The Elder Scrolls Online - 2024 a bad sign of things to come?
I want to preface this with a few things. First, ESO exists outside of steam and on consoles. So the population counts are nearly impossible to know 100%. Second, I'm not saying the game is dead and abandon ship.
With that out of the way, steamcharts is an interesting metric to look at is it offers, in a way, the closest thing we have to an unbiased representation of populations. Now not the full population, but its the only metric available to the public if the game exists on steam. ESO in particular is interesting because its been on steam for a little over 10 years now. So we have a good amount of information to draw from.
Typically for me, games that have existed on steam for awhile and are multi platform/launcher; steam is a generalized indicator for overall health of the game. I find if a trend exists on a steam, a similar trend will exist on other platforms in my experience. So if there's a downward trend on steam, it often feels like there is a downward trend overall. It may not be by the same percents nor with the same numbers, but its a downward trend none the less.
Now 2024 is a big year for ESO. It is its 10 year anniversary. So there was a big year long celebration of some free DLC give always. Along with a new DLC release that introduced the typical new content, but its major thing was spell crafting and styles. However, in the second half of 2024 we're seeing numbers in average and peak player counts that have not been this low since 2018.
This is a bit surprising and troubling. The main DLC was released on June 3rd on PC. And there was not much of a population jump. It also fell almost immediately the following month more than it gained. There was a big PvP update in September that saw very little impact, which probably doesn't bode well for future PvP support in the game. This was also combined with the release of 2 new companions.
As we move into the Holiday and Christmas season, we're going to start seeing discounts that typically come out around this time jump up populations. ESO right now i think is 75% off, so that's why already in the "last 30 days" we're seeing a jump. And we will probably see this increase continue. But the year to year trends of ESO have been going downward since it peaked in 2020.
This is a common trend I find in the industry. During the COVID lock downs, people had more spare time and were inside more. So it seemed like mmorpgs everywhere saw a population jump. And we're now experiencing the downward slide of that peak. The big question is if this will stop and where for these various mmorpgs.
So with ESO it becomes a question if things will plateau out soon, or will this continue. If you hang around the various feedback forums for ESO this year; you saw quite a bit of feedback. Any of these could lend itself.
Formula Fatigue - Content updates/DLC releases aren't introducing enough things that feel "truly new". They feel too much like the same content, but with a new coat of paint. And mini games like the antiquity system or the card game didn't interest people much. The solo/duo infinite archive (similar to torghast in wow) didn't seem to have a huge impact overall too.
Spell Crafting and Spell Styles were a let down. Again they didn't feel unique, didn't introduce enough interesting mechanics. A lot of the new abilities felt underwhelming and were just a mix and match of already exisiting things in the game. It allowed some builds to have access to some buffs/debuffs that it didn't before. But it didn't introduce really a "new way" to play the game from a feeling perspective. Or in the case of spell styles, didn't really change much (many of them have been recolors which has led to people feeling apathetic about them).
No interest in PvP content
The combat design complaints are coming to a head
Game releases in general feel too "safe"
Monetization
WoW has seen significant success with the war within/classic and is draining players from all the other mmorpgs
Whatever the reasons may be, the trend is certainly troubling and I'm sure is stirring discussions over at ZoS. If the trends we've seen since 2020 continue, then by the end of 2025 ESO on steam will be at population levels it saw in 2017. In 2026, population levels it saw in 2016.
What will be especially interesting is that was we move into the late 2020s, we will see an uptick in marketing around TES 6. Which will probably lead to more interest in ESO. The big questions will be what kind of impact will it be and when TES 6 does release, what will it do to ESO's population going forward?