The Elder Scrolls Online is the latest MMORPG that will move to a seasonal content model in 2025. The team will also make much-requested improvements to PvP and the new and returning player experience, as well as introduce new content, including 'experiments' throughout the year (and bring new stories into existing zones).
The news came in a new Studio Director's letter from Matt Firor, who recapped the year, including the big 10th anniversary and the release of the Gold Road Chapter six months ago. The ESO team is moving away from Chapters, which have expanded Tamriel and added new places, stories, and characters since they began these annual releases back in 2017 with Morrowind.
The downside of this, he says, were concentrated deadlines, and the need to get everything–from new zones to quests, systems, dungeons, and the rest–done for the June Chapter release.
“In 2025 expect to see named Seasons of three or six months duration with a mix of themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more”, but consider 2025 a transitional year, since we’ll still see a new zone-based content release and bigger things already in the works as they wrap those and fully move to seasonal development.
There’s a bit of a ‘return to our roots’ feel in the announcements, with renewed focus on groups like the Thieves Guild, Mages Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Fighters Guild, and a promise of new stories in familiar zones, bringing back familiar characters, and maybe some continued stories too. We’ll still see new zones too, but over multiple updates.
Next year, the team will continue to improve the new and returning player experience. Some of their goals are already live, but new stuff is on the way.
With these changes, they also promise “a new focus on change and experimentation” and to be able to get to fixes, improvements, and new content faster through the year. In 2025, sometimes patch notes will list “experiments”, ideas they may or may not fully develop and add to ESO. Potential experiments include improvements to Cyrodiil, including giving everyone PvP-specific skills to use, along with performance improvements.
One might increase the difficulty of overworld combat and improve combat feel via updated animations and effects. Another might see a zone become the site of high-end or soft-group content and gear chase.
The 10th anniversary is a yearlong celebration that kicked off in April this year, and it will be April 2025 when we can expect the big reveals on the first Season, and what else the team has planned.
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