No more Chapters for ESO confirmed: RIP 💀

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

So, new ESO Studio Director Dev letter tells that no more yearly Chapters, but small updates anymore. So here we are. Hate to be the "i told you so", but yeah..

Link to official Studio Director Letter from ZOS:

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/67321

What are your thoughts? Feelings?

This is how games literally enter the maintenance mode. So where are the "Game is biggest MMO on market" dudes now? I am giddy with anticipation while waiting for your explanations this time. :)

[Nain]

Originally posted by Sofia♡:

Literal maintenance mode. As in yes, dead game. Compared to other active mmo games with steady schedule of yearly content with actual dates and what comes on what quarter.

i have to disagree here a bit. if you want to see what true maintenance mode mmos look like then check out anarchy online, age of conan, or secret world legends.
none of those games got any content added in the past years. none. not even cosmetic updates for yearly events like haloween or christmas. that is true maintenance mode!
when the beancounters dont even care to throw in some cheap cosmetics for cash!

with eso in its current state and whatever the future holds, lets just wait and see. on face value, they said "more content to come, but at a slower pace and with a different delivery".

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

Originally posted by Sofia♡:

Because content and dates about is is ALL that matters. This was just announcement and in april comes next announcement. No content. Next announcement. Again, let that sink in. That is literal maintenance mode.

Compare to previous years, Q1 Dungeon DLC 1, Q2 Chapter, Q3 Dungeon DLC2, Q4 Mini zone end of chapter story.

2024 Half of that.

2025 No dates for anything. And at April will come Announcement (no content, an announcement after announcement of no chapters). If this does not have someone worried, not sure what to say.

As said, you can explain all you want, but facts are facts. They did not publish any dates for content for next year, because they literally don't have it. If they had, you know they would have given dates to calm people who said about maintenance mode and dying game. All they talk is seasons and tiny updates. And no dates. Literal maintenance mode. As in yes, dead game. Compared to other active mmo games with steady schedule of yearly content with actual dates and what comes on what quarter.

they literally are updating old graphics for free for the base game. that isnt maint mode. cry more. im not gonna track player count numbers like i have ocd. ill let zenimax worry about their bottom line and ill continue to play the wonderful game theyve produced and ive thoroughly enjoyed.

Cool, have fun buying Crates on Crown Crate Seasons for Battlepass progress in future. :) I sense a lucky aura my frrrriend and all you need is to purrrchase another crate!

[AmaiAmai]

lmao seeing someone think that upgrading graphics means a game isn't in maint mode.

This isn't the early 2000s, you can upgrade graphics using AI tools. Get real.

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by Nain:

Originally posted by Sofia♡:

Literal maintenance mode. As in yes, dead game. Compared to other active mmo games with steady schedule of yearly content with actual dates and what comes on what quarter.

i have to disagree here a bit. if you want to see what true maintenance mode mmos look like then check out anarchy online, age of conan, or secret world legends.
none of those games got any content added in the past years. none. not even cosmetic updates for yearly events like haloween or christmas. that is true maintenance mode!
when the beancounters dont even care to throw in some cheap cosmetics for cash!

with eso in its current state and whatever the future holds, lets just wait and see. on face value, they said "more content to come, but at a slower pace and with a different delivery".

It's the first step, if you look what 2023 had in content, then 2024 what this year has/had. And next year 2025.. that has no dates announced or 100% confirmed anything. So.. with that trajectory it is quite easy to do the math.

Them cancelling their own 10 year anniversary Live Event just suddenly at same time has all the signs of being in financial trouble all over it. Anyone who is not in denial can feel it.

I did play ESO for 5 years. I gave feedback probably 1000 posts during Beta servers. Always to no use. They always did bad changes. Here we are. You think they do not manage to screw up even the maintenance mode? Only shot they got is now to go full free2play model. If done right it can save them. But do i trust them to get even that right?

[Swans]

Originally posted by Sofia♡:

Originally posted by Swans:

Haha, well, it all comes down to personality types ;-) Whenever I complete one of those 'personality type' psychometric sessions, I am always the 'analytical personality type', i.e., I will not make a decision until I have all the facts. Unsurprisingly, I hold a senior decision making role for this reason!

And at this point, there simply are no facts for me to analyse, just a statement from ZOS.

You could be entirely correct in what you say. But equally, ZOS may have now been sufficiently absorbed into Microsoft that the corporate 'growth mindset' philosophy has engulfed them and they are re-aligning around that.

As befits an analytical type, I won't decide until I see some facts and, as any stockbroker will tell you, "past performance is no indicator of future performance" ;-)

To be honest, i like that. :) Your style i mean.

But, with ZOS and their track record. Personally all i have is cynical realism, with ZOS every change is like talking about memes.

Do you expect them to change their method of doing things? I WISH they had variables

Well, most orgs do fail at business change, but being a small org goes in ZOS' favour. Importantly, they are a subsidiary of an org that successfully practices such change - at a vast scale - every day. Go back 10 years and Microsoft were irrelevant and everything they did was inferior. Now they are one of the two largest cloud providers in the world, the largest security provider in the world, a relevant device provider, a relevant game provider, they employ hundreds of thousands of architects and developers who deliver transformation at enormous scale every day, and are a strategic partner of Prosci, who are the world's leader in business change.

So I would rather hope that the great and the good at ZOS would reach out to all that corporate muscle in the parent org and ask for some lessons learned and guidance.

Therefore, should ZOS fail, it will be to your point - they don't really want to change and this is a smokescreen - rather than lack of capability and knowledge. You could not dream of a better position for them to be in to enact change.

That's why my first post said I was, "cynically hopeful".

[Luckylancer]

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

"
Just to follow up here. The changes here are to make us more agile and produce more engaging and varied content. So from our prospective, it is not us "going into maintenance" but rather being able to address several concerns the player base has noted over the years."
from community manager kevin. doesnt seem like maintenance mode to me when they are adding seasons. learn what that is

Why do you believe in cooperate lies? This is meintenence mod. Devs want to reduce new content and this is how they get away with it. Also, ZoS decided to reuse overland content to carter to veteran players instead of releasing new end game content.

I bet they do PvP changes to just balance the PvE in future updates and borderline stop PvP updades all together.

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by Swans:

Therefore, should ZOS fail, it will be to your point - they don't really want to change and this is a smokescreen - rather than lack of capability and knowledge. You could not dream of a better position for them to be in to enact change.

Wish Microsoft had "cleaned the house". Worst enemy of ZOS is currently it's certain lead/key Devs who are in charge. :/

If there was new management with actual passion and ambition again, i feel the game that has huge potential could actually make a comeback. Yes, i believe it could be saved. But not with current lead. That is the issue. If someone has ran it down like this, they cannot help it up, they keep repeating same mistakes. Even reading that letter shows the issue. They do not even make sure peoples worries are gone. Canceling chapters but not announcing clear dates for anything. Every even noob marketing specialist would know that will cause huge issues. So why does ZOS not know it? How they always manage to mess up things?

I mean, Kevin here who visited us.. would even probably be a nice dude if he had better leaders who would bring quality product so he would not have to be defending for them. I bet he like hates mondays often there when hears news of what is happening and latest dramas and crisis situations. I bet he sees fantasy dreams about working at Larian or FromSoftware or even SquareEnix at FFXIV. :P

[NESSKAT]

TLDR..................................." Janitor wanted for small business prior to closure - strictly maintenance work. Must enjoy working alone. Est 6 months to a year contract.

[Tensar]

We knew this game was dying, I think it could be a nice way to embelish the game's end.

[Privatelvl25]

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

Originally posted by zukobach5:

Uh huh. Just like how you experimented with Q4 2024? One of the emptiest years ever and less players playing than ever before.

You should have done your research on Guild Wars 2 when they stopped making proper expansions. They have been struggling for air since they decided to do that and never recovered. Now, they don't even have the funds or manpower to reverse any of that.

this game had under 5k players on steam for a few years at launch and is down single digit percentages compared to same time last year on steamcharts. why be so hyperbolic?

You are aware of Google right? This information is easily accessible and you couldn't be more wrong.

For the 1st time since Feb 2018 ESO was below 10k on steam in Nov. The last 30 days is even worse.

Month Avg. Players
Last 30 Days 9,839.6
November 2024 9,960.2

Year over year?

November 2023 12,152.6

Ave 2192 more

That's not "single digits "

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by PrivateProfile:

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

this game had under 5k players on steam for a few years at launch and is down single digit percentages compared to same time last year on steamcharts. why be so hyperbolic?

You are aware of Google right? This information is easily accessible and you couldn't be more wrong.

For the 1st time since Feb 2018 ESO was below 10k on steam in Nov. The last 30 days is even worse.

Month Avg. Players
Last 30 Days 9,839.6
November 2024 9,960.2

Year over year?

November 2023 12,152.6

Ave 2192 more

That's not "single digits "

I suspect that guy is either a super fan boy or he works for ZOS with the amount of silliness he posts in defence of ZOS. It really makes no sense otherwise.

[UnderNewManagement]

Originally posted by PrivateProfile:

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

this game had under 5k players on steam for a few years at launch and is down single digit percentages compared to same time last year on steamcharts. why be so hyperbolic?

You are aware of Google right? This information is easily accessible and you couldn't be more wrong.

For the 1st time since Feb 2018 ESO was below 10k on steam in Nov. The last 30 days is even worse.

Month Avg. Players
Last 30 Days 9,839.6
November 2024 9,960.2

Year over year?

November 2023 12,152.6

Ave 2192 more

That's not "single digits "

yeah its not single digit, i was looking at the comparisons from month to month. and last few months are theyve gone down single digits each time. its still a sustainable level per my point. and it isnt the 17k lost players that someone else tried to claim by comparing peak players between now and april. lol. have fun
its nice being able to admit i was wrong :)

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuQe6ID_dBY

This video did put it rather well in my opinion, another content creator for ESO gone (quits, so was his last video about ESO by his own word) and did showcase well the empty promises for years and talked the Developer Letter in detail and what it means, and obviously what it does not mean, again.. It's same exact words than all these years before and nothing happened.

They used to at least have Chapter content to go with lies about fixing server performance, now not even have Chapters, only thing that is left are the same empty words. Sad times.

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by Sofia♡:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuQe6ID_dBY

This video did put it rather well in my opinion, another content creator for ESO gone (quits, so was his last video about ESO by his own word) and did showcase well the empty promises for years and talked the Developer Letter in detail and what it means, and obviously what it does not mean, again.. It's same exact words than all these years before and nothing happened.

They used to at least have Chapter content to go with lies about fixing server performance, now not even have Chapters, only thing that is left are the same empty words. Sad times.

Everything from Matt Firor is a lie. The guy lies out of his teeth.

Then saying something as dumb as "multi-threading didn't help" just means that the implementer was incompetent.

What's insulting is that they seriously think players are that stupid to eat anything they say without questioning it.

See Kevin's comment above, what he said and what I bolded out is ridiculous because it's not just sounding stupid; it goes against all of computation theory.

He's essentially claiming a task p can be completed in 0 time instead of n time. If he's not claiming that, then it has an impact on performance no matter what he or any other dev says

But please, ZOS, if you can demonstrate that, let me know. I can use the prize money to fund my research more.

[Schnurzelputz]

Introducing Seasons ,,,,

.... i stoped my abonoment after years. I quit d4 already tired to play the same stuff again and again. When they come with seasons, season pass and all that. then i'm done with eso after startin it 2014 .... and with gaming at all after starting it back in the 90's.