The MMORPG ESO almost failed – the developers would have done just one thing differently

earthpressnews

Elder Scrolls: Online (ESO) is one of the most successful MMORPGs today. But it wasn’t always like that. The developers have now revealed what they would have done differently at release.

Elder Scrolls: Online is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. But for a long time, things didn’t look good for the MMORPG in the world of “The Elder Scrolls”:

  • At release, many players expected a new look for WoW, or at least wanted it to be like WoW.
  • Poor balancing, bugs and technical problems as well as an endgame that was far too short also caused a lot of frustration.
  • In addition, there was a mandatory subscription model, which many players also did not want.

    • But ESO has changed radically in the past 10 years and a lot has happened: ESO is no longer a game with a mandatory subscription and with Tamriel Unlimited many restrictions have been lifted, making the game more and more accessible over the years.

    The developers now explained that despite the many problems, they had only done one thing differently.

    Funny trailer for the Summer Game Fest shows you what Elder Scrolls Online is all about

    More videos

    Autoplay

    During development, a decision was made to create a game

    What did the developer say? Rich Lambert, Creative Director for ESO, explained in an interview with PCGamer that he would change at least one thing if he were to develop ESO again:

    The only thing I could think of would be to choose the game you want to play.

    The many problems with ESO in the beginning were mainly due to the fact that they didn’t yet know where they wanted to develop the game. There were two competing versions of the game’s direction and they wanted to reconcile both options. But that just didn’t work and caused a lot of problems.

    His colleague, Matt Firor, studio manager of ESO developer Zenimax Online Studio, explained that he probably wouldn’t have done anything differently. The many problems proved valuable for the development of Elder Scrolls: Online in the long run. Certain things, such as the financing model, could be put into practice much better by learning from the mistakes.

    More about ESO: The same Rich Lambert, by the way, feared that the big and important update “One Tamriel” would destroy the game. But today the MMORPG is making billions. You can read the entire interview on MeinMMO: Chief developer on ESO’s most important update: They were sure “that we would kill the game.”

    mmod-game