What to expect from Elder Scrolls Online in 2025?

Elder Scrolls Online is making some interesting changes in 2025, and while only time will tell if they’re successful, or the right way to go, we won’t know until it all starts happening. The game has persisted for many years, alongside other titans of the MMO genre, and still has a devoted following on all major platforms it’s available on.

The ability to go anywhere and play how you like certainly has an appeal you can’t find in other MMOs — not to the degree you can in ESO, anyway. According to Rich Lambert, December is typically the time when content is teased or revealed.

Last December was no exception, as Matt Firor, Game Director for Elder Scrolls Online posted a letter to the community about some things they could expect going into the new year. Here’s what we know so far.

Matt Firor highlights what players can look forward to in Elder Scrolls Online in 2025

Unfortunately, compared to World of Warcraft’s roadmaps, Elder Scrolls Online’s 2025 is a bit more cryptic in some ways. We have a clear idea of the types of goals the team has set out to overcome this year, but not necessarily what the content will be to go along with it. That’s perfectly fine, though — we need surprises sometimes. There were a few topics Matt Firor touched on in his note:

Here's to a new year! (Image via ZeniMax Online Studios)

Saying goodbye to Chapters/Hello to Seasons
A new focus on change and experimentation
Concentrating on new/returning user experience
Continuing to tell great stories

The annual chapters are going away in Elder Scrolls Online in 2025, and will be replaced by Seasons. The final “annual chapter” of course being Gold Road. Matt made it clear they’re still going to be telling stories, but right now, he wants the team to focus on content for all types of ESO players would be interested in.

Instead of dropping gigantic updates once a year, and small updates throughout, 2025 is going to feature named Seasons, which will go between three or six months duration, with a variety of story content, events, store items, dungeons, and much more. However, there are bigger content drops that the team has been working on that will still launch.

Changing this development cycle will let the team launch content when it’s ready, instead of focusing on the Annual June Release. It should be a really interesting change for Elder Scrolls Online going forward.

The future is certainly bright for Elder Scrolls Online (Image via ZeniMax Online Studios)

The community has spoken, and the dev team has listened — there’s a great need for experimentation in Elder Scrolls Online, and they’re going to try and deliver on that in 2025. The team has some ideas that are marked as “experiments” in patch notes and could show up as full game systems later.

There are some experiments as well that the teams are currently working on, that you could see on the live servers as tests this year. Some are just that — “tests” — and others may be iterated on based on player feedback. Here are the examples Matt offered:

We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign
Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat
Improving the overall feel of combat with animation, FX, and potentially audio work
Experimenting with more zones like Craglorn (although not as large in area or scope), created exclusively for high-end group and soft-group content with associated gear chase
Adding and refining tools to make guild recruitment, interaction, and management easier and more logical
We have many more ideas here, and of course, we are listening to you and will be coming up with new ideas based on your feedback

Another place where Elder Scrolls Online could use some love is the new and returning user experience. This is something I agree with on a personal level. I love ESO, but I don’t always have time to devote to any particular MMO. So I often feel like a “returning player” and need to learn stuff again.

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The game is so massive, and there’s so much in it, that it’s certainly time to improve the overall new user experience. They don’t want new players to be overwhelmed by all the options they have, and give instead, the “essential guidance they need to enjoy the game before opening it up to all possibilities.”

That’s not a bad plan. Then there are players who come back after a few months or years, and it’s not really clear what they ought to be doing. So, there are going to be some changes to help overall. These include, but aren’t limited to:

A new patcher, with improved visuals and performance (PC only)
Returning to the original Wailing Prison tutorial area for all new players - this has already launched, but we will be regularly tweaking it to improve the experience
Visually improving base game zones with updated textures and art assets, starting with the "starter islands" - these should start rolling out in March 2025
Not showing new players prologue quest or Chapter quest compass pins. The jury is still out on how Stuga will feel about this
Sprucing up the game's PC UI, which is long overdue for a modern visual upgrade
Other map and UI systems (still in design/idea stage) to make returning to the game more seamless and get you back into the action quickly

And finally, the thing Elder Scrolls Online truly excels at — continuing to tell great stories. Instead of creating huge new sections of the map, they’re going to use the current zones and areas to tell some new stories. They gave a few examples in the letter:

Continuing the stories in existing zones and storylines and bringing back familiar characters
New stories focused on hallmark Elder Scrolls organizations like Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild
Splitting a large zone across multiple updates

Honestly, they had me at Dark Brotherhood. Matt also pointed out that seasons won’t necessarily start at specific times. The first Season will be introduced in April 2025, but the announcement will be for more than just that. There’s also a tease of a content update in March 2025 — which will be on PTS in January.

The letter ends with some sad news, though. There will be no North American community event this year. Instead, they’re putting that effort into the game itself. However, there will likely be other events in other territories, so stay tuned for more on that. It sounds like things in Elder Scrolls Online are going to be quite interesting in 2025.

Check out our other Elder Scrolls Online guides and features

Edited by Ritoban "Veloxi" Paul