If alarm bells were faintly ringing over Elder Scrolls Online owing to events transpiring early in December, now they’re blaring klaxons with the release of the 2025 roadmap. No matter how much spin Zenimax is putting on the change of course presented in this letter, its contents should be deeply concerning to any fan of this Big Five MMORPG.
With the decision to end yearly chapters (expansions) and cancel the 2025 North American community event, Elder Scrolls Online will begin its 11th year in extreme uncertainty. Today I want to dig into last week’s letter and share with you what I think is happening to this once-great MMO.
I trust that many of you who know me can vouch that I’m not a doomsayer. I don’t really sit here rooting for games to crumble and fail, especially ones that I’ve played extensively. But it’s really hard to see ZeniMax Online Studios’ Matt Firor’s letter as anything but a big step backward for ESO — a marked reduction in scope and ambition compared to prior years.
This wasn’t completely unforeseen, as ZeniMax was kind of toddling in the direction of big change this past year. When you stack up both last and this year’s letters, you’ll see a studio that doesn’t have a strong vision other than a desire to change from a rather established yearly cadence that stretches back to 2017.
And you know what? Sometimes change to a routine is needed, especially if things have grown stale or stifling. A good refresh and reorganization can make things agile and lively once more — again, if you have a vision for it.
But I don’t think that’s the case for Elder Scrolls Online.
The dual decision to cut out the yearly expansions and cancel the NA meetup smacks of reduced resources, period. This could stem from declining revenue, orders from its parent company, or shifting efforts over to the still-as-yet unannounced secret MMORPG that ZeniMax is creating — or a combination of the three.
What this announcement does not project is a studio flush with options and cash.
Again, that spin. Firor talks of a “new release philosophy” that is quite familiar to any MMO fan who’s been around for a while. This is when a studio goes “Hey, expansions are hard and expensive to make, so we’re going to step back from doing those in order to deliver more frequent content and projects! You as a community will benefit more from this in the end!”
I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is almost never the case. We’ll see a couple snappy patches, then a slowdown, and — this is inevitable — a future announcement where a sheepish studio will confess that eliminating expansions was a mistake and it’s returning to that model for all of the obvious benefits of churning out these yearly cash cows. From Guild Wars 2 to EVE Online, we’ve seen countless MMORPGs run this exact cycle.
Worse, ZeniMax’s “seasons” sound so dull and uninteresting, especially to players who have been underwhelmed by other MMOs sporting their idea of seasonal content. It’s nothing more or less than the occasional content drop — again, a reduction in output.
On top of this, Firor’s mention of running “experiments” on servers doesn’t garner confidence of a firm vision. It’s more of a “let’s start flinging stuff at players and see what sticks” approach, and that’s not a good style of development.
I do hope and wish the best for Elder Scrolls Online as it moves into 2025. I don’t want this game to fall into disrepair, maintenance mode, or oblivion (rimshot). I’ll gladly eat all of these words if this new approach ends up being a net positive for the game.
And I will say that a few of the projects that Firor mentions has my approval, including increasing landscape difficulty, improving combat all around (hear hear), and improving the new player experience.
However, my heart still sinks when I contemplate a 2025 without the excitement of an expansion with a new system, companions, zones, and sweeping storyline. Let’s hope that when ZeniMax gets this “new design philosophy” out of its system, the studio will return to the tried-and-true model in 2026.
Traverse the troubled land of Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls Online! Justin Olivetti will be your guide here in Tamriel Infinium on Wednesdays as we explore together the world created by ZeniMax and Bethesda in one of the biggest MMOs in the genre.
