This is a longer reflection, so feel free to read in parts.

Before I begin, I want to make a few things clear.

Part 1:

First, this is not intended to be a complaint thread, a nostalgia post, or a declaration that my perspective is the correct one. It is simply a critique and a reflection from someone who has played ESO on and off since launch. THIS POST WILL BE IN AN ESSAY FORMAT

Second, I wrote this myself. I did use AI to help with grammatical structure, articulation, and organisation. The ideas, experiences, opinions, and observations are my own. I chose to use AI because I wanted the post to be as cohesive, direct, and universal as possible so that people could engage with the ideas being discussed rather than get distracted by how they were expressed.
Most importantly, I am not presenting any of this as an absolute truth. These are observations based on my own experiences over many years of playing the game, participating in PvE and PvP, running a guild, teaching newer players, and being involved in the community.
For me, this is ultimately about integrity more than anything else. It is about trying to have an honest discussion regarding ESO's strengths, weaknesses, community, progression systems, and long term direction. I still believe ESO is one of the most unique MMOs ever made, which is precisely why I think these discussions are worth having.
During the periods when I stepped away from ESO, I spent time in other MMOs as well. I played games such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and several others over the years, particularly during the COVID period. Having experienced a variety of MMO communities and progression systems, I still believe ESO remains one of the most unique MMOs ever made.

What always distinguished ESO for me was that it felt like an Elder Scrolls game first and an MMO second. Build freedom, experimentation, open ended character progression, and player creativity were central to its identity. The combat system remains one of the most unique aspects of ESO. Whether people love or hate light attack weaving is a separate discussion. The point is that ESO developed its own identity. Active resource management, weaving, bar swapping, sustain, buffs, debuffs, positioning, encounter awareness, and build construction all combine to create something distinct. The same applies to character building. If a new player opens their character sheet, they are presented with a surprising amount of depth. Different damage types, penetration, critical chance, critical damage, recovery, resistances, status effects, proc interactions, class passives, weapon passives, champion points, gear bonuses, and progression systems all interact with one another. There is a level of complexity beneath the surface that rewards experimentation and learning.
I do not think ESO's systems are perfect. I do think they are unique, and that uniqueness is worth preserving.

Part 2:

I was also actively involved in the community. I ran a guild for a period of time and spent a significant amount of time helping newer players learn both PvE and PvP. I taught fundamentals, helped people understand builds, sustain, mechanics, rotations, progression, and generally tried to create an environment where people could improve without feeling excluded.
That experience probably shapes my perspective. When I look at ESO, I do not just look at gear, balance changes, or progression systems. I look at how those systems influence the way players interact with one another and the kind of community that develops around them.
For me, the most important part of any MMO is not the gear, the combat system, the score pushing, or even the content itself. It is the community that forms around those things. The social culture that develops within an MMO is arguably its most important feature because it influences how people learn, progress, cooperate, and ultimately whether they continue playing.
I say this as someone who has participated in endgame content. I have done trifectas. I have pushed difficult content. I have played PvP. Some of my favourite experiences in ESO came from four player content and arenas such as Blackrose Prison. I have no issue with optimisation, difficult content, score pushing, or players pursuing high performance. Those things have always been part of MMOs.
My concern is not that ESO has changed. Any MMO that survives for more than a decade has to change.
My concern is whether some of the things that originally encouraged mentorship, experimentation, player development, self sufficiency, cooperation, and community building have become less central to the experience than they once were.
I also want to be careful not to overstate this point.
Mentorship still exists. Teaching communities still exist. There are excellent guilds and players who dedicate enormous amounts of time to helping others learn the game, and I think they deserve recognition for that.
In many ways, those communities represent some of the very best aspects of ESO.
My argument is not that these communities have disappeared. My concern is that they feel less central to the broader culture than they once did. The emphasis often appears to be placed more heavily on optimisation, progression systems, efficiency, and measurable performance than on player development and mentorship.
At the same time, I do not think every community should function the same way. One of the strengths of an MMO is that players create their own cultures within it. Competitive score pushing groups, casual social guilds, teaching guilds, roleplaying communities, PvP guilds, trading guilds, and everything in between all contribute to the overall health of the game.
Those smaller communities create a larger culture together.
What I am suggesting is not that every guild should become a teaching guild. Rather, I think there is value in ensuring that the game continues to encourage environments where learning, mentorship, experimentation, and player development remain visible and valued alongside optimisation and progression.
I also think there is a delicate balance to be found between supporting self sufficient solo play and maintaining healthy reasons for players to come together. One of ESO's strengths has always been that players could enjoy the game in different ways. The challenge is maintaining that freedom while still encouraging meaningful interaction and community building.
For me, that balance is important because community does not emerge automatically. It emerges from the incentives, systems, and culture that encourage players to engage with one another. When those systems support mentorship, cooperation, and shared experiences, the entire game benefits from it.

Part 3:

I also want to acknowledge that many changes over the years have been genuinely positive. Transmutation, reconstruction, account wide improvements, accessibility features, and numerous quality of life changes solved real frustrations that existed in earlier versions of the game. I would not want to go back to farming a Maelstrom weapon only to receive the wrong trait and have to start all over again. Many of these improvements were healthy for the game and made it more accessible to a wider audience.
My concern is not with any one individual system. It is with the cumulative effect of many systems and the culture that has developed around them.
One thing I often hear is that older ESO was not grindy. I do not think that is entirely true. We farmed Burning Spellweave in City of Ash. We collected monster sets. We chased specific traits. We collected Undaunted keys. We farmed Maelstrom weapons. We acquired sustain sets when they were necessary. There was always a grind.
The difference, at least from my perspective, was the culture surrounding that progression.
Back then, if somebody wanted to improve, the focus was often on helping them become a better player. Guilds would craft Hunding's Rage, Julianos, or Twice Born Star for newer players. People would explain mechanics. Players would help each other learn. There was a sense that progression was connected to understanding the game rather than simply completing a checklist.
Veteran Maelstrom Arena became a rite of passage for many players. It was not perfect, and plenty of people disliked it, but the reason people encouraged others to do it was because it taught fundamentals. It taught sustain, positioning, awareness, survival, self sufficiency, and damage optimisation. It forced players to engage with the game's mechanics and understand their class.
The value of Maelstrom was not simply the weapon at the end. The value was what players learned in the process.
The rite of passage today often feels different.
Instead of being encouraged to develop mastery, players are frequently encouraged to collect a list of approved sets, complete multiple progression systems, farm normal trials, and provide a parse before they are considered ready for content. Whether the content itself actually requires those numbers is another discussion entirely. I have seen situations where players are expected to produce damage far beyond what is necessary to clear the content.
To me, the focus has gradually shifted from demonstrating mastery of gameplay to demonstrating ownership of gear and completion of systems.
Again, this is not an absolute statement. There are still excellent guilds and communities that teach players properly. I am simply describing a trend that I have observed over time.
I also think ESO has gradually adopted some progression philosophies commonly found in more traditional MMOs. I am not saying ESO has become those games. What I am saying is that progression increasingly revolves around acquiring specific gear, completing specific systems, and following increasingly established pathways of optimisation.
Ironically, one of ESO's greatest strengths was that it never felt entirely like those games.
I have also noticed a broader cultural shift towards efficiency.
Power levelling, Skyreach runs, carries, and shortcuts have always existed. That is not new. What feels different is how much of the conversation now revolves around reaching the destination as quickly as possible.
ESO contains an enormous amount of story content, yet there often feels like very little incentive to engage with it beyond completion. Even with zone guides and quality of life improvements, the new player experience can still feel disconnected from the systems that actually matter later. The tutorial introduces some fundamentals, but much of what players eventually learn comes from external guides, Discord servers, websites, and community resources.
Ironically, one of the best additions in recent years has been the optional difficulty system for questing. It allows veteran players to experience story content with a meaningful level of challenge. I would personally like to see more systems that encourage players to experience content together rather than simply moving through increasingly efficient progression pathways.
The same can be said for systems such as Scribing. On paper, I think Scribing is a great idea. In practice, it becomes another layer added on top of numerous existing systems. Individually, most of these systems make sense. Together, they create an increasing amount of maintenance for players who want to stay current.
None of this means the old system was perfect or that the current system is fundamentally flawed. My concern is simply that progression appears to have become increasingly system driven, while the importance of player development and mastery feels less central than it once did.
For me, the question is not whether progression should exist. The question is whether progression systems are helping players learn the game, or whether they are increasingly becoming goals in and of themselves.

Part 4:

The distinction between Magicka and Stamina builds was once much clearer. There were certainly dominant metas and balance issues, but the foundations of gameplay remained focused on sustain, weaving, resource management, and understanding your class.
There were periods where this balance broke down. Morrowind is probably one of the clearest examples. Heavy attack builds, extremely high Minor Vulnerability uptime, and the dominance of Sorcerers and pet Sorcerers created a meta that many players felt reduced the importance of weaving and active gameplay. Elseweyr brought further shifts with Necromancers and powerful stamina focused setups. Every era has had balance issues.
That is not new.
What feels different now is the scale of the power creep.
Damage numbers have reached levels that would have seemed absurd in earlier versions of the game. Players are exceeding 170,000 DPS on trial dummies. Older content is being completed at speeds that were once unimaginable. Content that was originally designed around significantly lower damage expectations can now be cleared with levels of performance that would have been considered extraordinary years ago.
The issue is not simply that players are stronger. The issue is that community expectations often rise alongside those numbers.
As damage increases, optimisation becomes more important, gear becomes more important, and community expectations can become increasingly disconnected from the actual requirements of the content itself. I have seen situations where players are expected to provide damage that far exceeds what is necessary to successfully complete the content they are applying for.
Hybridisation is another example of something that is both positive and complicated.
Philosophically, I think hybridisation fits ESO perfectly. Elder Scrolls has always been about freedom, experimentation, and creating characters that do not fit neatly into predefined categories. In that sense, hybridisation feels like a natural evolution of the series.
I know there are players who preferred the clearer distinction between Magicka and Stamina builds, and I understand those arguments. There was a stronger sense of class and resource identity during certain periods of the game's history.
At the same time, I think hybridisation has opened up possibilities that fit the Elder Scrolls philosophy much more naturally. It allows players to experiment, create unusual builds, and approach character development in more flexible ways.
The challenge is that hybridisation does not exist in isolation.
It exists alongside increasingly powerful gear sets, progression systems, optimisation culture, and growing performance expectations. While hybridisation increases freedom in theory, players are often funnelled towards a relatively small number of highly effective builds in practice.
I do not think hybridisation itself is the problem.
I think the interaction between hybridisation, power creep, optimisation culture, and increasingly powerful gear sets creates unintended consequences.
In PvE, this often manifests as players feeling pressured towards a relatively small pool of classes, gear combinations, and playstyles that are considered optimal.
In PvP, the results can be even more noticeable. Greater build flexibility can create interesting possibilities, but it can also contribute to situations where certain combinations become disproportionately effective.
To be clear, I am not arguing that balance was ever perfect in earlier versions of ESO. It never was. Every era had dominant builds, and every era had players pushing the boundaries of what was possible.
What concerns me is not that powerful builds exist.
What concerns me is the extent to which power creep, optimisation, and community expectations increasingly shape how players engage with the game.
For me, one of ESO's greatest strengths has always been the ability to experiment, learn, and discover solutions through gameplay. My concern is that as systems become more complex and expectations become more rigid, some of that experimentation becomes less visible within the broader culture.
Again, this is not an argument against progression, powerful builds, or player optimisation.
It is simply an observation that there is a delicate balance between encouraging creativity and encouraging conformity, and I think that balance becomes harder to maintain as power creep continues to increase over time.

Part 5:

On the PvP side, my concerns are somewhat different.
PvP has never been perfectly balanced. Every era had dominant builds. Bat Swarm vampires, proc metas, heavy attack metas, and many others have come and gone throughout ESO's history. That is simply part of MMO design. Players will always find strong combinations, and metas will always evolve.
Because of that, balance itself is not my primary concern.
What concerns me more is the combination of current balance extremes and long standing performance issues.
Some current builds, particularly certain Werewolf setups, Pulse based Sorcerer builds, and some recent Dragonknight interactions, feel unusually dominant even by ESO standards. Every era has had powerful builds, but the current environment often feels less interactive and less dependent on player decision making than many previous metas.
That does not mean these issues cannot be addressed through future balance passes. Historically, dominant builds eventually change. Metas shift. Classes are adjusted. New systems are introduced.
What concerns me more is the foundation those balance discussions are taking place on.
Cyrodiil remains one of the most ambitious features ESO has ever attempted. The large scale alliance warfare that originally drew inspiration from games such as Dark Age of Camelot remains one of the defining aspects of the game. The concept itself was never the problem. In many ways, it is still one of the most compelling ideas in the MMO genre.
The problem is that performance concerns have existed for so long that they have become part of the expected experience.
Ability delay, lag, skill responsiveness, server performance, and large scale combat issues have been discussed for years. Most long term players know exactly what people mean when these topics are raised because they have been part of the conversation for such a long time.
My criticism is not that these issues have never been acknowledged.
Over the years there have been discussions, tests, campaigns, and various attempts to improve performance. The concern is that from a player perspective, the end result often feels largely unchanged.
At a certain point, acknowledgement alone stops being enough.
Cyrodiil has been one of ESO's flagship features since launch. Imperial City remains one of the most unique PvE and PvP environments in the MMO genre. Both are capable of creating experiences that very few games can replicate.
When the same issues remain major topics of discussion for over a decade, it becomes increasingly difficult for players to view them as temporary problems.
Whether the causes are technical limitations, engine constraints, network infrastructure, resource allocation, or something else entirely is difficult for players to know. Most players are not engineers. Most players are not developers.
What players do know is the experience they have when they log in.
A dominant build can eventually be adjusted.
Performance problems affect everyone.
This is why I view long term performance concerns as more important than any individual PvP meta. Strong builds come and go. The health of the environment they exist within is what ultimately matters.
I also think Imperial City deserves special mention.
Even after all these years, Imperial City remains one of the most interesting ideas ESO has ever produced. The combination of PvE and PvP creates a dynamic environment that very few MMOs have successfully replicated. There is always tension. There is always risk. There is always the possibility of meaningful interaction between players and the world itself.
Yet it often feels like there is very little incentive for players to engage with it compared to other areas of the game.
For a feature that remains one of ESO's most unique achievements, it often feels underutilised relative to its potential.
I have similar concerns regarding battlegrounds, particularly for newer players.
When I returned, I noticed what appeared to be significant scaling issues at lower levels. Characters at lower levels often seemed to have dramatically fewer resources than higher level players who also benefited from additional attributes, skill points, passives, and experience.
Some of those players may simply be experienced veterans on alternate characters. That has always existed and is not necessarily a problem by itself.
The concern is the experience of a genuinely new player entering PvP for the first time.
For a game that has spent years improving accessibility in other areas, the battleground experience at lower levels can feel surprisingly unforgiving and, at times, difficult to understand.
Again, none of these concerns exist in isolation.
Balance concerns, battleground scaling concerns, Imperial City participation concerns, and Cyrodiil performance concerns all contribute to a broader question regarding the long term health of ESO's PvP environment.
My concern is not that PvP is beyond saving. Far from it.
My concern is that some of the most important conversations surrounding PvP today are often the same conversations that players were having years ago.
For a game that has achieved so much over more than a decade, I think it is reasonable to expect continued attention towards some of these foundational issues, particularly when they involve systems that remain central to ESO's identity.


Final Part:

Ultimately, I do not think ESO is a bad game. Far from it.
I still believe it is one of the most unique MMOs ever created.
I would not have spent this much time thinking about it, discussing it, teaching it, or returning to it over the years if I did not care about it.
My concern is simply that over time the game has accumulated more systems, more progression pathways, more optimisation requirements, and more power creep, while some of the elements that originally encouraged mentorship, mastery, experimentation, cooperation, and community building feel less central to the overall experience than they once did.
That does not mean those things have disappeared.
Teaching communities still exist. Helpful guilds still exist. Players continue to mentor one another. Communities continue to form around shared interests, whether that is roleplaying, trading, PvP, score pushing, housing, teaching, or simply enjoying the game together.
In many ways, those communities represent the very best aspects of ESO.
Nor am I suggesting that every guild should become a teaching guild or that every player should approach the game the same way. One of the strengths of an MMO is that people create their own cultures within it. Those smaller communities contribute to a broader culture that is constantly evolving.
Any MMO that survives for more than a decade has to evolve.
I am not suggesting ESO should return to 2014, 2016, or any other specific period in its history. Every era had strengths, weaknesses, balance issues, and design decisions that players disagreed with.
Nor am I suggesting that everything was better in the past.
Many of the improvements ESO has received over the years have been genuinely positive. Accessibility has improved. Quality of life has improved. Build flexibility has improved. The game has become more approachable in many ways than it was at launch.
My hope is not that ESO returns to an earlier version of itself.
My hope is simply that as the game continues to evolve, the systems, incentives, and community culture continue to support the things that made ESO special in the first place.
Mentorship.
Experimentation.
Cooperation.
Mastery.
Community building.
Meaningful player interaction.
I think there is a delicate balance to be found between supporting self sufficient solo play and maintaining healthy reasons for players to come together.
Between accessibility and mastery.
Between optimisation and creativity.
Between progression and community.
ESO remains one of the few MMOs capable of striking that balance because many of those foundations already exist within the game.
That is ultimately why I am writing this.
Not because I think ESO is a bad game.
Not because I think the developers do not care.
And not because I think the past was perfect.
I am writing this because I still think ESO is worth caring about.
I think ESO's community matters.
I think ESO's culture matters.
And I think discussions about progression, mentorship, PvP, community building, and long term game health are ultimately discussions about preserving what makes the game unique.
I do not think any of these observations are particularly original. Most of them have been discussed by the community for years. I am simply offering my perspective as someone who has played since launch, stepped away several times, returned again, and reflected on what has changed.
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps others have had very different experiences.
That is completely fine.
These are simply my observations, my experiences, and my reflections after more than a decade of playing The Elder Scrolls Online on and off.
I would be genuinely interested to hear what others think.

Thank you so much for reading, and remember to "light attack weave, drink your dots, and drop your pots!" Hehe (not original my friend says this)