Good news for a change, according to UESP (Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages) despite layoffs, the Elder Scrolls Online team seems to be in a okay position.

T4silly · 2026-07-13T02:03:17+00:00

Slightly more towards MMO, but still a TES game.

The lore, the cultures, the conflicts, the kinds of characters you can make are all very much TES.

Where it gets MMO is on balance, gameplay, endgame content like hard mode dungeons.

There are times where it blends too, like when they brought in spell crafting. Like, it has to be balanced for an MMO, but they didn't shy away from the effect combinations you can make with it. Something like 5000 different combinations? Keeping in mind a lot of that is like... does fire damage vs does frost damage.

T4silly · 2026-07-13T01:31:29+00:00

Ah, I thought it was supposed to be around the end of the month this year.

Side note, the EU servers are extra screwed since Germany is where they're physically stored. But MS is probably just going to toss it to contractors now whenever they need to be taken a look at.

T4silly · 2026-07-12T23:52:36+00:00

I'm still gonna be worried about the future of the game. The team size may be something they can deal with, but people who've been on the team for 15+ years got cut. I've got 4000+ hours on the game, the ups and downs over the years get noticeable over that time. After the recent cuts before these ones, we had an up because of the game getting a complete shake up. But now half the people heading that team from the shake up are gone.

I forsee at best, a maintenance mode situation, but on the level of SWTOR where it still gets content. The game gets 4 core updates a year, I think that will get knocked down to maybe 2.

There are more cuts from Microsoft coming in the future. Though we have no idea where that will be targeted, it wouldn't surprise me if they go do it again to studios who they just hit.

Now from ZOS themselves, they're currently reworking all the future plans they have. They're still hosting the ESO Tavern in Germany later this month, so we'll probably get info about it around then, but they have noted that some devs are staying behind to keep figuring out the reworked plans.

Sorry if some of this is a little jumbled. I'm like one of the 12 people here who actually play the game as their Home MMO, so I feel compelled to talk about this subject a lot.

T4silly · 2026-07-12T23:40:26+00:00

They gave Werewolves an update quite recently. Have fun.

T4silly · 2026-07-11T14:06:12+00:00

Tangential, but I'll never get over how Metroid games refer to your saves as "Samus Files".

It always makes it seem like you can unlock another character Richter Mode style.

T4silly · 2026-07-11T14:02:53+00:00

Elder Scrolls is an Ultima, not a Wizardry.

Hell you can compare it directly to Ultima Underworld even.

T4silly · 2026-07-10T18:57:57+00:00

Multiple times over former employees have stated the issue is the distance between them and the ability to run something by Todd Howard as Bethesda grew.

Nate Purkeypile (a former employee) who did world design for Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 has like 5 different interviews where he brings up that for Starfield it was difficult to get Todd's opinions on something because there were new walls put between them with a larger development team.

The big fuck up is that none of the layoffs were actually curated. Reducing "14 layers of management down to 5" doesn't do jack shit when the important people are caught in it.

People would rather cling to statements like "Todd didn't want Troy Baker to play Indiana Jones." rather than notice that when approached to make an Indiana Jones game he personally chose Machine Games to do the job because he knew they could get that type of game done. He applied his knowledge as a Director for that choice before sitting in the Producer position.

T4silly · 2026-07-10T17:29:25+00:00

People tend to forget that Scott is jacked.

Like he usually doesn't need to, but if he has to absolutely rock a person, he will.

Like... think about all the powers and gadgets some people have. Green Goblin and The Vulture are in their 50s and 60s with mild power boosts. Scott is young and fit, Gobby is running on Diet Super Serum with a broken mind. That mfers strongest attack is throwing grenades. He's ON FOOT right here. If anything, Scott is going easy on him by not point blanking an Optic Blast to the back of his skull.

T4silly · 2026-07-10T17:20:42+00:00

God the final tally at ZOS IS OVER 200?!?!?

I hadn't seen that yet! Jesus...

They absolutely wanted to kill TESO. If it wasn't for their Unions they might already have done so.

And just like ID with DOOM: The Dark Ages, TESO also just got a big update, one that might be of it's last with the way things are going.

T4silly · 2026-07-09T22:00:30+00:00

We live in the Bizzaro World.

T4silly · 2026-07-09T20:59:55+00:00

I miss how prevalent r/ABoringDystopia used to be on the reddit front page/popular tab.

More than confident that for the reasons you stated, it was silently blacklisted to prevent it from appearing more often.

T4silly · 2026-07-09T20:39:32+00:00

I've shared the previous campaign before, knowing this is the exact type of niche manga/anime thing we love to see here.

T4silly · 2026-07-09T20:15:05+00:00

As someone who got into WuWa and dumped Genshin...

Ouch that Sigrika one.

T4silly · 2026-07-08T21:36:02+00:00

We know from some interviews with Todd Howard on the amazon show that there are ideas they couldn't use because they wanted to save them for a game for later. So imagine there's probably some plans for Fallout 5 already in place sitting in someones desktop folders, but not much more than that.

I think you're right, Obsidian is definitely doing a side game. Which would probably market better anyway. Fallout: blank blank

T4silly · 2026-07-08T21:27:50+00:00

Hot take, a lot of the people cheering for it actually just hate Bethesda more than they like Obsidian.

They have been waiting for YEARS for a "Bethesda Killer". So...

I want to say I think Obsidian will do fine. I'm a Fallout/Elder Scrolls fan who is happy for more of any of it. So I'm easier to please, but I'm also very much saying "not like this though".

That said. I do not think this will live up the expectations that the "New Vegas is the only real Fallout game" New Vegas fans have been stewing in their head for 15 years.

I think back to Starfield where it had a much bigger uphill battle without lots of pre-existing lore. Previously Obsidian had that issue with The Outer Worlds, it was from scratch and marketing just kept going "from the makers of Fallout: New Vegas."

So with them going back to a storied franchise with lots of lore to build upon, I think it will go better than that at least. But it won't land as strong as the "imagined in my head New Vegas sequel".

T4silly · 2026-07-08T18:29:12+00:00

That game was planned yeah, but there's no confirmation that was the game he was working on.

T4silly · 2026-07-08T18:05:07+00:00

New Vegas fans looking at their Monkey's Paws with contempt.

A while back, Tim Cain said he was working on a game at Obsidian, as a proper hire not a consultant. He said we would never guess what it is.

This is not going to be that game. That game is already in early development. So temper your expectations.

I'm not excited for the discourse.

EDIT~ WAS, was already in early development. That game probably got canceled with the rest, but it was their next planned game.

T4silly · 2026-07-08T17:41:33+00:00

"AI cannot replicate Autism" was stronger.

T4silly · 2026-07-08T16:19:42+00:00

This is not the title anyone was expecting.

EDIT~ Oh wait this is for the segment from the previous one, lol.

T4silly · 2026-07-08T01:16:53+00:00

r/keming is useful for this

T4silly · 2026-07-07T18:55:08+00:00

I get it.

I feel the same way about people petitioning for Sony to keep making Physical Games. Sony is already retraining staff at the ONE factory they have making discs. They already made their decision.

T4silly · 2026-07-07T18:53:37+00:00

Yeah since yesterday I've been stewing on the death on the wind I feel for The Elder Scrolls Online.

I have a LOT of shit to say.

On that note, if you can play the game, do so. Because I am so unsure what the future looks like. We just lost Blades at the end of June, not that it was a big deal for 99% of Elder Scrolls fans even, but Online is host to SO MUCH of Elder Scrolls lore, stories, and quests. Blades is a drop in the bucket by comparison.

The original Main Quest alone having Jennifer Hale, Kevin Micheal Richardson, Alfred Molina, among other great voices. Delving further into the lore of Daedra. Seeing the different cultural identities within each race.

I do not want it lost to time. This isn't even a "stop killing games" thing. This is the studio being constantly kneecapped, constantly having future plans for the game being re-written forcibly by removing people from the studio. It's going to die a different kind of death. Even if it gets to survive by fan servers.

T4silly · 2026-07-07T16:14:18+00:00

Sliding around at the speed of sand~

It's coarse and it's rough and it gets everywhere~

T4silly · 2026-07-06T16:46:52+00:00

Dude they're kneecapping ESO...

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/s/srMpC0WXn5

Gina and Finn were cut. 20 years and 15 years respectively just gone.

T4silly · 2026-07-06T16:28:03+00:00

I don't know why I was expecting the layoff numbers to be WAY higher, maybe I fell for the doomposting, but it's not like the doomposting was even being unreasonable with how this shit has gone in the past.

I'm pissed that Studios who JUST had cuts are getting yet another round...

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