They do seem to do everything in their power to displease, don't they? *worried*

See and that is why I made this suggestion along with the timeframes for weekly updates long ago when it was still set to "sundays" among others. Because just like you said, OP, there are some fundamental and quintessential things that have proven time and time and time again to be in place for good reasons.

A very quick overview..

* Weekly maintenances - Tuesday and Thursday early mornings, big content updates on the tuesday window (I understand ZeniMax probably meant it well and wanted us to be able to enjoy Craglorn this weekend.. but that's sadly not how it works with huge patches)

* Patchnotes - Don't put in stealth buffs/nerfs. Players will always find out and then be outraged about it. Just say why a change is made and everyone can try and cope with it

* ETAs - While being a potentially dangerous thing, it's good to at least give very basic ETA's on downtimes, just make sure you update them when unpredicted changes happen and delay or shorten it.

* Communication is key - There will always be whiners and haters. But if you communicate well and often enough, those will not have the chance to sway an even larger amount of people with their attitudes and thus reduce the txocitiy of the forums which then again creates a positive effect for the entire community (self-assuring behaviour)

* Don't be afraid - While it may seem like a bad move from the perspective of a CEO, it's actually usually working very well to simply admit a mistake and even explain why it has been made. This makes you appear human and in-touch, it increases transparency and thus makes people bond with you outside of the actual product as well. We've all made mistakes in our lives. It's admitting them and changing them which is to be admired.

* Reward your CS - Encourage them to take responsibility but also reward when they do. I don't know the inner workings of ZeniMax but this is something I really would like to add as my little "bonus advice". I've been in the field of CS for a long time myself and people usually respond well if you reward them for taking responsibility, this can be as simple as telling someone "thank you" in person when they've delivered a good report on what's currently bugging people but can also be implemented in a gratification process e.g. The reason why this is so important is that, especially in the gaming world, you are selling a product - repeatedly so - to the same customer base over and over again. That's fine. That's a subscription model. But that is also why the CS is even more important than in regular business models. If someone buys a pair of shoes and is dissatisfied, he won't buy them again. If someone unsubs your game, you miss out future payments and often they will spread the word online about the reasons leading to it.

There would be more, but I don't want to come across too strongly here. I am not unsatisfied with ESO or ZeniMax by the way. I just sincerely try to shed some insight and feedback on it.

The wheel has not to be invented anew - I love the approach at trying to find "new ways" for a MMO and ESO is successful at that for me, but a few basics are simply that: basics. Like I can't write if I don't know any letters.