ESO 3.0… This is Depressing

Syldras · January 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Quests in Morrowind: 7 Story, 34 non-Story. 41 Total

You forgot a few.

Gabriel_H · January 10

Syldras wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Quests in Morrowind: 7 Story, 34 non-Story. 41 Total

You forgot a few.

I didn't. Those would be daily quests I mentioned.

In Morrowind we got 4 dailies, in SoTW we got 3. That's your huge drop in quantity?

LukosCreyden · January 10

At the end of the day, MMOs need new things to survive. NEW things. Recycled and rehashed old things CAN work, but MMOs ultimately need new things. So, new zones, new classes, new skill lines. New toys.

Syldras · January 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I didn't. Those would be daily quests I mentioned.

And daily quests are no quest content? Since if you count them, Morrowind has a much higher quest number than Solstice. Also, the number alone doesn't say anything about scope and even less about quality. In that regard, Solstice was horrible. But of course you are entitled to your own opinion. I just don't have the impression many people share it.

Sluggy · January 10

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

This feels like much more of a doom and gloom post than is warranted by events....

Overall, I agree. But I think my outlook is tempered by an understanding of what I'm seeing and acceptance of where things really are and have been going. Listen, I've been calling out the long-tail operation since IA was released and I'm not walking back from that now. They've been on a three year long push to ensure the game could operate even if the population were to drastically lower suddenly - which it has. To me that's good planning. Many MMOs die when that happens but when things were looking good, they had the clarity of mind to take measures for the future. Clearly, the game has entered a new lifecycle and it seems to involve shoring up what they have. As someone else pointed out above, it would be foolish to continue the same pace as if nothing were changing about the market and their business. Will this work out in the long run? Heck if I know but I think it's prudent of them to try because the old method was clearly not going to continue working for much longer. Like I said above, Microsoft has expectations and in a world of AI hype, they aren't going to suffer opportunity costs. A threshold *must* be met.

Gabriel_H · January 10

Syldras wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I didn't. Those would be daily quests I mentioned.

And daily quests are no quest content? Since if you count them, Morrowind has a much higher quest number than Solstice. Also, the number doesn't say anything about scope and even less about quality.

Morrowind has 4 daily quests, SotW has 3.

1 extra non-daily and 1 extra daily is "much higher"? Really?!

Edit: Scope and quality would both be quality issues not quantity issues.

Syldras · January 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Morrowind has 4 daily quests, SotW has 3.

4 questgivers with 26 quests in total.

Gabriel_H · January 10

Syldras wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Morrowind has 4 daily quests, SotW has 3.

4 questgivers with 26 quests in total.

Oh are we counting the variants of the same quest giver? Solstice had, lets see there is the 6 WBs, 6 Delve/Overland, 6 Siege Camps, 6 Crystals, 6 Crafting, and 6 Mats, so 24 quests in total.

YandereGirlfriend · January 10

Syldras wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

Solstice was added as a new zone and did nothing for the game whatsoever. 2025 was actually one of the worst years for ESO.

Yes, because the quality was horrible and it was already lacking many aspects that earlier chapters had. Think of what was added to the game with Morrowind and Summerset, for example. It's not the zone/chapter format inself that is a problem, but that they could not deliver quality content anymore. Whether they manage to without having to create a new zone - we'll see.

The only thing I, as someone who's playing ESO for 10 years now, hope is that there will be enough new playable content to keep me interested (and yes, I've seen the schedule, but we don't have any info about the scope of upcoming content yet). Bug fixes and QOL improvements are awesome, but if there's almost nothing new to do, why would I log in? I've already finished all old content that interested me. And I know many long-time players are in that situation.

Zone questing isn't an end-game system and it runs out no matter how large or small a Chapter's zone used to be. Every expansion that I participated in, starting from Summerset, had the forum flooded after Week 1 of people who blazed through the storyline and became disgruntled. No development team on this earth can pump-out casual story content and zones at the rate at which some people are able to consume it. It is a simple fact of the industry.

Otherwise, you can participate in some form of end-game content. That decidedly does not mean anything combat-related. You can do end-game housing or even roleplaying and fashion. For combat, you have a huge pool of existing dungeons with many achievements to acquire, a new trial is on the way, and PvP, the most evergreen of all evergreen systems, is finally back in the spotlight with promising new changes. You could even learn Tales of Tribute!

Frankly, the game catered to the casual questing crowd that demanded an unrealistic pace of raw "content" delivery for too long - and the rest of the game suffered mightily for it. Now balance is finally being restored and the game will be better off for it.

Gabriel_H · January 10

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Zone questing isn't an end-game system and it runs out no matter how large or small a Chapter's zone used to be. Every expansion that I participated in, starting from Summerset, had the forum flooded after Week 1 of people who blazed through the storyline and became disgruntled. No development team on this earth can pump-out casual story content and zones at the rate at which some people are able to consume it. It is a simple fact of the industry.

I blaze through a new zone in 10 to 16 hours depending on the rng fishing, bugs, and rng mythics on post 1st iteration. A standard gamer would probably get 30 - 40 hours of gameplay out of it - industry standard for an expansion.

I'd have to be down below 10 hours to start complaining about the lack of content. I think what people tend to do is focus on the content type they like, and ignore that there other types that would eat into development time and that are enjoyed by others.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

You could even learn Tales of Tribute!

You had my full support, right up until that!

Syldras · January 10

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Otherwise, you can participate in some form of end-game content. That decidedly does not mean anything combat-related. You can do end-game housing or even roleplaying and fashion. For combat, you have a huge pool of existing dungeons with many achievements to acquire, a new trial is on the way, and PvP, the most evergreen of all evergreen systems, is finally back in the spotlight with promising new changes. You could even learn Tales of Tribute!

Not sure if this is meant as a general statement or you actually mean me as a person: I've done most of these things you listed here, except for those that absolutely don't interest me. There's no new dungeons this year, no new zone will most likely mean no new furnishing style, ToT also didn't get a new deck this year.

Syldras · January 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Oh are we counting the variants of the same quest giver? Solstice had, lets see there is the 6 WBs, 6 Delve/Overland, 6 Siege Camps, 6 Crystals, 6 Crafting, and 6 Mats, so 24 quests in total.

The majority of those you list here were temporary event quests that are gone for good, no permanent additions. Also, even if it might have been a while since I finished school, I'm quite sure that 6x6 is 36, not 24. Not that it helps, though, since as I said: Most were just event quests. 13 Solstice daily quests are permanent, vs 26 in Morrowind/Vvardenfell.

If you enjoyed Solstice, nice for you. Lots of people did not enjoy it and found the quality and quantity lacking. There were enough threads about why.

Twohothardware · January 10

Players haven't been buying the Expansions in large numbers for years now. Summerset was the last big expansion that actually was popular.

The game is 11 years old and doesn't make sense for them to try and create large expansions that require a lot of development time unless player counts rebound and that's not going to happen unless they fix all the underlying issues in the game and add the features people have asked for forever.

Things like overland difficulty, Crossplay, improving game visuals and performance, re-doing the base classes and making them more competitive to subclassing, and adding better in-game cosmetic rewards that aren't limited to the Crown Store purchases.

tomofhyrule · January 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

...

The Warden
We got sub-classing. While it was made available to base game, that should be celebrated not derided.

...

So, can you point me at this quantity difference you are seeing that I am apparently not?

Can we stop pretending that the addition of Subclassing was anywhere near the level of the addition of a brand new Class?

Let's ignore the fact that one was paid (and therefore counted as part of the value of the respective Chapter) and the other was basegame (so therefore not part of the value of the respective Chapter).

It's still that in once case, you have 3 entirely new, built from scratch skill lines, each with 5 skills, 4 passives, and an ultimate. Nothing like that had ever been seen before, and players got a chance to play with all of that new content.
In the other case, it was just being able to take existing skill lines and put them on a different character. Nothing new at all, unless you count destroying the balance of the game.

That's basically saying that Cadwell's Silver is equivalent to every chapter we've had combined because that allows you to experience a full story in 5 zones (plus a starter zone!).
Sure... if you only play one character ever, I guess it is new. To you. But to anyone else, it's just copypasta of what we already have.

WalkingBomb · January 10

They could've just done nothing, that's the cheapest for them; the fact they're willing to make some changes is pretty nice I think!

Gabriel_H · January 11

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Can we stop pretending that the addition of Subclassing was anywhere near the level of the addition of a brand new Class?

...

It's still that in once case, you have 3 entirely new, built from scratch skill lines, each with 5 skills, 4 passives, and an ultimate. Nothing like that had ever been seen before, and players got a chance to play with all of that new content.

Sure, if we stop pretending new class actives and passives aren't just re-worked skills that already exist.

Recent · January 11

What? Are they really removing endeavors and daily login rewards? And replacing them with what? Please explain in simple terms .
What is a battle pass? Is that like the game pass we bought for the season of the wormcult, the wall, or are they changing that?

lillybit · January 11

Recent wrote: »

What? Are they really removing endeavors and daily login rewards? And replacing them with what? Please explain in simple terms .
What is a battle pass? Is that like the game pass we bought for the season of the wormcult, the wall, or are they changing that?

Daily rewards and endeavours (tho not the seals they give) are being rolled into the new Tamriel Tomes which is a version of a battle pass. From the little we know, It'll be similar to earning endeavours but instead of being daily/weekly they'll be weekly and monthly (or seasonal, can't remember which) but you'll be able to reroll the weekly ones as least. They'll also have something to do with event tickets which are being rebranded as Trade Bars and losing the cap.

The main part is free (and from the sounds of it has the same kind of rewards as the login rewards as well as seals, trade bars and maybe a few other bits) with 2 levels of premium access that really just give a crown crates level shiny.

In this first one at the 1st level (Premium) is a wolf mount that changes appearance from day to night. It looks pretty cool actually and I don't normal care about the wolves. This is earnable rather than given outright.

Then the 2nd level (Premium+) adds a costume that's unlocked straight away and also gives faster progress but we don't know how significant that'll be.

Neither Premium pass expire at the end of the season so you can keep them going til you complete them. Conversely, the free one only lasts for as long as the season.

ESO+ will also give extra progress in the Tomes and a free Premium+ pass once a year.

All in all it'll be pretty ignorable if you aren't that interested in cosmetics. I expect the free one to be similar to every other free system they've added in the past - big, generous rewards to start with that trail off to meh. I doubt it'll be too much of a hardship if you don't complete them as it goes on

ThoraxtheDark · January 11

Well if you are still here through the last " content pass "

I have bad news for you

We all knew this last year. We all told you.

Now here we are. Making forum posts .

Im here for the visual changes and possible capes 🥵

Recent · January 11

lillybit wrote: »

Recent wrote: »

What? Are they really removing endeavors and daily login rewards? And replacing them with what? Please explain in simple terms .
What is a battle pass? Is that like the game pass we bought for the season of the wormcult, the wall, or are they changing that?

Daily rewards and endeavours (tho not the seals they give) are being rolled into the new Tamriel Tomes which is a version of a battle pass. From the little we know, It'll be similar to earning endeavours but instead of being daily/weekly they'll be weekly and monthly (or seasonal, can't remember which) but you'll be able to reroll the weekly ones as least. They'll also have something to do with event tickets which are being rebranded as Trade Bars and losing the cap.

The main part is free (and from the sounds of it has the same kind of rewards as the login rewards as well as seals, trade bars and maybe a few other bits) with 2 levels of premium access that really just give a crown crates level shiny.

In this first one at the 1st level (Premium) is a wolf mount that changes appearance from day to night. It looks pretty cool actually and I don't normal care about the wolves. This is earnable rather than given outright.

Then the 2nd level (Premium+) adds a costume that's unlocked straight away and also gives faster progress but we don't know how significant that'll be.

Neither Premium pass expire at the end of the season so you can keep them going til you complete them. Conversely, the free one only lasts for as long as the season.

ESO+ will also give extra progress in the Tomes and a free Premium+ pass once a year.

All in all it'll be pretty ignorable if you aren't that interested in cosmetics. I expect the free one to be similar to every other free system they've added in the past - big, generous rewards to start with that trail off to meh. I doubt it'll be too much of a hardship if you don't complete them as it goes on

Thank you kindly for your thorough reply..gave you an awesome 💕

moderatelyfatman · January 11

LukosCreyden wrote: »

At the end of the day, MMOs need new things to survive. NEW things. Recycled and rehashed old things CAN work, but MMOs ultimately need new things. So, new zones, new classes, new skill lines. New toys.

There's no point having new things if the core game itself isn't fun any more.

I'm happy for 2026 to be the year where ZOS focusses on doing major fixes to the base game to make it enjoyable again.

licenturion · January 11

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

At the end of the day, MMOs need new things to survive. NEW things. Recycled and rehashed old things CAN work, but MMOs ultimately need new things. So, new zones, new classes, new skill lines. New toys.

There's no point having new things if the core game itself isn't fun any more.

I'm happy for 2026 to be the year where ZOS focusses on doing major fixes to the base game to make it enjoyable again.

These ‘major’ fixes being 4 class balance reworks and a first version beta version of an overland difficulty slider.

Rest is changing back some numbers, battlegrounds and licenses in the backend of bad decisions.

I think part the community is blinded because they saved all these smaller changes to present them 1 swoop so that people give them an easy pass for what we don’t get for a whole year.

Only way I would be okay with a fix up year like this if we got a refresh a bunch of the old base game zones and their sets. But clearly those plans have been scrapped too because the art team is now fully invested in creating cosmetics for battlepasses, pursuits, crown store and crates.

I hope all those people cheering at ZOS now buy a truckload of battlepasses, because otherwise actual content for 2027 and beyond will be even more scaled back.

Seraphayel · January 11

Syldras wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

I also do not think that the writing in Morrowind or Summerset was better than in Necrom and Gold Road.

Honestly, then I think we can end this discussion here. If you're truly interested in learning why lots of people prefer the older chapters over the newer ones, there are many threads on exactly that, where people explain why they think this way.

And as for the differences in quantity, as I said: There are complete lists of all introduced features for each chapter on UESP. A tendency is clearly visible there.

Yes we can, because it’s all very unbalanced in regards to criticism and especially towards the road map for this year doesn’t make much sense as most of it is unfounded due to a lack of in depth information. You‘re assuming so many things without knowing about it that you simply cannot form a reasonable judgement on this point.

Many things in Chapters also did not get announced right away when they had the huge reveal, but days later when they did their in depth blog posts or streams. So wait until then and even then many of what you said is just premature doom and gloom.

I can understand criticism towards Season of the Worm Cult. But when people really start to drag Chapters like Necrom or Gold Road that have been good to very good overall and offered a lot of stuff, it becomes blatant that most of it is just nostalgia and not grounded in reality.

Sailor_Palutena · January 11

A good start would be actual new mounts. I've been hitting that key for years now: Tamriel has a rich fauna, yet every single mount we get is the same with a new coat of paint. A red horse, a blue horse, a dark horse, a coral horse, a fire horse, ok let's vary a little: bears, wolves, indriks and give a hundred skins to those too.

SummersetCitizen · January 11

Seraphayel wrote: »

Gold Road that have been good to very good overall

Gold Road was fine… but unremarkable. By that point, though, the decline was already noticeable. Half the buildings in the main city aren’t even enterable, which undercuts exploration and immersion in ways older content didn’t.

Anyone who’s been around for years has seen this trend. We’re in a downward population spiral, and copying the industry-standard battle pass model isn’t going to reverse it. Players looking for something different won’t be drawn in by ESO becoming more like its competitors.

Seraphayel · January 11

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Gold Road that have been good to very good overall

Gold Road was fine… but unremarkable. By that point, though, the decline was already noticeable. Half the buildings in the main city aren’t even enterable, which undercuts exploration and immersion in ways older content didn’t.

Anyone who’s been around for years has seen this trend. We’re in a downward population spiral, and copying the industry-standard battle pass model isn’t going to reverse it. Players looking for something different won’t be drawn in by ESO becoming more like its competitors.

I'm not denying that, but continuing the way they did with the former model was obviously either not stopping or even accelerating the downward spiral. I'm not counting 2025 as it was mostly transitional and lacking on several aspects, but 2026 looks way more exciting with a lot more diversity to old and new content. How this will fare nobody knows yet, but I think we can all agree that the Chapter model was tried, tested and outdated.

Einar_Hrafnarsson · January 11

licenturion wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Splitting the monetization off of content and making it more as a standalone cosmetic unlock IMO is better.

I think the new monetization model has even become worse now.

Going forward they will also use now all monetization models know to gaming:
- buy the game
- buy DLC in the crown store (older zones + dungeons)
- buy cosmetics in the crown store
- buy a subscription for some exclusive features
- buy a premium battlepass and a premium+ battlepass for cosmetics
- buy crowns in pre-defined packs
- buy gambling lootboxes
- do weekly challenges to earn cosmetic currency with a limited amount of rerolls

Not mentioned yet but surely coming at some point (100 percent sure):
- buy battle pass tier skips with crowns
- buy extra rerolls for weekly challenges
- buy mini event passes like New Life pass, White Streak pass with a limited free version and Premium upgrade.

I play some F2P games that are more generous and have half of these monetization systems.

And for people say that we get all the content for free now. What actual new content is in the roadmap besides the trial? I saw no new dungeons, zones, delves, sets, etc.

I only saw lots of reimaging of old (remastered) content and new 'modes' announced. Also reverting 3 years of bad decisions isn't really a feature. It's great, but it should be side notes to the presentation and not dominating the narrative. I must be getting old because I heard the word 'rewards' 50 times in the stream. I am probably old but I don't play games for rewards. The reward should be great stories, engaging gameplay and an immersive world.

Reading this just made ESO feel like a Korean Grind MMO

Sarannah · January 11

Morvan wrote: »

I'm really sad to see that some people can't understand the vision ZOS has for this year, you guys are used to getting the same thing every year and now that you're getting something different you think it's less, you guys barely have any details on all the new things announced and immediately assumed it's less content.

Give them a chance, this time they're not even charging you for it.

Uhhm, us longterm loyal paying players were asked to stand by them during their 2025 transitional year already. I did that, while I even kept playing and paying for the game. Despite the transitional year turning out quite bad. Then comes the announcement that instead of going for a longterm vision, they are releasing a battle pass and are choosing to cater mostly to free players instead. Battle passes themselves are used for short term monetary gain, and allow a company to take a game offline easily whenever there are one or two seasons without enough profit. As a longterm loyal player this anouncement hurts, and almost feels like a diablo "don't you all have phones" type of joke! They knew they had to come out swinging with the announcement, but they didn't. Their competition doesn't slack or slow down either.

At the same time, ZOS are doing the class refreshes. Meaning that even if we choose to stand by them, we may or may not even recognize the game anymore in two years once they are done with that. And that is even IF the class refreshes work out well, which they may not. Based on the previous year, the terrible battle pass announcement, and the future roadmap with barely anything to show for it, standing by this game any longer is seriously too much to ask!

Adding to that, they had a crown pack sale just two weeks before this announcement, full well knowing they were going to change payment models and moving many cosmetics away from the crown store and away from crowns. They could have postponed the crown pack sale till after the announcement or could atleast have put up a notice that they were changing payment model and that buying packs could be risky. Having bought quite a few crown packs during the sale, this feels like a really dirty move on their part.

Ever since the announcement I haven't been able to motivate myself to even login to the game anymore. While I never missed a day in eight years of playing, and absolutely love(d) the game.

The OP seems correct, and to me this does look like maintenance mode while trying to squeeze every penny possible from players. That won't be me though!

PS: The way battle passes work and focus on short term monetary gain are the exact reason why I will never play a game with a battle pass.

Seraphayel · January 11

Some of these arguments are so constructed and fake… the Crown Sale was some kind of scam now? How so? There are three Crown Sales per year and always at the same time…

You still can buy everything for Crowns, right until March. There was nothing risky in getting Crowns (I also bought 35.000 fyi) and really nothing shady about the sale whatsoever.

Lucasl402 · January 11

Seraphayel wrote: »

Some of these arguments are so constructed and fake… the Crown Sale was some kind of scam now? How so? There are three Crown Sales per year and always at the same time…

You still can buy everything for Crowns, right until March. There was nothing risky in getting Crowns (I also bought 35.000 fyi) and really nothing shady about the sale whatsoever.

I'm not understanding something maybe.

Crowns are still going to be a thing after the next update, right? They're not taking crowns away are they? And if they are, what are they replacing them with? How's that going to work if they're replacing them with something different?