When's Crossplay Coming to Elder Scrolls Online? - A Kinda Funny Gamescast Limited Series

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast

Episode: When's Crossplay Coming to Elder Scrolls Online?
Release Date: May 23, 2025

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Introduction

In the final episode of the limited series Elder Scrolls Online Podcast hosted by Kinda Funny, hosts Greg Miller and Snowbike Mike engage in an in-depth discussion with key figures from Zenimax Online Studios—Rich Lambert, Game Director of Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), and Matt Feyror, Studio Director. The conversation delves into the game's evolution, community dynamics, technical challenges, and future developments, with a particular focus on the much-anticipated crossplay feature.

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Leadership and Studio Dynamics

The episode opens with Greg expressing his regret that the series is concluding, highlighting the enjoyable collaboration with Rich and Matt.

• Greg Miller [00:10]: "What's up, everybody? Welcome to the final episode of the Elder Scrolls Online podcast..."

Rich Lambert reflects on his time with the team, emphasizing the strong leadership and supportive environment fostered by Matt Feyror and the late Robert Altman.

• Rich Lambert [02:23]: "I really only play on. See on the regular."

Matt Feyror discusses the impact of leadership on the studio's culture, particularly the loyalty inspired by Robert Altman.

• Matt Feyror [01:15]: "...it's really hard to get across kind of the culture that. That we have that results from that. But it was loyalty. Right. It's like he was loyal to us."

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Impact of Xbox Acquisition and COVID-19

The conversation shifts to Xbox's acquisition of ZeniMax and how it has influenced ESO. Matt highlights the seamless transition and continued support from Xbox, which has enabled the studio to focus on game development without major disruptions.

• Matt Feyror [03:32]: "They bought ZeniMax for great games. Right. And a great game publisher. So it's in their best interest and our best interest to keep doing what we're doing."

Greg brings up server stability issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, where player numbers surged, overwhelming the game's infrastructure.

• Matt Feyror [07:31]: "...we had an influx like that... lots of server issues because this was at that point a six, seven year old game and we weren't prepared..."

Rich Lambert elaborates on the challenges of remote work and maintaining efficient communication without the usual in-person interactions.

• Rich Lambert [09:00]: "The random wandering around. You see something, you ask a question... We had to relearn how to do all of that remotely."

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Console Launch and Technical Enhancements

The hosts discuss the significant milestones of launching ESO on new consoles like the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. Matt details the technical upgrades made to ensure the game runs smoothly on these platforms, including modern shaders and performance modes.

• Matt Feyror [10:46]: "Yeah, we did that in the middle of the pandemic... it runs great."

Rich adds that the graphical improvements have been well-received by both developers and players.

• Rich Lambert [11:05]: "Our graphics guys love that. Yeah, just love that."

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Community Growth and Player Dynamics

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the ESO community's evolution, especially during the pandemic when virtual worlds became essential for social interaction.

• Matt Feyror [12:53]: "The mood of the community kind of changed... it was very important to a lot of people maintaining their sanity for that time."

Rich shares heartwarming stories of players forming real-life relationships through ESO, underscoring the game's role beyond mere gameplay.

• Rich Lambert [18:15]: "Couples have met in the game, met then, met in real life, gotten married or now bring them to the community events..."

Matt emphasizes the diversity of activities within ESO, from PvE quests to housing, which cater to various player interests.

• Matt Feyror [15:23]: "...another activity that is now very important and central to the experience."

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Crossplay Discussions

When addressing the recurring question of crossplay, Rich and Matt acknowledge its importance to the community. They reveal ongoing efforts to update the underlying technology to facilitate cross-platform play, although they caution that it's a complex process.

• Matt Feyror [25:24]: "We're working on doing some underlying tech changes that would make it possible."

Greg presses on why crossplay hasn't been implemented yet, to which Matt responds by highlighting the technical and stakeholder challenges involved.

• Matt Feyror [26:06]: "The platform holders... it's something we really want to do."

Rich reinforces the commitment to making crossplay a reality, assuring the community that it's a priority despite the hurdles.

• Rich Lambert [25:18]: "Anything is possible."

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PvP Enhancements and Future Plans

The hosts delve into ESO's PvP systems, exploring recent tests aimed at improving large-scale battles in Cyrodiil. Rich explains the technical constraints and the team's dedication to enhancing player experiences without compromising server performance.

• Rich Lambert [31:22]: "The whole goal of doing this test is to prove out performance..."

Matt outlines the history and future of PvP in ESO, indicating that upcoming tests could pave the way for more robust PvP interactions.

• Matt Feyror [34:43]: "...this experiment that we're doing is kind of this new..."

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Community Engagement and Toxicity Management

Rich and Matt discuss their proactive approach to fostering a positive community environment. They highlight the importance of loyalty and trust, explaining how ESO maintains low toxicity levels through supportive community events and inclusive gameplay.

• Matt Feyror [43:12]: "We have a community that will welcome you, that doesn't enforce a playstyle on you..."

Rich shares personal anecdotes about meeting community members and the emotional connections forged through ESO.

• Rich Lambert [18:16]: "Like, you know, we all get together. You run into them, you know, in a hallway... it's a big honor."

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Modernization and Future Content

Looking ahead, Rich and Matt outline ESO's modernization efforts, including graphical updates, UI overhauls, and new storytelling methods. They reveal upcoming content such as the Seasons of the Worm Cult, a new island—Solstice—and the Soul Wall event, which will offer server-specific story progressions.

• Rich Lambert [57:46]: "This year is focused on the wurm cult... a brand new island with some very cool stories..."

Matt discusses the shift from the chapter model to a more flexible content delivery system, allowing the team to address long-standing issues while continuing to deliver engaging content.

• Matt Feyror [48:39]: "...this model gives us the time to do those things while delivering great content."

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Advice for New Players

As the podcast winds down, Matt and Rich offer guidance for newcomers to ESO. They encourage experimentation with different playstyles and emphasize that players can always adjust their characters as they explore the vast world of Tamriel.

• Rich Lambert [61:36]: "You're never behind, so you can always play with whomever..."
• Matt Feyror [61:21]: "Go through the original tutorial, create a new character and then go to Orsinium, which is my favorite place in the game."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with heartfelt thanks to Rich and Matt for sharing their insights and experiences. Snowbike Mike reflects on the significance of ESO in his gaming life, while Greg emphasizes the deep connections forged through the game.

• Snowbike Mike [62:24]: "This whole time. I'm very excited."
• Greg Miller [62:38]: "Matt and Rich, thank you so much for letting us be part of your story for the past four episodes..."

The hosts encourage listeners to engage with ESO and continue supporting the vibrant community that sustains it.

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Notable Quotes

• Matt Feyror [01:15]: "It's like loyalty. Right. It's like he was loyal to us."
• Rich Lambert [09:30]: "We had to relearn how to do all of that remotely..."
• Matt Feyror [12:53]: "...it's very important to a lot of people maintaining their sanity for that time."
• Rich Lambert [18:15]: "Couples have met in the game, met then, met in real life..."
• Matt Feyror [25:24]: "We're working on doing some underlying tech changes that would make it possible."
• Rich Lambert [43:12]: "We have a community that will welcome you..."
• Matt Feyror [48:39]: "This model gives us the time to do those things while delivering great content."
• Rich Lambert [57:46]: "This year is focused on the wurm cult..."
• Matt Feyror [61:21]: "Go through the original tutorial, create a new character and then go to Orsinium..."

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a comprehensive look into ESO's past challenges, present achievements, and future aspirations. By addressing technical hurdles, fostering a supportive community, and continuously evolving the game, Zenimax Online Studios demonstrates its commitment to delivering a rich and engaging experience for both new and veteran players. The discussion on crossplay indicates a promising direction, aligning ESO with contemporary gaming trends and expanding its accessible player base.

For those unfamiliar with the podcast, this summary provides a clear and detailed overview of the episode's content, capturing the essence of the hosts' conversation and the depth of ESO's ongoing development.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the final episode of 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, Snowbike Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

Hi, Greg. Not too happy that you're saying the final episode because I've been having so.

[Greg Miller]

Much fun with these. It went too fast.

[Snowbike Mike]

Too fast. Getting to spend time with these two guys has been pretty great. And talking all things Elder Scrolls Online has been pretty amazing.

[Greg Miller]

Of course, these two guys are none other than Rich Lambert, of course, game director of the Elder Scrolls Online. Hello. How are you?

[Rich Lambert]

I am fantastic today.

[Greg Miller]

Are you gonna miss us?

[Rich Lambert]

Yes, actually.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, you.

[Rich Lambert]

I'm looking forward to going home, but.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, maybe we can. Maybe we can share, you know, our characters. Maybe we get to play with.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Greg Miller]

How many characters do you have, Rich?

[Rich Lambert]

Too many.

[Greg Miller]

Are they on every platform as well? Just everywhere?

[Rich Lambert]

I mean, technically, yes, but I really only play on. See on the regular.

[Greg Miller]

Sure. Okay. Okay, Fair enough. Okay. And then of course, it's Matt Feyror. Of course. He is the big cheese. All right. He is the big cheese. Studio director. Studio director, Zenimax Online Studios.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. And actually, after the. After the last episode, Rich and I were talking a little bit about the Robert segment. We were talking about when we were talking to Robert Altman. And it's like, it's really hard to get across kind of the culture that. That we have that results from that. But we were. We were trying to figure out a way to say it so that people would understand that are listening to this. But I think it comes down to loyalty. Right. It's like he was loyal to us. Right. It was not a traditional CEO relationship where if he believed in what you were doing, he would literally go to war for you. Right. And we knew that, and he knew we would do that for him. Right. And we were all pointed in the right direction.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I'm here is because of him. Him. You know, I. When I started here, Robert had just opened up a small satellite office in the Hunt Valley area to keep a small number of engineers and artists because they lived in Pennsylvania and they had to drive to Rockville every day. And they just. That's like, what, two hours each way? Something like that. And they were like, we can't do this. And he's like, what would it take? What if I open something closer? And they were like, yeah. And he's like, okay, done.

[Greg Miller]

And he did that.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

That's kind of awesome.

[Matt Feyror]

And then Rich was the manager of that office. Right. And it's all because he wanted to make things work for the team. Right. And if he believed in something, it was gonna happen. Right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It actually leads me to something, but I'll get to that. One second. Remember everybody, this is the Elder Scrolls Online podcast. A four part series between the Elder Scrolls Online and us here at Kinda funny. Of course. If you like the Elder Scrolls Online, play the game, go get the other episodes that are up on their channels. If you like Kinda Funny, come get the episodes that are up on our channel under the gamescast feed. You can get it as a podcast, you can get as a YouTube video. You can have a great time no matter where you're getting it. Please, like subscribe and share. Because we couldn't do this without you. Just like the Elder Scrolls Online wouldn't be anything without you. It's community. But before we get to the community, which is what this episode's all about in the future and the cool stuff you're doing, I want to come back to this leadership question. We haven't talked at all about Xbox buying, y' all. What's that been like? Because from the outside, I think they've done such a great job of keeping it like. No, you are ZeniMax Online Studios. That's Bethesda. That's its own thing. It's a brand still.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. They bought ZeniMax for great games. Right. And a great game publisher. So it's in their best interest and our best interest to keep doing what we're doing. Right. And so they, they facilitate that. I will say that happened in 2020. And it's like that was right as the pandemic happened and then Robert passed away right then. So a lot of change happened very quickly. And you know, the pandemic was tough. Right? It was really hard. We haven't even gotten into what that did to Eso and maybe where our numbers just exploded and our servers melted. Right. But that changeover happened then and that was the least problematic by far of all the other things that were happening. Right. It was literally just smooth, seamless to. We got support from Zenimax and now it's Xbox. Right. So they just let us do what we do.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say, yeah, I know. Again, this is a new relationship. Obviously we're about to talk about these Covid numbers and what it did for the game. But it is that thing of, you know, when we've been talking about Robert Altman and him telling you like, is this going to be, is this going to be a great video game? It's going to be the best RPG of all time. We'll go do, go do it. Does that seem to be the same case here? Like obviously different. This is an established product that's been running for 10 years live. So like basically are they staying out of the way of what you want to do?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, absolutely. It's like you tell us what you need. There are a few wrinkles. Like it's more fiscal year based. It's a public company. Right. So the meetings are a little different but the goals are the same.

[Greg Miller]

And Phil Spencer's always begging you for T shirts to wear.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I mean I love working with those guys because, you know, especially Phil, he's a gamer. Right. He understands exactly what we're trying to do in the sense of we're delivering an experience to a group of gamers and we've proven that we can do it. Right. And so as long as we keep doing that, that, that that's what he's looking for.

[Snowbike Mike]

Is there anything that interests you that Xbox and Microsoft have done, I think about cloud gaming.

[Matt Feyror]

Right.

[Snowbike Mike]

And having your game just so readily available at a click of a button. Has that impressed you guys? Is that something you take advantage of and think about for the future?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, well, we did have stadia. We did, we did have a stadia client. So we were actually ahead of Poor One out. But no, no. So but again, now that we're working with giant companies, right. These things become possible. Right. We, you know, obviously the Google thing was more of a publishing deal, but with, with, with Xbox. Yeah, we're on xCloud and we're on Game Pass and. Right. We didn't have to do really anything to make those things happen. And it's great. Like it's, that's the cool part of working with, with a giant company. That's technology forward thinking.

[Snowbike Mike]

They said the word loyalty and it's really stuck with me, Greg, you know, and I, I think it's really impressive.

[Matt Feyror]

Right.

[Snowbike Mike]

You talk about loyalty and what Robert meant to all of you kind of brought to it all and what you guys have done with your community and the community right back. That loyalty of, hey, this is 10 years plus of course with you guys on the back end. But it's wild. I, I think loyalty is a big one with MMOs of loyalty from the developers for the fans of, hey, we, you know, we expect you guys to deliver and you guys have. And on the Flip side, the loyalty of the fans of, hey, we're here through thick and thin. It could be bad. We, we're ready for the good stuff. But it, it, it is interesting when you think of 10 years in the word loyalty, it really stands out to me.

[Greg Miller]

Me.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, it's a relationship, right. It's like, you know, they have lots of options. Right. And a lot of the developer, virtual world, developer community relationship is trust and, and loyalty. Right. And, and they, they trust that we'll do the right things. Mostly the right things. Right. Because we go back and change things constantly. Right. But they trust that we're the people that are going to deliver the experience that they want. Yep.

[Greg Miller]

When we're talking about this community and this obviously is all about them. Today on this episode, we obviously talked about launch, this giant explosion. You're melting servers there, the learnings. Then we talked about console launch in previous episodes. Okay. There's this giant influx you just touched on. It is Covid and work from home and everybody being on lockdown. Is that the next big explosion?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I mean the chapters happened with more wind in Somerset. That was a steady increase. Right. Nice, gentle, you know, like you're talking.

[Greg Miller]

About coming on over the rolling range.

[Matt Feyror]

Right. And we were successful. Right. We had a lot of players and it was good. Like. But then Covid happened and like every other live service, game and game, our numbers just overnight blew up because what else are you going to do when you're stuck at home and you can't go out? You're going to jump into a virtual world. Right. And we, we had lots of server issues because this was at that point a six, seven year old game and we weren't prepared for an influx like that. So Graymore launched in June of 2020, which is like six weeks after we all went home. And so that meant the content was in the can pretty much. We were in testing, you know, for that. But the live services aspect of Gramor, when all these players came in and we had, you know, you can go back and look on the message boards and social media, right. It was, it was a time when we had to put a lot of work into server stability and bringing more stuff online. And it was again a good problem to have, but was happening against that backdrop of just, you know, everything happening in the world.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, and not to mention, I think it's so easy for even the way you're talking about it, to us as players to think about. We're on lockdown, we're at home, we just want to Play this game. You're also developers who have now been forced home. Imagine the entire pipeline is completely screwed up.

[Matt Feyror]

Well, fortunately, we're a live service game. And because we're a live service game, we have the concept of remote access to things. And so we had some of the technology, VPNs and everything already built out so that we could access stuff from home. So also we already had a somewhat distributed development environment for eso. So you could work on one part of the game and another person could work on the same part of the game. And then you checked it in and so.

[Greg Miller]

So you really didn't have an excuse then.

[Rich Lambert]

I mean, we.

[Greg Miller]

It was.

[Rich Lambert]

I think we were three days off of our original launch date.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, amazing.

[Matt Feyror]

But it was the human interaction.

[Greg Miller]

Of course.

[Matt Feyror]

Of course. You know, the decision making was slower. The being able to identify problems was slower. Identifying solutions was slower. That. That's where. That's where it really affected us.

[Rich Lambert]

It was really eye opening to. Because we always took it for granted. All those water cooler talks, right. The random wandering around. You see something, you ask a question. Like, all of that went away because everybody was now at home and you had to book a meeting in order to get somebody's attention because they're off in their own little world doing things. And so all of that collaborative stuff we had to relearn how to do remotely. And you'd be shocked at how many game development problems get solved by just happenstance. When you just walk by somebody's desk and see something, or you're in the cafeteria getting lunch and you talk about this problem, you're like, oh, we got a solution and they solve it there before it becomes a problem. We had to learn, like I said, how to do all of that all over again. And it was, it was tough.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, for sure. So then you get that pipeline down not that long after what is almost. Correct me if I'm wrong, a year later, you launched the Xbox Series X S and the PlayStation 5 client.

[Matt Feyror]

Right, we totally forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You've done a few things in this decade of this game being live.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, we did that in the middle of the pandemic. And that was. Again, we have our own engine, so it's very scalable. And we spent some time and resources to make it support the modern shaders and dlss and, you know, all the. Yeah, all the new occlusion system.

[Rich Lambert]

Our graphics guys love that. Yeah, just love that.

[Greg Miller]

As they should.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, yeah. And it's. Yeah. And it looks fantastic. Like it basically brought Our PC Ultra Spec to console and it. And it runs great. And also we could do performance modes. We could do 60 frames a second or you could do fidelity mode at 4K. And so it's just.

[Greg Miller]

We all know it's 60. That's not 60.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, everybody does. Yeah. But fidelity mode is great if you're doing screenshots and stuff like that. But you can, but you can switch back and forth so easily that you can actually choose which one pretty much on the fly.

[Greg Miller]

So then start bringing me. Let's get. I want to start bringing you I guess back to Community. We're talking about. Back in Episode two when we talked about the console launch, one of the things we celebrated there was 500,000 concurrence across all platforms. Did those numbers compare? When we're talking to Covid?

[Matt Feyror]

We didn't get quite that much, but it was in the ballpark. And again we had launched so much content between 2015 and 2020 that we couldn't support the concurrency that we did in 2020. So we did have queues in 2020 for the first time since 2015. And that was to again to preserve the stability of the people that were playing over. Over people waiting. So.

[Greg Miller]

And then I want to bring it to. As we move fully to the community conversation nowadays, what are you seeing? I know you've talked, we've talked on the show, Matt, about the player, the different types of players and the players who do check in once every 11 months. There's the big drop. I'm good. It's different this year. It's different this year. We're changing it all up. But like if. Where are we at in terms of what the Elder Scrolls online audience looks like on a day to day basis? And I know that's really impossible to put a number on.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Nor would you probably want to but like however you want to answer that question.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I think I'll go right back to the. To the pandemic to start with which is the mood of the community kind of changed at that point where it went from being a great game and virtual world to a place where I can go where things make sense because the outside world doesn't. Right. And we got a lot of feedback from our players that just like other games kind of like this, you know, like Animal Crossing and you know, where you can just go and live a virtual life that's not part of your. Your normal day to day routine was very important to a lot of people. And we saw an explosion in housing videos because a lot of people are literally virtually nesting and making and making a place again. That made sense that they could outfit. That made them feel better about. About what was happening. And that was, you know, that's. That's almost a responsibility at this point for us to do that because we know it was so important to people maintaining their sanity for. For that time. So the mood kind of changed at that point from, you know, to people that literally were doing housing more than. Than. Than a lot of other players were doing questing or PvP.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Matt Feyror]

And it was really cool. Right. It's like they took the tools that we gave them and started. If you look at housing videos on YouTube For ESO, it's not houses, man. They make animated robots and balloons. It's just crazy. Somebody did a Japanese medieval village in our housing system. And it's great stuff we would never would have thought of. And it's amazing. And we're really happy that we can support that. Right. So coming out of the pandemic, that stayed, right. That concept of, like, it's a place now, not a game. And so a lot of people come and come into the game not understanding that. And then they see YouTube and everything and it's a different vibe than you're expecting if you're used to Call of Duty or Diablo or.

[Rich Lambert]

That was true. Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

Right. And so that's kind of where the community is now, which is like it grew in. Not just in size, but it grew in understanding of what the virtual world that they're in is.

[Rich Lambert]

I was just going to say the community now, you know, when they're talking like FPS, you know, high FPS and things like that, it's not like performance of the game. It's fashion per second.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

Like that's their thing. That's their thing now.

[Matt Feyror]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

So as Matt said, like that conversation kind of changed from kind of power gaming traditional to that I can do whatever I want, be whatever I want and look as cool as I want.

[Greg Miller]

So then back for something we've talked about on this show, there's no right or wrong way to play this. Do you feel like that's really where that message comes from and took off like before that. But when it was just. Was it just questing and it was guilds and it was traditional in quotes? Mmo.

[Matt Feyror]

No, no, I.

[Rich Lambert]

Well, at launch it was.

[Matt Feyror]

I launch it was. But once we did one Tamriel and got. And got. Yeah, it turned into a. You can play the game many different ways and all of them are fine. And I think the Pandemic just added one more of those things to do, which is you don't even have to do combat. Just go in and do the housing system and you know, and you don't have to do any of this stuff and just show off your house and invite friends over. Right. And it just added another activity that is now very important and central to the experience.

[Greg Miller]

And I guess that's the big question I would ask you is like, why is community so necessary, essential to your game? Like, obviously players equals money. Yeah, we know the financial. But I mean, it's that idea again that I've said on this show throughout all of these episodes of like, I could talk your ear off about the games that haven't made it, that didn't do the thing, that even had a community and still didn't make it. But somehow 10 years later, you are all still rolling and still pushing giant updates and making changes.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. And I think ultimately what it comes down to is the game draws the community. And this is one of the things you like to say. It's their game. We created it. It's our game initially and then after launch, it becomes their game. And you do essentially what they want us to do with some caveats in there. Otherwise you get like Bodie McBoat face and stuff like that. But yeah, like, you have to listen to them, you have to look at what they're doing. And we try really hard to be a part of that community. You know, we do a lot of different community events. You know, the Tavern is one of our favorites that we do, which is coming up in July in Germany. It's a big. It's an event we started in 2013.

[Matt Feyror]

13 or 14.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, something like that. And it's just a community get together for, you know, anybody that's in the. In the German area. So it's usually traditionally has been around Gamescom.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Rich Lambert]

We do it a month earlier now because we can get cooler venues and stuff like that in around there. Last year we did in a castle. It was awesome.

[Matt Feyror]

And they get players from all over, all over Europe.

[Greg Miller]

Mike, let's go.

[Matt Feyror]

Absolutely. Go. It's, it's. It's just. It's the best group of people and it's. They look forward to it because they get to see their. Their friend, their virtual friends in person. Right. Relationships are made. We know people gotten married.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

Like, we can make that happen.

[Greg Miller]

Talk to me about that and blow it up from just not just Germany, but like, what are the. What do you remember the first story from the community that made you go, wow? And then like other crazy ones that have happened since then?

[Rich Lambert]

There's so many.

[Matt Feyror]

There's. There's so many.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

And they're all, they're all good. Some of them are pretty heartbreaking. Some of them are uplifting. Right. It's like, you know, we all, when a. When a. When we lose community members, it's always a big deal. And there's, you know, in game remembrances and things, and that happens far too often, frankly, and we help wherever we can with those. But certainly couples have met in the game, met then, met in real life, gotten married or now now have kids and bring them to the community events and, you know, and it's like, it's hard not to just get emotional when you see that, because it's like that wouldn't have happened without. Without what we did for sure. Right. And that's what the game is. Right. It's not waving swords around and damaging monsters. Right. It's about connecting with people virtually and then in real life, if you meet them, and that's the magic.

[Rich Lambert]

One of my favorite stories is actually from the Tavern. So one of our first taverns, we're in this little basement dungeon thing. There's about 100 people there. And we did a bunch of cool events and whatnot, but we met a few of the content creators and a few people in the community. And then the following year, more camera. And there was this one really nervous young lady who brought me this. She said her English wasn't good, but it was fabulous. It was perfect. And she wanted to show me a bug about this particular item. Show me this bug. And I was, okay, cool, thanks. We took it back to the team. We got it fixed. The next year she came to the Tavern again. But this time she had met somebody at the Tavern previously. They were now a couple of. Fast forward a few years. They missed last year's Tavern because they were having a baby and they were together. And when we went back for Gamescom, we ended up having dinner with them. They brought the kid out for us to meet and all that other stuff.

[Greg Miller]

That's incredible.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. They would have never met if it wasn't for Eso. And that's just super, super cool.

[Greg Miller]

What about developers on the team? I assume I mentioned it earlier from the direct a few weeks ago, months ago. The fact that one of them is talking about the starter area I'm working on, but I of course started like, how many of the. How old do you feel Everyone out there is like, oh, I've been listening to you, Greg, since I was in junior high. They work for me.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. 17 years. 18 years. Long time, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

A lot of, you know, it's in that sense, like, when we've been here for so long and have had a studio where so many people worked and some have left and gone off to do great things. Right. And it's. It's. It's hard not to feel pride at. Right. Almost parental, you know, at the people that you mentored that were interns that then went into the team and now go off and start companies and make great games. Right. You know, we're recording this during gdc, Right. So you. This. I'm seeing a lot of them now because, you know, we all get together. You run into them, you know, in a hallway, and it's like. It's a really, really, really good feeling.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, It's. It's so, so much fun to watch people grow.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

Especially, you know, like, Lauren was the one that you were talking about.

[Matt Feyror]

She.

[Rich Lambert]

Before she was on the team, she was a player, you know, a player that was really enthusiastic and really passionate, and we ended up hiring her. We have a number of people who.

[Matt Feyror]

Was also in the.

[Rich Lambert]

Gary came from that, you know, Alec came from that. Right. Where, you know, they were just. They were vocal people in the community that we were able to, you know, work with and hire, and they turned into these juggernauts, which is awesome.

[Matt Feyror]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

Watching people grow is just so cool.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. The best part of management is hiring people that are better than you and that. And we are definitely at that point, if you saw the direct. Right. You'll see the result of that. Right. They're amazingly good people that are very good at what they do.

[Greg Miller]

Talk to me about how you listen to the community again. We've talked so much throughout this series about how great the community is, how you strive to drive out toxicity, and that's not what it's about. But then there's also been an underlying current from both of you of, like, oh, well, the community requested this, or they wanted this, or two weeks after all the bad YouTube videos people were making for no reason, we had this core group that's like, hey, we agree there's problems, but we're here for the right reasons. Where do you go to find them? Or do they find you everywhere? Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

So I spent a lot of time on Twitch. Spend a lot of time on social media. You know, one of my favorite things to do is to just lurk a.

[Matt Feyror]

Poorly kept secret is Rich and I are both in guilds in game and we're with people who have no idea who we are.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Matt Feyror]

And I've been in, I've been in guild since, since day one that I'm an active member in and they have no idea who I am. And Rich is the same. And we get a shockingly, really good amount of information from just playing with people in the game. Even if they're not talking, just seeing what they're doing. Like I can complete this dungeon in 30 seconds. If you do this exploit, it won't be tomorrow. Right. And that, that literally happened. And so it's, it's fun a just to play your own game. And Rich and I probably played this game more than any other people because we have to play it before on the dev server and then we play it on pts when it's being tested and then we play it on live when it's live on all the great. So it's a commitment. Right. But when you're in it with the community and you're seeing it from their eyes is when you can actually see the things that need to be done. And we're not perfect at it obviously. Right. But it really gives us the right perspective.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. And we get to experience the same pain. We get to see the same things. I during COVID got bored and started streaming ESO for a while. So I did that for a while and that was cool. I got to see that side of things and understand what a lot of the streamers go through. So that was a new perspective for me and I got to see that stuff. And we do community night trials with a number of folks where we used to call it tipsy trials, where we might get a little. We might drink a little bit.

[Matt Feyror]

Indulge.

[Rich Lambert]

Might indulge. That's the word I was looking for. And just have fun. Right. We go and we do the thing and you know, it's a once a week commitment. But it's, it's tons of fun and people love it.

[Greg Miller]

Have you been surprised by the community, the PC side, the console side, the Xbox to PlayStation side? Like is there.

[Matt Feyror]

If I've learned one thing from this entire thing, it's that there are hardcore console players and there are very, very, very not hardcore PC players. Right. It's there. It's. That is not a thing. Right. We have super hardcore console players. Right. And a lot of our housing community is on. Is on PC. It's just, it's just what it is. And right at this point the device you're playing on is just a door into your world. And it really doesn't matter how you get there. Once you're there, you do what you do.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. Gamers are gamers.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

It's funny you say about the door. Once you're there, you're there. It's just a device, you know. Y' all put out a call for questions for this show.

[Matt Feyror]

Oh, boy, did we?

[Greg Miller]

You did. I was not aware you opened the net.

[Matt Feyror]

It's been fun, guys.

[Greg Miller]

In like every other question was Crossplay.

[Matt Feyror]

Ah.

[Greg Miller]

I know you. I know you gentlemen very well now.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I know that there's been a lot of whiteboards. I'd imagine this is something that's come up a lot, probably for a very. Probably since console launch, if not right before it.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, we get that question a lot.

[Greg Miller]

Why is it not possible?

[Rich Lambert]

Anything is possible.

[Matt Feyror]

We're working on doing some underlining underlying tech changes that would make it possible.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Matt Feyror]

Like we know how important it is. Of course. Again, started working on this game in 2007. Didn't even think about two platforms, much less six or whatever. Whatever we support now.

[Greg Miller]

And everything's an Xbox, if you didn't know.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

I mean, the 2007 version, that actually.

[Matt Feyror]

Makes it easier now, that whole concept. Right. The this is an Xbox thing. Because that philosophy now comes from the top, and that makes it easier to get the agreements done. To do. Right. To do what you need to do to do Crossplay, which is an extremely long GDC presentation of technology. You know, handshaking, other things.

[Greg Miller]

Wait, you don't just flip the switch?

[Matt Feyror]

You don't just flip the switch.

[Rich Lambert]

But it's not just a technology problem either.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Stakeholders. Yeah. Platform holders.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. So it's something we know about. It's something we really want to do. We're working on the underlying tech for it, and we'll see if we can make it happen.

[Greg Miller]

That's awesome. Yeah. I can only imagine building a 2007 game. You know what I mean? And not. How do you ever. Future proof, think about this and stuff. Even having that answer is good enough. So there you go. Everybody got asked. You don't have to ask it every time on every other question about it. But again, that's what we're talking about, is your commitment to this community. And honestly, again, even as an outsider, for the most part. Right. Who's watched your presentations or listened to podcasts or done these things, the way you talk to them. I appreciate that you have answers. So many people will dodge things and not. And dodge is actually too. That's too negative of a word, you know what I mean? But find a way to cleverly get out of the question.

[Matt Feyror]

Not dodging. We really want to do cross play. We really want to do it. I swear this is something that we understand is very important to players. We want to do it and we're trying to figure out a way to do it and we're working on that right now.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, good. Thank you for that and thank you for watching. Remember, of course, this is the Elder Scrolls Online Podcast, a four episode limited series from us at the Kind of Funny gamescast. If you like it, why don't you like subscribe, share, follow, tell your friends. Do whatever it is for the platform of choice that you're on, whether it's over on the Elder Scrolls Online's channels or if it's over on the kind of funny channels. No matter where you're getting the show. Thank you for your support and for now, here's a word from our sponsors. 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 Nevermind 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.

[Unknown]

This episode is sponsored by Subway Surfers. The goated endless runner that carried me through middle school, high school, college and now adulthood is celebrating their 13th birthday, which also marks their 200th world tour updates and they're going big because Subway Surfers decided to travel to not one, not two, but 21 different locations in their 200th world tour special event. As Kind of Funny's resident Zoomer, I can seriously say that I adore Subway Surfers. It's one of my favorite comfort games. Grabbing items, completing challenges and pulling out a hoverboard right as I'm about to hit a train. Feels just as good now as it did when I was sitting in the back of Mr. Cockburn Spanish class. Play through all 21 destinations to unlock amazing rewards such as characters, hoverboards and in game currency. Just tap the 200th World Tour button on the screen to start playing and exclusively for best friends. Head over to kindafunny.com subwaysurfers or scan the QR code on screen to get a ton of special in game rewards. The Update ends on June 1st, so scan that QR code, download Subway Surfers and start running. If you don't want to miss out on all the rewards I already did. This episode is brought to you by Factor when life gets busy, food can sometimes feel like a chore and the fast food trips can go from a weekly to daily occurrence very, very fast. So buck those trends and make this season your best with nutritious 2 minute meals from Factor. Eating well has never been this easy. Just heat up and enjoy, giving you more time to do what you want. With 45 weekly menu options, you can pick gourmet meals that fit your goals. Choose from Calorie Smart Protein plus Keto and more. We at Kinda Funny Love Factor Meals Blessing Greg loved for a quick lunch in between shows and I adore it as a healthier alternative instead of the dreaded hump day. Too tired to cook? Drive thru run helping me to get on track with my goals. Get started@Factor Meals.com kindafunny50 off and use code kindafunny50 off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That's code kinda funny50off@Factor Meals.com kindaFunny50 off for 50% off plus free shipping Factor Meals.com kindafunny 50 off Michael yeah, I.

[Snowbike Mike]

Want to talk a little bit about the community because we've talked a lot about PvP but we haven't really dove into it and that is something that brought me on. I can remember watching Twitch streams of the giant scale battles of three different factions colliding in the middle and I thought that is some of the coolest stuff around. What is PvP like now in 2025 and beyond? What are some of the steps that you've taken to really make sure it is kind of future proofing, constantly evolving and getting better?

[Rich Lambert]

Well, we just went through a series of pretty pretty crazy tests on Live towards the end of March and we're.

[Matt Feyror]

Recording this before the test happens. So literally they're experimental tests so, so we don't know how they'll turn out, but we're confident that information will come from them that we can use.

[Rich Lambert]

The whole goal of doing this test is to prove out performance. Some of the performance problems that we've had in Cyrodiil and in the larger scale battles and it's, it's focused really on the abilities, the combat, how much we can jam through kind of that pipe. You think of a fire hose. Yeah, it's only so big, you know, we get so much water through there. That's basically what, what we're, we're testing right now. And on the ability side of things, things, if that goes well, we have a direction. If it doesn't go well, well then we're going to go and have a think about what we do next in Cyrodiil. But outside of Cil, we've got battlegrounds. Those came in, in, in Morind in 2017. We've got Imperial City which is this hybrid PvE PvP thing which is tons and tons and tons of fun. And the storyline is phenomenal in there. You know, the Draco blades is awesome. That whole storyline is really cool. So there's. And then dueling. Right. So those are kind of the, the avenues for our PVPers to, to, to get their thing on.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. Going back to the beginning of the project, obviously the original mandate for the product was dark age. Camelot's PvP wows PvE Elder Scrolls IP. Right. We've gotten away from many of those for business reasons. Right. That we talked about in episode one. But the PvP thing is still there. It's just that it happened that our user base, the massive numbers of users came in and were not interested in PvP. However, a very important part of the community is massively interested in PvP. And by, by giving the PvE questing people abilities, all of the armor sets, doing the champion system, right. Doing the PV gear chase, that adds items literally to, to the game and each one needs to be a little unique and special and each one requires some CPU when the player does it in the game. And when you add that to a PvP system where 900 players are in game at one time, it stopped being able to work basically. So instead of taking away, historically instead of taking away a lot of the abilities and that sort of thing, we actually just scaled down the number of people that were allowed in a serial campaign at once. And the point of these tests is to redo the ability system just in Cyrodiil, just in the PvP part of the game and get back up to the 900 that that we had, which was 300, 300, 300. So it's a three sided PvP game. So it's a natural evolution of the game. And I know our PvP players that really want to go back to that have been very frustrated with us, but there are four or five other groups of players that also want content that are massively frustrated at us for not giving them, you know, stuff faster. So, you know, we did do battlegrounds, we did things that we, that we do over smaller sided PvP to try to alleviate some of that in the interim. But now it's time to go back and actually look at the PvP system and make it perform it. And it's going to come. If this test works, it'll be, you have a separate set of abilities in PvP than you do in PvE. They're named the same. They are in PvE. It's not that, it's just, they just act a little differently in PvP to be much more performant.

[Greg Miller]

Gotcha.

[Rich Lambert]

How.

[Matt Feyror]

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Greg Miller]

No, thank you for opening up the door. I love you. Like, we're testing it, we're trying. The question I would be out of that one is how maddening is it to have a game that has all these different types of players? We're talking about PvE, we're talking about PvP, we're talking about people who are just designing homes. And you just said, you know, we hear the PvP people yelling at us, but we also have these five other groups yelling at us. Like, first off, what, what, when you look at it, what are the groups and then how do you keep them all happy without losing them?

[Matt Feyror]

It's. You have to do what you think is right at the time. Right, right. It's a constant weighing, you know, resources versus pandemic versus, you know, servers melting. Because too many people are like.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Matt Feyror]

All these take resources to deal with. And so which is why we haven't been able to do PvP for a long time because the servers melting as part of, part of the pandemic was directly. Would have directly affected the number of people in Cyrodiil because it was a cpu. Too many people on the servers problem.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

So. Right. There's always reasons and I know they sound like excuses to the players and frankly, I understand that because I, I love the PvP system too and I would really love to go in like it was on launch day, you know, it was just swarms of players, you know, everywhere. Which is, which is awesome. It was wild. It was cool.

[Greg Miller]

Do you remember this?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, I remember this very well.

[Matt Feyror]

There's nothing like that, like that feeling of just massive numbers of players, like, you know, Braveheart style running into battle. And it's awesome. There's literally my favorite part of the game. And so this experiment that we're doing is kind of this new. When we're talking about seasons and changing things, this is something we could not have done in the chapter model because we were forced to launch something every June 1st and we just didn't have the resources to do things like this. That took obviously engineers away, designers away. So now that we're stretching the model out so we're not launching content quite so big, content quite so often, and definitely not on the same calendar day every year. It gives us the chance to pry out these six eight week tests, time to develop them, three months, whatever it takes that we can do these experiments right? And now if this works right, we have the basis for a system that then we can flesh out into a real, real new Cyrodiil that has its own kind of gear ability chase that's much more performant.

[Rich Lambert]

And the other part to that as well is there's just some problems that are much harder to diagnose than others. And with, with Cirrhotil in general, all of that happens because of load. And so trying to reproduce that amount of load on a full server internally for us is super hard. Like we use bots and things like that, but a bot can't replicate what a player does. And so like trying to track that stuff down. And we've done a ton of these types of tests over the years, like Ed Tafoe and Brian Wheeler. Brian Wheeler is our lead combat and PVP designer. And Ed Tafoe is ct, he's tech director, Tech director now studio tech director, who did a lot of the server stuff. They worked hand in hand for like three years working on the servers, trying to get the performance better. And it helped significantly, but it still didn't bring us over that threshold where players stopped feeling that input lag, that lag. So then we started doing tests like, well, let's turn the champion system off and Cyrodiil, let's turn proxets off in Cyrodol, let's turn group healing, you know.

[Matt Feyror]

On no NPCs, no wondering, drop a bomb on it.

[Rich Lambert]

We went through a ton of different things. And so this, this cirr test that we're doing or have done by the time this goes, those live, is that next evolution in there to kind of go through and incrementally test where the problem is. And it's maddening to us because we can't fix it. We can't write like it's really, really hard to do. So that's again, that probably sounds like an excuse.

[Matt Feyror]

Well, to illustrate, and this is a very live service game design story. Like, so there are, you know, every, every gamer knows FPS frames per second, of course, so fashion so that 98% of the time that's, that's your client and that's how many frames it's displaying on your screen, you know, per second. There's also server frames per second, which is, which is how, how many, how many cycles a server can perform every frame. And so the problem with our PvP system is just like on a client, our server gets bogged down when too much stuff goes through it and the FPS goes way down. So we actually, over time, when our players were thinking we weren't doing anything about PvP, we actually got our server frames for cyrodiil from like 700 down to 300, which is like half, which is a miracle that we did that. But the problem is anything over like 70 was unacceptable to the players. Right. And so we cut it down by literally. Literally we doubled the number of frames and yet it wasn't enough for the players to notice. And that's why we're now doing this. When we realized that, hey, we had done everything, we actually made it so much better on the server. Yet it's still not discernible to the players that now we know we need to.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. And for the vast majority of the time, like the server frames are really, really good. They're below that threshold. But primetime, right? Bullpop campaigns. Then. Yeah, there's these hiccups occasionally in there. That's what we're trying to solve.

[Greg Miller]

Video games are hard to make. I feel like in general this, that you're always on the treadmill.

[Matt Feyror]

Something's always happening.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, but I keep fun.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

Every day's different.

[Greg Miller]

I feel like that's gotta be something that again, we talked for our very first episode, the first thing we talked about was the, you know, unspoken synergies right between oh, Elder scrolls online is 10 kind of funny. Is 10 this, that the other, blah, blah. The other one I think that I've talked to so many developers about is that it took me a long time, but there was a developer friend of mine who released a game that was very well received. But she was having a terrible time at lunch because she was reading the comments from the people who didn't like it. And I had this moment of clarity talking to him, like, oh, man. Like you in my world would get to publish a YouTube video once every six years and then look at those comments and do it. Whereas for us, and kind of funny, there is this joy and pain and everything else of we do this every day. And when you don't like it or don't connect with it, we see that comment and we want to iterate on it immediately. And it might not be something we can immediately change, but if it comes to the next big, you know, Patreon push or anniversary or whatever, you see us constantly revising what we're doing to get there. And I feel like your type of game development is so much more like that, where you have this line to the community that's there and you see them every day and you see the peaks and you see the valleys and you see the feedback. That's got to be, again, powerful, but again, yeah, 100%.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, it's that same boat, right. You know, you put your blood, sweat and tears into something and you release it. And then some people love it and some people hate it and some people really hate it and.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

You just, you got to deal, deal with it. And people generally don't complain unless they're really passionate. And I think I said that, said that earlier. And so you got to, you got to dig into that and see what they're really upset about.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. In something that I am sure you will, you, you will agree with because you get it every day too. You definitely, after a certain point, we've all been here long enough to, with. With. With that Internet thing is that you, you can look at a comment and pretty easily tell if it's in good faith.

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Matt Feyror]

Right. Yes. And even if it's full of things you don't want to hear, if it's in good faith, there's something there that you should probably take account. And then there are some that's just whatever, like, life goes on.

[Greg Miller]

So again, talking about this, what I think is interesting and very similar to us is you're saying there's people who really hate a thing. I assume that like us, when that happens, they're giving you the good faith to fix it, though, or to listen to them or. Yeah, generally, yeah, obviously there's always going to be atrophy people leaving, coming and going. But like the majority of this audience I feel like, would probably Be there with you through all of it.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. I mean, again, it's all about trust.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

And so, you know, we have to. We have to show up, you know, with. With the changes. And so as long. As long as we keep doing that, I think we'll be on the right trajectory.

[Greg Miller]

I've heard you both talk about it, and Elder Scrolls Online in general talk about it, but, like, how the ESO community is the best one in gaming and how toxicity has been cut not out, because that's impossible, but to such a low level. I want to know from both of you, why. Why do you think that's the case, Matt?

[Matt Feyror]

Well, we've. We've talked about this a lot. We all have our own theories. First of all, the. It's a. And I. I say this all the time, and I know it sounds like a shtick, but we are a virtual world as much as we are a game. So we attract people that aren't necessarily in it to dominate. And whenever you're in a game that's about domination or winning or competing. Right. You get a totally different type of person. Not.

[Greg Miller]

They sure do, Mike.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, you want to tell your stories.

[Greg Miller]

Of playing fall guys and just stopping to throw people off.

[Matt Feyror]

But I think there's something. And I know Rich will probably have a completely different answer, but there's something about a game that came out of the gate, not sprinting, that had a group of people that believed in it, that then actually started sprinting. And those people are there, and they're your evangelists, and they're like, no, these developers, this company, whatever. Right. Stick with them because they're going to do the right thing. And I think there's something to that there. Like, the lack of immediate giant success meant that we had to fight for it. And our community, we did have a lot of very supportive community, even back when we were a meme. Right. Of. And there were people that were fighting back against that. And those are the people, I think, that are the core of the community, that when you log into the game as a new player and they're playing and they ask a question like, it's in their best interest to get a new player in and teach them how awesome the game is because they want the game to succeed. And so I think the pay it forward part of that has been a big, big, big part of our success.

[Greg Miller]

Something we haven't talked about. That's an interesting callback to you, Matt, of course, is that you wanted to do an MMO for Fallout. Then that, of course, didn't happen. You came over here, this happens. But then Fallout 76 does happen. And Fallout 76 has such a similar story of stumbling out of the gate but having an audience and finding it to it to where, of course, they have this giant explosion with the Fallout TV show, let alone, I'm sure, Covid numbers going up. Did you reach out to them at their launch? Did you? Well, how does that relationship work?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, first of all, I love that game. I actually grew up in West Virginia, so. Oh, nice. Like I'm literally. I know the map and so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wasn't part of the team by any means. But. But there were, there were ideas being bounced off, especially after launch, which is like, you know, how do you, you know, respond to feedback, that kind of thing. But they, they're good at what they do, right? Yeah. You know, it was like anything that I added would have just cemented something that they were already thinking about. So, you know, it's not like I had a magic bullet or anything. It's like, listen to the community and look at the, look at the. What people are playing that actually play all the time and do more of. Add more of what they're doing and less of what they're not. And it's just, you know, basic stuff. But they were already, already on that path.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, I got to have a few really good sit downs with them when they were talking about doing their. Their version of one's hammer. Although the one followed or whatever, they ended up naming that just to kind of give them some. Here's the issues we ran into, you know, some knowledge sharing and stuff like that. But as Matt said, like, they know their game, they know what they're doing. We were just there to kind of help when they needed questions answered.

[Greg Miller]

Speaking of knowing your game, knowing what you're doing, and of course your community, again the direct happens. You come out, you talk about this and again, your messaging was so great and even the ad read in this episode I like so much. Right. Because it's about you. You keep putting it on the player. Right. Of like, this is your world to go do it in. Before we end this podcast, this amazing series and before Mike and I stream the game today, of course, very excited. Twitch TV, kind of funnygames, YouTube.com kindafunnygames it'll be up there forever and I'm sure we'll be playing more of it. My question really becomes, then let's talk about, now that we have all this information, what we're about to set off on what we have set off on and then even beyond that, where we're going with it. So I guess recapping what's going on right now.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I'll do the.

[Greg Miller]

The bullet point.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. The high level. And then it's, of course, Rich, who's actually, I think the theme of this, like, people are focusing on seasons and what that means in other games and, you know, having either a positive or a negative opinion based on that. It's important that what we're actually doing now is changing the model so we have more time to do things that we need to do that we've been putting off for a long time. Right. And chapters were awesome, but the community was starting to send us very clear messages that doing the same thing every year was a little too cyclical. And even though the content was fun. Right. Hey, maybe you should fix these things. And we literally didn't have the time to fix those things, whatever they were pointing out. So we could go back to doing one large thing a year. Right. That would fit into what we're doing eventually. But what we're doing right now is kind of on unplugging the chapter so that we can free up the teams to do things that we've wanted to do for a long time, like continue story guild storylines, like, you know, fix problems in. In Ribbon Spire. I don't want to just going to punch me now because we've redone that zone. But, you know, fix here, though, right? Like, all these things have been stacking up and we haven't had the time to do them. This model gives us the time to do those things while delivering great content. It's just. It's going to be delivered either a little less often or. Or it's going to be targeted at a specific zone to fix something or to. But we're still going to tell great stories, but now we get to react a little more to problems that need to be solved.

[Rich Lambert]

I think that's the key. It lets us be a little bit more flexible in how quickly we can react to things and do more unexpected things. Right. Like that's. That's definitely a big piece of feedback is, yeah, the stuff is good, but it's starting to feel formulaic. So we want to break that. Break that mold and do something different.

[Matt Feyror]

And why aren't you doing crossplay? Right. This gives us the chance to actually delve into the very difficult technical problems that need to be solved. We can never do that with the chapter model.

[Greg Miller]

No, I think, you know, I think you've Made the case for it in this episode before we even got to this part of it. Like, okay, cool, well here's we can do. We're going to go focus on PvP because that community needs it. We're looking into crossplay. What are the other. And nobody's holding you to it, but you communicate so well. What are the other pain points you see with ESO right now that you'd love to touch on and hopefully get the time, bandwidth, whatever.

[Matt Feyror]

We call it modernizing.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Matt Feyror]

Like in many ways we've modernized every year. We have, you know, current gen console client. We have like, we are always adding new graphical stuff. Right. But there are, there are still things like we've heard since 2014, the combat is. Feels very MMO and not very first person elders.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

[Matt Feyror]

Right. And to make it a little. Make it a little more visceral and we've never had the time to do that. Like our animations are a little 2014. Our zones are. The older ones are a little bit 2014. Our UI, our PC UI especially. Right. It. It's not fantastic and it needs to be updated. We've already announced that we're going to redo that. Right. The. We have a list of these things that. I just picked the top five or six there. Right. That's what we're looking at.

[Rich Lambert]

There's the, the new and returning player experience. Right. We've been so focused on putting new stuff in and adding new stuff for the veterans, we kind of lost sight of what's that like for a new player when they come in? Like, Holy cow, there's 10 years of stuff. Where do I start? What's the right order? Right. We get that question all the time. And P.S. there is no right order.

[Greg Miller]

But go build your house. Houses are big.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. Well, you just said this at the. Before we started filming, which was, you know, hey, I'm jumping back in after a while and holy shit. Right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Rich Lambert]

That's the thing.

[Matt Feyror]

It's like, it's. It's overwhelming because the game is so large that especially a returning player that has an idea of what the game was like in 2018 or whenever the last time they played were. It's a lot different now and we don't do a good job of reintroducing a player into the. Back into the world. And my reaction when you said that was you should just roll a new character.

[Greg Miller]

But I'm committed and I got. I like this.

[Matt Feyror]

And that's the right answer. Right? And I had the wrong answer there because I wanted you to see the new tutorial and everything, but you don't want that. You want to play the character that you. That you played before. And we, as developers, need to make that expression experience better.

[Rich Lambert]

100.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Michael. We're winding down.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's very special. This was a lot of fun, these four episodes. You know, MMOs, growing up as a kid, that was my bread and butter. I loved MMOs. I love this shared world, this experience I got to experience with my friends. And ESO was a really special one for me. So getting to go behind the scenes with you two was a moment I'll never forget. And I'm sure the audience will share the same of. This was a lot of fun to get to learn, see the future, and just talk, which has been great. Thanks. You too.

[Rich Lambert]

This has been a blast for us. We could. Matt and I could talk, literally talk about ESO for days.

[Greg Miller]

That's what you do.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, that's what we do, right?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. But rarely in this depth like this. It's great to kind of stretch it out and actually explain. Like, a lot of times we're announcing things and players, like, why are you doing that? You just announced something. Right. This gives us the chance to actually explain why we're doing it. Right. And. And I. And even though I know we've left a lot of questions unanswered with some of the things we've said. Right. We're. We're trying to get across in this format, which is great, which is we get a chance to explain things a little more, not just announce them.

[Greg Miller]

I guess my big question for both of you, and this is way back to journalism school at Mizzou, is, what didn't we ask you? We got to talk this entire time we've done these four episodes. It's four hours of content we've done on eso. But I feel like there's always something that is in the back of your head of, I wish we would have gotten to that. I wish we would have done that. Is there something, Matt, that stands out to you, Rich, that stands out to you? And I want it from both of you of whatever it would be. But, like, I never. I. You know, it's that thing with. When we set off to do this show, it's that idea of, like, I want the kind of funny audience to find game development information here, and I want the ESO audience to find ESO information here, and I don't want to alienate one of the other. So I don't know if I skewed away from a topic you wanted to get into?

[Matt Feyror]

No, I didn't have an agenda coming in, but I think the question, and we might have answered it unsuccessfully over the last four hours or whatever is. Is why should you play this game?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, that's a great question.

[Matt Feyror]

Right, right.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's a good one.

[Greg Miller]

Why should you cut it out, Put it back, guys. Matt, specifically, why should you play this game? Why should you play ESO right now?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, well, I mean, the answer is, if you listen to. If you can listen to this far into the podcast, right, you get a pretty good idea. But it's a game that has a community that will welcome you, that doesn't enforce a playstyle on you, that gives you a virtual world to explore based on one of the best known IPs in the world, and you can kind of carve your own path in that. Is it perfect? No, but. But it's. It's a great game and a great world with a great community.

[Snowbike Mike]

Nailed it.

[Rich Lambert]

I can't do better than that.

[Greg Miller]

Do you have a different question that you wish I would ask you?

[Rich Lambert]

I mean, talk more about your wife for me? I think I do that enough. No, I mean, I think that the thing. Actually, maybe I will, because she imparted this bit of wisdom to me when I first took on the creative director role because I was really worried, right? Like, if I make a mistake, I make the wrong call. People lose their jobs, Right? That was always kind of in the back of my head. And she's just like, you got to do what you think is right and think about our family, just our family dynamic as it is. She's like, when I'm planning meals, we have four. Well, technically, we have five people at home. She can't make a meal that satisfies all five people. How are you going to make a decision that satisfies millions of people, like all of them at the same time? So don't worry about it. Do what you think is right. And that really hit hard for me. And it's something that I think about all the time whenever I do stuff is, yeah, we're going to make the wrong call sometimes, but there's going to be people that are going to support it, they're going to love it, and they're. They're going to keep playing, right? And those that are upset, we will try to hit them. Well, not hit them. We will try to satisfy them, you know, at some point over the course of the year.

[Greg Miller]

That's a fantastic question and answer. Michael, what didn't you get the chance as what are you on it?

[Snowbike Mike]

You know, it's just been so much fun to celebrate and these moments where you have those big announcements, we get to see the wowing trailers and as fans, it is always cool of wow. Oh my gosh, I'm blown away. The hard work that goes behind it and the decision making of what those are, those characters that may or may not return. What is the excitement level for the team when it is, hey, this is the moment we're going to share this big thing. Who makes those decisions? What kind of fun do you have?

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, I mean, Rich does too. But you know, the. With a game like this, with a team this big, with a game that's been around, right. The whole team needs a very clear direction of where they're going. And so that's what we try to do. Both of us are now at the point where we're not and we can't get involved so much in the day to day decision making because there's so much of it. But we really try to keep the team pointed at the place we're trying to get to.

[Rich Lambert]

And the team loves making new stuff, but they also love going back and bringing back those beloved characters. Right. You know, the Razum Dars of the game and so on and so forth. So they are really excited about what's coming this year and the stories that we're telling and the big event that we're doing in the. With the wall and whatnot. So yeah, like the team's really, really excited about this.

[Greg Miller]

They should be. Congratulations. You know, I think again, like you guys have built something so special, but again, even to go watch that direct or hear you talk about it for four hours and the passion and the love and the care and the, you know, this is 10 years of the game. Sure. Like we said. But since 2007. Right. Like it's such a healthy chunk of your lives, your professional careers and the fact that you've been given this opportunity to grow it and you have and you've changed it. I hope you both are incredibly proud of what you've made and everybody obviously back home working on it and their homes working on it. You know what I mean? How separate the company is.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah. It's a great team. It's really a great team that allows us to do this and so can't speak highly enough of them. We try to set the direction, but there's a lot of people. It takes a village to do a game like this and we have a good Village.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah. And it's. It really isn't. It's going to sound cliche, but it is really an honor to be able to represent the team.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Rich Lambert]

Right. Like, obviously Matt and I don't do all the work. There's a lot of really smart people that are really, really passionate about the game, and we get to talk about this thing that, you know, they have put their lives into. So it's.

[Matt Feyror]

It's.

[Rich Lambert]

It's a big honor.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, so two things before we get out of here. Back to you. I need to have you tell me what is everybody excited for? It is Friday, May 23rd. Right now. What is going on? What is coming? What is the big push this year?

[Rich Lambert]

This is a new way for us to tell stories in eso. This year is focused on the wurm cult. You know, this is a continuation of the base game story. There's a brand new way for you to build your characters with our subclassing. So now you can, like I said earlier, you can be a necromancer, warden, arcanist, if you want. Right. Like, you have all of these abilities. I think it's over 3,000 combinations of class abilities that get added to your repertoire. If you want, we've got Solstice, which is a brand new island with some very cool stories focused mainly around the Argonians and the High elves. Sounds weird, but it makes. When you get in there, you start to dig into there, you start to learn more about this Outcast group that's there and kind of doing their thing. And then, of course, we've got the big Soul Wall event, which is the first time we've ever done this that's based on servers, so each server will progress their own way. And then we cap that all off with all kinds of cool quality life improvements and whatnot, which we didn't really talk too much about.

[Matt Feyror]

The floor comes under modernization, Right?

[Rich Lambert]

Right. Comes under modernization. But I think one of the things that I will say is our housing community has been really, really patient with us in terms of, like, all the cool things we've built. But one of the pain points for them is just inventory pressure. You know, they have all these furnishings, all this crazy stuff that they have to kind of manage. A lot of people have storage homes where they store, toss it all in, just. Yeah, they just. Right.

[Matt Feyror]

And it's like the warehouse in Indiana Jones 100%. Like, literally, you walk in and you.

[Rich Lambert]

See just multiple houses that have this.

[Matt Feyror]

Right.

[Rich Lambert]

And. And so we implemented a furnishing vault or are implementing a furnishing vault where they're going to be able to store some number of these in. In their. In the vault and clear up a whole crap ton of inventory space. So just lots of things like that.

[Greg Miller]

This is a question for you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Lay down me.

[Greg Miller]

And then it's going to be a question. I was thinking, obviously we're talking so much about returning players, all these different changes, modernization. But like we're going to stream it right now, basically. Right. Are we rolling new characters?

[Snowbike Mike]

I really would love you to see the new opening area and the tutorial and how they. They've redone this because I remember day one of what it really looked like. And recently I have rerolled a character and I think it's a great job. But Greg, I would love for you to be the most comfortable. So we're going to stick with our normal characters and we'll find our way and we'll look north and we're just going to go straight through the map.

[Greg Miller]

Because like I was thinking the. We have new people watching, obviously. Hopefully they're excited. They want to go play it. My question to you guys is what is your advice for a new player on how to start how to play Eso?

[Rich Lambert]

It's a good one.

[Matt Feyror]

I mean, that answer would be colored by the way that we play the game, but I would.

[Rich Lambert]

Which we play very different.

[Matt Feyror]

We play very different PvP.

[Greg Miller]

All right. It's based on this Camelot game.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, yeah. But when I play, yes, I do PvP a fair amount, but I very much like the exploration also. So what I would do is go through the original tutorial, create a new character and then go to Orsinium, which is my favorite place in the game. Which again, it was the one zone that we had two years to make and it just feels right. And it has some of the best quests in the game that aren't even. The main story in that zone is great, but some of the side quests are unbelievable. But that's what I would do.

[Rich Lambert]

My advice, and this is me as a power gamer, but what I would do is just take your time and go slow. And I think the biggest thing that players need to understand is you're never behind, so you can always play with whomever. So you can just come in and play whenever.

[Greg Miller]

Love that.

[Rich Lambert]

But the biggest one is there is nothing you can do to your character that you can't undo later on easily. So just experiment and make choices and try something. If you want to pick up a destruction staff and shoot fireballs, go do that right if you want to sword and board it, you can do that. Like just, just experiment and see what sticks with you. Because you can always undo it later.

[Matt Feyror]

On if you want to pickpocket guards. You can do that.

[Rich Lambert]

You can do that.

[Matt Feyror]

There's a whole thriving criminal enterprise system that literally exists on you stealing stuff and fencing it. Right. There's so many things in the game that you can do that are, that are amazing and you don't know until you go and try it.

[Rich Lambert]

Yep, just go slow, explore, learn the world, learn the lore and stuff.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm gonna work on my house. I'm very excited about it. This whole time. I'm very excited.

[Matt Feyror]

P.S. the guards don't like it when you pick pocket, so you better be good at picking.

[Greg Miller]

Get yourself up, get out of there. Matt and Rich, thank you so much for letting us be part of your story for the past four episodes of this to celebrate your 10 year anniversary. It's been incredible.

[Matt Feyror]

Yeah, thanks for having us. This is a big thrill to be able to go in this depth with this.

[Rich Lambert]

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it.

[Greg Miller]

Good. I'm glad you had fun. And Mike, thank you for hanging out with me.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thanks, Greg. Thank you to everybody. An experience of a lifetime. Another one we get to share together and one I'll never forget. Thanks, Homie.

[Greg Miller]

Remember everybody, this has been the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of funny games cast special. There's been four episodes. So if you're just tuning into this one, go ahead and get back to it. Whether it be over on the ESO, YouTube, whether it's over on the kind of funny YouTube or, or our podcast service Gamescast. You could find it there. Of course. We are gonna be streaming this one and I wanna do a long one. All right, we're getting dear doing a long stream today. None of this three hour business. We're going longer than that. You can catch it live on Twitch TV, kindafunnungames, YouTube.com kindafunnygames obviously later you get it on YouTube whenever you want to. But for now we will bid you adieu and remind you that you can go play the Elder Scrolls right Now on Xbox, PlayStation and PC. Go ahead and do it, give them some feedback. And remember, until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.