In the wake of the XBox Gaming studio culls, the ESO players have been waiting to see what the revised Roadmap will now look like. With pains of the changes a year ago still pretty fresh in our minds and given the seriousness of the headcount loss, it was expected this Road Map refresh would be applying the breaks to many of the initiatives that were listed as benefits of the switch from new expansions to the smaller. releases with focused items. Zenimax Online Studios Logo The community letter from the Director we got to hear more about what the leadership plan looks like. As was inevitable some planned content is now being pushed out to 2027: the class and combat refresh will be given more time the newly introduced dynamic world events that are planned for Skyrim will happen next year New PVP zone is pushed back too There are still things planned for 2026 such as A new challenge: The Nowhere Vault - more puzzle based adventuring New game system rumours Solo dungeons More Golden Pursuits Lots of Quality of Life changes for players Nick Giacomini is clear to point out in his letter that this isn't about putting the game into maintenance mode and he and team want to still continue to grow the game. However that growth is in and around the Battle Pass system, long overdue player requested features and changes, and finally new features and content to keep playing ESO fulfilling. Putting all your eggs in a single Elder Scrolls shaped basket You may have seen there is a "song and dance" being performed in both directions for building a better collaboration between Zenimax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls franchise. "entering a new chapter of collaboration across Bethesda" I really hope that I'm wrong but I have a terrible feeling that this collaboration isn't to benefit any one studio in particular, it feels like some half-baked scheme Asha Sharma is laying the ground work for so they can start to merge/mix the resources from the MMO and Single Player game studios together. Because lets be frank she seems utterly clueless about the games industry in general and knowing the difference between these two types of game isn't likely high on her list of "make cost go down" priorities. Maybe I am way off the mark, maybe ESO resources aren't going to be back filling the roles lost at Bethesda to keep TES 6 on track, but if it starts to lean that way, the long term future for ESO is going to look bleak. People don't stick with remasters or remakes Finally I wanted to touch on something that I have been pondering for the last couple of years around, while not directly impacting ESO it could be in the same area given my statement above. A massive effort was put into delivering The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered last April, which although it had some good launch day numbers, in little over a month it's daily numbers on steam had dropped lower than those of the 9 years older Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition. This same behaviour is repeated with the recent Gothic 1 Remake too that only came out on June 5th this year (2026). Charts from Steamdb on player counts Source : https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=489830,1297900,1716740,2623190 Fancy graphics and overhauled systems aren't what keep people returning to these titles, it's the replayable nature of the game, put also the investment into addressing problems (long term support and updates) and of course the massive modding comunty. Also remake/remaster games are mostly the same game as before with more polish, but if you have put in thousands of hours into a RPG world, the quality of the remake/remaster graphics does little to mitagate that. Bethedsa has a reputation of mostly leaving players to dream up a mod or solution to a bug they can't be bothered to direct energy into resolving. Interestingly if we look at games that are still drawing in daily players on steam we get to look at titles like Cyberpunk and No Mans Sky, two titles where the game reviewed so poorly at launch it took them listening, fixing and improving the original game. TES6 HAS to be a success or the Todd Howard machine may officially have run it's course.