ZeniMax Online Studios’ Studio Director Matt Firor talks about another big year for The Elder Scrolls Online and some of the even bigger changes coming to the game in 2025 and beyond.
Welcome to everyone in the Elder Scrolls Online community! As the year is drawing to a close, I’m going to take some time to walk you through my thoughts on 2024 – and look ahead to 2025 and how ESO will be evolving to meet the changing needs of the community.
First, a few notes about 2024. I probably say this every year, but 2024’s ESO content was among my favorite. I loved the vibe and story of Gold Road, and now that Home Tours is allowing me to see so many other people’s homes, I’m seriously considering making Merryvine Estate my main house – although it will take a lot to unseat me from Mournoth Keep… 2024 showed that we are still creating wonderful content for all our players. We ended the year with two new Companions – I am currently adventuring with Zerith-var, although I’m early in my journey with him – as well some fun tweaks to Battlegrounds, and much more. I look back on 2024’s content and updates, and am very satisfied with our story, content, and systems updates.
It was wonderful to spend time with fans in person in April at our Amsterdam 10 Year Anniversary event, and for team members – sadly I could not make it – to attend the German ESO Tavern in July. We had many other smaller regional community events – some for the first time in their territories – sprinkled throughout the year, where fans of the game got to meet one another and share stories about their shared time in Tamriel.
And now it is time to look forward, which will comprise most of this end of year message. Change is a constant, especially in gaming. The gaming industry changes, player habits change, other games come and go. In fact, change has been constant since ESO launched in 2014. We have been able to keep up with the times, make hard decisions and big changes when it was time to make them. Looking back on all the changes that have gotten us here, it is pretty clear that we have generally made the right decisions at the right times for our game. And now, we are looking forward to 2025 and how we can change ESO to keep it relevant, awesome, and compelling.
Since 2017, we have released amazing content and systems every year - but always on the same schedule. This annual cadence pushed the team to focus on short deadlines – every June – where all types of content (systems, content, zones, etc.) had to be completed at the same time and has not left us much time for experimentation or thinking about doing things differently.
At the end of last year, we gave a slight heads up that we would be shaking things up. Our lead times are so long that we were already planning for some of these changes back then. And, I’m very happy to say that starting in 2025, you'll see new ideas and ways of launching content start rolling out.
Turning the Page on Chapters
We have been incredibly successful with our strong annual Chapter releases: starting with Morrowind in 2017 up through Gold Road just six months ago. Zone design and quest/content is at the core of every Elder Scrolls game, as our annual Chapter release model highlighted. We will still do lots of story content, but now, looking into 2025, we need to concentrate on different types of content to support all types of ESO players. So, we are putting Chapters aside and will be focusing on new types of content, and a new release philosophy. More on that below.
As 2025 will be a transition year for new content, we are going to have new zone-based content launch in 2025 - but you'll have to wait until April to hear the specifics about how it is different. Stay tuned!
Introducing Seasons
Over the course of 2025 we will be moving more towards a seasonal content model and away from launching massive content updates once a year, as we did with Chapters. We will be talking much more about this in the future, but in 2025 expect to see named Seasons of three or six months duration with a mix of themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more.
2025 will be a mix of old and new as we move the dev team towards creating smaller bite-sized pieces of content. We will still have some larger items that we've been working on for over a year, which you'll see launch as well.
Freeing up the dev team from needing to adhere to a strict annual cycle means we will be able to have teams launch content when it is ready throughout the year and not work to a date in June – this will let us focus on a greater variety of content spread over the year. This supports the new Seasons model, and will enable us to release content, updates, fixes, and systems in a more efficient manner.
A new focus on change and experimentation
We have been hearing from you, the community, that we need to experiment more, to shake things up and not be so predictable. The game needs new and different types of content, and for long-standing feedback to be addressed. We have already started on some ideas that will be tested in 2025. These systems and ideas will be clearly marked as "experiments" in patch notes and are ideas that may or may not be fleshed out into full game systems. With our new focus on breaking up content into seasons and away from years, it gives us time to do these experiments and changes.
Here are some of the ideas that we are working on, some of which you may see on the live servers as tests in 2025 and beyond. Some of these will be tests and some will be improvements based on player feedback:
- We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign
- Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat
- Improving the overall feel of combat with animation, FX, and potentially audio work
- Experimenting with more zones like Craglorn (although not as large in area or scope), created exclusively for high-end group and soft-group content with associated gear chase
- Adding and refining tools to make guild recruitment, interaction, and management easier and more logical
- We have many more ideas here, and of course, we are listening to you and will be coming up with new ideas based on your feedback
Concentrating on new and returning user experience
It is long past time that we address ESO's new and returning user experience. The game is so large at this point that we need to refine the new user experience. Our goal is to shield new players from being overwhelmed by dozens of content options presented to them on entering the world, and instead give them the essential guidance they need to enjoy the game before opening it up to all possibilities.
Additionally, we have many millions of players who return to the game every year after taking months to years off – and it is often confusing to them what they should be doing. We need to address this by making sure that the game’s map and other quest/informational UI areas clearly show the user where they were when they left, what has been added since then, and where they will find content they will love.
Here are just a few of the items planned to improve the new and returning user experience – some of these will launch in 2025, some afterwards:
- A new patcher, with improved visuals and performance (PC only)
- Returning to the original Wailing Prison tutorial area for all new players - this has already launched, but we will be regularly tweaking it to improve the experience
- Visually improving base game zones with updated textures and art assets, starting with the "starter islands" - these should start rolling out in March 2025
- Not showing new players prologue quest or Chapter quest compass pins. The jury is still out on how Stuga will feel about this
- Sprucing up the game's PC UI, which is long overdue for a modern visual upgrade
- Other map and UI systems (still in design/idea stage) to make returning to the game more seamless and get you back into the action quickly
Continuing to tell great stories
With the changes to our content release model, please be assured that we are not abandoning new quest content – but we will do it in different ways than we previously have. As our focus will not be on adding giant new landmasses – although we will do that from time to time – instead, we will use existing zones and areas to tell new stories. Some of these are:
- Continuing the stories in existing zones and storylines and bringing back familiar characters
- New stories focused on hallmark Elder Scrolls organizations like Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild
- Splitting a large zone across multiple updates
We are embarking on these changes to give the development team the space to find a new cadence that can mix new content and systems with addressing feedback, fixing issues, and adding new quests and activities to existing zones and stories. It will not be as regular as the old annual cadence - so expect Season launches and new content, systems, and test announcements throughout the year, not necessarily in January as we have done since 2017.
Speaking of, to give everyone a heads up, our next big announcement event will be in April 2025 as we introduce our first Season. There will be much more in the April announcement, but for that, you will have to wait. We will still have a content update in March 2025 (on PTS as normal in January), and we will give you more information about that sometime early in the new year.
You have already heard the news that we will not be doing a 2025 North American community event as we originally planned. This was a difficult decision, but as shown by all the planning and development changes listed here, we need to focus on the game itself for a while this year. That said, we will still see you at local community events in many territories, so stay tuned for announcements and details on those.
And finally, my thanks to all of you. Thank you so much for being part of the wonderful community that makes up this amazing online virtual world. As I have said many times before, we would not be here without you. You all have navigated many changes throughout the years and have given us invaluable feedback that has helped steer our decision making since our beta program started in 2013.
Have a wonderful holiday and see you in Tamriel!
Matt