Will the Recent ZOS Layoffs Effect the ESO Class Refresh Schedule?

JohnRingo · July 7

This is one of the things that occurred to me today. Reports from affected employees suggest that a significant number of developers involved with content, dungeons, events, and related work were impacted, although the full scope of the restructuring has not been officially detailed.

DK and WW have already received their updates, but remaining classes are still waiting.

Will the class refresh schedule continue largely as planned, be delayed, or be scaled back in scope? Is this the type of work that was likely already far enough along to survive the restructuring, or should players expect priorities to shift toward maintenance and bug fixing instead?

Obviously, if this project goes unfinished or is heavily delayed, there will be serious balance repercussions.

LittleLionLeone · July 7

Warden might be fine, but the rest will probably be pushed back. Won't know for sure until they say.

IZZEFlameLash · July 7

I think it is why they didn't even mention Warden refresh coming. So, probably

tomofhyrule · July 7

Take it with a grain of salt, but Jess did post this on Reddit right after the update post they made:

Source

Having said that, I'm still not holding out hope. It feels like Warden wasn't going to make U51 in the first place considering how we haven't heard a peep about it when things were not actively on fire, and they delayed PTS for some unspecified reason while very pointedly hinting that the reason it needed to delay was something that people were asking a lot about and they couldn't say.

It does seem like the ESO Combat team still has people, so theoretically they could still do that. But we did lose a lot of art/animation/VFX people, so it's really not looking good for more than just shuffling the skills between lines now.

evLRise · July 7

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Take it with a grain of salt, but Jess did post this on Reddit right after the update post they made:

Source

Having said that, I'm still not holding out hope. It feels like Warden wasn't going to make U51 in the first place considering how we haven't heard a peep about it when things were not actively on fire, and they delayed PTS for some unspecified reason while very pointedly hinting that the reason it needed to delay was something that people were asking a lot about and they couldn't say.

It does seem like the ESO Combat team still has people, so theoretically they could still do that. But we did lose a lot of art/animation/VFX people, so it's really not looking good for more than just shuffling the skills between lines now.

Planned and on schedule are 2 completely different things.

Arunei · July 7

We don't know what the schedule is going to be yet. Jessica said they're going to evaluate stuff and then give us a timeline when they have the chance to. Until then the only thing to do is wait.

tomofhyrule · July 7

evLRise wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Take it with a grain of salt, but Jess did post this on Reddit right after the update post they made:

Source

Having said that, I'm still not holding out hope. It feels like Warden wasn't going to make U51 in the first place considering how we haven't heard a peep about it when things were not actively on fire, and they delayed PTS for some unspecified reason while very pointedly hinting that the reason it needed to delay was something that people were asking a lot about and they couldn't say.

It does seem like the ESO Combat team still has people, so theoretically they could still do that. But we did lose a lot of art/animation/VFX people, so it's really not looking good for more than just shuffling the skills between lines now.

Planned and on schedule are 2 completely different things.

It is very obvious that they’re not going to be doing this in the two year window they scheduled. Again, Warden was missing that schedule even before the cuts. There’s no way they’ll release as scheduled any more.

At this point, the question shouldn’t be “will they release as scheduled?”, rather it should be “will they release at all?”

Seraphayel · July 7

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

Also, if they focus on the class reworks and not new content, we could get them faster instead of slower.

But fact is, we don’t know yet.

tomofhyrule · July 7

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

Seraphayel · July 7

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

Radiate77 · July 7

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

Update 51 was pushed back weeks and that is why the PTS is now rolling out on the 29th.

tomofhyrule · July 7

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

You are being pedantic.

For anyone who will only take officially verified ZOS statements: no, there is no indication that anything with the reworks will change in the slightest. However, the original timeline gave dates for Warden, which was to be on PTS on 6 July and Live on 31 August. I’ll let you check for yourself to see if Warden did make it to PTS as scheduled.

There is no official statement that Warden is no longer in U51. But even if Warden is still in U51, it did not release on PTS on time. There is no amount of “well ackschually” that will change the fact that Warden did not release on the actual schedule of yesterday. It was delayed.

Beyond that, the only thing we have is the ESOLive, where they announced an official delay for U51. No reason was given, but it was said it had to do with “the thing people were mentioning in chat,” and the thing people were mentioning in chat was the Warden rework. The obvious implication is that Warden’s rework was delaying the entirety of U51, but the team wasn’t allowed to directly state that.

Eldovar · July 7

What tom said...

There is official confirmation yesterday that roadmaps will be adjusted.

Also consider the fact that a lot of senior key staff was laid off and will have a big impact. Teams need to regroup, replan their work, sometimes knowledge and experience is gone and stuff takes longer to do. All this stuff takes a lot of time to do. And combined with summer holidays and a huge morale drop, I don't expect much in the near future.

NeoniKa · July 7

I think it would be a good idea to stop altering the classes. Or at least leave half of the classes alone so that those who don't want these changes can have a choice.

Seraphayel · July 7

Radiate77 wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

Update 51 was pushed back weeks and that is why the PTS is now rolling out on the 29th.

I know that. But that doesn’t mean that the Warden rework was pushed back whatsoever. Again, it‘s just spreading fake news at the moment.

The PTS was delayed, that’s true. We don’t know why, that’s also true.

Someone said the Warden rework isn’t coming with the U51 update although there hasn’t been an official word on this, so again: fake news as of now.

Seraphayel · July 7

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

You are being pedantic.

For anyone who will only take officially verified ZOS statements: no, there is no indication that anything with the reworks will change in the slightest. However, the original timeline gave dates for Warden, which was to be on PTS on 6 July and Live on 31 August. I’ll let you check for yourself to see if Warden did make it to PTS as scheduled.

There is no official statement that Warden is no longer in U51. But even if Warden is still in U51, it did not release on PTS on time. There is no amount of “well ackschually” that will change the fact that Warden did not release on the actual schedule of yesterday. It was delayed.

Beyond that, the only thing we have is the ESOLive, where they announced an official delay for U51. No reason was given, but it was said it had to do with “the thing people were mentioning in chat,” and the thing people were mentioning in chat was the Warden rework. The obvious implication is that Warden’s rework was delaying the entirety of U51, but the team wasn’t allowed to directly state that.

Is the PTS with U51 online?

CAB_Life · July 7

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

CAB_Life · July 7

Seraphayel wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

Update 51 was pushed back weeks and that is why the PTS is now rolling out on the 29th.

I know that. But that doesn’t mean that the Warden rework was pushed back whatsoever. Again, it‘s just spreading fake news at the moment.

The PTS was delayed, that’s true. We don’t know why, that’s also true.

Someone said the Warden rework isn’t coming with the U51 update although there hasn’t been an official word on this, so again: fake news as of now.

Actually, I didn’t realize it until Spopes pointed it out on stream with an ESO dev slide, but Warden was always mentioned as coming in September.

rlindsey912nub18_ESO · July 7

I’m not waiting even longer to get class refresh when most of the community told them one at a time was a bad way to the class refresh o well good luck to those of you who will stick around looking at maybe 3 or 4 years for those changes if the game is still around

BXR_Lonestar · July 7

JohnRingo wrote: »

This is one of the things that occurred to me today. Reports from affected employees suggest that a significant number of developers involved with content, dungeons, events, and related work were impacted, although the full scope of the restructuring has not been officially detailed.

DK and WW have already received their updates, but remaining classes are still waiting.

Will the class refresh schedule continue largely as planned, be delayed, or be scaled back in scope? Is this the type of work that was likely already far enough along to survive the restructuring, or should players expect priorities to shift toward maintenance and bug fixing instead?

Obviously, if this project goes unfinished or is heavily delayed, there will be serious balance repercussions.

If the delays impact the refresh, then PVP IMO is going to be dead. The meta is clearly settling in and is becoming so unfun and toxic to play right now that my entire guild of pvp players have spent the evenings playing other games. It's just not fun to constantly fight other groups all of whom are 3-5 dk's +, maybe 1-2 werewolves, and a couple of healers (if they have one at all), and if not small sweaty comp groups like that, basically comp zergs of 3-4 full groups of players all running heavy on shielders and healers.

PVP is in the worst state it has been in in a long time IMO, and if we're stuck with this meta, it will be the death of the game mode for many players including myself, as we'll shift our focus towards other things.

I will say this: If layoffs do impact the rework schedule, then Zos needs to rethink its approach to watering down the effects of subclassing by simply removing it. Remember that Subclassing is the reason why they're doing the rework - it impacted the game in negative ways they didn't foresee, and so they were working to water it down by improving the strength of pureclass characters. If the rework process is half-baked because they can't dedicate the resources, then stop spending resources on the rework and just eliminate subclassing altogether, and THEN sit down and do a proper rework patch that updates all the classes all at once if you want.

In the short to intermediate term, it will suck, but in the long term, doing this will save the company money, and launching the class rework for all classes all at once is how the rework SHOULD be done to avoid situations like we have today.

BXR_Lonestar · July 7

CAB_Life wrote: »

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I wonder how much money they've spent working on the class rework when they could have saved themselves a pile of money just admitting subclassing was a mistake and undoing it...

Firstmep · July 7

CAB_Life wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Warden was not missing that schedule, I don’t know why y’all always come up with these takes that are simply not true.

The original schedule was that Warden would be on PTS on July 6. If Warden is not on PTS as of yesterday, it has missed that schedule.

They delayed U51 PTS for some unspecified reason, true. But - whether Warden was the reason or not - Warden is delayed and will not release on 31 August like originally planned. Ergo, Warden is not coming on schedule.

They outright stated Warden rework is not launching with U51? If so, where? Because I missed that official information then.

Update 51 was pushed back weeks and that is why the PTS is now rolling out on the 29th.

I know that. But that doesn’t mean that the Warden rework was pushed back whatsoever. Again, it‘s just spreading fake news at the moment.

The PTS was delayed, that’s true. We don’t know why, that’s also true.

Someone said the Warden rework isn’t coming with the U51 update although there hasn’t been an official word on this, so again: fake news as of now.

Actually, I didn’t realize it until Spopes pointed it out on stream with an ESO dev slide, but Warden was always mentioned as coming in September.

It's the pts that got delayed, but afaik we don't know if that delay is gonna affect u51 release. And we may never know with the layoffs now, it may well get pushed further back regardless.

Estin · July 7

tomofhyrule wrote: »

evLRise wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Take it with a grain of salt, but Jess did post this on Reddit right after the update post they made:

Source

Having said that, I'm still not holding out hope. It feels like Warden wasn't going to make U51 in the first place considering how we haven't heard a peep about it when things were not actively on fire, and they delayed PTS for some unspecified reason while very pointedly hinting that the reason it needed to delay was something that people were asking a lot about and they couldn't say.

It does seem like the ESO Combat team still has people, so theoretically they could still do that. But we did lose a lot of art/animation/VFX people, so it's really not looking good for more than just shuffling the skills between lines now.

Planned and on schedule are 2 completely different things.

It is very obvious that they’re not going to be doing this in the two year window they scheduled. Again, Warden was missing that schedule even before the cuts. There’s no way they’ll release as scheduled any more.

At this point, the question shouldn’t be “will they release as scheduled?”, rather it should be “will they release at all?”

So, the more that I read into the layoffs, the more that I'm convinced that Warden was not the cause of the PTS delay despite what was mentioned in the stream a couple of weeks ago. We knew the PTS was going to be July 6th as early as May 20th. You can see this for yourself for the May dev stream. The PTS was also most likely planned for July 6th much earlier than we knew it too.

It wasn't until June 10th, the earliest report that I've found, that Xbox was planning massive layoffs in part of its Xbox reset. Everything I've read mentioned it would happen in early July with some even saying July 6th as the day got closer. 3200 layoffs is a lot of people, and I'm certain ZOS knew they were going to be hit hard, they just did not know who would get hit. They also most likely suspected that it would happen on July 6th too since the new Fiscal year for Xbox/Microsoft starts on the 1st of July always. The 1st was on a Wednesday, but that is too early to do the layoffs. Microsoft has usually done their cuts within the first few days after the 1st, but since the the 2nd was too close to the holiday weekend that started on Friday July 3rd, and since nothing can be done over the weekend, the next best date for the layoffs would be July 6th, the same day that the PTS was set to release.

It makes perfect sense for ZOS to decide to delay the PTS by 3 weeks because of this incoming event. Could you imagine if they released the PTS yesterday? They would not be able to handle the standard PTS cycle with the restructuring they knew they would have to do. What's actually coming in PTS 51? Solo dungeons, the hybridization changes, new UI features, Sages Vault, the Warden refresh, and possibly Crimson Veldt and Sheogorath quests. That is a lot of work to handle, and there is no way they would have been able to do anything for the Week 2 PTS changes and potentially Week 3 with the cuts they knew that was coming.

So I will say cut them some slack on the Warden refresh. They knew they would need time to regroup, and the best thing they could've done was push back the PTS launch by a few weeks to give them enough breathing room for restructuring and planning for the future as they prepared for the layoffs. The release of U51 PTS is no doubt the lowest priority right now as they figure out who would be able to fill the gaps in the dev team. A lot of animators were laid off as well as some sound designers. That is definitely going to throw a wrench in the refreshes as well as any other content that needs them. The combat team as of now looks to be fully in tact, but there is still another 1600 layoffs looming over them that would happen anywhere in the next 6-12 months. I hope they will be spared from those, but the likelihood of that is low.

Radiate77 · July 7

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I wonder how much money they've spent working on the class rework when they could have saved themselves a pile of money just admitting subclassing was a mistake and undoing it...

This rework has nothing to do with Subclassing, and everything to do with the fact that the skill lines are not balanced to begin with, and how heavily outdated the animations are.

The only mistake with Subclassing was not fully committing to it, and instead creating these nonsense Class Mastery passives that should have a “Monster’s Only” tag.

Estin · July 7

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I wonder how much money they've spent working on the class rework when they could have saved themselves a pile of money just admitting subclassing was a mistake and undoing it...

They said they started working on DK in August 2025, so the idea of the class refreshes was most likely not in response to subclassing. It was probably something that was already planned for a while, especially since there have been numerous complaints that the combat in the game feels floaty and classes like warden lacking a consistent theme long before we knew Subclassing would be a thing. Some of these complaints can even be seen in the pain point thread. The class refreshes very well may have happened even if we never got subclassing. At most the damage ceiling wouldn't have been as high as it is for DK.

tomofhyrule · July 7

Estin wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I wonder how much money they've spent working on the class rework when they could have saved themselves a pile of money just admitting subclassing was a mistake and undoing it...

They said they started working on DK in August 2025, so the idea of the class refreshes was most likely not in response to subclassing. It was probably something that was already planned for a while, especially since there have been numerous complaints that the combat in the game feels floaty and classes like warden lacking a consistent theme long before we knew Subclassing would be a thing. Some of these complaints can even be seen in the pain point thread. The class refreshes very well may have happened even if we never got subclassing. At most the damage ceiling wouldn't have been as high as it is for DK.

And yet Subclassing released in June 2025, so before they started working on the refreshes. The timeline is allowing for “refreshes was a response to Subclassing,” and they even acknowledged it in the article about the refreshes that “As it stands, subclassing is objectively stronger than “pure” classing by a large margin for several reasons.”
(Source: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69039)

This suggests that the refresh is, at least in part, a response to Subclassing.

What DK’s refresh didn’t fully incorporate was the Class surveys, since they ran through September 2025 and they had already started fixing DK in August.

Seraphayel · July 7

Class Masteries are the response to Subclassing

Estin · July 7

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Estin wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

It should be their sole priority. Get it all out and done in 6 months then move back to content. The combat system is literally unfinished atm. That’s inexcusable for a decade-year old game facing additional market and internal pressures and will lead to more failures and cuts because it will impact profitability. I’m sure it already has. The aforementioned is unpleasant to even say, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I wonder how much money they've spent working on the class rework when they could have saved themselves a pile of money just admitting subclassing was a mistake and undoing it...

They said they started working on DK in August 2025, so the idea of the class refreshes was most likely not in response to subclassing. It was probably something that was already planned for a while, especially since there have been numerous complaints that the combat in the game feels floaty and classes like warden lacking a consistent theme long before we knew Subclassing would be a thing. Some of these complaints can even be seen in the pain point thread. The class refreshes very well may have happened even if we never got subclassing. At most the damage ceiling wouldn't have been as high as it is for DK.

And yet Subclassing released in June 2025, so before they started working on the refreshes. The timeline is allowing for “refreshes was a response to Subclassing,” and they even acknowledged it in the article about the refreshes that “As it stands, subclassing is objectively stronger than “pure” classing by a large margin for several reasons.”
(Source: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69039)

This suggests that the refresh is, at least in part, a response to Subclassing.

What DK’s refresh didn’t fully incorporate was the Class surveys, since they ran through September 2025 and they had already started fixing DK in August.

That's why I said at most the damage ceiling wouldn't have been as high as it is for DK. If subclassing never happened, the DK rework wouldn't need to have inflated damage or resource gen. It would still be the same as it is now visually and skill wise, just more in line with the power scaling pre U46. If anything is a direct response to subclassing, it's the class masteries, and as we can see, it only took them 1 patch cycle to come up with it.

katanagirl1 · July 8

This makes a lot of sense @Estin. Thanks for posting.

IZZEFlameLash · July 8

Eldovar wrote: »

What tom said...

There is official confirmation yesterday that roadmaps will be adjusted.

Also consider the fact that a lot of senior key staff was laid off and will have a big impact. Teams need to regroup, replan their work, sometimes knowledge and experience is gone and stuff takes longer to do. All this stuff takes a lot of time to do. And combined with summer holidays and a huge morale drop, I don't expect much in the near future.

Here's hoping class reworks are put into the front and possibly release 2 at a time. Seems like the most manageable and yet most visible value creation for the game given the current size of the team now.

SneaK · July 8

Not saying it to be rude, but maybe some new faces will show up and deliver on time or early considering the atmosphere there seems to be screaming for immediate action.