Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Skyrim Saved (and Delayed) The Elder Scrolls Online - A Kinda Funny Gamescast Limited Series

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of funny games cast limited series. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the Master of Hype, Snowbike, Mike. Hi, Gregie. How are you, Mike? Really good. We've got a special one today. A great intro as well. That'll get you hyped and excited. It's sure well, of course. Lots to talk about, lots about what's going on. But as always, hold on, when I got to bust out the big titles. All right? Next to you, Mike just happens to be Rich Lambert, game director, the Elder Scroles. Scrolls Online. Hello, Rich. Hello. How are you?

I am fantastic. Are you ready for the hard questions? Yeah, let's do this. This could be fun. And then, of course, joining us. He is studio director, Zenimax Online Studios. It's Matt Fyroar. Hey, Matt. Don't you forget it.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you need to bring your chair up higher again? I tried. It didn't work. Ladies, gentlemen, and NBs, we are very, very excited for this. This, of course, is something very special for us, Mike. A true partnership here with the other scrolls online. to celebrate, of course, the Elder Scrolls Online's 10th anniversary, our 10th anniversary. We were approached by ESO, and they said, hey, you make really good podcasts, and we think we have a really good story to tell, Mike.

They have a great story. You have a great story celebrating 10 years, and why not get both together? Let's tell a great story about Elder Scrolls Online. So we are doing a four-episode limited series here on the Gamescast and, of course, on Elder Scrolls Online's YouTube channel over there, talking about everything that's happened here. Of course, it's happening right now. You've got episode one. Episode two is going to be Friday, April 25th.

Episode three is Friday, May 9th. And then Friday, May 23rd is our fourth and final episode. I can't thank you guys enough for doing this rich, Matt. You know, I'm lucky enough to be celebrating 18 years of doing video game journalism, whatever you want to call this, enthusiast press, yelling at people on podcasts as my career. And the thing I love the most isn't playing the games. it honestly is talking to developers about the things they've created, the passion they get to put into it,

and the stories behind it. And so when ESO came a call in and asked and wanted to talk to this opportunity, wanted us to pitch, I was like, you don't understand like, you know, I enjoy, of course,

the old days of the E3 interview stage at IGN. I enjoy talking to people at SGF. I enjoyed the GDC stream we did not so recently, not so long ago. That was 30 minutes with a dev, right? But the idea of 45, four,

45 minute podcasts that can go anywhere and talk about all the warts, how this came to be. I think that's incredibly special, Matt. So thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, it's our pleasure. I mean, we work a lot in an office or remotely with not much human interaction besides ourselves. So it's really, really a treat for us to come out and actually talk about what we do because we don't do it enough, right? We've been doing this a long time, and ESO celebrating its 10th anniversary, it was last year. So the joke is we're about to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our 10th anniversary. But seriously, like, we love to do this because what we do matters on a lot of levels, right?

And we want to make sure that we get to talk about what we do and the effort that we put into it and kind of the ideas behind what we do. So it's not just a game, but it's also like it's a virtual world. You can meet other people. And we did that all very super intentionally. And so, which, of course, during the pandemic took a big big. big explosive growth spurt because many people were looking for those kind of connections. Of course. And I think

for me, I was so warmed in the heart by you, kind of funny best friends, of course. When we announced this show on Games Daily Mike, I won't lie, I expected pushback from some kind of funny fans. Well, I mean, like, I expected the normal thing of like, well, wait a second, kind of funny is not the biggest

ESO fans. Like, why are they doing the show or I don't want to get the way the games cast? And I was ready to make the pitch, but the audience really got behind it. It was so excited for the crossover. I was shocked to see how many Elder Scrolls online players there are in the kind of funny community, but then how many people already knew the message I was going

to give of like the idea of coming in here, Mike, you know, you played a ton at launch. You've been playing a lot recently. I played at launch and I'm a laps fan and I'm ready to come back with all the stuff we're going to talk about that you've done. But it's the idea that to get in here and have this kind of access, we talk all the time about

on games daily, on games cast. We make our best educated guests on why decisions get made and what's happening in the industry, but we aren't those people. So to have four episodes to really get granular with you and talk about this game and talk about game development is so special. And that's access we really don't get. So I'm really looking forward to getting into this talking about how y'all found your way to Zoss,

which I love saying, by the way. I didn't know that was how we pronounce it. I didn't know if people are boiling it down to Zinnamax online studios to Zoss. And I was watching the direct the other day. I was like, yes, all right. I'm in. Now we're talking about it. But anyways, talking about your journey there, the journey to making this game,

the journey and all these different things. It's just really incredible. stuff. And I hope you guys, you know, obviously, we've been getting a lot of praise for our 10th anniversary. I hope you know, and I hope you've gotten that on your 10th anniversary tour here, Rich, of people really telling you how much awesome it is. It's pretty cool to be able to say we've been working on this game for as long as we have. You know, we started in 2007. Yeah. So it's, what, 17, 18 years now? Yeah, I don't want to do. And, yeah, we get, you know, we get to go to these shows. We get to go talk to the people and the fans and went on. They're like, this helped me through a really tough

time. This is how I connect with people, right? It's, it's amazing. And I really think, Matt, that's one of the reasons this relationship makes so much sense, is that you have those stories, but then I also truly, truly appreciate how you and ESO and the community are like very much kind of funny. We don't want assholes. We don't want toxicity. We don't need that. That's not what this is about. And sure, that means that, you know, your audience is this smaller group, perhaps, but it is this fact that, like, no, they're there for the right reasons. And I, I'm so, happy that you guys championing that the same way we do it, it's kind of funny. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of crossover. And our community is amazing in ESO. Like, where new players

come in, you know, and post all the time on social media and Reddit. Wow, I can't believe I asked a question of someone in global chat in the zone I was in. And it was even the right answer. And it was even the right answer. So, yeah, but, but yeah, it's a, you want to go somewhere in your virtual other life. You want to go somewhere where, you know, you You can be comfortable and you can live the kind of, you know, Elder Scrolls fantasy life that you've always wanted. And we give them that. But we give them the tools to do it. But the people are the ones, the community are the ones that actually bring it and actually make it what it is.

And also, you know, coming off the heels of as we're recording or this is posting yesterday's direct, right, really doubling down on that message. Right, that was something you guys were talking about. This is you. This is you. I love that. Yeah. In fact, many things we talked about in the direct yesterday were because of community. community feedback. And as we go over the course of these four podcasts, you're going to hear this a lot.

But we take community feedback very seriously and have made many, many major changes to game systems based on community feedback. Not only community feedback, but a huge indicator of what we're going to do is seeing how players react to the things that we put into the game, whether they're talking about it or whether they're doing it in game, sometimes two different things. People like to complain about things that they do a lot. But, you know, whether there's smoke, there's fire, usually. And yeah, so we're making some changes to the way that we're delivering content in ESO, and we announced that in the direct.

And we're going to get to that. You're giving me too much. There's so much I want to jump in. I want to talk about this switch to one Tamriel. Well, that's a good story. That's a really good story. We're going to start with some of the recap of what happened yesterday, of course. Then I want to start from literally the origins and then start really going for these four episodes.

But first I remind you, of course, that this is the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of a funny games cast special. Wherever you are getting it or consuming it, please like, subscribe, share. Of course, leave a comment, tell your friends about it. And make sure you mark your calendar for the future episodes as we keep coming back about every two weeks to hang out and talk more Elder Scrolls online.

Of course, we couldn't do without you, both kind of funny and The Elder Scrolls online. So please go support, whoever you want to support. However you got here, maybe on your YouTube, maybe you're on ours, maybe you're a podcast. It doesn't matter. Wherever it is, I'm excited about it. We have so much to talk about. But again, I love that I can take a breath and take it.

We have so much time, so much time to talk about it. That's exciting. We would be fools not to talk about what just happened at the direct. So, Matt, cue me up for you. I want to talk about the origins and how this all started, but in terms of where we are on the timeline, in reality, what was the big stuff yesterday? What's speaking to you?

So we've been giving the community a heads up that this is going to happen for a year and a half now. But basically, we'll talk about how the game launched. But in 2017, we introduced this concept of chapters. And it's where we package up a zone, a new major system, like a new class, or companions or a card game, right? Just something major. And put it out in retail, either digital or there was actually retail in 2017. So there were boxes.

For you children watching, there used to be brick and mortar stores you'd go to. But so, you know, we had a new logo, like we called the ESO chapter in 2017, Morwin. So we had a box that said ESO Morwin with a Morwin symbol and everything. And then in 2018, we came out with Somerset and then elsewhere. But these were kind of major moments, but based around the idea that you would go somewhere and buy something, even if it's going to steam and buying it. And it was hugely successful, right? We were Bethesda at the time.

I mean, we're still Bethesda, but we were solo at the time. and Bethesda had an amazingly good retail sales marketing team. And so they were very good at brand stuff like that. And so we were leveraging the power of them to go out and actually get the word out that, hey, ESO has a big drop coming. It's called a chapter, right? Kind of like an expansion, but you get to go to Morewind, right? And it resonates.

And then the next year was you get to go to Somerset. No one's been to Somerset where the highals are in Elder Scrolls world since 1994. right? So there's always a hook. Hug hugely successful, but it's been eight years, and in those eight years, the way people consume content in games like this has just changed, right?

Dramatically. Yes. And if you look at behind the scenes, how we do the packaging of the stuff, we had about an 18-month runway, 18-month runway to do each of these chapters. So we had two teams kind of leapfrogging over each other a little bit working on these and crossing up, at certain points and working on the same thing together. But what it meant was 18 months before,

we had to look forward and see what people would want to do in a year and a half, right? And think about the pandemic happening and thinking about all these things happening. But the biggest thing it did is it gave players much of the year's content in one day. Yeah. And they could go consume it all.

And so now what players, which is fine, Like we had a bunch of, we had a huge cadre of players that would just play through the chapter, go away, come back next June for the next chapter, totally fine. I was listening, I think you talked to Price about this, or maybe it was McCaffrey, and you were talking about, yeah, you know, this player who shows up and then they're gone for 11 months and then they're back. And that's great. Yeah.

But now players are giving us the very clear message. This is a little unsatisfying. They love the content, but they want more things to happen over the course of the year. And so to do that, we have to change the way. that we deliver content to kind of unspool some of the stuff from the giant June release and do it more evenly across the year. We're calling that concept seasons with a small S, right? It's like it's just every three months we're going to deliver something.

And it could be a new zone with some quests. It could be a new class. It could be, right, it doesn't have to be all tied together anymore. And it makes us more flexible so we can actually react faster and give players what they want without needing to look forward so far. And I'll stop you right there then. So Rich, game director,

does this make the job easier or harder? I mean, you don't have to, I guess, you don't have to anticipate what people are going to want as much, but now you need to turn things quicker, right? Yeah,

I mean, it's still, at its core, it's still they were building new things. It's just really what it comes down to is how we're packaging it and how many teams and how far out we are in order to do it.

It does give us a lot more flexibility. It lets us be a lot more reactive. which is good. A lot of times, as Matt said, especially when it comes to building zones, it takes about 18 months to do that. And so when players gave us feedback on the last zone, we've already been hard at work on the next one.

Sure. So it's really the next one that players start to see some of that feedback. So we want to be able to be more agile in that regard. I'm assuming you were seeing this feedback from players. Oh, yeah. And within the team as well, in the studio as well, right? When you have to be so far out, you know, in terms of your planning,

whatnot. That's really hard because the team is heads down working on stuff. And then another team who's later on or earlier on in the process is like, hey, we need to know these things for this future thing. When are you going to get it to us? We're like, we're doing this thing and this thing and this thing.

Right? So this helps alleviate some of those. Okay. Where are we going then with this first season? So we're announcing, and Rich can go into the details on this. It's called, it's a

it's a little different because we're halfway between transitioning models. So it's going to be a little different than it'll be going forward. But it's called actually I'll let Rich give all the details. But we're basically spreading out the content over a few more months and not just one day in June. And that's what we announced. And it's really cool content. It comes a lot of cool stuff. It just won't happen all at once.

Yeah. So we are going to Solstice, which is a small island kind of in the south corner of the map. And the story is broken up over two major releases. So the first part comes in June. There is a giant wall that kind of separates the island.

Which players get to take down together in like this big server-wide event, which will be really, really cool. That opens access to the second half of the end. So it's a it's our take on this first step of being able to spread the content out a little bit more and give players what they're asking for,

which is more repeatable, more content. at a regular cadence. And multi-classing and... And a million other things as well, yeah. Up dating the starter realms, doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, like, there's all kinds of cool stuff.

And, you know, the subclassing stuff is really, really cool, right? And, you know, it's going to allow players to continue the characters that they've started, but able to use skill lines from other classes. So you're not kind of locked into things. So that it went from, I think Kerry, who's the systems designer that's been working on the system. It went from something I think there's now over 3,000

possibilities in terms of your class now instead of seven. It's pretty crazy now what you can do with your class. Like I see a nodding. That's the part that gets me very excited. There's so much in this announcement that I can't wait to dive a little bit deeper. But the subclasses does get me really exciting

because as someone who has played mainly Tank as a Dragon Knight the whole entire career of ESO, I want to try other classes. I want to be at higher levels and see those cool skills. And so it's exciting to me to be able to jump into that. What does it look like from a player's perspective? Is it all unlocked and I can just pick and choose?

Do I have to go out and unlock them and play as other classes? So there's multiple ways that you can do this. So if you are a person that like a veteran player who's basically leveled every class to 50 and whatnot, you're going to get access to a lot of that stuff right off the bat. You know, the requirement is you have to be, you have to have a class at level 50 in order to use the class set. or skills. But we also looked at our player population

and kind of looked at what they do. And there are a significant number of people that really only have one character. So we wanted to make sure they could still participate in the system without having to start all over again. And so there are ways that you can train and learn the skills on that one particular class. It takes some time,

but so does leveling classes to 50? Yeah, but people are used to putting the time in. Right, right, right. About living and being in the world and learning. I mean, you know, you're, you played it down, I feel like, but that was one of the things that spoke to me so much, even as a novice, right, or an outsider, is the fact that the story you're telling this season is a sequel, right? Yeah, I was, I was about to go, like, so incredible. Like, what a great idea, of course, to bring it back to these worms. Yeah. Yeah, so, so the season is actually called the seasons of the worm cold. And that's a name that is immediately known by everyone who's played ESO because the main story. in the launch version of the game, the very first story that we told was the story

the wormcult and Manor Marco and Mullug Balls invading Tamriel. And so because we're at the tail end of our 10th anniversary, right, we wanted to actually cap it off with the story that actually took off from the first story that we had. And so this story very much takes place after the main story in the base game takes place. And so, which is a departure for us because the way the continuity works in the game, which frankly requires a physics degree at this point. It's time as a construct of the player, right? Whatever order you do stuff in is whatever order you do.

And that's easy to design around. So basically, if you play ESO, everything happens in the game at the same time. And it just makes things easier to explain story-wise. And like Rich said, your character experiences things in the order they experience it in. Not necessarily true for every character. However, this new story that we're telling actually does take, place after the first story so that we can actually extend the story, bring back beloved characters that you might remember from the main story, which we do a lot if you played a lot of ESO,

you'll notice we bring back characters that our community loves and demands that they have more interaction with. And we're definitely doing that, and it's going to be nostalgic for older players that have been around. But it's a great story. I want to start segueing because I still have so many questions, but we'll get to the new stuff as we continue on our journey here. I don't have to get it all out in one podcast.

I don't have to do it all. I want to start seguing to how this game came to be. But before then, there's something you said at the top that I thought was interesting. We're talking about Zoss. We're talking about Xenamax online studios, right? And you said, we're not Bethes-Zep, but we are Bethlehem. But talk to me about how you see.

Right now, I know, right? The big question, I'm coming out and swinging. Right now, how do you see the studio? How do you define the studio? What is that relationship? Because I think that is something that's lost a lot. You'll see us even watching it, doing the direct reacting to the Xbox developer director or something. You come up.

Well, it's not what it is, but it isn't. I need a whiteboard in about 20 minutes. All right. So the easiest way to explain is explain how we evolved. Sure. So in 2007, I was hired to start Xenamax Online Studios. Xenomax was the parent company. It still is in many ways.

A parent company under which was Bethesda SoftWorks, Bethesda Game Studios did machine games, although they came after 2007. Xenomax Online is in that family. So Bethesda Softworks was our publisher, right? So we're all studios that then Bethesda Softworks published. So people get hung up a lot, even today over Bethesda Game Studios versus Bethesafewx versus Xanomax Media versus Xenomax Online. So the easiest way to remember is Zoss, Xenomax Online, is we're developed to be kind of the MMO online group at,

at Bethesda. Of course. See what I did there. It took five minutes. Yeah, five minutes. So, yeah, if you go back to Dice 2011, Todd Howard gave a key to the Skyrim keynote there. And he actually had a slide that tried to explain it. And it's, what was that, 15 years ago.

And it's still dead on relevant today, as it was back then. So I highly recommend. I think you could stream it. But it was very funny. But yeah, so they hired me. I was, I'm an old MMO guy. I worked at a company. I'm, yes, very old.

Stone Age. So I was a founder of Mythic Entertainment. We did Dark Age Camelot, which is a big MMO in 2001-ish on. And so I left Mythic in 2006 and then consulted for a while. And then I got the call from Bethesda that they were looking to start an MMO studio to leverage their IP into the online space. So that worked out. went and worked for the first three months. That went all right, I guess.

You're jumping really quickly. You're jumping way too fast for everything that's going on, right? Because what I need to know, I think, more than anything, is then, like, for, you know, you've talked enough, Matt, Rich. Yeah. Zoss. Yeah. What you're doing with Elder Scrolls.

How do you define Zoss? Like, how do, what's the identity of it to you in terms of, like, what separates it? And I don't even want to bring in Bethesian games. But for you, like, what is Zoss? Because the direct yesterday, it was awesome. Kind of funny, you know, we are Monday morning quarterbacks for directs and for presentations. And this move that has happened recently from the Xbox Studios, Bethesda, you guys were the ones just did of. Hey, you know what?

We have developers who are passionate about their games. Let's get them on camera talking about that. And having the one woman, her name escapes me, I'm sorry. But she was talking about like going back and touching up the starter areas that she, she remembers so well from being a fan. That was Lauren. What a beautiful story. What an amazing thing.

But I think it gives such a great glimpse into what Zoss is. How do you define Zoss, Rich? I mean, I think you summed it up pretty well. We're just a bunch of people that are really passionate about making games. And that's what we care about, right? And we can all work together. You know, titles generally don't mean a thing. It's just you get a bunch of people in a room and you make magic.

And that's kind of what we do. And we've always done. And we've never really been out there, you know, kind of trumpeting ourselves and talking about how good we are. Which is why people say Bethesda makes out of scrolls online. That's why we're changing with this show, everybody. But, you know, it's just a bunch of humble people that just are more concerned about making something cool than they are, you know, kind of propping themselves up. And pro tip, name your game something other than the IP name if you want people to understand. Fair enough.

Yeah, that I can see. I can see. And also a corporate name for your studio is also not always the best way to get it. name out there. But as Rich said, yeah, we're kind of under the radar. We don't get out and do this kind of thing a whole lot. People do confuse us a lot with all the other, but that's the Xana Maxes that are that are out there. But yeah, but we're the studio that makes Elder Scrolls online, right? And we've always, we've evolved over the years, which we'll go into, but we started out, like, especially with Rich in my background being hardcore old school MMO players.

We started, we started making an MMO and we ended up making an Elder Scrolls virtual world, basically. Yeah. Right. And it just, it evolved over time. We didn't, these games always evolved over time, always. Like, you could have a whole GDC presentation on that. Like, the developers that launched these games, including us, don't know where we're going to be in 10 years.

We go where the community and the market and the IP takes you. Sure. And, yeah, but we ended up kind of just because we followed the Elder Scrolls North Star and the community North Star. We ended up making a kind of a very cool virtual world that has a ton of things to do in it that aren't necessarily elder. scrolls, it's very much community-based, right? But, you know, like people make, uh, in our housing system, you know, we have a whole, uh, group of people that do nothing but stream their housing,

you know, how, how they build out their houses. They do, uh, you know, machinema type, type stuff in their houses. And it's awesome. We didn't plan on that in 2007, right? That, that's just the way these things go. And that digression explains kind of who we are, right? Well, I think it does. And I think one of the things you touched on that I think so powerful for this is you say you're under the radar, right, in terms of just getting your work and getting it done. But I think you're under the radar maybe to the mainstream.

Everybody's going to, kind of funny to watch a thing or IGN or GameSpot, right? It's a little, but like your community knows y'all. Oh, yeah. Because you're responding to them and going this, and it's always been that thing of, I couldn't even, I mean, again, 10 years. So let's say, I don't even know, five years ago.

But I remember when we'd watch whatever direct is going on and oh here comes a new trailer for Elder Scrolls online. That's still going? That's a moment. You know what I mean? And it's like, well, not only is it still going.

It's so successful that they're doubling down and making more content and putting it in here and trying to get in front of you and doing all these different things. And our community travels extremely well, right? Like wherever we go, whatever we do, there's always a huge contingent there. You know, every direct when we do things, you know, on Twitch or whatnot, like they're there and they always show up. So another big question then. Why? Why are they so dedicated to you?

Is it just the game is that good? I think some of it is that, right? We give them the tools, but I think it's just the community in it of itself, right? And that's the magic of the MMOs and the online games in general is you develop those social ties. And once you have those, you're there for those people. Like the game is always secondary at that point,

and you're logging into play with your friends. Yeah, I'll describe it a little differently, although that's very much 100% correct. Even in the days when after PC launch, when we weren't doing so well before console launch, our numbers weren't fantastic. But we had like a population that was probably 30% of what we thought it was going to be. Sure. But that 30% logged in every day and played obsessively. And much of what we learned from that point going forward is look at what they're doing.

Don't tell them what to do. Just sit back, watch what they're doing, and do more of that. and facilitate them to do more of more of what they want to do. And I think that philosophy, which came early on, because frankly launch is now early on in the game's development, right? That philosophy comes through, and I think players respond to that, that like, oh, I can do this.

Oh, they're letting me do this now. I like doing that. And I'm oversimplifying it, but not every developer works that way, right? Because we were, I'm not going to say desperate, because it wasn't that bad, but we needed to make changes. And we very much looked at that cadre of players

and made a lot of decisions based on that. All right, hold on now. We said this was a no-holds-barred interview. Were you really not desperate? Like, keep in mind, we're on the outside. I don't know anything. Review scores, PC, not doing hot. It's subscription only.

You're saying you had 30%. Is there not a gigantic anime sweat drop on your head of like, what about Xenamax being like, what are we doing? It's not an anime sweatshirt. It was real. No, but, I mean, our review scores, for the launch game, we had 90s

and we had 40s. And it's like our, you know, our, you know, our Robert Alman, right, the CEO was like, I don't know what to make of this. You know, he's like, well, clearly the low ones are wrong. That was my, that was certainly what my reaction was, well, we seriously had

scores that were all over the place that you couldn't look at media feedback because it was just all over the board. Some people got it, some people didn't. We had problems. I mean, no question. So, we were given a very strong mandate to make the game

better by console launch. I know we're going to talk about this in a future podcast. Yeah, of course. But I couldn't let you slide on that. No, no, no, no. We weren't necessary. There was pressure. There was a ton of pressure. The company had invested a lot of money in this game and a lot of money in us

and wanted it to pay off, right? in the basic business terms. And we were a long way from that. And I think the fact that we had a split PC console launch actually saved us because it gave us the time to make things better. Interesting.

Because most of the people that played Skyrim back in 2014 played on console. And so the console market for Elder Scrolls back then was much bigger than the PC market. And so it gave us that year, 12 months, whatever it was, 14 months. To actually react and do more of what I just said. where we look at what players are doing and make sure we do more of that.

And that hit before console launch and that's when it blew up. Okay. So now, let's do it. Let's actually wind the clock back. Semi-desperate. This episode is brought to you by the Elder Scrolls Online. Every legend starts somewhere and in ESO, it starts with you. Join the millions of players in the award-winning online fantasy RPG.

Write your story into a vibrant chapter of Tamriel's distant past and discover a world steeped in adventure and possibility. ESO is more than a game. It's a virtual world where you belong. This year, ESO is breaking the mold and introducing the content pass, complete with two new dungeon packs, two-part story content, a brand new zone to explore, and a world-changing in-game event all released throughout the year. And talking about story, 2025 brings us the seasons of the worm cult, a direct sequel to ESO's main story. Travel to the never-before-explored island of solstice where worm cult activity is surging. It's up to you to unite the three alliances against this old foe that has mysteriously returned. Pick up the Elder Scrolls online now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

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That's BetterHelp, h-elp.com slash kind of funny. Betterhelp.com slash kind of funny. You already started giving your elevator pitch, but this is a long-form podcast we're on, so I need more than this, all right? Because the story goes that you say, I've heard you and read your interviews, like, oh, I basically retired. You basically you left Mythic, you basically retired from games, you said. This was

before, yes, so. Exactly. I just sank for the studio. I did not retire. I'm sorry, before you get called. I see the headlines. Oh, no. God, good news, everybody. Bring out the retirement cake. It's over. It's over, Matt. See you later. What, like,

were you just bored as hell at home and never really went back, or was this meant to be a break? All right. The funniest story here, if you want to go into all the details. I spent much of the time after leaving Mythic trying to develop a fallout MMO. And this is before Bethesda had the rights.

Okay. Right? And I was working with Interplay, and I was negotiating. I had a publisher lined up. Yeah. And then Interplay stopped taking my calls and stopped returning my emails.

And like two weeks later, Bethesda acquires rights to fall out, right? Nice. No wonder. So then they call me and said, hey, we want to talk to you about setting up an MMO studio, and it's not fallout, right? They made it right up front.

But I was like... You're like, I got out of these docks, though. I got to see science stuff. I did try. I did try to pitch it. But really, they saw what success, Blizzard had turning Warcraft from a single player franchise to a multiplayer franchise. And Elder Scrolls, right, fantasy. And they wanted to do that.

And that was the pitch to me was, we want you to come and take this amazing IP, which was oblivion at the time, right? It was long before Skyrim. Because, yeah, this is 2007? 2007. Yeah. Fallout 3 hadn't even launched. It was a long time ago. Yeah, I remember.

And so they wanted Zoss to start a studio to turn oblivion into the next big MMO. And that was the pitch, right? But I was already on the hook because I just wanted to go where Fallout was. And Elmer Scrolls, right? I played the hell out of Daggerfall was one of my favorite games in the late 90s. And, of course, I played more wind and oblivion. So it didn't take much convincing. So I was retired, but I was trying to get something.

I was trying to get something rolling, and then it turns out it just rolled in a slightly different direction. He took the bait. Yeah, exactly. He's back in. You can't say no. And so you said, we joked about this earlier, but you were saying you've actually been there even longer, Rich.

Yeah, so he founded the studio, but somehow you've been there longer. I worked on Oblivion. Yeah. And I was also a producer on Fallout 3 as well. And so I used to bug taught a lot when I first started there. You know, hey, this would make a really good MMO. and he was like, launch this first. They're never going to work, kid.

Get out of my office. Launch this first, right? And then one day he called me and said, you need to come down and have a chat with me. I was like, oh, what did I do? And I walked into Todd's office and there was Matt. And he introduced us. And he was like, please take Rich.

All he talks about is making online games. And Matt did. Please take him off my name. All he talks about is EverQuest. And wow, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So then I can't imagine, Mike, tackling something this large.

Yeah. A blank piece of paper. Go make Elder Scrolls MMO. What are the first steps? How does that? I don't know what I mean? Like, what do we do? It's just you two in a room?

That's how to start? So this is the part where we get to talk about Bethesda Game Studios. Great. Because Todd actually invited us in, I sat with his team for like three or four months in the early days just to see how they did things, how they worked with the IP,

and it gave Rich and I a chance to sketch out what we wanted for the world, and we were right there with the people, even though they were very much trying to get fallout out the door. They did one. You're like, but what about Elder Scrolls? Exactly. But it was more like what eras the game set in.

What's the timeline? How are we going to share IP? Because you can't work on a game like this and not create new IP in the IP. And so we needed a conduit to make sure that there was a way for two-way communications. When is the game set? How are the alliances set up?

Because we wanted PVP to be an integral component. And we whiteboarded out all that stuff and showed it to Todd. And I think, yeah, it was all thumbs up. There was some discussion. There's still discussion now, right? How did we end up with the second era? There was a... It was, so it's in the Interregnum,

which is this 400-year period where it was just total constant war. Yeah. So there's no really records of anything. So I think Todd was like, this is perfect, right? Go and do whatever. Nothing's known. Yeah, an important part of the pitch for ESO is that you could become emperor, which is in our PVP system. So, yeah, we needed a time when there were no emperors on the throne before Tiberseptom came,

and I'm getting really geeky into the scrolls now. Super deep into it. Yeah, here we go. This is before the empire, the Tiberseptons empire was founded. And so we needed a time when it was unknown and there was lots of chaos. They say PVP kind of at the forefront, you, your mind there. Were there some inspirations

that you saw on other MMOs? Or was it just the combat of oblivion? We're like, we got to have PVP in this. Yeah, so my background at Dark Age Camelot, we were the PVP MMO. So the pitch for ESO

to Xana Max, to Robert and all the executives there was Dark Age Camelot's PVP system plus World Warcraft's PVE system plus oblivion's IP. And so...

And he said dollar signs. And that was the pitch. Which in 2007 was as much as sure bad ideas as you could get, right? Sure. It resulted in very much a World Warcraft style game with the great PVP system based on oblivion IP. And we'll get into where that led us in a bit. But, you know, remember the original content style we had. Yeah.

I mean, it was... I still have a map. I was going through my desk. and I found a map from 2008 that had the whole world planned out with all the dungeons and all the other stuff. Wow. Wow. And it was very different than what we have today.

Like, we learned a lot while we were building this game. Yeah. For you, Rich, give me a little bit of your background because obviously Matt Camelot, we know all this stuff. I was hearing about muds. You were playing muds way back in the day. I was making them. You were making them.

Yeah, because you were so obsessed with one. You were paying about, what was it? $3 an hour and then you ended up like, well, it would be cheaper to license it. So you just licensed it. You're a psychopath. To make our own game out of it. But just a quick diversion there.

There was no internet then. So we didn't know muds existed. And the game that I was playing was a multi-user dungeon, by the way. Thank you. Nice. Yeah. I was wondering what that was. Text MMOs from the 80s and 90s.

But yeah, I was obsessed with this modem game where you could have five players online at the same time because there were five modems. And but it wasn't a mud. It was a different offshoot. and we didn't know muds existed. There was no internet. You couldn't go ask people, hey, what's your multiplayer?

The text game. Walking around Babbage is. You got a mud, you got a mud. They're like, what's a modem? And so, yeah, so some friends and I decided to just license the game, and that was in 1986 or 87, and then my first game kind of rolled out of that.

Amazing. It's been a while. So, but Rich, for you, you're working at Bethesda, you're working on Oblivion, you're working on Fallout 3, but you're pitching all this MMO or multiplayer stuff, Are you going home and playing MMOs like matters?

Okay. Yeah, like that was, I'm a huge gaming nerd. I always have been. And I accidentally got into this industry in the late 90s testing. Oh, okay, okay. So I had no idea it was a real job. I thought I was going to be a teaching pro for golf. Like that was my, that was my thing.

No way, really? That was my thing. Rich is a really, really good golfer. That was my thing. Like really good. Mike likes to hit the links today. I would just say, we'll go out sometime. Yeah, yeah.

Anytime, man. What's your handicap, Rich? last year I finished at a four the year before that he's golfing he might be better than you and I'm golfing he's golfing he's golfing but yeah so it was just a summer job that one buddy got and I said there's no way

that's BS and that summer job I ended up getting and it turned into this 30 year career now making games and whatnot but yeah games has always been a thing online games in particular I actually met my wife playing EverQuest Oh that's amazing We've been married 23 years now because of that.

That's incredible. So it's always been a huge part of life. Oh, you got to tell that story. Which one? The how I met her? Yeah. I was playing with her son at the time. What?

Oh, a quick sidebar. Come on here real quick. How old is Rich? This looks really young. I'm so good. I'm 48. I'm happy to say that. Okay, good, good.

But yeah, so I met her son, right? We were in the same guild, this really high-end guild. and he was like 12, right? And we started playing. She came on calm and she's like, why are you talking about the guild? No, actually, she ended up joining the guild and then we started kind of hanging out

and all that other stuff. And as a joke I made to, you know, Jim at the time I was like, dude, I want your mom. Turns out it was, it was real, right? Like, and we got married. So, and we've been married ever since. That's incredible.

Yeah. That's an incredible story. You don't hear that story often. Well, I mean, I guess actually, you know, for you guys, you probably hear that story a lot. Don't you? We do.

And it's a really cool part and why I'm so interested in that online space. Yeah. Is you get to meet people you wouldn't normally get to meet and you get to, you know, chat with people who are thousands of miles away, you know,

in Australia and Japan and just everywhere, right? And they're all playing this game. It's awesome. That's really great. Yeah. It's, I'm blown away when you talk about, they came to you and said,

let's build this online world because I always play Skyrim and Elder Scrolls and Fall on them. I look at my friends and go, man, it would be so cool if we shared this experience together. I would love to have multiplayer in this. And everybody would go, no, no, no, it's a single player game. I don't want you ruin in the moment. And was there any pushback? It's just thing I'm like, oh, we want you to do it.

But in my mind, it's like, I was like the only person in my friend group ever running around going, let's all play together. This would be so amazing. And like this idea that Todd's in there like, Eric, beloved, you walk out of the daggers from everyone. Like, what are you? I have shocking news for you. I have shocking news for you. The internet can be a little harsh on new ideas.

Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, the whole concept, obviously, took the IP to places. We weren't the first multiplayer Elder Scrolls game. There was one in 1998. The, can't remember the name of it now. Battlespire. Yes. And so, see?

See? We weren't even the first one, but we were the first big one. And so, yeah, it took a while to get everything in place so that people were like, okay, that's how you're going to do it, like internally. And then, and then, you know, obviously when we announced. We had a whole other internet issue to deal with. But it was fine. People were passionate about Elder Scrolls. Skyrim was literally one of the best games of all time.

And, you know, so we had a very firm base to stand on to start to start working on this game. But I think the interesting thing that I don't want to get lost to the listener or viewer right now is that we keep talking about 2007, you guys are doing this thing, blah, blah. They're working on Fallout 3. Skyrim isn't even a thing yet. No. You're making an Elder Scrolls that's more like, wow. which is far different than Elder Scrolls Online as we know it now. So at what point do they show you Skyrim?

You go, oh, fuck. Like, oh, no. I think, I mean, Rich and I both live through this, and I think we probably have the same idea about it. But everybody knew it was a good game before it launched. Nobody really thought it was going to blow up like it did. Sure. And so when Todd showed it to us, he was like, this is pretty good.

Like, he was, it was pretty cool. And so, but yeah, after it launched in November 2011, it took the IP in a completely different direction than it was. It was now mass market console. Yeah. I mean, obviously, oblivion was. But it just, you know, it blew anything oblivion did out of the water. It was next level. It was next level in every sense.

And you could not make the next big Elder Scrolls game and not. take that into account. So it's interesting to talk about like internal pushback to hey we're doing an online RPG and this not the other. Then Skyroom kind of changes everything. Was there conversations then about it? Maybe we just cancel this. We get out of it. No, it was it was it was all us. We had to cancel a lot of things internally and reorient the team towards making

there's there was the 2012 the March 2012 team meeting where we went over that Oh, no, if they know the date. Yeah. It was a big moment. March 2012 would be right after the first sales report for the November launch of Skyrim. Yeah. It was probably about the time the team stopped playing Skyrim obsessively.

Yeah, right. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I remember that. We all piled into that other building. How big is the team around this time? Ballpark. I know it's worth. 500?

Okay. Maybe. Yeah. So remember when you're talking about making games like this and you talk about numbers of people, like these, this is the most. difficult entertainment product ever created to make, like any, any game like this. So, yes, you have to make a great game. It has to resonate. It has to be a great Elder Scrolls game. It also has to run around the world on the internet.

Let's get the tech team in here. The server population. With Bethes's first direct-to-consumer billing system with credit card processing and customer support. And we did all of that. All of that was happening at the same time. So, yeah, it was. So there are a lot of people worked on this game. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, and it was just like the mood. We were like, this is what we're going to do. This is what we need to focus on.

I remember Paul and I having arguments about, like, is it fully cinematic? Is it fully V-Oed? And he was very much in the, this is the right thing to do. And I was always more focused on the power gaming side of things. So I was like, oh, I just click through it. That's the feel, right? Like, oh, my God. No, don't, don't, Rich, don't encourage, Mike.

I can't give this kid to watch a cinematic. He was totally right. Like, focusing in on that and telling those stories. getting different type of emotion into the storytelling, into the quest, made a massive difference. Yeah, the Paul, he's talking about as Paul Sage, who was a creative director at the time. Rich, from the inception of the game in 2007 to write about just after launch was the head of content. So all the questing, the way zones were developed, that was all rich. Paul was the creative director then and also added systems and stuff.

So I made it Paul's job to figure out how to respond to Skyrim, right, to be the point point person. I did a whole GDC presentation on it last year exactly what we had to do to go through and I think 27 systems got added to the game first person view the fact you could free swing your weapons and shoot your bow without having anyone targeted so no more tab targeting.

It got fully voiced. That was a huge thing. Every quest and ESO was voiced. We had to figure out a pipeline to go that we didn't build initially because it was just all text, figure out how to take that text put it into a usable script so that an actor could read it

and then put it back in to the game and have it like it was insane. Yeah, because when you write quest for reading, they are much different than when you write quest for speaking. We have to change the team around. Also French and German at launch. Also, right, it's just, you get the sense. For an uneducated person like me versus reading versus speaking,

is it what, the syntax and the words? And how you use the words and, in general you get away with bigger flowery words if it's just text but those words are generally harder for somebody to speak. So you have to think about speech patterns and all the other fun stuff that goes along with it.

So the team changed. That was when we decided to go and have a writing team that focused on just writing the dialogue. Which is led by one of the original Dungeons of Dragons guys. Wow. The pedigree on this team. Yeah, it's insane.

Question. another one I would have. Again, you were talking about a side of game development that we don't see, right, when something drastically changes or there's bad news. And we're talking about this March, what year? What meeting was it? Sorry. March 2012, right?

March 2012, right? So what you've, this has been just seeing for five years at this point. When this happens, is it demoralizing to the team? Is it inspiring? Do you see people leave the project over this? I wonder, like, I can't. wrap my head around working out something that long and then having something happen like that.

I think most people on the project at that point, I don't want to speak for everyone, but most people knew that we had to change. Like you looked at Skyrim and you looked at what we were working on and they did not connect at all. I mean, it was a good game. It just wasn't that game. Sure. And so...

The people are going to pick this up are going to... The reason I was excited for it is I like Skyrim's so much. They're going to expect a small button bar, first person solo-friendly, not-hardcore experience. And translating that from the game that we had to that was then Rich and Paul's problem. Yeah.

And I remember... You see you guys. I remember there were obviously some people that were just like, no, I'm invested in this thing. We should do this. But I remember almost like a sense of relief from people going, oh, thank goodness. Like we're not going to release something

that doesn't meet the standards of... Sure. Sure, fair, fair, fair. And so that actually reinvigorated the team and we got a ridiculous amount of stuff done in those, what, two years? Yeah, 2012 to 2014. Yeah, almost exactly two years. Wow, that is a small window to turn it around like that.

It was a lot. In a game that large, especially with the voice acting, because we had to get actors in the studio, in recording booths almost immediately just to start testing things and get moving. And we had a, what, a million lines of, it was crazy. Like, there's so much text in this game. trying to think back, and I think it was... 700,000? I don't know.

Well, across all three languages, yeah. I think it was close to 700,000 lines of dialogue that we had to record across three language. Jeez, Louise. Yeah, if you look at the ESO credits, let them scroll to the end and then look at the voice actors, and they brought life to the game. Like, before... John Cleese?

You kidding me? Like, that was always the thing. Pete Beacin-soil. There's lots. We could start name-dropping like crazy. Yeah, but it's amazing to see the text. and read it and hear it in your brain and then have somebody else read it. And just like I said earlier,

the emotion that comes out and just completely changes the dynamic of the storytelling. And the pipeline that took of like recording, like the size of the client grew by, orders of magnitude, which led to problems with downloading and right. It's just, it was a problem that had to be solved. Scale,

the scale just got bigger and bigger. That's a good way to think about it. Economies of scale in this, right? Like you do it in a smaller game, a single player game or something like that. Sure, it's just for that person. But when you do it in this, it's multiplied by however many people you have. When you're working on a more wow-like ESO, which I, like you're talking about you can call it that.

The big bar where, you know, third person, we're doing this kind of thing. You make this decision you have to go after Skyrim. What happened to your release date? Were people that were, I mean, were you already targeting something? like, well, that's done. Yeah, there were two things. First, the success of Skyrim made our release date a little less

necessary. We're going to ride this one, don't worry. It gave us some time. And nobody, I mean, nobody wants to release a game that's not ready or not right. Like, nobody does. So we were fortunately

working for the company that we were that was willing to let us go. We had a lot of work to do to convince them. This is what we're going to do to get there, right? And Todd stepped in and helped us there too, like, okay, this is, you know, talking to people and making sure that we were on the right path to get, to get there for how the IP and the game systems were represented. But it was, yeah, we were given the time. We weren't given all the time.

Yeah. But because we weren't quite done all the changes by the time the game launched, which then goes into what do we do after launch. Sure. Yeah, yeah, rough PC launch. Yeah, but it got it to the point where you could see where it should have been at launch. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough on that one. what was the biggest was it the VEO? What was the biggest hurdle? What was the biggest thing in terms of like, okay, we're going to make the switch and oh man, we didn't see this and we didn't see that. I can't believe

this is taking so long to fix. Combat model was a big one. Combat changed. Like when you go from I'll say dark age camo, that style, but it's also wow style, right? Tab targeting modifiable, modded UI where you can have 85 buttons and you're just clicking the buttons instead of we, the changing from that

to Paul's mantra at the time was, I don't want you looking at the button bar. I want you look at the world. You're playing the world. You're not playing the bar. Right? And that's when we put, you know, the red circles under monsters that were,

and enemies that were attacking you or when you were about to get a-o-eed. Or when they were doing a massive attack, they have that effect that comes out. All of that happened then so that you wouldn't have to look at the button bar to see it was happening. Gotcha.

And so the ramifications of that were huge across the effects teams, the way the monster, the monster A-O-E team. All the animation stuff. Animations. Yeah, it was a lot of work. You guys did an incredible job on that. How did you nail down how many skills would be at play?

I mean, we talk about controller later on when we get to console, but when we look at PC and yeah, wow, has 20 moves that I can choose from, how did you kind of scale that down and say, this is the number we want to be at? From what I remember, and it's a little hazy, but we started talking about deck builders and deck building, right? And so the theme was you choose your deck, and then you'd go into combat.

And that's all... So you're making decisions outside before you went in so that you couldn't react to everything. So you had to build your deck in a way that you could be survivable in any scenario. And that was kind of the initial...

I remember those discussions and then I don't remember how we landed on five plus an ultimate. Yeah, the funny thing is is that the internet rumor is, of course, that we were already thinking about console when we made that change. We were not.

We didn't know we were going to make a console version until, frankly, shockingly close before console. launch. But we did that to make it more Skyrim-like, not more console-like. And it just happened that by doing that, now it would map to a controller, although with some additional tweaking. But yeah, it just made it so your character couldn't do everything at once. You had to pick and choose what deck you were playing when you went out. And you could change it if you wanted, but you couldn't do it in combat. Was there ever discussion after Skyrim of having so much

freedom in the player of choosing what they want to be at any moment. Was there that move of, hey, you know, MMOs are usually tank, healer, DPS. Let's move away from that. We're kind of seeing that with subclasses now, which is very exciting. But back then was there a moment of like, hold up. Maybe we give the player all the freedom in the world to do whatever they want. Yeah? Yeah.

We talked a lot about that. Yeah. And we're skipping over so many massive things. They're involved in that question, which was how do we forget this? Like, you can pick up any weapon or arm. armor in the world and use it, right? What MMO could you pick up any weapon or armor and use it no matter what class you were, right? Sure. That came from Skyrim.

Right? And being able to loot everything in the world. Like you can go, we hired a team of interns who we then ended up. The click turns. That's what we called them? Yeah, yeah, the click turns. We ended up hiring almost all of them full time after they were interns. But yeah, they basically went through every container in the world and made them lootable.

Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it was ridiculous that you were able to do this so quickly. Because it sounds like just making a completely different game. Well, we had the space. The space didn't change, right? We had the zones. We had the trees.

We had the water. We had the, right? So a lot of questions get answered when those things are done. Okay. Like how fast do you move? How do animations work? How do the monsters navigate across the terrain? Right?

That's a whole other set of things that have to even. We didn't have to change that. All we had to change were your systems, the character systems, for interacting with those things. Gotcha. which is kind of half of the equation. No big deal. Half. We had to rewrite a lot of quests,

but that was more from the, how do you turn just great walls of text, pages of text, into spoken dialogue that is interesting and easy to digest. How did you nail the zones? We talk about the other half now. How did we, you know,

throw the dart and say, that's the scope of the game right there. This is how many zones. So remember that map that I was talking about earlier? Yeah, that was part of it. But a lot of it was really trial and error. We must have, what was it, Glenumbra? So many awful zones.

Eight times and Ravenspire, we did five full times. Yeah, so there's a zone called Stormhaven where any player of VSO is no Stormhaven. If you go into Stormhaven, it's actually, if you look at it closely, it's a lot different than most of the other zones. And it's because it was the zone. It's the zone that we tried to make all the content model work. And we must have redone that thing. I swear seven times. Or war.

Yeah, the affectionate nickname for the game was Warrior and Stormhaven, because we only had the Warrior and we only had Storm Haven, and we were trying to prove that the game was fun and interesting with that. So, yes, we did that work early on in that one zone, and then we applied that concept from that zone out to all the others, which made it much easier to replicate than actually redo it every time. The first version of all the zones, we actually made the mistake of having five teams do five different zones. We ended up with five different games.

These don't, this doesn't, this doesn't, there's no narrative. There's nothing connected to this. Yeah, we learned a lot, right, in doing all of that kind of stuff. And a lot of it was us just playing and going, this doesn't work. Bulldoze it, start again. Well, this doesn't work. Try another model. And it was not necessarily like the quests themselves, because storytelling is kind of

storytelling. It was how players ran into those, right? So, you know, some of the first iterations were kind of the traditional hub and spoke, right? You're in a hub, you pick up all the quest. and then you go out in the world and do your thing. And that works and that's fine. But it didn't feel Elder Scrolls. And it took us a number of iterations before we got to the,

just pick a direction and go and you will find something. If you don't have an MPC chasing you down right in your face, it's not an other scrolls game. We fixed Stuga. But yeah, yeah, there's a P. A POI quest in Storm Haven called Pariah Abbey, which was our, that's where we came up with our P.O.I Quest system. And the hallmark of that quest is you walk near it,

and an NPC spawns out of view and runs towards you and demands help. And that took a lot to get right because it's like, what area around the thing, does the thing spawn and how fast does it come to get you? Does it look unnatural as it's like sprinting at you? And what if you don't notice, does it just stand there forever? And the player can come in from any direction. So, like, how do you account for that? We have to learn all that cost.

Figure it all out. I'm so thankful we have a lot of time. I was going to say fascinated by zones and how the player moves. We're coming up on an hour. I promised them 45 minutes. But I've been too good. I do. So I want to land because the next episode is going to be more about these early days, right?

Both I think the lead up to launch, launch, then what happens afterwards. But here as we talk, I think the big question I would have is like from this switch, from this iteration, from Skyrim changing the game literally on what it needed to be. what was the biggest lesson for you? What was like, what's the, what's the piece of advice you've taken on then for these next decade? And I'm being loose with years. I think for me is, don't be afraid of change, right?

Like, it's, you see it a lot in, in kind of this industry in general, where people really glom on to their, and hold sacred their initial ideas. Like, it's got to be this, because that's the way I designed it. and game design isn't a perfect science, right?

It's a lot of trial and error. It's making mistakes. It's learning. And so if something's not working, sometimes you just got to bulldoze it and try something different. And that's a really hard lesson to learn and a really hard thing to do. So for me,

that was kind of the reinforcement. Yeah, I'll say what I really learned in that time was addition by subtraction. Like, don't be afraid to remove stuff that doesn't work and nuke it. don't ever go back. We have zones that we, there are whole zones in the game that we developed

and we just, we just deleted because they just weren't good enough. And by doing that, it gave us the time to focus on the things that did work. And then we launched with fewer zones, Rich keeps talking about his map. He hasn't got to the point where he told you, we still haven't done that map

that he found in his desk 10 years later. How close are we? Not even close. And that map was for launch. Yeah. I wasn't for 10 years after the last. But we did the right thing. We focused on a great experience and not on quantity.

Yeah, I think that map was like 57 zones or something ridiculous like that. And we shipped with 17. Okay. Okay. Not too shabby. Yeah. It's pretty good. I want to talk about that ship.

I want to talk about that launch. I want to talk about the period before the period after and a little bit more than that. And we will hear on the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of funny game. Games cast, limited series. Ladies, gentlemen, NB, if you are enjoying this, thank you so much. Remember to like, subscribe, share, and remember that we're doing four episodes every two weeks. So we're back, April 25th, Friday, April 25th. We'll be back with episode two to continue our conversation about this amazing game and where it's going.

But for now, we remind you. We couldn't do without you. So like, subscribe, share. Thank you, of course, Matt, Rich, Mike. And until next time, no, it's been our pleasure to serve you.