likely that they can't churn out a zone every year and hit the quality they used to have. They need more time. So if they go to a zone every couple of years, but the quality of the story and the zone improves, then I'm all for it. It's unreasonable to want better quality AND a zone arriving every year. AFAIK, other MMOs don't release large expansions every year. Yes, ZOS used to do it, but we all know the investment and dev resources have been reduced since then.
So, if this results in an improvement in the zones being released, I'm fine with it. If not, then I'll be disappointed. Right now, it's a wait and see.

I just wished they would have communicated it like this in the stream then. The way they presented it made it look like there's not much content coming, and we have no clue whether it will be more next year, or even less.

Then again, I'm sadly not even sure anymore whether some "This year we focus on QOL and smaller additions, next year there will be a chapter-like story zone again" would have helped much. After all, they have already promised similar things. Several times. And from the way the Wall event was marketed, we know that no matter how great the promises, the outcome might be underwhelming. The only thing that might have helped might have been being absolutely clear and providing solid and safe info. No "there's some story content later" without any info about the scope. No "there are awesome things coming at the end of the year or beginning of 2027 perhaps" which means there could be, or maybe not, and what ever might be coming, we can't really judge it either.

AVaelham wrote: »

So, other than the Night Market - which is a new type of zone (faction-based group event in Fargrave), we are not getting any new zones this year.
Instead, we are getting two storylines: a new Thieves Guild adventure and Sheogorath Returns For The Millionth Time It's Not Funny Anymore. Gone are the days when we'd get a cinematic reveal about the overall storyline.

What are you thoughts on this?

My thoughts are Microsoft's ambition to be the leader in AI slop has ruined many things, and ESO just happens to be one of those things. Hopefully the existing staff working at ZOS are able to keep the studio running, and the game survives what is surely one of the worst moments in gaming, and all history to be honest.

Seraphayel wrote: »

Season 1 contains everything a Chapter would contain (minus a zone we get earlier this year) - and it doesn't cost anything. It's free content.

Since you seem to be well-informed, I have a few questions:

What scope do the Sheogorath and the Thieves Guild questlines have? Is it like the Morrowind main story had been? Or perhaps the Sun-in-Shadow questline? Or the West Solstice main quest? Or maybe closer to the prologue or epilogue quests of the last few years?

What is the Sage's Vault?

How many quests and what does the High Seas event consist of?

Also, a missing zone isn't just some tiny thing. It's not just a missing piece of land, it also means: No antiquities, ToT deck, companions (yes, I know they were removed some years ago - but they were once part of a chapter), furnishings, delves, public dungeons, world bosses, bard songs, lore books, ambient music,... Unless of course they will put all this into an existing zone with the update. Do you think that will happen?

scrappy1342 wrote: »

i think they -could-, but the question is -will- they? the way the amount of new content has diminished starting with necrom onward makes me skeptical

Necrom was by no means a decline. Telvanni Peninsula, and especially the visually stunning Apocrypha, as well as the story surrounding Mora, were highlights for me. And in retrospect, I also think the Endless Archive is very well done. Goldroad was the downfall. A small zone and a pseudo-housing feature. And a PvP feature that nobody liked either.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The Night Market sounds pretty expensive but I guess we shall see. It sounded more like Craglorn than a dungeon but I don't actually know. I guess we'll know more later. I was a bit confused on that point.

I was actually thinking something like a more story driven Writhing Wall Phase 3 type thing, or a very large public dungeon.

Syldras wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Season 1 contains everything a Chapter would contain (minus a zone we get earlier this year) - and it doesn't cost anything. It's free content.

Since you seem to be well-informed, I have a few questions:

What scope do the Sheogorath and the Thieves Guild questlines have? Is it like the Morrowind main story had been? Or perhaps the Sun-in-Shadow questline? Or the West Solstice main quest? Or maybe closer to the prologue or epilogue quests of the last few years?

What is the Sage's Vault?

How many quests and what does the High Seas event consist of?

Also, a missing zone isn't just some tiny thing. It's not just a missing piece of land, it also means: No antiquities, ToT deck, companions (yes, I know they were removed some years ago - but they were once part of a chapter), furnishings, delves, public dungeons, world bosses, bard songs, lore books, ambient music,... Unless of course they will put all this into an existing zone with the update. Do you think that will happen?

I‘m sure we‘re getting answers for all of this throughout the next weeks and months. Did we know beforehand how much quests Morrowind will have? No. We got to learn as soon as the PRT went up. Sometimes they told us that it‘s 30 hours of content or whatever (which was never the case), but right now we just lack in depth information about all of this.

What I’m not doing though is coming to premature conclusions about quality and quantity when there is no basis for it. I‘m just tired reading about an alleged lack of content when a) there‘s lots of stuff listed in the road map and b) we simply don’t have any further information about it yet. Yes, maybe it will be severely lacking. Maybe it will be good. Who knows, we don’t.

And what y’all seem to forget, you get all of it for free. So for sure it won’t rival the amount of Chapters they sold for $40 bucks. Yes yes, you don’t want free content, you want lots of quality and quantity content you can pay for. That’s what we had in the last years (okay, minus 2025) and y’all still complained.

Last but not least, yes, I think so. But instead of being tied to a new zone they will be tied to the respective event.