The Elder Scrolls Online's year-long story arcs are coming to an end, according to a new letter by ZeniMax Online Studios' director Matt Firor. Additionally, Firor mentions that the MMO has added "millions" of new players this year, though doesn't give an exact figure in the end.
In his annual letter to the fans, Firor looked back on the year that was in 2022, which saw ZeniMax Online Studios launch its Legacy of the Bretons storyline, including its newest chapter expansion, High Isle in June. Firor states that not only did ESO add new localizations, such as Spanish and Simplified Chinese, but also that "millions" more players have jumped into the MMO across the various platforms. However, Firor stopped short of giving an exact figure on the actual player count increase.
He also touched on the disastrous launch of update 36, which released last month, which Firor states the team is still chasing issues stemming from the update.
"I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the issues with Update 36, which launched just this last November. It introduced far too many bugs and issues, and even as I write this, we are still chasing down issues with blocking in combat. Trust me, I am just as concerned about this as you all are, and we will be making some process changes within the Dev Team to ensure that things like this happen far more rarely. With an ageing code base (which is 26 million lines of code… really!) it is difficult to be 100% efficient, but we can be far, far better and we know it. "
The end of year-long story updates
However, the real meat and potatoes of the letter surrounds The Elder Scrolls Online's year-long story arcs coming to an end. Since 2019, The Elder Scrolls Online has told an overarching story that encapsulates all the major updates of the year, from dungeon DLC to the central chapter release in June. However, as The Elder Scrolls Online continues to age and stories are added, Firor states that he feels theses year-long arcs have run their course. As a result of the cadence of releasing these 12-month story arcs, Firor states that it "limits" what the developers are able to do.
Much of the changes come from player feedback, specifically that while the amount of content in the game is stunning, it's also intimidating for players thanks to the sheer volume of it in ESO. Firor praised his team, though, reminding readers that every year since 2014, ZeniMax Online Studios has added 40 hours of RPG content to the MMO - enough normally for whole games at many studios - with myriad dungeons, classes, quest lines, features and more. As a result, players have been asking for more content to "enjoy for years," as well as content that utilizes the map that's already there. And, more importantly, new gameplay features to shake up the routine.
So starting in 2023, we'll see a return of the large, focused, and more detailed Chapter releases that tell the whole story, not simply a portion of it to continue later on in the year. As a result, players won't need to return to future updates just to get more of the story they paid for in the chapter - it'll all be right there from the get go. Firor states that the team is "excited" about next year's release, which more information will be detaield in next year's Global Reveal Event.
Additionally, we will still see a Dungeon DLC launch in the first quarter of 2023, but as it stands right now it seems as those will be stand alone stories, not connected to the chapter update. Quarter 3 will see the team focus on bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements to ESO.
Quarter 4 of 2023 gets interesting, though. Instead of a zone DLC to tie together the whole story from the year, ZeniMax will instead be releasing a new system. No details were given about this new system, but we will likely have more details at the upcoming event.
Hardware And Fan Events
The letter also touched on the hardware updates coming to the ESO datacenter. The update itself has been slowed down thanks to global shortages of components, but Firor mentions that once this upgrade is done, the datacenter will be "more reliable," as well as performance improvements.
"Almost all the hardware should be delivered and in place by December and then we'll need a month or two to install and test everything before we shift over to the new hardware. Please note that we will be prioritizing all three Realms in the EU datacenter first, and then will return to the NA datacenter to finish moving Xbox and PlayStation Realms there. We are as frustrated as you that this has taken so long—but it is happening and will be done and ready for all players, probably in late February or March of 2023. "
The Elder Scrolls Online will also be hosting player gatherings in North America this year, announcing an in-person event in the Spring of 2023. No official details as to when and where yet, other than "somewhere in the United States." But attendees can go hands on with the upcoming Chapter, attend dev and community talks and more. Existing gatherings will continue as well, including th ESO Tavern in Europe.
