@Vulkunne

That is a completely valid concern, and it’s honestly the scariest part of any major software overhaul. When a game has 12 years of content, systems, and spaghetti code piled on top of each other, there is a very real fear that changing the engine could break the unique feel of the game or ruin what already works.

However, modern game development has moved past the era of just overriding the old code and hoping for the best. When studios do engine migrations or massive backend overhauls today, they usually run a hybrid pipeline. They can rebuild and test the core physics and combat systems in a separate environment, ensuring that things like light-attack weaving, animations, and character responsiveness feel exactly the same as they do now.

It’s definitely a high-wire act, and it requires incredible precision. But at the end of the day, doing nothing is also a massive risk. If they don't take that leap, the game will eventually become completely unmaintainable as new hardware comes out and the old engine degrades further. It’s about taking a controlled risk now to secure the game’s survival for the next decade.

@Aislinna

Fair enough, let's agree to disagree on the financial metrics. You are absolutely right that ZOS accountants have the exact data, and at the end of the day, it is their business decision to make.

My main goal was simply to highlight that as a dedicated community, we are actively funding a premium product, and wanting to see that revenue reinvested into a sustainable technological future is a completely reasonable expectation.

Thanks for the conversation, and have a good night as well!

Aislinna wrote: »

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

@Aislinna

That is not how business accounting works. You cannot amortize active live-service revenue over pre-launch development years when the product wasn't even on the market generating sales.

The initial development costs from 2007 to 2014 were capital investments that were cleared and paid off a long time ago within the game's first few successful years.

We are discussing the current financial health of the game in 2026. Evaluating a live-service title's ability to fund a modern upgrade by dragging in pre-launch sunk costs from nearly two decades ago is a massive reach. The reality remains unchanged: the game generates immense monthly revenue right now, and reinvesting in its core technology is standard product lifecycle management.

You mentioned the $2 billion lifetime revenue number, which had to pay off those pre-development costs. If you are only wanting to talk about current financial health, then don't bring up lifetime revenue numbers, bring up current financial numbers that you don't have information about. Anyway, I am sure the accountants at ZOS know more about their accounting numbers than you or I do. If they felt making a major expenditure in re-working the game and engine was worth it, I'm sure they would do it. Have a good night.

Rumor had it prelaunch budget was $200m. I have no idea how accurate that is but they didn't just start with nothing in 2007 obviously.

Anyway, eso is definitely due for a revamp somehow, both engine and server arch. The tech debt is massive and crushing at this point.

I quit after health issues and my main two guilds both disbanding (raid) and leaving the game (pvp). The cyrodiil lag was unacceptable back in 2014-2016 and I could no longer have fun in eso. Add in various rl issues since plus cyro being neglected, and I have only played eso sparsely after my 2013(beta) -2016(live) stint.

I'm rooting hard for ZOS as I loved the game and I want it to succeed. Plus I want an mmo home again! Challenge difficulties have enticed me to quest again at least.

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

Gabriel_H!

If the Vengeance campaign was successfully absorbing the player base and solving the issue, the developers wouldn't have literally just posted a message stating that they are monitoring Gray Host queue times and considering opening Blackreach specifically for Gray Host overflow. The developers themselves openly acknowledge that the GH queues are a major problem right now.

Gray Host isn’t popular due to some "concerted effort" to make it look busy; it’s popular because it runs the traditional, standard ruleset (CP/Proc enabled) that the vast majority of the PvP community builds their characters for. Many players simply do not want to play with the restricted rulesets of other campaigns, which is why they prefer to sit in a 2-hour GH queue instead.

Furthermore, even if Vengeance does see a spike during absolute prime-time hours, the fact that these campaigns hit their population limits so quickly and trigger massive queues just proves the core issue: the population caps per campaign are incredibly low.

The only reason ZOS had to lower the player caps to these levels over the years is because the engine cannot handle more players fighting in the same zone without the simulation completely collapsing. Whether you split players into Gray Host, Vengeance, or Blackreach, the root problem remains the same—the engine limits how many of us can actually play together.

Again, it isn't the engine. It's the ruleset. The servers cannot handle that many players using that ruleset. There are too many calculations. New servers won't fix that. Nothing will fix that except reducing the number of players or reducing the number of calculations.

khajiit can envision countless other things he would rather have development efforts spent on.

@Gabriel_H

But what actually executes the ruleset? The engine code.

You are entirely right that the servers cannot handle that many calculations at once under the current framework. But the reason "nothing will fix that" right now is because the legacy engine is mathematically bottlenecked by single-threaded or poorly optimized sequential processing. It forces the server to calculate thousands of procs, conditions, and AoEs in a single, tight line.

A modern next-gen engine architecture doesn't just make the game look prettier; it fundamentally changes *how* those calculations are distributed. By utilizing an Entity Component System (ECS) and true multi-threading, a modern framework can unpack those heavy player calculations and run them across dozens of CPU cores simultaneously.

Saying "the ruleset is too heavy, so it can never be fixed" is ignoring how modern multiplayer gaming technology has evolved. We don't need to water down the gameplay or slash the player caps forever; we need an engine codebase that is actually capable of handling parallel computing at a 2026 standard.

And again @Gabriel_H

While your explanation of race conditions and thread locks applies to traditional, tightly coupled object-oriented programming, it overlooks how modern concurrent MMO architecture actually handles parallel computing today.

Modern high-performance engines don't just throw random synchronous tasks at worker threads and force the main thread to sit and wait. Instead, they utilize architecture like an Entity Component System (ECS) combined with determinism.

In a modern ECS framework, data is laid out flat in memory tables. The server doesn't process whole "players" sequentially. Instead, it breaks down tasks into isolated, stateless systems. For example:
1. One system calculates positioning and movement.
2. Another system calculates independent passive resource regeneration (stamina/magicka ticks).
3. A separate system handles visual projectile trajectory.

Because these data components are completely isolated from each other in memory, they can be processed across dozens of CPU cores simultaneously without any risk of data corruption or race conditions. The data is only synchronized at the very end of a fixed server tick.

Furthermore, modern spatial partitioning (like advanced server meshing) ensures that even if individual combat actions within a specific group must remain sequential, the server can isolate those calculation groups to dedicated nodes.

Saying that multiplayer actions can *only* be processed sequentially on a single thread is a 2010-era software limitation. Modern parallel computing has solved these architecture challenges, which is exactly why modern next-gen engines can handle massive player populations without choking on a single main thread.

At the end of the day - the amount of "higher ups" you'd have to get into a room and convince the do something like this, the years of work, the amount of resources, I just don't see anyone signing off on it.

The ONLY way I see them doing it is if they want this game to be around for another 10 years and there is literally nothing coming down the road from the studio. There is no doubt ES6 will have a huge impact on ESO and the numbers it generates.

If you're looking for some copium... they have said they are bringing crossplay to ESO. IF I was in a position to do something massive with the engine... and knowing you're going to have crossplay coming... and knowing all the underlying tech debt you've built... I could see a few engineers in the room putting together a very.. VERY good case on why this would be the perfect time to do that change.

However, I just... I really don't see leadership (especially the old ESO leadership who were stuck in their ways and tended to make bad decision after bad decision no disrespect here it just is what it is) singing off on it. The old leadership was reactive, chased trends 5 years too late, etc. I would be shocked if this is coming with crossplay. I'd put the odds at 99.9% it won't happen.

I would love to be proven wrong and none of this is a shot at the devs - just the reality that most studios got caught up in the fortnight/live service hype and chased trends year after year... zeni wasn't the first nor the last.

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

@Gabriel_H

But what actually executes the ruleset? The engine code.

No. Again, that isn't the engine. Lets stick with the car metaphor.

The engine makes the whole thing go. The ruleset is the steering, brakes, lights and indicators.

ZOS have optimised the game code (the ruleset) as much as they can. Without inventing an entirely new programming language that is more efficient than C++ they've taken that as far as it can go.

The servers cannot process efficiently all the calculations the game code is throwing at them. There is no getting around that without improving the speeds of server processors, both single and multi-threaded - which isn't up to ZOS.

So, ZOS are left with two choices: Reduce the population further or revise the ruleset. They went with the latter and offered up Vengeance.

I don't like Vengeance, not least because I believe there was a more elegant solution. Me being picky aside, I feel it is too limiting and can be expanded without affecting performance - because the performance is better, a lot lot better.

So, which do you want? Less people or less calculations?

they'd have to remake the whole game with a new engine. you're also just kicking the problem down the road. The problem isn't the engine it's the lazy handling of devs over the years. Futureproofing systems is not something eso started doing until recently (at least, not strongly). you talk as if you know everything but you should realize that it will take at LEAST 5 years to rewrite the entirety of ESO in a new engine, by which point we're already outdated. It's not about the engine's age. you should be asking for devs to take performance concerns and future proofing more seriously. asking them to remake the whole game with a new engine is just going to get some laughs in their office (tired laughs, people say this *** all the time. but you cant replace the engine in an existing 15+ year old game thats like asking to entirely change the metals used in your PC. sure you can do this but it wont change performance without changing the way the metals are used and it will just take an unfathomable amount of time.)

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

@karthrag_inak

You completely understands that there are many shiny new things Khajiit would like to see in Tamriel!

But consider this: no matter how many beautiful new zones, exciting stories, or fancy styles ZOS brings to the game, it becomes very hard to enjoy them if the ground beneath our paws is constantly lagging.

A strong foundation makes everything else better. If we upgrade the core engine, it means future development for all those other things Khajiit wants will become much easier, faster, and run smoother for everyone. Plus, fewer long queues means more time to spend gold in the taverns! 🙂

never experienced any such problems -shrug-

karthrag_inak wrote: »

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

@karthrag_inak

You completely understands that there are many shiny new things Khajiit would like to see in Tamriel!

But consider this: no matter how many beautiful new zones, exciting stories, or fancy styles ZOS brings to the game, it becomes very hard to enjoy them if the ground beneath our paws is constantly lagging.

A strong foundation makes everything else better. If we upgrade the core engine, it means future development for all those other things Khajiit wants will become much easier, faster, and run smoother for everyone. Plus, fewer long queues means more time to spend gold in the taverns! 🙂

never experienced any such problems -shrug-

@karthrag_inak Then this Khajiit is very lucky to walk on warm sands where the lag does not bite!

But jokes aside, just because you personally haven't experienced it doesn't mean the problem isn't real. The very first post in this thread starts with a direct quote from the ESO development team explicitly stating that they are monitoring the frustrating queue times and performance graphs for Gray Host.

If you mostly play casual PvE, solo content, or questing during off-peak hours, the engine will handle it just fine. But for anyone participating in trials, high-end group content, or prime-time Cyrodiil alliances, the technical limitations are a daily reality confirmed by both the community and ZOS themselves.

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

They weren't saying that ESO would be shut down for 5 years, they're saying it would take that long for the game to be written to a new engine, at which point it'll just be outdated again. Which is a point I was going to make myself; they'd be stuck in a perpetual loop of upgrading the engine because the last one is already outdated. The amount of resources that would take is unrealistic to expect them to spend.

Beyond that, how likely is it they could transfer character data to a new engine? How likely is it that transfer would go over without breaking or corrupting somehow? I can guarantee that if people had to start over a fair number who've been playing for a while would just quit. And then a bunch of resources have been spent on something that will likely tank because a bunch of people didn't bother playing anymore after losing everything.

@Arunei That is a very common fear, but it misunderstands how modern software database architecture and product lifecycles actually work.

First, regarding character data: Player accounts, items, achievements, and Crown Store purchases are stored in SQL/NoSQL server databases—they are completely independent of the game client’s rendering or physics engine. When an MMO migrates its backend code, they aren't erasing the database; they are simply changing the software layer that reads that data. It is the exact same process ZOS already does during database maintenance or database refreshes. No one would lose their characters or have to start over.

Second, the idea of a "perpetual loop of upgrading" is a false premise. A well-designed, modern game engine doesn't become obsolete in 5 years. Engines like Unreal Engine or highly optimized custom C++ frameworks are designed to be modular and scalable. They form a solid technical foundation that lasts for 10 to 15 years through incremental API updates (like moving from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12), without requiring a complete rewrite every time.

The current ESO engine has lasted over a decade. The problem is that it has reached its absolute structural limit and accumulated too much technical debt. Investing in a next-gen architecture now isn't a "waste of resources"—it is the only way to build a foundation that can sustain the next 10 years of content, crossplay, and modern player populations without forcing us into locked, watered-down campaigns.

This is great but where is this magic mmo engine?

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

They weren't saying that ESO would be shut down for 5 years, they're saying it would take that long for the game to be written to a new engine, at which point it'll just be outdated again. Which is a point I was going to make myself; they'd be stuck in a perpetual loop of upgrading the engine because the last one is already outdated. The amount of resources that would take is unrealistic to expect them to spend.

Beyond that, how likely is it they could transfer character data to a new engine? How likely is it that transfer would go over without breaking or corrupting somehow? I can guarantee that if people had to start over a fair number who've been playing for a while would just quit. And then a bunch of resources have been spent on something that will likely tank because a bunch of people didn't bother playing anymore after losing everything.

@Arunei That is a very common fear, but it misunderstands how modern software database architecture and product lifecycles actually work.

First, regarding character data: Player accounts, items, achievements, and Crown Store purchases are stored in SQL/NoSQL server databases—they are completely independent of the game client’s rendering or physics engine. When an MMO migrates its backend code, they aren't erasing the database; they are simply changing the software layer that reads that data. It is the exact same process ZOS already does during database maintenance or database refreshes. No one would lose their characters or have to start over.

Second, the idea of a "perpetual loop of upgrading" is a false premise. A well-designed, modern game engine doesn't become obsolete in 5 years. Engines like Unreal Engine or highly optimized custom C++ frameworks are designed to be modular and scalable. They form a solid technical foundation that lasts for 10 to 15 years through incremental API updates (like moving from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12), without requiring a complete rewrite every time.

The current ESO engine has lasted over a decade. The problem is that it has reached its absolute structural limit and accumulated too much technical debt. Investing in a next-gen architecture now isn't a "waste of resources"—it is the only way to build a foundation that can sustain the next 10 years of content, crossplay, and modern player populations without forcing us into locked, watered-down campaigns.

That makes it sound so easy, when it's not. Engines are not some neat little package that can be swapped in and out - they are messy and they have quirks - especially older engines like this. It would be a massive undertaking and a huge commitment of labor and resources for this studio to switch engines. Given the recent cost-cutting by the parent company, I do not see them committing to any major expenditures like this anytime soon. And again, I don't believe they should. Simply put, there are far better ways to spend time and money developing things for ESO.

Furthermore, using an LLM to construct your posts for you isn't discussing in good faith, language barrier or not. After reading through this thread, it's abundantly clear that this is what you are doing. Present your own ideas and arguments.

Northwold wrote: »

VidmaVirtual wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

They weren't saying that ESO would be shut down for 5 years, they're saying it would take that long for the game to be written to a new engine, at which point it'll just be outdated again. Which is a point I was going to make myself; they'd be stuck in a perpetual loop of upgrading the engine because the last one is already outdated. The amount of resources that would take is unrealistic to expect them to spend.

Beyond that, how likely is it they could transfer character data to a new engine? How likely is it that transfer would go over without breaking or corrupting somehow? I can guarantee that if people had to start over a fair number who've been playing for a while would just quit. And then a bunch of resources have been spent on something that will likely tank because a bunch of people didn't bother playing anymore after losing everything.

@Arunei That is a very common fear, but it misunderstands how modern software database architecture and product lifecycles actually work.

First, regarding character data: Player accounts, items, achievements, and Crown Store purchases are stored in SQL/NoSQL server databases—they are completely independent of the game client’s rendering or physics engine. When an MMO migrates its backend code, they aren't erasing the database; they are simply changing the software layer that reads that data. It is the exact same process ZOS already does during database maintenance or database refreshes. No one would lose their characters or have to start over.

Second, the idea of a "perpetual loop of upgrading" is a false premise. A well-designed, modern game engine doesn't become obsolete in 5 years. Engines like Unreal Engine or highly optimized custom C++ frameworks are designed to be modular and scalable. They form a solid technical foundation that lasts for 10 to 15 years through incremental API updates (like moving from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12), without requiring a complete rewrite every time.

The current ESO engine has lasted over a decade. The problem is that it has reached its absolute structural limit and accumulated too much technical debt. Investing in a next-gen architecture now isn't a "waste of resources"—it is the only way to build a foundation that can sustain the next 10 years of content, crossplay, and modern player populations without forcing us into locked, watered-down campaigns.

This is great but where is this magic mmo engine?

@Northwold There is no "magic," just standard modern software engineering that has evolved massively over the last decade.

When we talk about a next-gen MMO engine today, we look at several highly successful real-world examples and specialized platforms:

1. Unreal Engine 5 (with modern MMO network layers): Unreal Engine 5 natively includes World Partitioning and is being heavily utilized for next-gen massive multiplayer games (like ArcheAge Chronicles or Pax Dei) because its architecture natively handles multi-threaded physics and modern data pipelines.

2. Specialized Backend Frameworks (like SpatialOS / Improbable): Modern MMOs don't just rely on a single out-of-the-box engine; they combine front-end graphics with specialized cloud-based server engines designed specifically to solve the exact calculation bottleneck ESO suffers from. These frameworks dynamically split the computational load of thousands of player interactions across modular cloud nodes in real-time.

3. Custom Next-Gen Frameworks (like New World's Azoth Engine or EVE's Carbon Technology): Amazon built the Azoth Engine from scratch to handle hundreds of players fighting with active physics and hitbox registrations simultaneously in Aeternum without breaking the server node. CCP Games built Carbon to continuously modernize EVE Online's backend over two decades.

The point isn't that ZOS has to go to a store and buy a "magic MMO engine box." The point is that they need to stop incrementally patching a legacy framework that was built in 2012 and instead invest in migrating to a modern, multithreaded backend infrastructure—whether that means developing a next-gen custom framework (which a 2-billion-dollar game can absolutely afford) or adapting industry-standard modular tech. The technology exists and is being used by other studios right now.