Year 2020 ESO facepalm Moments

The Elder Scrolls Online "Studio Director's Letter: 2020 Retrospective" admitted "things were not so rosy". What an understatement.
They (and their apologists) like to blame Covid, but in the meantime Genshin Impact three years in the making debuted with barely any bugs, made over $100 million, and then more than doubled that with two successful updates, neither of which introduced the same sort of game-breaking game-crashing bugs that Elder Scrolls Online produces throughout the year. They don't have to blame Covid for anything.

We started this list in February and at the time had no idea it would become such a huge list. Why bring it up again at the end of the year?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-- George Santayana

Highlights include:

• #1 - Ridiculous customer service
• #12 - Full game re-download results in frequent crashes instead of improvements.
• #13 - A wave of incorrectly applied bans followed by a vague explanation after some bans were listed.
• #20 - Greymoor release disaster, including players who didn't buy it but had access and got to keep the Antiquities Skill Line. Players who did buy Greymoor were the ones who were initially locked out of the new zone. Plus it broke many things, which players continued to discover (#35).
• #27 - Assorted players got up to 100,000 Crowns credited to their accounts. It was announced that using those Crowns would be an exploit but those who did spend them got to keep them anyway.
• #36 - Witches' Festival broken in many ways from day one.
• #38 - Markarth DLC release introduces a lot of bugs.
• #39 - Eight weeks of performance-related tests in open world PvP Cyrodiil resulted in nothing useful or really actionable.
• #40 - Next year's release is scheduled for 2020.
• #41 - Xbox players all kicked out of the game due to a "publishing error".

1. Jan-14 - A report that customer service tried to extort a player for money in the process of trying to resolve an issue. Only after the issue has been posted on the forums and the player has been locked out for almost a month, does an "Escalations" agent handle it properly.
2. Jan-16 - ZOS can't spell "receive".
3. Jan-20 - Trader Swap issue on PC(EU) recurs.
4. Jan-23 Midyear Mayhem - Not only did they announce it only the day before (Jan-22), but the Alliance Banners that players could create turned out instead to be Imperial Legion Zero banners -- a faction loyal to Molag Bal. 
5. Jan-31 Harrowstorm Dungeon Tour - Postponed due to "technical difficulties" half an hour after the start time of 6 PM EST.
6. Jan-31 February rewards had only 3 weeks with no explanation until much later after the players noticed it. Since the 2019 November Rewards were initially impossible to complete, obviously ESO didn't get the benefit of the doubt but the naturally belated official explanation did seem to make sense. And since they subsequently scheduled the Murkmire event in that last week, it's possible they genuinely did forget one full week of rewards.
7. Feb-2 PC(EU) Trader Swap issues. Again.
8. Feb-4 ZOS admits to weakening/nerfing an old set "Iceheart" which had no complaints about being overpowered, in order to standardize it with a new set in the upcoming DLC -- basically adjusting a years-old set to promote new content.
9. Feb-6 Dragon Marks daily login reward has the same issue ambient occlusion issue as the Dragon Marks daily login reward in October-2019. "We are working on a fix for this in a future update" obviously means some indeterminate time in the future which might actually never come. And in the meantime -- they release another product with the same problem. Hmm.
10. Feb-12 Murkmire February Event announced - and the dates are scheduled to overlap with a mandatory full download of the game.
11. Feb-20 The Murkmire event's "small chance" of additional Murkmire Strongboxes is essentially zero after hours of grinding. And even if you do get one, the collectibles fragment is not a guaranteed drop. Given the elusiveness of the fragments required for the collectibles, they are essentially a thinly disguised purchase option from the Crown Store at a cost multiples more than the Murkmire expansion itself.
12. Feb-25 Full game re-download for performance results in frequent crashes instead. Known issues include bugs that weren't in the game before. Steam clients who tried to do a fresh installation of the game ended up being forced to download an old version and then update to the new version, instead of simply downloading the new version right off.
13. Feb-28 A wave of incorrectly applied bans on accounts, initially blaming third-party software but apparently some (many?) later retracted. Players completely in the dark and many afraid to log on in case some automated system was picking up false positives and banning innocent parties. Complete silence from ZOS during the incident, neither acknowledging nor denying anything was going on, until well after.
14. Mar-10 After console Update 25, XBox language defaulted to German.
15. Mar-10 Cyrodiil Campaign rewards were not sent out and the first attempt to correct that also failed.
16. Mar-12 New house "Forgemaster Falls" released, costs 6000 Crowns. When it rains, it rains inside the roofed house. Apparently not a new issue either but finally they quickly promised a fix though with no clear timeline.
17. Mar-27 Last year's Jester's Festival included special "stick mounts" which deliberately had no mount training speed bonuses. The new stick mount this year not only cost more but they forgot to indicate this "feature" anywhere in the game or in the event announcements. Refunds offered.
18. Apr-2 Jubilee event, which worked fine in previous years, is bugged this year. Reports of Anniversary reward boxes not consistently dropped, and even of the Cake memento not consistently added to Collections.
19. May-7 Siegemaster's Warhorse pulled from Crown Store for now because the item description "contained incorrect information" -- that the mount could be earned in-game. It will be returned to the Crown Store at a later date, presumably after it is removed from being collectible in-game.
20. May-26 Login and Greymoor chapter access issues on the very first day of the Greymoor launch -- including access for players who did NOT buy it. Players exploited this by going to the new area to unlock the use of Antiquities, and were allowed to keep the use of this new feature plus everything they find with it.
21. To help resolve issues a login queue was implemented, but hours after launch the wait time was still over 10 minutes for PC(NA). Maintenance was scheduled but the issue of players who had purchased Greymoor and could not access it was still not yet resolved.
22. May-31 PC-EU Trader swap issue. Again. And it takes three days to investigate and fix.
23. June-24 After maintenance, players could not log into PC(NA) server.
24. June-25 Unlike previous Midyear Mayhem events, this time it started with no additional campaigns initially open to handle the additional players due to the event.
25. July-28 - Login queues for PC(EU) server following maintenance -- Even a day after maintenance concluded.
26. It's August and the Guild Trader Swap continues to be buggy.
27. Aug-21 Assorted accounts suddenly get up to around 100,000 Crowns (cash shop currency) for no reason. Of course people spent them. And although it was deemed an exploit, everyone got to keep what they spent.
28. Aug-27 Guilds that have successfully bid on Guild Traders show "none hired" for weeks despite staff post that "the proper team is investigating". (A long summary of many trader issues appears on the forums months later -- obviously issues are not being addressed at all).
29. Sept-1 - Assorted bugs, including old ones that were fixed, show up after latest patch.
30. Sep-8 - After a patch which included a change to the Terms of Service, console players could not actually agree to the new Terms and therefore could not get past it to play.
31. Sep-16 - EU issues continue. XBox EU servers taken offline.
32. Sep-24 - Another longstanding exploit revealed to be persistent and no action taken by ZOS.
33. Sep-30 - Group finder for dungeons is broken. Again.
34. Oct-5 - PTS patch notes 6.2.2. quietly slips in exploits to be fixed, such as "Shield Wall: Fixed an issue where activating this Ultimate or its morphs while wearing item sets such as Frozen Watcher could trigger their effects permanently". How long have these exploits been allowed to continue?
35. Oct-7 - Greymoor chapter discovered to have broken even more things, this time cosmetics.
36. Oct-22 - Everything about the Witches' Festival is broken:
• An event ESO has run many times before, starts with no Starter Quest despite that being in the Announcements.
• Issues with the Crimson Indrik berry preventing people from buying it. With no clear ETA on a fix, player who are near cap on event tickets are faced with losing tickets because earning any more would put them over the 12 ticket limit.
• Other players report that a Nascent Indrik they had already collected disappeared.
• The new Throwing Bones memento collectible didn't work and needed a hotfix.
• Mechanics of the "grab bags" (that are purchased with Event Tickets) means sometimes you won't get anything useful, or even anything at all, depending on the character that purchased the non-transferable bag. This was reported on the Test Server but went live.
• Oct-30 The event-critical character "Impressario" disappears from various cities in various instances. Official response is to try your luck looking around.
• Nov-2 The bug is finally fixed as part of the maintenance to implement the Markarth DLC -- with less than one day left on the event.
37. Oct-28 - ZOS doesn't know how to use a calendar.
38. Nov-2 - After maintenance to implement the Markarth DLC, various bizarre bugs are discovered -- as usual. This time there's a "list of known issues" on the forums.
• The Clockwork City event was also initially enabled, allowing players to get Event Tickets that way. However, this was quickly hotfixed.
• The Stillwaters Retreat house now has invisible walls in it but this is not part of the list of known issues.
• Various dungeons had mechanics broken and become virtually unplayable.
• Nov-9 - Markarth DLC update patch notes for Playstation now include "known issues" section. Various odd things broken such as no longer being able to sit on chairs.
• Forum compiles their own list of unacknowledged issues.
• Console players frustrated that bugs identified for PC release still made it to Console despite their update being later. And that overall Console bugs get less attention.
• EU players claim their servers are more problematic.
• Some fixes for issues didn't even work:
• Issue where Werewolf skills were reset and skill points lost. Multiple fixes still did not solve the issue properly. Players were still reporting skill points missing in January. Finally it looked like the issue is related to one where they were negligent with a bug back in 2018.
• Hotfix for group finder made it worse.
39. Eight weeks of extensive live server performance testing in open world PvP Cyrodiil resulted in nothing useful.
40. Dec-1 - Original trailer for next year's product Global Review puts the date as January 21, 2020.
41. Dec-4 - A "publishing error" on XBox kicks everyone out of the game and doesn't let them back in.
42. Dec-7 - Partway through the Undaunted Event, event drops become buggy. Some player testing suggests the bug is (inexplicably) tied to the availability of the Crown Store.
43. Dec-19 - Guild chat on console unusable, constant voice alerts make it intolerable, continues well into late January.