Every year, the Elder Scrolls Online team delivers a statement. They go over what went right and what may have gone wrong, especially since ESO recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.
Along with the end-of-year message was ESO’s performance improvement roadmap for 2020. Performance issues became a hot topic for the MMORPG, which led to the unfortunate cancellation of one of its events.
The ESO team is still working on the Q4 2019 Update 24. This update included a memory management overhaul plus combat ability improvements. Work continued on a complete rewrite of the “Looking for Group” system as well. There’s an additional patch planned for PlayStation 4-specific stability issues.
Q1 2020 contains Update 25. This critical update will require players on every platform to re-download the game client. Players should expect long download times during this period. With the inconvenience comes some benefits. CHaracters and fixtures will load faster, more combat ability improvements, plus the first round of frame rate improvements.
Update 26 comes in Q2 2020 with even more server stability and optimization planned. The second phase of frame rate improvements comes along wth phase three of combat ability improvements.
Unfortunately, there are no updates for Q3 and Q4 yet. The next round of updates will be uploaded on the website sometime in 2020.
Along with the performance improvement roadmap came a letter from Creative Director Rich Lambert. The year celebrated the “Year of the Dragon,” with several events and new content. Wrathstone, Elsweyr, Scalebreaker, and Dragonhold together weaved a story.
Lambert also discussed the performance issues that occurred, especially during the Undaunted event, but assured players “We’ll continue to focus on performance in the coming year and will keep the roadmap updated monthly to ensure you are all in the loop.”
The updates and end-of-the-year roundup are some of the ways Bethesda and Zenimax want to keep players informed of what to look forward to in 2020.
Currently, players can enjoy the New Life Event that occurs annually. This is the last opportunity to collect event tickets and evolve the Indrik mount. Players can also participate in the season of giving. Those who gift event tickets from the Crown Store will receive a Crown Crate in return.
The Elder Scrolls Online is currently available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
