The Elder Scrolls Online

Overview

A thousand years before the dragons returned to Skyrim, Tamriel was a continent without an emperor. Three alliances fight for the vacant Ruby Throne: the Aldmeri Dominion of high elves, wood elves and Khajiit; the Daggerfall Covenant of Bretons, Redguards and orcs; and the Ebonheart Pact of Nords, dark elves and Argonians. Meanwhile the Daedric prince Molag Bal is trying to pull the mortal world into his realm, Coldharbour, and has already stolen the player's soul.

The Elder Scrolls Online, developed by ZeniMax Online Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, launched for Windows and macOS on April 4, 2014, and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2015. It was the first massively multiplayer game in the Elder Scrolls series, and it had a difficult start, arriving with a subscription fee and a lukewarm reception. A year later it dropped the fee, and over the following decade it became one of the most successful online role-playing games of its time, selling more than 15 million copies by 2020 and earning over $2 billion by 2024.

Origins

ZeniMax Media, Bethesda's parent, founded ZeniMax Online Studios in 2007 and gave it one project. Its head, Matt Firor, had produced Mythic Entertainment's Dark Age of Camelot, and the new game's signature feature, a three-faction war over the province of Cyrodiil with siege weapons and keeps, draws on that game's realm-versus-realm design. The team prototyped in the licensed HeroEngine while building its own technology, and Bethesda Game Studios, then making Skyrim, consulted.

After years of rumors, the game was announced in Game Informer on May 3, 2012. The cast was starry, including John Cleese, Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Gambon and Alfred Molina. In August 2013 ZeniMax confirmed a monthly subscription on every platform, a costly bet at a time when most rival MMORPGs were abandoning fees.

How it plays

Characters choose a race and, originally, one of four classes, the Dragonknight, Sorcerer, Nightblade and Templar; later chapters added the Warden, Necromancer and Arcanist. In the series' tradition, skills improve through use of weapons and armor as well as class skill lines, and players can become vampires or werewolves or join guilds such as the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. Combat is action-based, played in first or third person, and the game is heavily voiced.

The story follows the "Soul Shriven" hero's escape from Coldharbour and a war against Molag Bal, told through large, handcrafted zones full of quests. At launch, zones were locked by faction; in 2016 the "One Tamriel" update removed those barriers and scaled content to every player's level, so friends from any alliance could adventure anywhere. Group play includes four-player dungeons, twelve-player trials and the Alliance War in Cyrodiil, with the Imperial City as a battleground.

Reception & impact

Reviews of the 2014 launch were mixed. Critics found it competent but unremarkable, and PC Gamer noted that "'okay' isn't good enough" for a subscription game. Launch-day problems included an item-duplication exploit that led to thousands of bans. In January 2015 ZeniMax announced that the subscription would end; on March 17, 2015, the game became buy-to-play as The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, with an optional ESO Plus membership and a cash shop. The console versions launched that June to strong sales, topping the U.K. charts.

From there, ZeniMax released yearly "chapters" that revisited the settings of the single-player games: Morrowind (2017) returned to the island of Vvardenfell; Summerset (2018) and Elsweyr (2019) opened regions unseen since Arena; Greymoor (2020) went back to Skyrim; and Blackwood (2021), High Isle (2022), Necrom (2023) and Gold Road (2024) followed. Summerset won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Video Game. The player base grew from about 8.5 million copies sold in 2017 to more than 15 million by 2020, and Bethesda's Pete Hines called it the company's most successful game from 2017 to 2021.

Legacy

In December 2024 ZeniMax Online announced a shift away from annual chapters toward seasonal content releases starting in 2025. After more than a decade, The Elder Scrolls Online has built the most detailed map of Tamriel in the series, including regions such as the High Isle archipelago that no earlier game had let players explore, and it filled the long gap after Skyrim while fans waited for The Elder Scrolls VI. Its turnaround joined that of Final Fantasy XIV as proof that an MMORPG could recover from a disappointing launch, and its move away from a mandatory subscription followed The Lord of the Rings Online toward the buy-once model that Guild Wars had pioneered.