For the 10th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Online and the console launch of Gold Road, MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz had the opportunity to speak with Creative Director Rich Lambert about the past decade, criticism of the new chapter, and the hottest MMORPG summer in years.
Since April, celebrations for the 10th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Online have been underway. The party is set to continue until June 2025, which marks ten years since the console version of the MMORPG was released. Speaking of consoles: Since June 3, 2024, you can experience the new chapter Gold Road on PC, followed by the release for Xbox and PlayStation on June 18.
From MeinMMO’s perspective, these are enough good reasons to ask the ESO team some more questions – during the MMORPG Theme Week, we had just spoken with Loremaster Michael Zenke and Narrative Director Bill Slavicsek about the story and lore of the Tamriel adventure .
This time, Rich Lambert took the time to answer my questions. Rich has been the Creative Director at Zenimax since June 2014 and has been involved in the full seven years of development time of Elder Scrolls Online as Lead Content Designer. He is usually the one who presents the new chapters to the press and public.
He has been following The Elder Scrolls Online since the beta. He was there at launch and knows every DLC and every chapter. With his Khajiit Nightblade, he has already been able to traverse dungeons alongside the developers multiple times.
Pay2Win Accusations and the Allegedly Small Zone
Around the launch of Gold Road, there was a lot of criticism from the community. It was said that the new region of the West Marshes is significantly smaller than the areas of previous chapters, for example, after the public test server went live. This was supported by screenshots of the West Marshes map, where several wayshrines were visible within sight.
However, it is impossible to compare the playable area of different chapters without tools. For example, in the center of Vvardenfell stands the enormous volcano. Other chapters brought vast underground areas in addition to the overworld map. I wanted to know exactly from Rich: How do the West Marshes stack up in direct comparison? His answer:
Of course, we have seen the criticism and taken the feedback. The engine of our game world consists of many cells, and when you look at the number of cells from which the West Marshes are constructed, the size of the region actually turns out to be similar to that of previous chapters.
However, I also find that one area in the northeast, where five wayshrines are within sight, quite strange.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
The highly anticipated feature of the writing system also faced criticism. The quests are boring, the long distances slow down the Gold Road adventure, and it frequently goes back to old zones, were the accusations. The criticism has reached the developers, but there was also praise:
We wanted to try something here that we hadn’t done before. What is interesting is: For every person who tells us that they dislike the writing tasks for the reasons you mentioned, there is someone else who is happy to return to old areas they haven’t visited in ages…[ ]
However, we are looking closely at the mentioned points of criticism and have also identified some issues around the writing system that can be improved – such as regarding the unlocking of recipes with alternate characters…[ ] It simply doesn’t feel as good as we hoped to earn the writing schematics a second and third time.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
The discussions surrounding the launch of Gold Road were ultimately accompanied by Pay2Win accusations because you have to purchase the chapter Gold Road to gain access to the skills of the writing system. I wanted to know from Rich how he evaluates this and whether similar accusations had already been made when new classes were introduced through chapters.
Every time. As soon as we release a new class with a chapter, there are some people who complain that it is Pay2Win. However, we don’t see it that way because the skills that come with new classes or now with the writing system aren’t really noticeably more powerful than the skills you can access alternatively.
They’re just new and thus interesting, and some skills come with cool effects. However, our PvP is so skill-based that a less experienced player with the best possible gear and skills will never win against a hardcore PvP veteran…[ ] Our job is, of course, to ensure that we don’t introduce any new skills into the game that are overly powerful.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
However, Gold Road was not only received critically in the community. There was a lot of praise, for example, for the visual design of the zones and how locations known from Oblivion like Skingrad were integrated into Elder Scrolls Online.
Many lore fans also warmly received the introduction of the new Daedric Princess Ithelia. The charismatic princess is also one of the highlights of the chapter for Rich. Just like the aforementioned writing system:
The system itself is already fantastic, with over 4,000 combinations. However, the writing system is accompanied by a story that I simply think is incredibly good. This is clearly part of the best storytelling we have done so far.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
“One half was sure that we would kill the game like this.”
Rich and I didn’t just talk about the new chapter, but also about the path the game has taken over the past ten years. After previously discussing the full voice-over of all dialogues with Michael Zenke and Bill Slavicsek, I wanted to know what other design decision has positively shaped the Elder Scrolls Online today.
One of the most important decisions came only after the launch, when Matt Firor and I sat down to think about what we could do to make Elder Scrolls Online something different. […]
At that time, we were caught between a rock and a hard place because the game didn’t have enough Elder Scrolls but also not enough MMO, and we had to think about what exactly we wanted to be. So I spent several days over Christmas at Matt’s house to figure out what One Tamriel could be.
Once we nailed that down, we went back to the team where we presented our pitch. And the team looked at us in disbelief: “You want to do what?!” One half was sure that we would kill the game this way. The other half was excited about our idea. And we did it, and that changed everything for the better.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
The update One Tamriel was released in October 2016 and brought flexible level scaling to the game world of Elder Scrolls Online. Additionally, the endgame of the MMORPG was restructured. Both created, in combination, the foundation on which ESO has been standing for almost eight years now.
A Live-Action Series for Elder Scrolls like Fallout?
You must have heard about how incredibly positively the launch of the Amazon Prime Fallout series has impacted player numbers in the various Fallout games. I want to know from Rich Lambert how such an adaptation for Elder Scrolls would need to look in his view to be worthwhile and significant.
Similar to Blizzard with Warcraft, the Zenimax team has also been hearing the demand for a live-action or CGI movie for the Elder Scrolls universe for years. Rich would be very interested in such an adaptation because the lore of Tamriel has so much to offer, but that decision is not in his hands.
Through the Amazon Prime Fallout series, Fallout 76 hit player records – here is the trailer:
Additionally, every minute of CGI film, of the quality of the cinematic trailers of Elder Scrolls Online or World of Warcraft, is extremely expensive: “Many people simply cannot imagine how expensive it is to implement something like this in CGI,” explains the developer.
The Hottest MMORPG Summer in Years
In the interview, we also discussed the various MMORPG releases that are currently and upcoming in the following weeks. Tarisland is already out. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail and WoW: The War Within are already on the starting blocks. Throne and Liberty is coming. New World is landing on consoles.
I wanted to know from Rich whether there is currently relief that with the early launch of Gold Road, they were able to avoid this launch cycle or if he is, on the contrary, very excited about one of the projects privately.
I find all of them exciting, and not just the upcoming MMORPGs. I’m also really looking forward to the DLC for Elden Ring. There are just so many games that are coming out soon. Currently, I’m playing Hades 2 nonstop; I loved the first part already…[ ]
If time permits, I’d also like to check out all the new MMORPGs. On the one hand, that is naturally part of the job, but on the other hand, I have always been a fan of the genre.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
The Time Under Microsoft
Normally, PR doesn’t like it when you stray too far from the actual topic in an interview about a specific game, but I took the chance to briefly talk with Rich about Microsoft and the time so far at Team Xbox.
For a long time, it was said that the Microsoft management grants the acquired studios a lot of freedom to work on their projects quietly. However, since the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, there have been repeated reports of layoffs, project terminations, and studio closures. Zenimax and Bethesda were often affected.
I wanted to know from Rich how he evaluates the time since the acquisition in March 2021 and whether anything has changed in the internal working methods since then.
We are in the fortunate position that we are profitable and successful, and that the Xbox leadership understands what we are doing and why we are doing it. Therefore, they usually let us work in peace, which is great.
For us developers, there has not actually been any change in our daily business. The changes that have occurred have more affected the leadership levels, such as Matt Firor and the others. The team and I simply continue to do what we have always been doing, and as long as we are successful with that, they can leave us alone.
Rich Lambert in conversation with MeinMMO
“I met my wife in EverQuest.”
Online role-playing games have always had the potential to play a hugely important role in people’s lives and to shape and influence them in a noticeably positive way. This was recently shown by the story of a seriously ill woman who shared with the community what ESO means to her.
I wanted to know from Rich what goes through his mind when he hears such stories and whether there is perhaps a community story that has particularly touched him. The Creative Director explains that over the years there have been so many beautiful anecdotes that he doesn’t want to highlight any. But many stories involve friends or partners for life having met.
He can relate very well to this, as Rich met his wife in EverQuest. They have now been married for 22 years. For the developer, it thus feels like he can give something back with ESO and close the circle.
According to Rich Lambert, the first details about the update for the third quarter of 2024, which is set to bring new housing content among other things, will be available “very soon”. Additionally, the public test server is set to go live with the new features in the coming weeks.
