2021 Elder Scrolls Online Year In Review

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We're starting yet another "year in review" post for Elder Scrolls Online, following up our surprisingly eventful 2020 recap.
2019 saw exploiters get and keep the Necromancer class for free without owning the Elsweyr chapter. Year 2020 saw them get the Greymoor Antiquities skill line and some players got up to 100,000 Crowns. What will exploiters get in 2021?
Aside from exploitation, there are ongoing performance issues which Zenimax supposedly began tackling in earnest two years ago but since then performance has only degraded.

HIGHLIGHTS
  • Mar-9 - Guild roster broken and multiple fixes required.
  • Apr-14 - Some players not able to receive any in-game mail at all, either from players or the system, despite the mailbox showing completely empty. First fix not attempted until May-18 and even that was postponed.
  • Apr-19 - Basic inventory functions on Console severely broken after update. Game basically unplayable even with a clumsy workaround that didn't always work. First fix scheduled for June-5.
  • Jun-18 - Customer service destroys a 7-year since-beta player's account and stonewalls them on responses, fixes, or compensation.
  • Jun-24 - Hotfix for severe bug that greatly impacts PvP fails. Players continue to brazenly exploit it knowing that ZOS never follows up on TOS violations.
  • Aug-31 - Reporting exploits gets the whistleblowers suspended.
  • Sep-20 - Exploiters ruin the experiences of players by deliberately bypassing intended gameplay. The ZOS response is to enable further exploitation and inappropriate gameplay.
  • Oct-2 - Finally a positive. An add-on caused their anti-cheat to flag traders as gold duplicators and suspended them. Following an investigation they discovered this was the case, restored seized funds, apologized, and even offered some compensation. Apology and compensation is new and a long-overdue policy for mistakes on their part that greatly impact players (e.g., Apr-19 issue).
THE LIST
  1. Jan-20 - The Cyrodiil open world PvP "AP Boosting" exploit continues with no word from the developers whatsoever, even about whether it is considered an exploit. Meanwhile, Midyear Mayhem is scheduled for January, the PvP event that doubles Alliance Point (AP) currency gains -- meaning exploiters will get double rewards again in this biannual event. (This post explains how AP boosting is done)
  2. Jan-22 - Constant crashing on PS4.
  3. Feb-15 - Yet another test on live PC servers for Cyrodiil performance issues after the previous one did not result is discovering any performance improvement of any "appreciable amount". Basically they continue to be completely clueless. Test to disable proc sets subsequently extended to Q3 but later repealed due to players continuing to argue about whether it is a valid move or not.
  4. Feb-23 - ZOS fails at something as simple as giving away a code to give a free pet. And customer service is so and clueless with what's going on that, as usual, players have to take to the forums and beg for help to maybe get a useful response to their tickets.
  5. Feb-26 - Tribunal Celebration is another broken event - not all daily quests that are supposed to give a Tribunal Coffer actually give a coffer. A workaround was discovered -- turn in a Vvardenfell quest first and Clockwork City quest second -- but ZOS didn't bother to announce that either.
    Other bugs in Clockwork City (released 2017) still there after all this time.


  6. Mar-9 - Increasing number of crashes and difficulty logging back in (sometimes in queue for over 2 hours, sometimes hung on loading screen), on various servers, since Update 29. No response from ZOS (EDIT: no response until much later and after Twitter activity to @BethesdaSupport). Sample threads:
  7. Mar-9 - Among the bizarre things that Update 29 broke was Guild History -- guilds were unable to properly tell how long someone had been away. ZOS is slow to acknowledge it, even slower to provide a fix.
  8. Mar-9 - Still not even an acknowledgement from ZOS that a fix to a Murkmire bug they supposedly applied in 2019 still doesn't work.
  9. Mar-22 - Extremely long login queues for PC platform after maintenance, with deceptive estimated times, such as "5 seconds" that last over 20 minutes; or even a wait time of over 2 days.
  10. Mar-24 - Forum post suggests the Crafting Bag might be a contributor to lag and cites reasons. Forum moderators close the thread as a "conspiracy theory". Even though ZOS's own theory about proc sets contributing to lag resulted in a test that showed it was not a significant factor.
  11. Apr-5 - Extended downtime for Playstation users again. Eventually explained by the Studio Director and the Jubilee Event extended. Seems like a ZOS tradition to have a massive screwup during Jubilee -- such as in 2018.
  12. Apr-5 - Bugged randomness? Players cite their experiences of so-called random drops such as getting a bow eight times in a row from Vatheshran Hollows arena.
  13. Apr-9 - Somehow ZOS manages to break very early new-player starting-quest content on Stros M'Kai and base game zones like Glenumbra. Issue was supposed to be addressed in a subsequent patch but on Apr-28 it became so severe with quests and skills not working that PC-NA was taken offline to address the issue.
  14. Apr-14 - Finally acknowledgement from ZOS that the new mail system (where old mails eventually get deleted) is severely bugged with missing / inaccessible mail.
  15. Apr-19 - Severe bugs for PS4 after maintenance including basic inventory functions that could wipe out your inventory inadvertently.
  16. Apr-23 - Content creators try Update 30 set changes on PTS and show how broken it already is. Warnings continue to go out against highly unbalanced possibilities. Video shows it is possible to be away-from-keyboard against an Imperial City boss (and multiple adds).
    • Finally after months of letting players exploit a badly designed set and even threatening to make it worse in Update 30, a hard nerf is announced to the Crimson Twilight set despite the player base recognizing the problem right from the start.
    • Changes which are meant to target meta-build PvP players ultimately affect everyone, including PvE players of all types, because there continues to be no separation between PvP and PvE rulesets. ZOS continues to let exploiters ruin the game for everyone with their short-sighted bandaid adjustments.
  17. May-3 - Yet another login issue for PC-EU. May-5 PC-EU taken offline indefinitely due to "hardware issues".
  18. May-10 - PTS Patch Notes 7.0.3. include a "fix" for the "issue" of Artaeum Fish Bowl food being too strong because it was meant for fishing. So three years after releasing this recipe, they decide to adjust the attribute bonuses down by an almost negligible amount. Forums call out the suspicious change as useless busywork especially as other foods are far more overtuned.
  19. May-14 - ZOS stands firm on limiting groups to 12 players everywhere, claiming performance issues -- Even though their own experiments on limiting group sizes in Cyrodiil to 12 have shown negligible impact.
  20. May-17 - Extended maintenance again followed by PC-EU unable to log in.
  21. May-27 - New tutorial for Blackwood chapter claims to let players choose their starting point -- but also removes all context and content for that starting point (as illustrated in this video)
  22. May-30 - Players suddenly lose access to the Greymoor chapter they purchased.
  23. Jun-4 - Various bug fixes don't fix anything.
  24. Jun-10 - Blackwood launch Twitch drops campaign is a flop.
  25. Jun-18 - Player since ESO-beta reports on how customer service destroyed their seven-year-old account and character and with no resolution or compensation for 9 months and counting. A similar issue in 2014 had no solution, no compensation, not apology.
  26. Jun-24 - A "Hotfix" (which was not really a hotfix since it required server downtime) to fix a severe exploit that impacted PvP was scheduled. Players had been exploiting it for days, and now with the PvP event Midyear Mayhem on, the hotfix actually failed and had to be rescheduled. No mention of dealing with exploiters either, as usual.
  27. Jun-25 - Midyear Mayhem event.
  28. Jul-1 - A thread started in 2019-November about an achievement bug in the Murkmire chapter finally get acknowledgement in 2021 -- but with a vague "we'll fix it but don't know when" answer.
  29. Jul-14 - More and more players reporting that Playstation is crashing very frequently.
  30. Jul-22 - First day of the Pan-Elsweyr event and PC-EU has gameplay and login issues. As usual.
  31. Aug-23 - Launch of new DLC and Update 31
  32. Aug-27 - Year One Celebration is another bugged event -- "Glorious Year One Coffers" are not giving the supposedly guaranteed style pages.
  33. Aug-31 - Maintenance breaks queueing into the Imperial City, during the Year One Celebration which involves the Imperial City.
  34. Aug-31 - Players claim they were banned after reporting an exploit. According to the Reddit thread responses, reporting a bug or exploit is very likely to get the whistleblower banned or suspended.
    And the official ZOS response confirms that your account can be frozen while they investigate -- which would be awfully inconvenient during an event for example. It is also highly unlikely that any compensation would be received. Overall, a heavy penalty for doing the right thing and reporting an exploit -- which is what you are supposed to do according to the Terms of Service when you encounter an exploit.
    Third party sources claim the players had collected rewards from the bugged encounter in the raid and therefore suspended.
  35. Sep-6 - PC-EU server crashes.
  36. Sep-7 - North American XBox access mysteriously stops working.
  37. Sep-8 - PlayStation maintenance creates new bug where the on-screen keyboard persists and covers a large portion of the screen. PlayStation 5 players report huge frame rate drops.
  38. Sep-20 - Patch 7.1.7. makes all Battleground matches Deathmatches only as a "test".
    • Many players have long since ruined all other types of Battleground matches by not bothering to play the objectives and instead treat every match like a Deathmatch kill-only-players. The ZOS solution is apparently to further enable and support this inappropriate behavior of selfish players by removing all types of matches except Deathmatch.
    • Nov-1 A separate queue for random matches was put back in Update 32 but the so-called randomness was poorly implemented to include the Deathmatch-only queue, so the result was still mostly Deathmatches in the random queue.
    • 2022-Jan-10 - ZOS claims the test was concluded and there was no significant change to participation. But at the same time they claimed that splitting the queue into Deathmatch and non-Deathmatch would affect queue times. So ZOS is choosing quantity over quality and player experience.
      • They did not test a queue that was only non-Deathmatch. Faced with no choice but Deathmatch, players might just have played what was available waiting for the test to be over, but were definitely not happy with the test.
      • The "conclusion" also suggests that players who want non-Deathmatch type battlegrounds might actually be a significant demographic because they think queue times would increase if they were allowed to not choose Deathmatch -- and ZOS is willing to let them have bad matches where selfish players don't play objectives.
      • Even Deathmatch players complain because they can't reliably get only Deathmatch.
  39. Sep-20 - Players have long exploited dungeons runs by simply rushing to the end boss to quickly farm rewards or complete Daily Undaunted Pledge quests. This has also ruined the dungeon play experience for many players, especially new ones who are trying to learn mechanics, experience the story, or simply have a good time playing through the dungeon in the intended way. The ZOS solution is apparently to further enable and support rushing and exploiting by letting players travel to a boss that is being engaged (upcoming Patch 7.2.0).
  40. Sep-23 - Patch makes XBox disconnect frequently.
  41. Sep-24 - Suspicious number of 72-hour bans for "gold duplication". Ultimately found to be in error and contrary to regular procedure ZOS did apologize.
  42. Oct-2 - Cyrodiil low-population bonus applied to higher-population factions.
  43. Oct-21 - Widespread issue where players got kicked from servers and could not log back in.
  44. Nov-7 - Yet another "hardware issue" causes PC-EU server to be taken offline.
The developers have shown little sign of improvement. All their talk in literally the last few years about "performance" have not just amounted to nothing but even poorer performance in loading screens and players getting disconnected during area transitions even.
But the year ended with a sober note from the Studio Director, which was better than previous overhyped positives to cover their shortfalls. No shortage of excuses as usual, unlike other developers. The hardware delays might be excused by the various delays they mentioned, except that promises were made long ago and players have been waiting on improvements for much longer than that. When resentment has built up, excuses become inexcusable.

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