Elder Scrolls Online's Rough Launch, Second Chances - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast
Episode: Elder Scrolls Online's Rough Launch, Second Chances
Release Date: April 25, 2025

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Introduction and Context

In this episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast, the hosts—Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye, Mike (the master of hype), and game director Rich Lambert—dive deep into the tumultuous early days of Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). They explore the game's challenging launch, the subsequent community backlash, and the steps taken to turn the situation around.

Greg Miller opens the discussion with a light-hearted exchange about their T-shirts and tattoos, setting a casual tone before delving into the more serious aspects of ESO's development and release.

Development Challenges and Design Decisions

The conversation begins with Matt Fyroar introducing his leg tattoo—a symbol of ten years of storytelling in ESO—and emphasizing the importance of not underestimating community engagement.

Matt Fyroar [02:23]:
"It's 10 years of stories of telling the game and it's full sleeve and it, I don't know that it was a lesson learned, but don't challenge your community anything to anything you're not willing to do."

The hosts discuss the impact of Skyrim on ESO's development. Originally titled Elder Scrolls Origins, the game was renamed to avoid confusion post-Skyrim's success and to clearly position ESO as the MMORPG entry in the series.

Mike [05:43]:
"We changed it to Elder Scrolls Online to make sure no one was confused and knew it was the multiplayer Elder Scrolls game."

Launch Issues

ESO's launch was marred by significant technical difficulties. The game experienced server overloads, leading to login queues that frustrated millions of eager players. Despite extensive beta testing with 150,000 participants, the team underestimated the sheer volume of concurrent players.

Mike [11:43]:
"We had console launch concurrency peaks of 500,000 players, which was unheard of at the time."

Additionally, the initial subscription model faced backlash. The decision to require a subscription was influenced by industry standards set by giants like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, as the gaming landscape shifted towards free-to-play models, ESO struggled to align its business strategy with player expectations.

Community Feedback and Criticism

Post-launch, ESO faced a wave of negative reviews and community backlash. The feedback was a mix of unfair criticism and valid concerns, leading to a challenging environment for the development team.

Matt Fyroar [29:17]:
"Many people at that point had put seven years of their lives into this and then, you know, you get this really weird mixed feedback and it's hard to not take it personally."

The team had to navigate through this criticism by differentiating between destructive hate and constructive feedback, focusing on the latter to guide future improvements.

Post-Launch Improvements

To address the issues, Rich Lambert and the team embarked on a mission to make ESO more aligned with the Elder Scrolls legacy. This involved enhancing the game's questing system, improving social interactions, and ensuring that content felt expansive and engaging.

Mike [21:59]:
"Players wanted to log into the game, create a character and just do whatever the hell they want... we didn't have enough of those things."

One significant update was Orsinium, ESO's first major DLC, which introduced a level-scaling system that allowed players of varying levels to enjoy content together without the constraints of traditional leveling.

Matt Fyroar [58:35]:
"We were really nervous about that. And it turns out gamers are just gamers and they can do anything with whatever."

Shift in Business Model

A pivotal moment came with Update 6 on March 16, 2015, when ESO transitioned from a subscription-based model to a free-to-play system with optional microtransactions. This shift was crucial in revitalizing the game's player base and aligning with contemporary gaming trends.

Mike [45:29]:
"We introduced microtransactions for convenience and customization only. You can't buy your way to success."

This change not only improved accessibility but also enhanced player satisfaction by allowing more freedom in how they engaged with the game without feeling pressured to spend beyond their means.

Console Launch and Subsequent Success

Following the successful overhaul, ESO launched on consoles, tapping into a broader audience. The collaboration with Iron Galaxy ensured that the console version was optimized and free from the issues that plagued the PC launch.

Matt Fyroar [37:56]:
"We were really, really nervous about that. And it turns out gamers are just gamers and they can do anything with whatever."

The console launch was met with enthusiasm, leading to exponential growth in concurrent players and monthly active users.

Greg Miller [50:30]:
"3 million new players in two months. 2.7 MAUs. And $230 million in revenue."

This period marked ESO's recovery, proving that with the right adjustments and responsiveness to player feedback, the game could achieve significant success despite a rocky start.

Future Plans

As the episode concludes, the hosts hint at forthcoming content and expansions, including a focus on Morrowind, drawing parallels to ESO's journey of learning and adapting.

Mike [69:36]:
"Todd Vaughn's the VP of Product development at Bethesda. He was like, now that you have all this great stuff, you should actually cash in on the nostalgia."

The anticipation builds for the next episode, where they plan to explore the secrets of Tamriel and the ongoing evolution of Elder Scrolls Online.

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Notable Quotes

• Matt Fyroar [02:23]:
  "Don't challenge your community anything to anything you're not willing to do."

• Mike [05:43]:
  "We changed it to Elder Scrolls Online to make sure no one was confused and knew it was the multiplayer Elder Scrolls game."

• Mike [11:43]:
  "We had console launch concurrency peaks of 500,000 players, which was unheard of at the time."

• Matt Fyroar [29:17]:
  "It's hard to not take it personally."

• Mike [21:59]:
  "Players wanted to log into the game, create a character and just do whatever the hell they want... we didn't have enough of those things."

• Mike [45:29]:
  "We introduced microtransactions for convenience and customization only. You can't buy your way to success."

• Greg Miller [50:30]:
  "3 million new players in two months. 2.7 MAUs. And $230 million in revenue."

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Conclusion

This episode provides an insider's look into the challenges faced by Elder Scrolls Online during its early days, highlighting the resilience and adaptability of its development team. From overcoming technical hurdles to pivoting business models in response to player feedback, ESO's journey underscores the importance of community engagement and continuous improvement in the ever-evolving landscape of MMORPGs.

For those interested in the intricate dynamics of game development and community management, this episode offers invaluable insights into turning a rough launch into a flourishing success story.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Elder Scrolls Online podcast. A kind of Funny Games Cast limited series. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside the master of Hype, Snow mug, Mike.

[Mike]

Greg.

[Rich Lambert]

We're back on the nice set with the nice intro. And these incredible guys, of course you.

[Greg Miller]

Know these incredible guys because of course this is episode two of our podcast. Let's introduce of course, the game director, Rich Lambert.

[Matt Fyroar]

Hello. Hello.

[Greg Miller]

Hello. How are you?

[Matt Fyroar]

Fantastic.

[Greg Miller]

Good. I love the T shirt.

[Matt Fyroar]

I. Yeah, I pulled it out of my closet. It's a little old, but classic. Gotta represent.

[Rich Lambert]

Classic.

[Greg Miller]

Great logo. Yeah, Elder Scrolls, great logo if we're being honest.

[Matt Fyroar]

Uh huh.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Just making sure we're on the same page. I don't trust you, Mike. You're up to something. And of course he is studio director, Zenimax Online Studios. It's Matt Fyroar. Hello.

[Mike]

Hello. My shirt's cool too.

[Greg Miller]

It is. No, you guys got good branding, you know what I mean? That's the good thing when you talk about this. We need more branding. We just got the wiener dog all the time. You're not even wearing.

[Rich Lambert]

You have a tattoo on your arm.

[Greg Miller]

Good branding, you know what I mean? There it is. No big deal. Ten years of us.

[Matt Fyroar]

That's my leg. My leg too.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I was going to say get him up there. Show the games. Get it up.

[Matt Fyroar]

Come on.

[Greg Miller]

This is a laid back podcast. Get up there.

[Matt Fyroar]

Got to stand up.

[Greg Miller]

Stand up. When we film things back at home, they don't like me wearing shorts.

[Matt Fyroar]

We don't care.

[Greg Miller]

What do you mean?

[Rich Lambert]

Put your foot right up on, on there. Step right up on that.

[Mike]

You do this. You're up there.

[Rich Lambert]

What do we got? Tell us about your leg.

[Mike]

What do we got?

[Greg Miller]

It's be working. Bears working. Here we go.

[Matt Fyroar]

This, it's. It's 10 years of stories of telling the game and it's full sleeve and it, I don't know that it was a lesson learned, but don't challenge your community anything to anything you're not willing to do.

[Rich Lambert]

Oh, we know that very well.

[Greg Miller]

Dive in. Dive in. So I, I don't know this story.

[Matt Fyroar]

Oh, you didn't know that? No, no, no. I think it was, it was elsewhere. Right? Yeah, we were talking about ways to kind of hype up what, you know, our global reveal and all that other stuff. And people started throwing things around and they're like, oh, maybe it was Ryan or Jordan or somebody, you know, one of our brand guys. And they're like, what if somebody got a tattoo and I'M like, I've always wanted one. Sure, I'll do that. But it's got to be, like, a ridiculous number. Ridiculous number. We want over 100. I think it was like a hundred thousand viewers.

[Mike]

Yeah, it was like simultaneous viewers on the stream.

[Matt Fyroar]

And it was. And we got it before we even started. And so the opening of the. Of the thing, you know, of the global reveal was rich. I hate to tell you this. You haven't even started yet, but you're getting that tattoo. And I was like, wow. Okay, well, let's do this.

[Greg Miller]

That's incredible. I love that.

[Matt Fyroar]

And then we kind of documented it, you know.

[Mike]

Yeah. There's a whole. Whole video of him getting it and the artist who's fantastic and where we are. Yeah. So it's a good watch.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

I appreciate that.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

We filmed it all and did it all, and, yeah, it was. It was. It was fun.

[Greg Miller]

You only put the most important things on your calves, on your legs. You know what I mean?

[Matt Fyroar]

There is a maple leaf on there, too.

[Mike]

Watch out.

[Rich Lambert]

Here it comes.

[Matt Fyroar]

Stripping Garfield. Look at that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah. I'm impressed. You are limber.

[Greg Miller]

It's more of the camera angle.

[Matt Fyroar]

Look at my butt.

[Greg Miller]

It's more the stupidity that I can't angle my legs to the camera no matter how hard I try them. Like, I'm going further away.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep, yep.

[Greg Miller]

Every.

[Matt Fyroar]

Oh, there you go. Holy cow. Look at that. He's found it.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, Barrett's amazing. A B roll. Don't worry about that. God, look at that. He's still in Asia today.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Just going. And how long did this take?

[Matt Fyroar]

It was. It was 30 hours.

[Mike]

Holy. Oh, man.

[Rich Lambert]

We got after it.

[Matt Fyroar]

We did it. We did it over a number of sessions. But Lydia there, when I first met her, she pulled out the art book from the launch.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

She had like, this is my favorite thing I have ever gotten. Can I do more of this? And I'm like, you're the one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Hell, yeah. That's incredible. That's amazing.

[Mike]

Wow.

[Matt Fyroar]

That's cool.

[Greg Miller]

Very cool.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But so is this whole story in this partnership. Of course. This is episode two of the Elder Scrolls podcast, a kind of funny Gamescast limited series. If you enjoyed the first one, thanks for coming back for a second one. If you've never caught the first one, go back and catch it. Remember, every two weeks, we're here with a brand new episode. That means there's two more coming May 9, and, of course, Friday, May 23, as we get ready for the big push here of the new ESO content. Of course there was a direct in April. It is still April. Yeah, it's April right now when this is airing. Of course you can go check that out and be part of it and continue this conversation. We talked a little bit, obviously, last episode about the April direct seasons subclasses. So much more. And then, of course, we had Matt and Rich start. Start us through the journey of getting here, starting in 2007, starting the whole thing. Then Skyrim coming in and changing everything, which is kind of where we left off. And I feel robbed because we ended that episode and we walked off and Matt immediately goes, oh, we didn't even bring up the fact that Skyrim changed the name of the game. I didn't know this either. Talk to me about this. What were you calling it before Skyrim?

[Mike]

And yeah, and that's not just a saying. We literally had to change the name of the game. So throughout the early part of E development, up until Skyrim launch, the ESO was going to be called Elder Scrolls Origins because of course, we take place second era, 700 years before all the others made sense. But after Skyrim literally launched and literally became one of the best games of all time, we were really concerned that by calling it Origins, by calling ESO Elder Scrolls Origins. Yeah. People would think it was a prequel to Skyrim because it's the next Elder Scrolls game that comes out. It would come out two years, two and a half years after. Right. So just to make sure no one was confused and knew it was the multiplayer Elder Scrolls game, we changed it to Elder Scrolls Online. So still eso, we didn't have to change the executable name, which was good. The engineers, they were very happy to.

[Matt Fyroar]

Go through all the code and change what ESO meant.

[Greg Miller]

Right. So just trying to definitely come up. All right, Elder Scrolls Online. Elder Scrolls Oblivion. No, Elder Scrolls the Octopus. What can we put in here that makes it make sense? I love that you got there in the end. And I think that's, you know, jumping off of the end, episode one and where we were. The one thing we talked about was Skyrim changing everything. Okay, you need to do that. As the juggernaut that was and is Skyrim continues to tumble down that hill. What does that do for you leading up to this launch in 2014? Is it just immense pressure? Is it this idea? Oh, man, we're not going to live up to expectations of what people want from that.

[Mike]

Well, we were working so hard. I don't know if we had time to feel emotions on that level. But what it did Do. Yeah, it set the bar, right. It's like we wanted to do the right thing for the brand, but what it really did is it made. When we opened up our beta website for beta applicants, it made it really popular. This was 2012, right, when Obamacare thing just got announced. And remember, I don't know if you remember back so far ago, but the government website collapsed under the weight of all the people and we had like eight times the traffic of that, of that website. And, and so we got like 5 million beta signups in like two days or so. It was, it was ridiculous. Which, which of course added to the pressure.

[Greg Miller]

But is that excitement though or is that an.

[Mike]

No, no, that, that's like, okay, there's a problem.

[Matt Fyroar]

It's a good problem.

[Mike]

People, people want to play this.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Mike]

And then it's, oh shit, now we got it. There's gonna be expectations and we have to make sure that we're. That that were gonna meet them.

[Greg Miller]

Look at the thousand yard stare.

[Matt Fyroar]

I'm just.

[Greg Miller]

We put him into a dark place.

[Mike]

I was just thinking that. I was literally just thinking.

[Matt Fyroar]

I was going back through and just thinking about it and going, yeah, like the thing that. And I can't remember when this was, but I remember a Robert talk which was don't F it up.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Robert Altman, of course.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was like basically it was a meeting where like, okay, you know, we just launched get best game of all time on the IP. You have 5 million beta signups. You're now fully funded to get to launch. Don't fuck up.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep.

[Mike]

Right. And it's like. But it wasn't. It was like a, it was a good thing. It was like, you are set up for success. Right. You know, we have given you all the support that you need, which is totally true. And in that time we'd already had started the turnaround. We knew launch date was going to be in 2014 and not 2013. Right. So it wasn't like, you know, you're, you're, you're in trouble. It was more like we now think even more that this game is gonna, is going to be big and it's up to us. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

So we talked a bit about launch in the first episode and how. Okay, it's. What was it? We weren't in trouble or.

[Matt Fyroar]

You had a great way of saying Anime Sweat.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, the anime Sweat. Yeah. But there was one at the very beginning, right. That wasn't a failure. It wasn't. It wasn't. Oh, it doesn't Matter. But it was.

[Mike]

I can't remember back though, you know what I'm.

[Greg Miller]

Two weeks ago, how can we possibly remember? No, but you were talking about the fact of like, you know, you didn't get all of it.

[Mike]

Right, right.

[Greg Miller]

This was at what point in the lead up to launch. I've always wondered this for you as video game developers, right? Video game developers at large, obviously. I've heard so many times that when you're in it, you can no longer see the forest for the trees, right? You're so lost in it, you don't know if. Everybody I've ever talked to as a developer is always like, we don't know what we're launching. Is it good, is bad? It's up to the players in that run up to launch and you're seeing you're not hitting the things you necessarily wanted to. Not as many zones, not as many of this. Is there an internal thing for either of you, not even in the team as a whole of man, we didn't get this. Man, this isn't going to be good, man, this is going to be received poorly.

[Mike]

That moment for me was when the reviews came out, which were before launch. But not long, I forget it was. But sometime in that it's a little hazy. We were working a lot, but there was again, like, some people loved it, some people hated it. So it was hard to draw a conclusion from. From the reviews. I think we had previews. We had a preview day. That's what it was. And everyone was like, the idea is great. The game looks really good. You know, not sure if it's going to add whatever pet peeve that they.

[Greg Miller]

Had and whatever that one person wanted from their.

[Mike]

But the thing is, we knew on some level we weren't quite there. But we also knew we had to launch. It was time, right? It was. We just had to get the game out there.

[Greg Miller]

So stop there again, please explain that to me as a layman. Like, how do you know when it's.

[Mike]

Just, we got to go, we got good enough, right?

[Matt Fyroar]

Like. And that's. That's a really awful thing to say when you really think about it. But at some point you got to ship the thing and then see what people think and then start to. Because you're right. You are so head down deep into this and focused on just getting it done that you start to lose a little bit of perspective when you're. When you're kind of going through it all. It's something that to this day, you know, when, when I'm reviewing Stuff that the team is building. I'm not in the everyday day to day stuff. And so I'm in there and I'm like, you forgot to tell this part of the story. Like the player doesn't have all the information they need to make a decision or a choice or whatnot. Right. It's that fresh eyes type thing. And that's what launch was for us.

[Greg Miller]

And gotcha.

[Matt Fyroar]

It was, was awesome. Like it was really eye opening.

[Mike]

Yeah. And again not, not a failure. It just wasn't as a success. Right. It was kind of that gray area. I love that in between.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And obviously by business standards not being a success means. It means you're a failure. But it really wasn't because the game worked. Like we'll go into a couple, I think we're going to go into a couple of specific things that were, that were terribly raw. But here's where it didn't work. Yeah, but the servers mostly were up. You know, obviously every, every game like this that launches you go from zero to millions of players in like, you know like that. And modern technology doesn't really ramp like that especially.

[Greg Miller]

Remember like what was it? What was like that peak concurrent when you started? Like, like was it literally.

[Mike]

I remember what it was in console launch which was 500,000. PC was obviously a lot smaller, but it was, it was more so. Yeah, we did. Oh, we did a pre launch. So we did. If you had pre ordered the game, you got in a week early. Yeah. And that was rough because that was a lot of players pre order.

[Matt Fyroar]

That was ed. Like literally our CTO literally just mucking with the queues.

[Mike]

No, no, that was console launch.

[Matt Fyroar]

Oh, that was console launch, right? Yeah.

[Mike]

No, this was insane. Yeah, this was. We had sales forecast. We knew how many people, how many people bought the game. We knew kind, you know, it was an old model. We, we had more data than we would now because people can just buy and download immediately now back then you couldn't really do that. You could, but it was just slower. But more people pre ordered it than we thought. And so our pre launch, our early access period was launch and we had a couple of bad problems that made us extend that pre launch period by a couple of days because we had to take servers down and fix things. You'll hear this a lot if you talk to online game developers, but gold where players can figure out how to duplicate money infinitely.

[Greg Miller]

What was that you duping? Were you duping?

[Mike]

It was you, wasn't it? Yeah, there were problems on that level. Like people would log in and their inventory would be gone. And so these are things every online game runs into. We found a lot of these things in beta, but our betas were big. We had one that like 150,000 people in, but it wasn't big enough to catch the day one problems. And so I would classify this as like we knew we were going to run into problems like, like this.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Mike]

Right. And you, you always know the first two weeks is, is going to be not a lot of sleep and a lot of stress and you'll figure it out. Our tech team, which we never talk enough about were at that time in 2014, were people I had worked with at Mythic and beyond for years and years and years. So we were pretty battle hardened and we knew what needed to be done. So none of that scared us. It was just we knew we had to get through that period and we got through the rough period on PC launch and then we started to get the real feedback that this is a good game, it's just not Elder Scrolls enough.

[Matt Fyroar]

I think that was the key, right?

[Mike]

That was the key. And then Rich was in charge of making it more Elder Scrolls because literally they were talking about content. We had hit all of the good things with combat and small button bar and those were Elder Scrolls. But the questing didn't and for very funny reasons.

[Matt Fyroar]

I mean what sounds good on paper doesn't always work good in practice. Work well in practice. So what? Well, so, you know, in a lot of single player games and you know, in oblivion and whatnot, there were world changing moments. Right. You go into an area, gets under attack, you clean it up, you deal with the problem and then everything goes back to pristine and everybody's happy.

[Mike]

Right.

[Matt Fyroar]

That is exceptionally powerful in terms of storytelling and giving players this feeling of progression through it, through an area. It is terrible in a multiplayer game because it separates players. So I go into the area, I'm a brand new player. You are in that area, but you've already completed it. We can't see each other, we can't play with each other.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Matt Fyroar]

So we had all these player separation issues.

[Mike]

Even if you're in the same group.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah, even if you're in the same group. So you would see like the little arrow above, you know, and just floating in the air to designate that your group member was there. But you couldn't actually play with.

[Greg Miller]

Got it.

[Mike]

Because the way the tech works is that area is actually all in the same area. It's just, it's called layering and you can layer in different content that some people can see and some people can't.

[Rich Lambert]

Wow.

[Mike]

And so we had the. We had this idea when we designed the game that, right. You were going to be able to change the world. In every Elder Scrolls game, Mehrunes, Dagon comes and stomps through the Imperial city and crushes it flat at the end of Oblivion. Right. It's like those are awesome moments and we wanted to capture that feeling. And so we had almost every one of the major pois in the game. Almost everyone had two or three states and for the first two days it was great players like, this is awesome. And then they started to invite their friends and their friends needed to catch up and they would group and they just couldn't.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah. It just lost it caused a huge amount of problems.

[Greg Miller]

So full stop here for me is this is always something I'm interested in from developer side. Is this something you. That caught you completely off guard? Had you thought this through or were you like, stupidly.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah. Right. Like, it's, it's, it's not stupid.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, again, you're building it, looking.

[Matt Fyroar]

Back at it, it's a duh moment. It's like, well, duh, of course. Right. But, you know, we just finished talking about how you're in it.

[Greg Miller]

You're.

[Matt Fyroar]

You're excited about it. You're. You're really interested in this thing and it worked and it was really cool. It's just we didn't think about that extra part.

[Mike]

Yeah, we want to make it solo friendly and we made it too solo friendly and very group hostile. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, that's a great point.

[Mike]

And that was the kind of the theme that was running, running through it. And it wasn't just that. It was. The game was split into three alliances, so. And then you only saw members of the opposing alliance when you were pvping and killing them, which is a very dark Age of Camelot thing, which is great. In Dark Age Camelot, which was not an Elder Scrolls game. And so it worked there you still.

[Greg Miller]

Getting residuals on this is why you keep saying so much. We made it all right.

[Mike]

Mythic.

[Greg Miller]

We get it.

[Mike]

Well, but the important Thing is the PvP system in ESO is essentially a copy of Camelot system. And so that you only saw enemy alliances when you were in the disputed territory. And then you could they look like NPCs. You couldn't talk to them like they were literally look like NPCs. ESO started out that way and. But again, Rich, after playing this game for two weeks is like, oh, I want to get my friend in. He gets his friend in and his friend creates a character in another alliance. They can. Not only can they not see each other, they can't even talk to each other. Like there's no chatting, there's no nothing. And the game didn't do a good job of explaining separation like that. So player separation was on the quest level, on the, on the world level. And that was a big problem to unspool. Like it not complicated. It just took a lot of busy work by Rich and his team.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah, I mean, we had a team devoted to fixing all the layering issues for six months.

[Greg Miller]

Damn. Damn.

[Matt Fyroar]

While we were doing all this other stuff at the same time. Like, we weren't just doing that, we're doing all the other stuff too.

[Greg Miller]

What do you find from the community at this time? We talk about that first two weeks. We talk about media, we talk about, you know, when you're on the other side of two weeks, things have shaken out. This is where we're at. You've done the blog posts, the apologies. You now have this, I assume, dedicated fan base, right. That is showing up and giving you true feedback. It's critical, obviously, but they're there for you.

[Mike]

So this is again going to shock you, but there are people out there in Internet land that love to drag games. They don't know. I know. Shocking. I know.

[Greg Miller]

They know there's better things to do, right?

[Mike]

I would like to think so, but. So we had two kind of concurrent tracks of information. One was basically everyone saying this game is awful and. And we hate it. And we hate the people that made it. And. And we're going to stream, you know, 24. 7 that we hate this game. Right. Then there are people that are actually playing it and they're giving us feedback of we hate this game. Do we love it too? You guys need to think more about this. And so it's hard to separate as humans sometimes those two streams because, you know, we got a lot of stuff directed at us in that, in, in that time. And some of it was fair, a lot of it was not. And so we're built to take this. But the team, you know, the newer members of the team that are younger, it was. There were a lot of soul crushing. Yeah. Soul crushing conversations. People just like, it's okay, you know, they don't hate you, they just hate your work. But so we did have to get through that. And again, in that criticism, there's always something that's valid and taking the valid stuff out of that and eventually the first stream kind of went away because there were new things to focus on or people weren't watching Elder Scrolls online socks videos as much as they were. But then we turned really to the, hey, let's look at what players are playing in the game. We had kind of this three sided matrix that we used of. We knew we needed to make changes and this then turned on rich to change. So we looked at what players are doing in the game, like literally the metrics, like what are they doing and then what are they telling us they should do? Sometimes those two things aren't the same things. And then what do we think as developers and stewards of this world, what do we think we should do? And if you triangulate those three points, usually something comes out of that that you can do with.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah. One of the first things that I did is I had our business intelligence group pull a list of all of the active devs who were playing eso, not just at Zos, but everywhere. So like there were a ton that I had no clue at BGS that were lifers, like just literally did nothing but play eso, which was really cool.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

And I sent out a big email to them. I'm like, give me your top five pain points. And then I put them all together and mapped them out against the player feedback. And there was a lot of overlap, like a lot of overlap there. So we're like, okay, this is what's going to lead us kind of forward. And that helped us really pick the lane, so to speak. Like I've said a few times and heard this, you know, in some feedback where at launch we didn't really know the game we wanted to make.

[Mike]

Right.

[Matt Fyroar]

We tried to walk that line between mmo an Elder Scrolls game and we had this kind of weird path in between the two. So it wasn't like exactly what everybody wanted. And when we chose based on feedback and our feedback, when we chose to make Elder Scrolls be the first bullet, so to speak, that helped frame a lot of conversations going forward and changed kind of the mentality. And it led to some really crazy discussions that Matt and I've had over the years. But like it was always make it more Elder Scrolls.

[Mike]

And that was. That conversation started with Skyrim for us and at launch it just showed how we were down that road, but we weren't far enough down that road. And we had another list of things that we had to do to make the game more Elder Scrolls.

[Greg Miller]

Like what does that list look like? Because again, I understand the competingness right of an MMO or an Elder Scrolls game. But I guess what's an example of make it more Elder Scrolls? And this is what we did.

[Mike]

So you play Oblivion for the first time. You come out of the dungeon, the tutorial, right. You could do it, go anywhere. You can go anywhere, right? Elder Scrolls, you have to go through zone A, zone B, zone C. And then if you're lucky, you'll do the quest. If you're lucky, if it works. And then, and then you go to.

[Matt Fyroar]

Now he sounds like a player.

[Mike]

Yeah, because when we launched, that quest was broken. But then, then you get to go to the other alliance and you do. It's very linear, very step based.

[Greg Miller]

Right, Got it, got it, got it, got it.

[Mike]

Obvious that wasn't an Elder Scrolls experience. Right. People wanted to log into the game, create a character and just do whatever the hell they want wanted. And we'd. Before launch, we had done the combat feel, small button bar. So like Rich said, it felt like an Elder Scrolls game, but it didn't play like an Elder Scrolls game. And so the next series of things were content. Right. Make sure the, make sure that you can go anywhere, do anything. Make sure that there are things to do in zones that aren't quests. Like, we were very quest driven, but, you know, for those who played, you know, any, any, any Elder Scrolls game, like exploration, you can go through the dungeons and figure out wacky things to do with the powers that they gave you. Right. Like there are things you can do which just aren't questing. And we didn't have enough of those things.

[Greg Miller]

Is this a conversation that, again with bgs talking to Todd's team, like, to, to get more of like, what, what the powers inside of a dungeon kind of idea?

[Mike]

No, it was more, it was more us.

[Matt Fyroar]

Right. Like, I think one of the really cool things about, you know, Todd is he's like, you gotta do what works for your game. Like, he's, he's the steward of the lore and the ip and so whenever we're trying to do like really crazy things. Yes. There's a conversation that we have about the lore and how it's gonna impact things, but when it comes to like, classes, right. They were actively going away from classes and we're like, we have to do classes for these reasons. He's like, okay, sure, just do it.

[Mike]

There's a very funny conversation I had with Todd early in development when it was clear that we weren't gonna have enough development time to do underwater swimming, which has been in every modern Elder Scrolls game, Todd, is it okay IP wise if we don't have underwater swimming? And he's like, have you ever had a meaningful experience underwater in a number of Scrolls game? And I was like no. And he's like exactly done.

[Greg Miller]

Don't worry about it.

[Mike]

So. But that's, that was the, that was what Rich is saying. It's like. It was like what works for you. Right. Don't. Don't worry so much. Yeah. Just make your game your game.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Mikey.

[Rich Lambert]

I'm just, you know, when I go back to the launch. Right. As well. It's interesting now we look at the market, it's a lot of free to play.

[Mike]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

You jump in and then there's microtransactions that monetize off of that. Of course you were coming in as a subscription service back then and was there any pushback on that? Was it? I mean, of course when I think of World of Warcraft back in the day, it was like that was just the normal. Of course I'm gonna sign up for that.

[Mike]

That was the way narrator voice. There was a lot of pushback. That was that. Yeah. And we. Yeah, I totally forgot about that. But I didn't obviously forget about it.

[Matt Fyroar]

Business model.

[Mike]

Yeah, we think about that. The, the game. The game. But there's the, the whole side of the game that is. Is making sure the play players can actually get it and, and, and pay for it. Yeah. So we had just come in at the tail end of subscriptions. Right. It was like wow. Was still had stupid number of subscribers. Star wars, the Old Republic had just launched two years before and while it wasn't great, it had, it had a pretty good number of. Of of subscribers as well. There weren't many games out there of our triple A status. Big IP that were not subscription based. Right. If you look at Star wars, you look at Warcraft, right. Those are big, big IPs and they were all subscription based. So the decision was made not to risk going to another model and not make any money. Right. It was decided just do the tried and true. And we knew getting closer to launch that probably wasn't the right thing to do. But it was far too. We were far too far down the. Down the road.

[Rich Lambert]

What were you seeing to make you say that? What was the signs on the road going?

[Mike]

Every one of our. Everyone who ever interacted with anything with the game was like this should not be a subscription. I think that had something that has something to do with it. But there weren't many viable other options except for Guild Wars 2 was. It was the one that we ended up kind of going, going with that model. But that big game and a great game. I spent a lot of time in that game. But that wasn't the star we were following. Like, we were like, we're, we're following Skyrim. Right. If. No, if any game can be a subscription based game in this, the game after Skyrim and Elder Scrolls can. Right. And it definitely proved that it wasn't right. And it's like. And we'll tell you, I mean, we'll get to the point in the story where when we made the change away from that, it was explosive growth, like unbelievably explosive growth. So that people wanted to play the game but nobody charged a required subscription for a game on console on. Except for games that had previously launched that already had already had a user base and we missed that.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I think that's what's so fascinating when you talk about your histories, what online MMOs were. Right. And especially starting in 2007, like as somebody who started at IGN in 2007. Right. Like to sit there and talk about what gaming was like back then and like what the models were and how that. I think even now, just to talk about. Oh yeah, there were so many MMOs. There was, there's. I'm a DC fan, they were working on DC Universe online like this. This wasn't like, it was the battle Royale of a few years ago. Right. Where it was. Everybody's doing this and making it and it was a flourishing market and suddenly people are trying. But who. Who's going to be the wow. Killer? Everybody looking for that wow. Killer. To try to look back and be like, well, yeah, you. That the model was subscription, of course. And then for you guys to be developing, working on a game. And I'm sure that was in 2007. Of course, no brainer.

[Mike]

It was greenlit as a, as a subscription game.

[Greg Miller]

So then to get further down that line and see, oh well, the industry's changing. But as always, like with as much work as you put into this and what you've built and how you're going and what you need to just launch it.

[Mike]

Yeah. The important thing is that on the publishing finance side of this project, not being subscription was seen as a bigger risk than being subscription.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Mike]

And I think that pretty much explains why we launched that way. It was like we still made a lot of money that first year. Like a lot of money. It just, it just tailed off as players stopped subscribing.

[Greg Miller]

Sure. So one thing I want to double back to. I was asking you about Forest for the Trees. Reviews are coming up. It's going to be this, the previews. You then said something interesting, I think about the online hate people being upset about it. Talking to younger developers about that. What was their take on reviews? Was there an or in like, you know, launch in general? Just was that outside of the angry videos and YouTube streams or whatever, was there like a. You have to sit down as a company and be like, hey everybody, this isn't the end of the world. We know we wanted a 90 on Metacritic just like you did. But now the work begins.

[Mike]

Yeah, congratulations. You got a 92 from something, but you got a 47 from something else, right? It's like, yeah, there were, I mean there were team meetings, there were one on one discussions. No one was super psyched, that is for sure.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's hard when you put as much time and effort into something, right. Many people at that point had put seven years of their lives into this and then, you know, you get this really weird mixed feedback and it's hard to not take it personally. But as Matt said a few times, there's always nuggets. Even if it's absolute vitriol, right? Even if it's. There's always nuggets. Like people generally won't complain if they don't have something to complain about, right. And if they weren't passionate and interested in the thing, like they just want it better. So you have to dig through that and finding that nugget as hard as it can be, as soul crushing as it can be, is super important.

[Mike]

Yeah. And again, with hundreds of people working on it, like the guy who's writing and editing the website is catching the same amount of emotional nuclear warfare as the combat designer, right? And it's like, it's not fair in.

[Matt Fyroar]

A lot of cases, community team just taking blow after blow after blow, right? And they're like, we can relay it, right? We don't actually fix these things. I can't tell you how many times Gina got hate messages of Gina fix this bug. And she's like, I don't fix bugs. I don't. Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like I play the game and I talk to you.

[Matt Fyroar]

I'm a community manager, right? Like that's. I'm supposed to foster feedback between you, all right? And so yeah, it was a very interesting time for us.

[Mike]

But yeah, for young developers, if anyone who's listening to this, it hasn't worked on a game like this. Sadly, this goes with the territory. Right. You can make the best game of all time and launch it and you're still going to get hate for something. And it's kind of a sad commentary on many things, but it's. You can't let that get to you. You just can't. If, if you're. If you know that you're on the right path and you're doing the right things and you believe in the project, then keep believing in the project.

[Rich Lambert]

I want to ask about the betas I was pretty interested in. You said you had a pretty large scale beta. Like what is the feedback you receive? I mean, you've talked about launch and all of this coming at you. Then the beta is giving you everything on feedback wise. What was the feedback light from the beta? What were you looking for? What were you also testing? It's always interesting to talk about armchair quarterbacking and like, oh well, they're doing the beta to turn on the server. Just try this. Is there any other things you're testing and trying out beforehand?

[Mike]

All right, that is a great question because I'd forgotten about a lot of this, but. So we had four big betas and then we had one smaller one that kind of ran concurrently. The four big betas where most of the people saw the game before we launched were server stability tech betas. And this is a big mistake that we made. We didn't really care what build was on it. We just wanted people to log in and test the login servers and we wanted to literally get as many people on and then pull the plug and see. And see how you have to test these things. Right. And then see what happens. And then. So there was one build especially that was just not. It just wasn't a good build. There was a combat bug in it and there was. And that was the one we got like 120,000 people concurrent in. So more than 120,000 people participated. And to us it was a great success. The servers were up, everything was stable, everything was in the green and. Right. And then it's like the feedback, this sucks. This sucks. And then we. Some guy leaked video that we had to go after and, and get it pulled down because it was all, all under NDA for sure. And, and just. And it was. Yeah, the narrative was starting to build then.

[E]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

How much does that impact you all beforehand?

[Mike]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

Like now the perception is starting to trend a different way than maybe where you want it. Is that a lesson learned in that situation when it comes to.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah, it is. Is that, you know, even though these games are really complex to make and they run on a giant IT exercise that you're also building at the same time as you're making the game. People only care about the game, right? That's it. Like a great game that crashes sometimes is far better than a shitty game running on great infrastructure. So that is the lesson that we learned from that check mark.

[Greg Miller]

Put that down. I want to talk about where we are right now. All right, post PC launch we're getting the ducks in the row. We're making more Elder Scrolls. We're looking towards that console launch. But before we do that, I'll remind you of course that this is the Elder Scrolls Online podcast, a kind of funny games cast limited series. If you like that, make sure you like subscribe and share this show wherever you're getting it. Whether it be over on the ESO channels, whether it's on the kinda funny channels, no matter what. Thank you and remember, until next time, here's a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by the Elder Scrolls Online. Every legend starts somewhere and in eso, it starts with you. Join the millions of players in the award winning online fantasy rpg. Write your story into a vibrant chapter of Tamriel's distant past and discover a world steeped in adventure and possibility. ESO is more than a game, it's a virtual world where you belong. This year, ESO is breaking the mold and introducing the content pass, complete with two new dungeon packs, two part story content, a brand new zone to explore, and a world changing in game event, all released throughout the year. And Talking about story 2025 brings us the seasons of the Worm Cult, a direct sequel to ESO's main story. Travel to the never before explored island of Solstice where Worm Cult activity is surging. It's up to you to unite the three alliances against this old foe that has mysteriously returned. Pick up the Elder Scrolls Online now on PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

[E]

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[Matt Fyroar]

That was elegant.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. You know what I mean. It's like I do it for a living. Let's talk about where we are then in this timeline does immediately when you sit down you're like we're making it more Elder Scrolls. We're going to do this, we're going to do that is the next thing. Then we're going to do this. All for console launch. You had mentioned at one point in the last episode, I think it was Matt that You didn't know you're doing a console till very late in the get it very close. When does console enter the picture for you? And that's when you know it. And then this and then console entered the picture.

[Mike]

When Skyrim became one of the best selling games on console.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yes.

[Mike]

Like end of, end of story. Right. It's like there was a market there and we had to serve it.

[Greg Miller]

And it was that another of this is going to be great. Or like, oh, we didn't build the game for this at all.

[Matt Fyroar]

There were lots of those conversations, like I remember, you know, down to are they going to be able to do dungeons? Are they going to be able to do trials? Are they going to like, are they going to play like mouse and keyboard players? Like, we were really, really nervous about that. And it turns out gamers are just gamers and they can do anything with whatever.

[Rich Lambert]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

I've heard Matt talk is trash about console gamers. He thought they weren' going to be hardcore. He thought we wouldn't be able to hang Mike. But we were there.

[Mike]

Yeah, I mean, I use a controller on PC.

[Matt Fyroar]

One of my favorite stories, you know, of that mouse and keyboard versus controller is. And this is quite a bit after launch, I think it was for Morrowind. We brought a number of people in to play the game and give us feedback on the features and what we were doing. And we had a really good mix of console gamers and PC gamers. And the PC gamers, there was a number of PVPers and they were all talking a lot of smack and. Right. So they had a dueling tournament and the person that won the dueling tournament was her name at the time was Beware. But now she goes by Lulu. Lulu, lovely. And she wiped the floor with everybody and she had this like weird claw grip on her controller and just demolished everybody. Like it was. It was amazing. And I was like, like, okay, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

It'S gonna be okay.

[Matt Fyroar]

Gamers are gamers.

[Mike]

So we were saved on the console, the whole console thing. We were saved by the fact that we were developing the console version right. When Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were not yet launched. But both Microsoft, Xbox and Sony were looking for content. And so also both of them shared a similar architecture and both of them had similar architecture to Windows. So if we were the previous generation, it would almost never have happened because ESO is a big game. But the tech revolution in console at that time helped us immensely. Right. And so we worked with a company named Iron Galaxy that does a lot of Dave Lang.

[Greg Miller]

We hate him. Around here. Come on.

[Mike]

He's a great guy. But yeah. So we had Dan Coleman and Adam Boys and Chelsea Blasco and that team. Chelsea was the head of Iron Galaxy, now was the lead producer on ESO console, which we call it Project Bluebird. And so we were able to give that to them and then go fix our stuff before console launch. And so that was very much the plan was we know we need to launch console again like PC. We know we need to launch at some point relatively soon because we got to make some money, but we're going to give you enough Runway to fix the things. And number one on that list after player separation was business model, because console gamers, if PC gamers are not going to pay a subscription for this game, console gamers definitely aren't for sure. And so that was the big change that then we started working on and we had almost exactly a year to do all of those changes.

[Greg Miller]

No big deal.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

Rebuild the. Well, not rebuild the game, but change a lot of the game, right?

[Mike]

Yeah. Rich and I did a retro kind of this in at one of the quake cons in 2018 or 2019 where we talked about this, this thing and I went back and watched that and I had forgotten so much stuff that we did. Which is funny because when we're on stage there talking about it, we had already forgotten about in years before. But so we just called our updates even now. Update one, update two, update three. So we had update six was the one that was important because it had the change of business model. So if you bought the game at any time, you could play it as much as you wanted. But if you wanted customization and convenience items, you could now had virtual currency. Sure. And there was an optional subscription. So that went in update 6. Like a bunch of combat changes.

[Greg Miller]

Ballpark, how far out from Launch is Update 6?

[Mike]

It is. I can tell you exactly. It is March 16, 2015, the day before St. Patrick's Day.

[Matt Fyroar]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

So never forget the green beer was flowing next time.

[Mike]

Well, and it's also literally the day when it went from red to green because. And not. Not. Not just in dollars, just in terms of. We saw the future that day.

[Greg Miller]

Gotcha.

[Mike]

So console didn't launch till June, but this was the build that was going to be the console launch build. And so. And the fact that we made it so you could just. If you had bought the game at any time since launch, you could, you know, subscription anymore so you could just log in and play. And so we ran a marketing campaign of like just come back and check it out.

[Greg Miller]

What do you got to lose?

[Mike]

What do you got to lose? It wasn't quite that level. But it was. But it was.

[Greg Miller]

What else are you gonna do today before say Patrick.

[Mike]

So yeah so our there are a bunch of other changes in their quality of life changes. A bunch of guild stuff. Facial animations are much better and you could actually see characters articulating. Yeah whole Gil Tabern I just watched this video. It's the only reason why I know but that build went up, update 6 went up and overnight our concurrency doubled. And then the next night it doubled again. And then. And then the whole narrative around the game changed. Completely changed and everything. Our street, our stream reviews which were don't ever read these reviews territory suddenly started to go up and up and up and right before console launch they actually reached reached reached positive mostly positive. And then console launched and then that just then the trajectory was stratospheric.

[Rich Lambert]

So that was the move to go to more of a free to play.

[Mike]

Model there with if you bought the game once you could play as much as you want without any subscription. You could optionally subscribe which is the way we do it now.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep.

[Rich Lambert]

ESL plus correct.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Rich Lambert]

I've been signed up to that for clip.

[Matt Fyroar]

That craft bag is something special.

[Greg Miller]

Here's I want to put a pin where we are right there because we're about to get to console and I love that but take me back. You said you had about a year to make all these changes in one of them being the business model. I have always found these discussions fascinating and I've never had this level of access to one. So you launch. Oh man, they hate the subscription. Where does that conversation start? Is that going to the late great Robert Altman and being like hey, we gotta do this. Is he like yeah, that sounds great. Or is he like what the hell are you talking about? Makes me the money.

[Mike]

So this is probably probably the only part of the conversation that Rich and I weren't actually in together. Because Rich was the adults got a.

[Matt Fyroar]

Room for this one.

[Mike]

Rich was hands deep in fixing all kinds of problems in the game. And this was me going to the boardroom and saying we fucked up. We got to change the business model. Showing based on data that we got from industry publications at the time around how virtual currency would work, what it would take to get us there. Just the fact that getting lapsed players into the game introduced the concept of lapsed players because that concept didn't exist before in Eso or Bethesda and so it was funny their reference for buying things virtual currency, which the generic term obviously is dlc but to them that was oblivion. Horse armor.

[Greg Miller]

Horse armor.

[Mike]

Literally the CTO was like, you're just going to sell horse armor and make money. And I was like, like yeah, I mean, and I, I mean start grabbing.

[Greg Miller]

The box to give you to put your stuff in.

[Mike]

But, but that was the, the concept of like you, you know, we're going to introduce, you know, microtransactions but we're going to do it for convenience and customization only. You can't buy your way to success. You can buy your way to look better.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You know, if you want. And we're going to have an optional subscription that gives you some virtual currency per month and gives you some, some engagement game perks as well. And we did some modeling which was good but the best modeling was we know that more players will play the game because of it because it's less risky to them to jump in and console launch. You only have one chance to launch on console. We want to make it as frictionless as possible.

[Greg Miller]

And in so many ways this is the last first impression. Right. That's what you had.

[Matt Fyroar]

You get one second chance.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mike]

And I'll blatantly name drop here but the ZeniMax board of directors back then, I don't know if you've ever gone into that was like Jerry Bruckheimer and guys, Cal Ripken, really, really famous, notable people. And after PC launch I had to go to the board and present the findings. And Jerry Bruckheimer actually said unlike movies which launch worldwide, you get a chance for a do over because you're going to go to console. And don't ever think this isn't a giant opportunity because now people know what it is and you just have to convince them that it's better. And it works like you know with, with movies, it's, it's one and done. You can't, you can't change them. And the whole concept to him was amazing that you could have something on one platform and kind of massage it and make it better and then go to a bigger platform and redo it. And so which was a great way to look at it. And that's, and that's the way that we ended up up doing it.

[Rich Lambert]

So you're looking at that model now and saying okay, this is the findings, this is what we want to do. You're going to keep still the price tag of to get in you have to pay X. But then you don't have to pay monthly, is it now? Hey, I got to get a creative team. We got to get a bunch of horse armor in this game. Let's start making this right now.

[Mike]

Yeah. So I will never say horse armor again. I just want to say that was the CTO's reference for, for. For what DLC was. But yes, we, so we had a designer on, on. On staff named, named Lee, Lee Rideout, who is actually still in, who came from a game. He was a designer on the team, not a monetization designer. And we had him design the monetization system and he approached it from a game perspective, not necessarily a financial perspective. And he's like, what do players want to buy based on this game that I just spent eight years making? Right. What would I do? Basically it's like I want to look cooler, I want to have. I can craft potions, but I can just buy them and maybe that's easier for me because I don't want to get into the crafting system. Right. And it came in up with all of these things. And I think the key thing there was not an outside finance person driving the decisions. It was an inside game designer that was driving that, which made it feel really good.

[Matt Fyroar]

And it also helped that the ethos. Right. Was do no harm.

[Mike]

Yeah. That was literally wrote that on the whiteboards.

[Matt Fyroar]

Number one, do no harm.

[Mike]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

More people did that.

[Matt Fyroar]

It's literally just convenience as cosmetics and we've kind of run up against that line over time. But that's always been the core is do no harm. And that helped solve a lot of conversations and helped really fine tune and focus Lee and team on what are the types of things. Now we have this huge pipeline for in game cosmetics and all that other stuff.

[Mike]

Yeah. So yeah, we have a lot of artists working a lot making costumes and dye colors and I mean there's so many houses, like there's so many parts of this system now that are intertwined with the game design. So you can get all these things, almost all of them without needing to go into the currency store. But if you want to save some time, you can, you can grind for it in game, you can buy them. And so it hit just right with the, with the player base. Obviously there was some concern for the player base in the early days, but. But it was, it was the right thing to do at just the right time. And then we rebranded the game as he went from the brown box to the, to the white box and it was like Elder Scrolls Online. Tamri. All unlimited. Unlimited. Obviously Meaning no subscription. Although nobody ever made the connection with a new video and. Right. And. And. And a fresh marketing campaign. And then that happened. Right. And when Update 6 hit, and then that was our look and brand up through console launch.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

Really quick. We kind of talk about, like, the perfect model that we kind of nailed here. What were some that were left on the floor that was not the perfect model of like, hey, that's not the right way, or we don't want to do that. But it's close.

[Matt Fyroar]

I mean, it all goes back to that. That mantra, right. Of do no harm. So there were.

[Mike]

Sure.

[Matt Fyroar]

There were lots of explorations of like, can players just buy power straight up? Can they just buy boosted characters? And.

[Mike]

And I think it was by time was. Was what? Like, literally you can buy your way to 50th level or something like that, which theoretically isn't buying power because you're not more powerful than a level 50 person. But that was way too close to the level line for us.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep. So it's a lot of that kind of stuff.

[E]

Okay.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You said this is all, you know, building up, doing this title update 6 and then console launch. Console launch runs flawlessly. Everything goes perfectly. This is it. This is the. This is. We don't need the other two episodes of the show. This is it. This is the big moment. Right.

[Mike]

Yeah. So I think ESO was either the number one or number two selling console game of 20. Well, no, Fallout 4 was that same year, so that probably, probably, probably beat us. That's fine. All in house, but whatever number was forecast, it was a lot more than that.

[Greg Miller]

I have numbers here because I didn't want to make you memorize them all. 3 million new players in two months. 2.7 MAUs. And that's monthly active users. Just making sure you run in July 2015, 500,000 concurrent players across all platforms, and then $230 million in revenue. Revenue.

[Mike]

Y.

[Matt Fyroar]

That was a good year.

[Greg Miller]

Pretty impressive.

[Mike]

So the. All of July was pretty much sleepless. So June. All of June. It launched June. Right. June or July. I forget. June. June. So yeah, so we actually had. At the office, I actually got like, we. Our office in Hunt Valley, Maryland, is right across the street from an Embassy Suites hotel. And we got seven or eight rooms and just put the keys on the front desk. So if somebody had had too much, they just went and got a key and went over and slept for a couple hours and then came back and put the key back and we rotated that way because, yeah, we had a rolling launch. So Worldwide launch, which I'm sure all of your viewers know what this means. It means New Zealand gets in first, then Australia, then Asia. And it's like over the course of that day, of course it launches at midnight. So by the time it gets to North America, it's midnight.

[Greg Miller]

You're a bit tired.

[Mike]

Not a good idea. Yeah. So as it launches in New Zealand and Australia like and then Asia and then Europe like the euphoria is just building because there's a lot of people playing.

[Greg Miller]

You're seeing these numbers pop and the.

[Mike]

Numbers, they're going crazy.

[Greg Miller]

Monitors with everything.

[Matt Fyroar]

Big old war room.

[Mike]

Yeah, giant. Giant war room. And the problem is New Zealand. Great people, not a whole lot of them. Australia, a few more. Asia. Elder Scrolls isn't big in Asia. So the, the ramp was nice and gentle. And Europe has two, two time zones kind of. Yeah. Goes up and America hits and the sort of. Just because everybody gets in at once and it's midnight on the east coast and the game is down. And so it was so much bigger than we thought it was going to be. And we, we thought it was going to be big. So it took us a good two or three hours to figure out what was going on there. And then the next two weeks was.

[Greg Miller]

And is is again. Is it an interesting answer? I don't even know what was going on there.

[Mike]

It was a login, a login load problem where we needed to distribute the login load on the edge device in our data center. Needed to actually have more ports opened.

[Matt Fyroar]

Basically we basically ddosed ourselves.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, right, got it, got it.

[Mike]

There's so much traffic that we had to redirect some of the compute power to the Edge.

[Greg Miller]

Got it, got it, got it.

[Mike]

But then the problem was now people could log in and now too many people were logging in and that was the two week problem where we could only fit maybe 70, 80,000 concurrent on each of our pods. So we had North America, PS4, North America, Xbox, Europe, PS4, Europe, Xbox. Each of those could only hold about 70,000 and the demand was like 100 plus. And so people would get in login queues. And I'll never forget somebody posted on social media like, like hey, it says I'm, I'm like 1 million 750 Tekken in line. That's got to be some kind of bug. No, that's accurate. That that was not a bug. And so is that one of you.

[Greg Miller]

When you're talking about these pods and you know, 70,000 or whatever were you when you set that were you like, this is going to be good or is it was.

[Mike]

Are we being ambitious or this was the. So. So there is an agnostic decision to that that's made by the head server person who's this guy at Defoe who I've worked with for years. He's now the CTO at Zaus. And it's what will be a good gaming what to most people. You can get in on a pod and still have a good gaming experience. Got it. And that's where he said it. No matter what the demand was, he was like, the people that are in are going to be fine.

[Greg Miller]

We don't want to ruin it for everyone.

[Mike]

We don't want to ruin it for everyone. And so our job over the next two weeks involving lots of phone calls directly from Robert and how angry were they? Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What were these tones like?

[Mike]

Can you please tell me how you can get more people on your servers? Right.

[Matt Fyroar]

It's a good problem to have.

[Greg Miller]

Of course.

[Matt Fyroar]

Really good problem.

[Mike]

Yeah. So again, while Rich was off and team were off fixing content problems that we found, I was locked in a room with two me and Ed and a couple of server guys. And we literally sat in that room and watched the charts. You could see how users logging in, CPU going up till it got to the red. And finally after eight days, Ed figured out how to fix it and fix it. And then we got up to 125,000 concurrent and then that was fine. That's where the 500,000 number comes from. Because with our login queue and all those servers added together, that's a lot of people pretty crazy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. It was an outrageous number. Congratulations on making it happen.

[Mike]

I think that's, you know, there's the phrase it's a good problem to have. It was a good problem to have, but it was still pretty.

[Greg Miller]

A problem.

[Mike]

A problem.

[Greg Miller]

When the dust settles and the things are back to green and everybody can get in and play the game, then what are we seeing? How does. What I mean, you guys have created a game and I know you're. No one knows this better than you, so I'm talking more to the audience. You've created a game that is never done. That is, you're never. You're never shipped, you're never. You're never gold, you're never done. There's always another thing. So I assume this is great. Numbers are great. It's back to looking at feedback. It's back to looking at hurdles. I assume console players are going to have different problems than PC players to some degree.

[Matt Fyroar]

They were the same kinds of things, right? It goes back to the gamers are just gamers and they can do anything. It was the same kinds of things. And we had done a ton of stuff. Like we did six updates in a year, which is ridiculous, right? We do four in a year now. So we did six updates in a year. A ton of new stuff added in there. People were really happy. But there were some lingering things, right? The whole it's still hard to play with my friends, right? It's that kind of stuff. And so we start in taking that feedback and started talking more about what we could do to change that stuff. And it led to some very interesting conversations for sure.

[Greg Miller]

Tell me about these conversations.

[Mike]

Well, yeah, so first we took that year off making new content. While we were on PC. Our content teams were actually still making new content. They were still making stuff. We just weren't putting it in the game. So after console launch we actually had some content in the can. And so we launched Imperial City which was a PvP centric PvE zone, which is awesome. If you never played Imperial City, any of you out there in Eso land, go play Imperial City. It's a lot of fun. And the next which important for this conversation was Orsinium. And Orsinium was our first real dlc. Still I think is the best content that we've done because we had a team working on it for like two years because they had time to go in and do all of the little things. It feels amazing. The story's great, but we had the problem and this is this and the one after that are the last big argument discussions that Rich and I had. But so consoles out, we have millions of players or we want to. Imperial City was easy. It was PvP, right? Our PvP system is. Is level scaled. So you go into the PvP zone and it doesn't really matter what level you are, just a matter of your skill and your. And your build and your gear. Because we wanted as many people to play PvP as possible. So Pyril City, no problem. Orsinium comes up and then we have discussion. What level is Orsinium? Because this is a level based game. If you're level 10, you can't really have group with a level 15 person. Right? That guy. You just won't get any. It just doesn't work.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Mike]

Old school. Old school still in that sense.

[Greg Miller]

And again a product at the time, especially for you guys with this MMO background. Like yeah, that's how things were especially in 2007. Let alone where we were in 2017, 15, like for, you know, people who need to be educated, remember, it was such a big deal. When I forget, Borderlands 2 was like, hey, you come together, it doesn't matter.

[Mike]

You're all able to play.

[Greg Miller]

And it's like, what? How's that possible? What are you doing? How's that?

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we had Oblivion and Skyrim as single player games, but North Stars there, it's like, doesn't matter what level you were.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You know, it's just the world scale to you. But Orsinium was like, what level is it? It's the best content in the game. Do we want to save it for max level players? Like, we want people to get in there. And then it's like, well, if it's low level, then max level players literally can't play it because they're not going to get rewarded for it. And so after many whiteboard sessions, yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

That was the test bed for its levelness.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

And we had to figure out what the heck that meant and battle leveling and solve all the grouping issues and all that other stuff. But it was. It turned out to be the right thing to do. Players absolutely loved it. And we saw, like, things we didn't even think about happened. Like guild recruitment went through the roof because there was a place where everybody could all be and they could play with their guildies. Didn't matter what level it was. Right. Didn't matter what alliance was. They could just play with each other. And we were like, hmm, that's interesting. And then that led to a few days at Matt's house over the Christmas break, talking about one. Tamriel.

[Mike]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, back to Arsenium real quick. If you all missed it. When Rich went over, we called it levelless or battle leveling. But what it basically meant is you could just go into the zone and. And the zone scaled to you or you actually. You scaled to the zone. And so we didn't even tell the players what level was. We didn't mention it at all. We didn't even. And they just went and played and nobody even knew it was in there. Except for the guys that are. That are crunching the numbers and they're like, wait a minute, something's happening here.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Because this is such awesome. It's an interesting twist on the similar problem we talked about earlier, right. Of like, well, okay, I come to join you, but in your game, the world's already been destroyed. So we show up and there's an era where you should Be. But you're not because you're in a parallel universe. Universe. If I'm level one and you, you guys come play with me tonight, I'm like, yeah, I can't do anything.

[Mike]

Yeah. And, and you know the, the term I used when I was in meetings with Rich and, and, and the team, it was like, does anyone really care what level they are in? Gta, right? You just jump in and play. Why can't we just jump in and play? And Orsinium showed that we could do that. And players didn't even know we were doing it. It was, it was, it was done in, in, in in such a good way. And like Rich said, it made it sociable again. Like, you know, you know how old school MMOs are underneath. They're not. No one's gonna group with you there. It's actually hostile to social systems to do that. And it's like. So that really opened our eyes.

[Greg Miller]

So this leads to you going to his house over Christmas break?

[Matt Fyroar]

Yeah, it was, it was. What was that? 2015. Christmas.

[Mike]

It was 2015, right after Orenium launched.

[Matt Fyroar]

Right after Orsinium launched. And Matt was like, hey, we, we need to chat. And I'm like, oh. So we spent, spent two days at his house over the Christmas break talking about doing the Orsinium treatment to the entire game. I was like, what? Like, really? And so we had to go through a whole host of things, everything from, you know, do we gate it again? Do we not to, like, what's progression look like now? Yeah, because that's a huge part of an online game is progression and all that stuff. And there were some heated moments, but we got through it and we got to a really good place. And then.

[Greg Miller]

What's a heated moment look like on this first episode?

[Matt Fyroar]

I'm not changing the levels.

[Mike]

I know. It was, it was a bigger discussion initially, which is we have this hit game. We have a lot of people playing it. We just launched this amazing dlc.

[Greg Miller]

We're finally in a great place.

[Mike]

We're finally doing that. We're finally in a great place. What do we do now?

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

And you're like, blow it all off.

[Mike]

Or you can also see which is, which is where we started with this of like the path that started before launch of us making the game more Elder Scrolls. Like, like making the game levelless. Like I said, like oblivion. And Skyrim is kind of the Holy Grail, like there, like, don't like again, does anybody care what level they are in Skyrim, really? I mean, you can do anything at Any level, pretty much. And so we wanted that idea in there or seen him prove that we could do it. And the yelling was more about it sounds easy to make the game levelless, but what it really did is if you were in the launch version of the game, you created a character. You went to Bleak. Let's just do Daggerfall. You went to Stros Mackay, then you went to Betnik, then you went to Glen Umbra, then you went to Stormhaven, then you went to Rivenspire. Right. Every player did that. So that means we developed the content, not the quest, but the content, the monster level, the way the game interacts with you. We made that with the assumption that you would have five or six zones to get to level 50. So Glenumbra had a lot less cool stuff than the last level in it because it assumed you were going to be higher level when monsters would be more difficult.

[Matt Fyroar]

Sure.

[Mike]

Right. So it wasn't just making it level. It meant Rich's team. And this is where he was trying to explain to me what a giant pain in the ass this is going to be. Was going in and make every zone 0 to 50 or 0 to max level.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Mike]

Every zone had to have world bosses, had to have easy monsters, middle monsters group. And so every zone became a microcosm of the game. And that was where the complexity came from.

[Greg Miller]

Gotcha.

[Matt Fyroar]

And then itemization. Like, how do we handle that? Right. We had to implement an entire system around making sure players understood that they were still gaining power as they were leveling up. Up. But it wasn't based on level. So how do you. How do you do that? And we came up with, you know, kind of the battle leveling system and the. The stars. I don't know if you notice the stars. You went through, through five stars. So that tells you how powerful your character is until you're 50. And then that basically goes away. And it's based on your gear and your level and now your champion points. But yeah, it was, it was really. It was. It was fun. Like, it was. It was fun conversation.

[Mike]

It all had to happen behind the scenes, though.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say, what happens when you come down from the mountaintop and all these developers.

[Matt Fyroar]

Hey, by the way, it was about the same reaction. And that was interesting, right? Like pitching this to the team and there was a. There's a pretty big split between. People were like, yeah, this is a great idea. And oh my gosh, I'm going to be looking for a job in a year.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wow. And it wasn't really thought like, oh yeah.

[Matt Fyroar]

Oh yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Like it was kill the game.

[Matt Fyroar]

It was. Yeah, it was the. This is going to be the death of Eso if we.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Matt Fyroar]

And. And when we eventually had our first play test with it, a lot of those people when they played it, they were like, I understand now. Like, this makes sense now. This is awesome. We were wrong. This is great. Right? And I'll never forget Dan Batson sent me a long email. He's like, I know. I was a vocal critic of this. You guys were totally right. Like, this was the absolute 100% on board now. Like, this is great, right? And the players had that same kind of reaction right? When we announced that we were doing this. They're like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? Like, this is the worst thing ever. And then they played it and went, got it.

[Mike]

I announced it at E3 2016. This is a funny moment. And seriously was. Probably had a lot to do with the game's Future success at E3 2016. We announced this on stage. We had the BE3 the Big Show. And there was a woman sitting as I was on stage like eight rows back. And you can't see anything when you're on stage, right? The lights.

[Greg Miller]

And.

[Mike]

And was just freaking out when I was. When. When I was talking and so. And. And she was sitting next to some media people who recorded it and it. It went semi viral. That like, I think it was when you invite your mother to your.

[Greg Miller]

To. To.

[Mike]

To. To. To your product presentation. It was. It was the funniest thing. But that actually got like a million views. And, and that actually, that was when we announced one Tamriel. And. And she. And. And her. And her boyfriend. I think I met her like later. Great. It was awesome person. Super excited about one Tamriel. And they. And it made people actually ask Elder Scrolls Online, why are people flipping out, flipping out about oh my God, there must be something here, right? And it actually helped us amazingly well, especially with one Tamriel, because it got people asking. Media started asking about what is this thing? You know? And then our user base started to respond. And then when it launched, when it launched it was like, oh yeah, this is great. And like nobody freaked out. And it was like, I can just play the game. Wives and husbands can now play together and you can recruit friends.

[Greg Miller]

Here we go. Crank up the sound. I gotta hear it. I. I can't quite find the moment. Sorry.

[Matt Fyroar]

Look at that.

[Greg Miller]

You're doing great.

[Mike]

How did you find that? I've been looking for that video forever. Yeah, I actually had to stop at one point and.

[Greg Miller]

Are you okay, ma'am?

[Mike]

Are you okay? Yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Incredible.

[Mike]

Yeah. Yeah. But so that. That was a moment. And when we launched, it was anticlimactic because to the players, they just launched in, logged in, and it was.

[Greg Miller]

And to you guys, you're like, first off, this humongous undertaking. I have to imagine this changed the servers and how you did all that.

[Mike]

To some degree, a little bit, but not. It just. It distributed the load more across. Because before, you had to be like, okay, if you're launching, you know, a new update or, you know, all the players are level one and they're going to go here, and they're level two, and you got to keep switching load from here to here. But now you can log in and go anywhere in the world. World. The load is actually much, much more evenly distributed. And it actually helped us more than it hurt us.

[Greg Miller]

So then once Ham Rail is launched, which I think is interesting, because it feels like there's a lot of parallels to what you guys just announced the last direct in terms of, like, hey, we're making this more for everybody, and this. And how are we going to get you content?

[Mike]

Yeah, well, it's interesting just as what we've been talking about here, it's like, we're not afraid to make changes when we need to make changes. I think that's the. Like, we don't want your advice from.

[Greg Miller]

The end of the last episode.

[Mike]

Right? Yeah, we don't want to stagnate. It's like, we want to. We want to make sure that we're. We're keeping. Keeping. Moving forward. But, yeah, we launched that year. We launched Steve's Guild, Dark Brotherhood, which are story DLCs, which were awesome. And then we ended with one Tamriel. And then it was, what do we do next? What do we do next? And, yeah, and actually, this is Todd Vaughn's idea. Todd Vaughn's the VP of Product development at Bethesda. He was like, now that you have all this great stuff, you should actually cash in on the nostalgia, the actual big moments of other Elder Scrolls games and make a package of new stuff. Don't just dribble it out over time. Which was Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. And it's like, just do something big and then the team can focus on it, meaning the publishing team can focus on it. It. And I was like, well, what Hallmark area would you like us to go to? And he's like, morrowind.

[Matt Fyroar]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

And that's where we'll end this episode. Come back next time for episode three to talk about Morrowind, talk about the secrets of Tamriel and everything else that's going on under there. Of course. Ladies, gentlemen, and enbies, thank you so much for watching this episode of the Elder Scrolls Online podcast, the kind of funny games cast limited series. Remember, each and every two weeks, we're here for a four part series, meaning we're back on on Friday, May 9th for a brand new episode. Of course. Matt, Rich, Mike, thank you so much for another great episode and hanging out again. We could just, we could talk and talk and talk about this.

[Rich Lambert]

So much fun. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

All right. When we come back next time, we're getting into some more of where they've been and where they're going. But until then, it's been our pleasure to serve.