A New Era For Elder Scrolls Online
The Elder Scrolls Online is heading into a major shift in how it evolves as a live game. After years of sticking to a strict yearly chapter release model, the team at Zenimax Online is moving to a more flexible seasonal structure where, in the words of executive producer Susan Kath and game director Nick Giacomini, nothing is off the table.
This is not just a marketing slogan. The developers are using this structural change to tackle long standing quality of life issues and rethink some very old assumptions about how an MMO should run. For players, that means less friction, more experimentation, and quicker improvements to the core experience instead of waiting for the next big expansion.
Moving Beyond The Old Chapter Model
For years, Elder Scrolls Online followed a predictable pattern. Each year brought a new chapter with a new zone and some marquee feature. That might sound great on paper, but behind the scenes it created a serious problem. The schedule was locked in roughly 18 months in advance, and every team member already had their work assigned.
As Susan Kath explains, the chapter model meant everyone knew exactly what they were doing each year: building zones, delivering new story content, and shipping the headlining features. The downside was a growing list of smaller but important fixes and improvements that never found a place on the schedule. There simply was no room to squeeze in long overdue quality of life updates.
Nick Giacomini points out that the team was not blind to player frustrations. They read feedback, played the game themselves, and knew where the rough edges were. The issue was time and structure. With such a rigid long form schedule, there was very little opportunity to address foundational problems or rethink old systems. The team realised that, if they wanted ESO to realistically become a 30 year MMO, they could not just keep adding the next thing on top of a creaky foundation.
This is what pushed them to abandon the old chapter blueprint. Instead of marching in a straight line toward a yearly big box release, they are transitioning to a seasonal model that allows them to directly target pain points and ship improvements bit by bit.
Quality Of Life First: Fixing The Friction
One of the biggest changes behind the scenes is the creation of a dedicated team whose sole job is to listen to the community and swiftly respond to common complaints. Their mandate is simple in Kath’s words: find out what everybody wants to do and do that.
Update 49 is the first major expression of that philosophy. It starts addressing long standing annoyances such as the amount of time it takes to train mounts and other nagging issues that players have been calling out for years. Instead of waiting for one perfect all inclusive fix, the team is now comfortable rolling out improvements piece by piece.
Kath uses housing as an example. There have been limits on furnishings in player homes for a long time. In the past, if those limits could not be raised everywhere including Notable Homes they would hold the change back. Now the thinking has shifted. If they can improve most houses today, they will ship that update now and keep working on the more complex edge cases in the background.
This new mindset has created what Giacomini calls an era of permission inside the studio. Developers no longer feel like they must wait for a perfect all or nothing solution. They are allowed to fix things in stages and experiment more aggressively in the name of a better player experience.
Free Respecs And More Player Experimentation
One of the clearest examples of this fresh approach is the rework of the respec system. Previously, changing your character build meant heading to a specific shrine and paying in game currency to reset skills or morphs. For players who like to optimise or test new builds especially in a game that just added a subclassing system to encourage variety that extra friction added up fast.
Giacomini describes his own experience: he would teleport to his house, test damage on a target dummy, realise he wanted to change a morph, then have to leave, travel to the shrine, respec, and go back to his house to test again. It was not a nightmare, but it was just enough hassle to discourage on the fly experimentation.
The team recognised that this old paradigm no longer matched modern player expectations. In a live MMO where build crafting is a core part of the fun, respecs should be quick and painless. Soon, ESO players will be able to respec their characters at the click of a button with no in game currency cost. That change fits perfectly with the goal of making subclassing and build variety feel rewarding instead of tedious.
This is more than just a convenience tweak. It reflects a broader willingness to let go of past decisions that no longer serve the game. Rather than clinging to old systems as if they were sacred, the developers are actively asking what is right for players right now and adjusting course accordingly.
Letting Go Of Old Stubbornness
The shift happening in Elder Scrolls Online mirrors trends across the MMO genre. World of Warcraft’s team publicly talked about letting go of old stubbornness after the Shadowlands era. Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida has also started to compromise on systems he personally preferred, such as loosening glamour restrictions, in order to better match what players actually want.
ESO’s leadership seems to be on a similar journey. They are no longer treating the past as a strict blueprint for the future. Instead, they are treating the game as a living world that needs to adapt over time. For players, this should mean a smoother experience, faster iteration on core systems, and a game that feels less weighed down by its own history.
If Zenimax can stay committed to this player first mindset, the seasonal structure and focus on foundational fixes could put Elder Scrolls Online on a strong path for the long haul. Out with the old, in with the new might be a common phrase, but for a long running MMO chasing a 30 year lifespan, it might also be exactly what is needed.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/the-elder-scrolls-onlines-director-says-doing-the-same-old-yearly-patch-cycle-wasnt-going-to-cut-it-if-the-mmo-developer-wanted-to-have-a-shot-at-reaching-that-30-year-mark/
