Steam Community :: The Elder Scrolls Online

ESO Leadership’s 2025 End-of-Year Letters to the Community

18 Dec

Read three letters from ESO’s leadership team where they discuss learnings from a busy year and set the tone and expectations for 2026.

ZeniMax Online Studios Studio Head Jo Burba, ESO Game Director Nick Giacomini, and Executive Producer Susan Kath share their thoughts on a challenging 2025 and their early plans for the year to come.

ESO Game Director Nick Giacomini

As another year in Tamriel comes to a close, I want to start with a moment of honest reflection.

This has been a challenging year. While we had high ambitions, we stumbled. Writhing Wall was not the experience that we wanted to deliver or that players deserved. Subclassing introduced and highlighted issues with class identity. Previously, we referred to this year as a “transition” year, yet I feel that there was not enough transition in meaningful ways.

Players have been asking us to be more transparent and communicate better; to provide a more rewarding experience; to be more exciting; to address long-standing issues and pain points; to improve combat, class identity, and PvP; and generally make more investment in the core game experience instead of just chasing the next big thing. We hear you. We agree.

We’ve talked about change in the past, but there’s been a disconnect with the words we’ve communicated and what we’ve released subsequently after those communications. We’re going to change that moving forward. We hope that you’ve seen the start of better communication from us, such as the recent Class Identity Refresh[www.elderscrollsonline.com] deep dive. This is not a temporary goal. We’re going to focus more on the core game, transparency, and listening to and incorporating your feedback. It’s the foundation of our work and the key to ESO’s future.

I’ve said this before, but ESO is nothing without you, our players. And we truly believe that by building this game with you, we can make the next decade of The Elder Scrolls Online the best one yet.

We know actions speak louder than words, and we will be addressing a lot of this in more concrete detail on January 7 during our 2026 Reveal livestream, so stay tuned.

Executive Producer Susan Kath

We’ve talked a lot about 2025 as a transition year, and a great deal of that was going on behind-the-scenes over the last 12 months. A game as massive as ESO doesn’t turn on a dime. Over the last year, we've had leadership changes throughout the studio, retooled the team and our development processes, and built out the new Seasons structure and content while planning out the next five plus years of ESO.

After eight years of yearly Chapter releases, that means rethinking nearly everything from the ground up. We’re no strangers to hard work, and it has been roll-the-sleeves-up-and-get-our-hands-dirty levels of work, but the team is excited—we’re all excited—to move into this next era.

So, what are we focusing on next? That’s what the 2026 Reveal livestream on January 7 is all about, and we can’t wait to put it in front of you and hear your thoughts.

We have a LOT to cover in this stream, and we’ll also follow it up with additional blog posts, streams, and AMAs going deeper on all the Big Details. We’ll also share more details in the following months on the topics we’re only able to cover briefly in the show, such as the introduction of optional Overland Difficulty modes that offer greater challenges and rewards.

The livestream’s main topics will be:

Seasons–the new approach to ESO releases that replaces Content Pass
Some of the new content we’ll be introducing over the first few Seasons
QoL improvements, class and combat changes, PvP additions, and in-game events changes
And very importantly, how we are going to approach all this so that we can surprise and delight you with new additions while working to better incorporate your thoughts and feedback as we tackle reworks and improvements to our core features.

We'll go into much greater detail in the 2026 Reveal livestream, so I'll just wrap up my part of this letter by asking you to join us on January 7, plus keep bringing us your questions, thoughts, and ideas. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Studio Head Jo Burba

As we hope you have already started to see, communication with you is one of the first things about ESO that is changing, and those changes don't stop after January 7. In 2026, the communication from us will be focused on the overall plan. It will get into more practical information about what we will be testing and when, what kinds of feedback we are looking for to help us iterate, and what is changing based on that feedback.

If you are reading this letter, chances are the things that truly excite you are learning the details of what we're doing and then testing them out so that you can help us deliver fun things to the community. We may try some crazy things, and we may not always get it 100% right, but what we always want to get right is that you feel heard and that our actions prove it.

We appreciate your support every year, but especially so this year. With all the changes in 2025 and the bumps that resulted, we found that focusing on the #ESOFam motivated us and reminded us why we are all here: to make and play great games with our friends.

Have a great end of year, and we will see you January 7!

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TLDR: Lore from questing is fun. Everything else is mediocre.

NOTE: My Steam hours do not reflect my playtime. I played primarily on the original client and my account has been active since the closed beta

ESO is a weird game for me. I've been playing it on/off since the closed beta. I recall dropping my Wildstar sub in anticipation for this games release. It was a terrible mess, ultimately, and I cancelled to wait out bug fixes and changes.

The game has evolved a lot since then. Tamriel Unlimited was an amazing addition that also brought one of my biggest complaints. Running around the open world with friends is great but now enemies are easily steamrolled. I probably died more in Toontown than I ever have in ESO. ZOS seems to add in new features but forget to do any sort of balancing or play testing to verify it's actually FUN.

Ignoring the actual difficulty of combat, it itself is not fun. The light attack weaving mechanic not only hurts my wrist but isn't enjoyable. The animations feel stiff yet floaty. There's no impact to your hits and it isn't helped by a slight delay between button press and animation play.

So what else is there to do? Well, fully voiced questing which is actually my favorite part of the game... but you need to suffer through the combat. You also have housing! Which if you're spending Crowns (in-game currency) you need to spend more than most do on their electric bills in real life to afford.

That leads me to the final thing, the pay shop. ESO is so heavily monetized and while you don't HAVE to spend money after the initial purchase you likely will feel obliged to. There's the membership which unlocks all but the current DLC, adds a crafting bag, and lands you some extra Crowns. This alone really feels necessary because DLC individually is expensive and you will never have free inventory slots without the crafting bag. The crown store itself has a lot of the better looking armors, mounts, and pets. There isn't much to be obtained freely with your in-game achievements.

To end this long review, I think the game can be fun with low expectations. It isn't good for a TES game nor is it a great MMO but if you just love Tamriel then the lore of this game is great. The world and combat can both feel lifeless but there is fun to be had.

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Posted: 19 December

130gb steam download for 100 gb more launcher download.

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