The Elder Scrolls Onlineis celebrating its tenth anniversary over the next year, commemorating a decade of having been on PC and console. It’s a momentous occasion as the once-scorned MMORPG, pushed aside by veterans of the genre and Elder Scrolls fans alike, has triumphed and, against all the odds, thrived.
“Launch was a huge milestone for us,” creative director Rich Lambert tells me as we sit in the entrance of the sugar factory where Zenimax is hosting its first of many celebratory events ahead of the Gold Road chapter’s launch. “But then we got that feedback, like this isn’t exactly what we wanted, it’s this weird hybrid of online game and Elder Scrolls. Just correcting that, fixing that, focusing on Elder Scrolls and being able to push through to where we are today, it’s really special to be at the ten year anniversary.”
ESO began development in 2007 before evenFallout 3had launched, back whenOblivionwas the hottest TES in town. WhenSkyrimreleased, Game and studio director Matt Firor told us that the team reworked ESO completely because of just how much the bar had been raised. However, Lambert assures me he knows as much as we do about TES 6.
The biggest change that brought The Elder Scrolls Online from being a tepid entry into the MMO canon to one of the icons of the genre, currently at 24 million players and counting, was the One Tamriel update. In what was an incredibly risky move, Zenimax opened up all zones regardless of your level, removing restrictions typical of the genre to allow players to explore Tamriel at their own leisure.
“I spent a couple of days at Matt’s house over the Christmas holidays one year and we just kind of argued back and forth about the pros and cons, ‘It’s the right thing to do! It’s the wrong thing to do!’” Lambert says. “When we were aligned, we went back to the team and we said this is what we’re gonna do and there was a split right down the middle.
“Half of the team was like, ‘Oh my god! You’re killing the game.’ The other half were like, ‘This is cool.’ We just worked through it and all the issues and once people started replaying it, they understood the magic. Being able to play with anybody, being able to go anywhere like that instantly turned it into an ‘Elder Scrolls game’. Once we launched it, the community had that same kind of reaction. It wasn’t easy and we didn’t really know what was gonna happen. We just knew it was the right thing to do.”
The Elder Scrolls Online launches updates with astounding frequency. The team says that through its expansions, it’s akin to having a new Elder Scrolls game every year, as newcomers can simply play the main quest and explore the new zone before putting the game down and waiting for the next chapter, a level of commitment rare for the MMO space. But aside from enormous story chapters, the team has implemented an entire tabletop card game, a roguelite mode, arenas, and countless new dungeons. I asked how the hell they do it.
“We have a super creative team and we’ve worked for a very long time together,” Lambert says, saying that the core team behind ESO has remained pretty much the same since 2007. “We have gotten pretty good at scheduling things out in a way that makes it doable and digestible without completely destroying the team. Like Matt said, we’ve done 41 updates in ten years. That’s remarkable.”
Of course, ten years means ESO has accrued its own veterans, and with One Tamriel stripping away the level restrictions and putting all zones - even new ones - on the same level playing field, many old-timers now find the game too easy. It’s an interesting contrast as ESO being too hard was what once pushed so many away.
“We do hear that feedback all the time,” Lambert says. “‘Give us a difficulty slider, let us do hard modes.’ There’s things we’re looking at but it’s not a simple problem because ten different people can play the game and they all play it ten different ways and it’s hard for some and easy for others. So we have to find the happy medium ground where the most amount of people can enjoy it.”
Lambert tells me that much of the past ten years has been about “fixing the game” and helping usher newer players in. The tutorial now ends with a grandiose room full of portals that lead to different beginnings, highlighting that everywhere and anywhere is an acceptable place to start, whether you want to go right back to the beginning or dive into the new chapter. But looking ahead, Lambert says that improving the technology is important.
“We keep adding new technology, new rendering technology, new ways to make the game run more efficiently. That’s one of the reasons we got to do things like a new class and Scribing,” he tells me. “As long as people wanna keep playing, we’re gonna keep improving it.”
Gold Roadlaunches on June 3 for PC, and June 18 for console.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is an expansion for the popular Bethesda MMORPG. When a lost Daedric Prince returns to West Weald, chaos ensues. A new zone is added, as well as the Scribing system and a 12-person trial, the Lucent Citadel.
