The Elder Scrolls Online devs promise that its new seasonal model 'is the beginning of a major shift' for the decade-old MMO: 'Frankly, we think we could make the game more rewarding and exciting'

The Elder Scrolls Online has had a bit of a rough go, recently, with its initially cool subclassing update not quite hitting the balance mark alongside a brutal rash of cuts at Microsoft, which saw the game's director quit.

Still, ESO's remaining developers have been adamant that it's not going anywhere, a promise that seems congruent with a recent deep-dive into the game's next plans—grab your calendar, baby, ESO's going seasonal.

In a developer livestream, game producer Nick Giacomini states that over the game's 12-year lifespan, "we made a lot of innovative decisions when we needed to … They were the right decisions at the time for building the game's foundation, and they show that we're capable of making big, fundamental changes when we need to."

However, "the game, we've heard, from you the players, has become more predictable than we'd like, too formulaic, and frankly we think we could make the game more rewarding and exciting."

Giacomini elaborates that this whole operation isn't just a change to the game's patch structure—it's a chance to "pause and work on addressing the pain points, and building the future of ESO together. This is the beginning of a major shift, just like One Tamriel was a decade ago, where we're going to be making major changes, just in a completely different way."

Senior creator engagement manager Gina Bruno chimes in, saying that "we know we could have greater transparency and just be better at following up with the community … like Nick was saying, the chapter model that we had been following for the past few years, the whole timeline was this speeding train that we couldn't stop."

As for what that means, Bruno says "it means earlier visibility into the things we're working on, it means engaging with you earlier in the process, and sharing the results of your input on dev efforts."

Seasons change

But what is a season? It's a three-month patch cycle, basically. The actual contents of what a season might feature are pretty much Calvinball—by design—but can include new PvP/PvE content to chew on, new features, story arcs, and zones. The backbone of the whole system is the fact that each season'll have new rewards.

Which (I know, I know) means a battlepass. The pass, called "Tamriel Tomes", doesn't seem too bad, mind. There's a free version, you progress through them by completing in-game rewards, and you'll be able to access past tomes in perpetuity—think Helldivers 2's Warbond system.

This'll also be coming along with the Gold Coast Bazaar, which seems similar to WoW's Trading Post—a bunch of cosmetics you can buy with a currency earned in-game. Only difference being, you can also get that currency from the Tamriel Tomes, but ESO's developers reassure players that most of them will be in the free version of the battle pass.

As for what's in that first season? Something called the "Night Market", a three-faction PvE zone designed to challenge endgame players that'll be open for seven weeks, though ZeniMax says there are plans to bring it—and future "event zones"—back in later updates, letting players make different choices and get different rewards.

If you've been frustrated by ESO lately, though, this might all be causing your eyes to glaze over—fortunately, ZeniMax seems pretty dedicated to revamping a bunch of different pain-points.

A scroll rewritten

First up, there's going to be a bunch of positive changes in the months to come. Stuff like free respecs, account-wide outfit slot unlocks, overland combat difficulty adjustments, and faster mount training. That's thanks to a new team that'll be "devoted to finding and focusing on the community's most requested quality of life features and other improvements," says executive producer Susan Kath.

The dev team will also be attempting to patch up issues caused by the new subclassing system, via comprehensive balance updates. Giacomini explains: "We recognise that with the introduction of subclassing, that's created issues at odds with that goal [of 'play your way']"—basically, ESO intended to open up build variety and has instead created a frustratingly strict metagame.

"We're working on addressing these issues with these efforts. We want class identity to be clearer, we want pure classes to be competitive, and we want as many builds as possible to be viable across all content." You can see those refreshes in the brand-spanking new roadmap below—and you might notice that they're focused on one class at a time, with the Dragonknight first on the docket.

"To be clear," Giacomini continues, "This doesn't mean that we won't make other changes to classes along the way—we do want to address outstanding issues throughout development, not just focus on one class at a time at the expense of all else."

All in all, it does seem like ZeniMax is dedicated to getting everything back in ship-shape for The Elder Scrolls Online. The "Season Zero" update launching on April 2 (and a QoL brush-up in March), will mark the start of that particular u-turn—and for what it's worth, I hope ESO sticks the landing.

It's clearly got an invested community of players, and as someone who has had their own gripes about my favourite MMO, I know how painful it can be to live through the dark times. Here's hoping some good comes out of a shaken ZeniMax in the months to come.