Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - What Was Cut from the Elder Scrolls Online - A Kinda Funny Gamescast Limited Series

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

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What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Elder Scrolls online podcast episode three. Kind of funny games cast, limited series. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside The Master of Hype. In no joke, no lie, no nothing, no cap. My favorite one of your little Zibba putties, Snowbike Mike. Thank you, Greg. You always make me smile. And I want you know that this is a medium. And I'm an extra large.

How does this work? I don't know, but we're making it worse. I mean, is it? Or do you feel comfortable in it? I feel very comfortable. Now, the guy behind the counter definitely looked at me. It was like, this is a medium. And I said, well, it fit.

It's it. And I walked away. That's my good. Rich Lambert, game director on the Elder Scrolls online. Is he pulling off the media? He is. Thank you. Looking good.

Our guests are saying that, that makes you feel good. Matt Fyroar, you're back one more time, of course. We are here. What do you think? What do you think? I'm a big carhart fan. Yeah, all right. And they're cut very generously.

There we go. We're where it's in right now. The generous cut. Studio director, Xenamax Online. Saying that about me. Watch out. Right there for you. Welcome back,

everybody, to episode three of our four-part series. Yes, that's right. The end is in sight, gentlemen. We'll let you go home to your family soon. You'll be able to stop talking about this game

you've been working on for 10 years launched. Can't stop. Can't stop. But this is your life. This is it. I guess, you know what, even before we get in any of the rigum of roll,

where we've been, blah. Rich, is this the last game you'll ever work on? Do you think you work on this until and this is like by the time this all wraps up? Truthfully, going into it, I didn't know we were going to be

working on this for 17, 18 years. So who knows where the future goes? Okay. Bad answer. Matt, what about you? Is this the last? You've already retired once. You already tried to get out once.

They pulled you back in. I've launched two games since 2001. So, right? And when you're in this, in the live service game, you know, when you do that, it's you're in for the long haul. Yeah. You go where the community takes you.

And you think it's going to take you forever? Is this it? Do you think you do this? I mean, I guess how do you guys tackle that when you think about your own personal career? You forget you're on the ESO show. Your personal careers, right? Like, is there always something happening with ESO so it feels like a new adventure? Because this is something we talk about a lot where it's like, oh, well, you know, Sony-Santa Monica,

they didn't want to do three God of War games because they didn't want to work on this for 30 years or whatever. Like, how did you tackle that and keep your team motivated? I mean, it's a privilege to work on this game. I mean, it's, it's, this is not, this is a force of nature, right? But there is a reason why my title was studio director and his is game director. You have more, you can, you can freely move about the cabin whatever you want to. I appreciate that. Well, everyone, if you want to hear more about the Elder Scrolls online, guess what, you're in the right place.

Because this is the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of funny gamescast limited series, no matter where you're getting it right now, whether it's over on the Elder Scrolls online. channels, whether it's on the kind of funny channels, please like, subscribe, share, so we can do more stuff like this, and of course get you involved in the conversation as we build to the next big update for ESO as we move into these crazy seasons. We got the worms.

It's all happening. But we're not even talking about that. Of course, last episode, we touched about the early days, right, of what was happening with launch, then of course the console stuff, and then we started tiptoeing around one Tamrio. We're going to talk about the secrets of Tamriel today. All right, well, I want to get into this. This is something we

talked a little bit about, but again, because it's so great to have these episodes where we can come back to stuff. You talked about sitting down with Todd Howard. Okay, this is their game. Oh, this is this great spot where, you know, nobody really knows the historical record of what was happening. Have fun with that.

I need to know what we're talking about when we say, hey, let's make a new entry into the Elder Scrolls universe, make it online multiplayer, do all these different things. How do you tackle that from a story? perspective. That's a really good question. I mean, it really starts in the location. Where are we going? What are we doing? When is it? When is it? And as that starts to materialize and starts to gel, then you start digging into, okay, well, in this particular province, high rock, right? Or Orsinium or, well, I guess Rosinium was post-launch. But you start digging into those, like, what are the people doing there? What are the stories? What are those things? And they just start coming to

together. So my question would be, and pro interview tip, though, like I asked a question, I didn't direct. I wanted to see who would bite first. Now, I'll go to you, Matt, because of course, you get called in the ballroom here, right? You get called in this meeting room and they're like, hey, come out of retirement, come do this for us. Like, can I default? They say, no, you can't. You're like, okay. Even when you say, okay, we're going to do this and we're going to pick this time period where there isn't much known about what happened. Does that mean that you then go home and replay all the other scroll games that you start and while you do it, you're taking copious notes? Or is there a giant Bible that's being handed over from Bethesda? Like where are we at? How does that

happen? So it really starts with you sit down and none of us use this terminology then because it's more modern than 2007. But what we really do is we set up what I call the virtual world. Like what do you want players to do? in this game. Don't worry about the IP yet, right? What's, what's happening? Like, uh, and, and, and like I said in a previous episode or two episodes ago, um, like we knew we wanted a strong PVP system. We knew we want, which if you, if you go down that road, it starts asking a lot of questions. Like, who's fighting in this PVP system? Um, I'm a historically a strong fan of three-sided PVP because we did that in Dark Age Camelot and it worked really well there because

in a 50-50 game, the one with 51% of the power always wins, right? And a three-sided, it can go on forever. And so we were committed to that, but that asked a lot of questions. Who are the three sides? And then that asked the questions, all right, there's nine provinces. There's 10, but what's happening with the, right? And then the question started, well, who would be allied together? What are they fighting over?

And then you're like, Ceradil's in the middle of the map. Oh, Oblivion just came out. We don't want to really go to Ciradil because that's where Oblivion just was. So let's make that the PVP zone. What's in the middle of Ciroidil, in the imperial city with the ruby throne. Okay, we're going to have a PVP system where you fight other alliances to become emperor and sit on the ruby throne. Those are the kind of, that's the way the conversation usually goes. And then it's like, okay, now we know that there's these three alliances fighting over the throne.

What does each alliance do, right? And Rich, I think, came up with the names, which is like the pact, the alliance, right? And the dominion. And the names of those are very evocative of what they are. The, right? The pact is like three groups of provinces that aren't usually allied with each other, but they're in it together because they have to. The alliance is like, we're a union of equals and then, right?

And then the Dominion is like, okay, you're here whether you want to be. Yeah, and not as kind. And if you look at the stories for each of those alliances, which we launched with, right, those themes go throughout those. So you have to set up the foundation for the world. And a lot of these questions start to, the more that you answer, the more other questions get answered when they come up. Gotcha.

Yeah. Rich for you coming up with these names, yeah, like, is this just you guys back in your house on a holiday break with a ball, like a tennis ball bouncing off the wall and what about this? Now, this is in the basement at Betheson, which is where BGS was at the time on whiteboards. Yeah, and the loading ducts. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just throwing ideas out onto a whiteboard and seeing what sticks. but you have to have those foundational pillars

that you're starting to build stuff off of. Sure. And you just start going. One block at a time, building, building, building, and then something catastrophic happens, and you have to solve that problem, and that's game-dap, right? And just keep going until you're done,

shipping, and then keep going. And going and going and going. But to get there, you have to build a series of boxes, right, that you contain the story and the developers, and the narrative into because it can't be wide open, right? You have to be like, okay, this story is going to be about this. And, right, you're working in the IP at this time.

So you're going to have some limitations about that. So it's not like blue sky, do whatever you want when it comes to the storytelling. It's more like you're telling the story of the dominion. What are they dominating, right? How does that work? And I don't actually know who came up with the Mullig Ball stole my soul main story. But that's how it was pitch, literally. But Mullig ball is stolen my soul and I want to get it back.

That was literally the tagline for the main story. And so, right? And then it's like, okay, that's what we knew about the story when it started. Nothing else except Mullug Ball stolen my soul and I want it back. And then it was Lawrence did a lot of that, wind did a lot of that stuff. For bringing back Manamarko. And they're like, oh, Manor Marco, right. Here is a necromancer who could work with Mullag Ball, right?

And he comes from going really deep into geekery of Elder Scrolls here. man, this is what it's all about. You got a four-part show to get his game. But Mano Marco is like the Uber litch in the Elder Scrolls universe. He's lived for almost forever. And he pops up in various Elder Scrolls games doing various nefarious things. But he's always the head of the worm cold. And the seasons coming up is called Seasons the Warm Cold.

I know. But it's right, it's like, so we have a villain now. We have Mollick Ball, who's a Dajerk Prince. And again, our frame of reference at the time. was Maroon's Dagon stomping the Imperial City flat at the end of Oblivion. So that concept was fresh in our mind. And if you played that part of ESO, where you get to meet Mollig Ball, right? I'm not going to spoil it too much.

But there's a scene very similar to that except he's stomping U. flat. And so that was very much done in an homage to oblivion at the time. But anyway, I digress. So you have Manna-Marco, you have evil, you have Mollock Ball, you're getting your soul back. And then it's creating great characters. and that's where Rich's team came in.

And the characters just start to organically happen, right? And going into that stuff, I think a really good example would be Cadwell. Cadwell wasn't actually part of the main story when we originally pitched it. Cadwell was written specifically for John Cleese once we realized we could actually get him. And the team went off. They went and did their thing. They introduced this new character, right? We got all the time in the world.

We got all the time in the world. So I want to put a full stop on that. How do you realize, oh, we did. could get John Cleese. Like what is that? Did somebody know him and casually mention it? That's a good question. I don't know how we got him. I mentioned it in the earlier episodes,

but Xenamax, obviously, free Xbox, had a board of directors that was full of Hollywood people. And so Hollywood insiders, and so we had lots of connections. And even the past Bethesda games had major, major voice talent.

Of course. And that's the reason. It's because they knew those people. And so, So it was, we were given a pretty good budget because it always makes great headlines when you say that you're working with Malcolm McDowell and Cape Cale and John Cleese and Alfred Molina and Michael Gambo and Bill Nye. These are all like super, super, super good actors. And not only did they help raise the profile of the SO, but they're really, really good. Like when you interact with them in game, they know what they're doing. A hundred percent, even as a noob, right? I mean, when John Cleese pops out, oh, my God, this is awesome.

Yeah, and he's believable in that character, right? And it's because our writers, which I'm sure we'll get into our writers who are amazing in ESO and know how to write a character that could take advantage of John Cleese's unique personality. So you've laid out so much on the table for me, and I like that. I appreciate that. Thank you. You say when you're sitting there, you know, well, forget the world in the IP. What is this game?

You know you want the strong PVP foundation. What are the other boxes that you put up on? that whiteboard to really start building out what the original ESO is. There were so many different ones, and some of them actually got cut. Like housing was an original part. Many of them got cut. But we just didn't have time to do it. We couldn't do it the way we wanted to.

But we started going down the, well, what is a Elder Scrolls player want? Well, they want the single player story stuff. Okay, we got that pillar. What do MMO players want? Well, they want group activities. So that's probably where dungeons come in. That's where trials come in. the veteran content type stuff comes in.

And we just slowly keep building out those pillars until you get to a point where you're like, okay, we have enough. Or we have too much, we have to scale back, and then that comes to post-launch. Post-launch stuff. Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the, you know,

it's something like, right, like any game you play is like 60% at best of what the vision was when it's got started, right? Yeah. Because you really find the fun once you start playing it, and then you realize what's necessary and what's not.

And then you realize what you literally can't do because of technology and you pair that back and then we don't have all the time in the world or budget so you pair it back a little more and that's where you end up. When you, and I'll start with you, Rich, but when you think back to this whiteboard and you think about everything on there,

do you laugh to yourself? Like, you're that ambitious or that's what you thought the game would be? Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where wouldn't it be cool? Like that stuff goes up on the board. Yeah. Right? It's, oh, it would be cool if we did this.

It would be cool if we did that. And then you take a step back, you look at that board and you're like, that's going to take us 30 years. How can we do all this? And so then you have to go through this triage process, figure out what's the most important, and then start building on it. And there are things, like I said earlier,

there are things that we wanted to do for launch that we just couldn't get to. And we eventually did put in the game. Talk to me about the things that you couldn't do. I figure you sit down, you make the boxes, we make the pillars, we're building block by block, and then you start in on a story. Is there a meeting with,

Bethesda Game Studios where you're like, we want to go X, Y, and you're like, not a chance. You can't do that. Like, were there sacred cows this way? Yeah, those were laid out mostly before just like, hey, you're going to, again, boxes, you know, here's where you are. You stay inside here. You can do basically whatever you want.

You want to get outside of that. Come talk to us. So dragons, right? Dragons were verboten because Skyrim had just launched and right. And right. And was still going strong and it was no dragons, right? Yeah. And eventually we're like, we're getting to the point in ESO's development where we want to

introduce some cool new system. We're like, we need to do dragons. they're like, okay, it's been long enough, and that's why there are dragons in elsewhere. And then we had to come up with the reason why dragons existed in this place that nobody knew about. And that was part of the fun of, you know, the negotiations, I guess, in all of that, which was, okay, dragons aren't generally in the second era. Why were they there? And how to train your dragons was the thing that popped into my head. It was like, well, they just got released out of a vault.

We could make something up. Apparently, they were hiding in a cave for a very long time. thought they were they were locked away in a in a cave in a vault and you accidentally set them free and now you got to go fix your mistake right yeah it was really cool so the other thing i would say that's interesting for me talking about this you're like okay we can't start the game where oblivion takes place because we were just there so then how do you key in on other spots and then is it again are i can't even fathom like i'm a big superman right but if you were to say all right cool take the current run of superman and build it and i'd be like well i got to go it's going to take it's going to take me three years to read everything to know. How do you get your head wrapped around what this place that you would know that you've seen on a map would look like? And it was in this letter that they said, like, what, I don't understand how that works at all. I mean, it's, it's just, again, it kind of goes back to the, you just start going and you just start,

building. You put something down on a whiteboard, and then that starts the conversations, and you just, you take your steps, because it is overwhelming. Elder Scrolls is 30 years old, something like that, 1994. 1994. And generally, Bethesda, game studio is always focused on a single province. And they'd like that super deep dive on the province. And really, Arena was the only game that had them all together.

And so being able to dig through some arena stuff, through lore books and all that other, and just pick and choose the really interesting bits. And that was something that team really enjoyed. Like Ranser's War was a really good example of that, right? Digging through. And it was just a lore book. We turned that into like an entire series of stories in, in Rivenspine.

Incredible. Yeah. What was it like creating hubs, right? We always talk about these big hubs, these center areas that everyone meets at. What is that like for your team of? What were the fun ones? What were the challenging ones?

What are the ones that don't get enough love? What are some that never were to be? So, so I'm going to mangle this answer a little bit because I know I'll get called out by someone who watches it. But I think, I believe it was EverQuest made, an amphitheater.

And it was where players are supposed to, going to get together and do performances and everyone was going to go to the amphitheater. And, of course, after launch, nobody went to the amphitheater, right? Everybody was in South Row, like fighting Dorn Bidon. Right, in between the commons. And so that's the beauty of these games is it's hard to script what people are going to do when you get into the game.

So we tried not to do that. We just tried to make a great fantasy world and build, you know, Daggerfall has to look like a medieval, you know, English place and what black marsh has to look like a swamp that lizard people would live in, right? And we just leaned into that.

And then players made it what they want. And of course, it turned it to, they did all that around every way shrine in the game. Yeah. But we let them do it. We didn't try to lead it, you know, into a conclusion. Yeah, we focused really heavily on the services side of it.

It's making sure that there was a location somewhere in a zone where they got the things, the vendors, the, you know, all of the crafting stations, like all that. That was the focus. And then, yeah,

like Matt said, let players figure it out. And when it came to like biggest problems, biggest challenges, it was what happens if everybody decides this is the hub, this is the city, and that's where they go.

And we have a few of those, Rockahaw was one of them, right, where that was the top end. Is that how you pronounce it? That's how I pronounce it. But I also say Arcanist. You say that's not that way. Classic.

Rocka. But yeah, so it's, right, it's just kind of a guess. Yeah. Best guess. And who knew that players would end up, our number one place where players get together is in the middle of the desert. Yeah. Right?

In Amherfell, because that's, it's a very, it's like 3% better, more efficient leveling there. Oh. Because they figured out where the dark anchors fall and how the way shrines are closer to the dark anchors in that zone than anyone else. And there's literally this train of, I don't know, hundreds of players that run through that zone 24-7, right? And it's like, you think Molligbaal would stop invading that zone because it's literally a dark and it's in immediate bloodbath and then they run onto the next one.

Yeah, and we didn't design that. That's just players found it. Yeah. And I think the other big part in that too was access to guild traders. Yeah. They were literally right next to the way shrines. So people could just waste rind in. take two steps. The guild traders were there.

They get their stuff and then they get out. So yeah, it's interesting. I know, I said, but a question I have here is like, is that loss of control not maddening for you? It's awesome. Yeah? Yeah, it's the same design as like universities a lot of time. If they're redoing a quad or a field or something,

they don't actually put in the paths first. They wait and see where people walk and then they pave them. Right. And that's kind of what we do. Interesting. Yeah. Because like it's, you know, something we talked about in the previous episodes. We're going to talk about the community going forward since the, you know, this big update you guys are here to talk about is all about that. But it's that idea for me of like, you all exist in such a interesting and special place, which I know you know. But, you know, we talk every day on Games Daily about these games that are this happens. They're starting up. They're doing the thing. They're out. They fail.

They didn't, that first week dead. Not enough people showed up. They're pulling the plug. out of yeah. There's a million games that line the streets as corpses like this, right? But for you guys to be able to come out, struggle like we talked about, but find what you need, then to get to iterate, change, go, evolve with this and get to this point. Like, it's just such a special thing that I don't know. And I guess I shouldn't even hypothesis. Do you think Matt, and I'm coming to you, Rich, do you think that that's something that can still exist in 2025, that games can launch like this and be like, hey, it ain't going to be perfect because you need to help us make it,

Perfect. No Man Sky, Valheim. Those games exist very much. And they become better if the developer sticks with it through the criticism stage. Sure, sure, sure. And so it all depends what your goals are when you launch. If your goal is to launch a completely finished game that's going to have 5 million active players and right, that's probably not going to happen. Yeah. It's the people at the top who usually need to understand that. On that love, but it's very, very, it's always good to build the foundation and build the world and test it a little bit. Like Valheim was perfect for that, right? Sure.

The first word, Hades. I mean, there's many of these games. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That do it in a way that failure is not catastrophic, right? Because it's built into the plan. I love that. Okay. Rich, that was pretty well said.

Maybe you're off the hook. I mean, he's right. I think we were also in the very fortunate position that Robert believed in us, believed in the IP and didn't quit. Like he didn't quit on us. He forced us not to quit. Right, exactly. And that was a big thing.

Like, there's not a lot of companies around that have that kind of foresight and leadership. Yeah, there was literally a meeting after launch with just a few of us, me, and Robert and some of the higher ups at Zenimax. And basically it was like, all right, didn't go the way you plan. right? Now what are you going to do? And that was literally the, and the subtext was very clear, which is don't wallow in misery and, you know, and get fixated on, you know, comments on YouTube, right? Just tell me how you're going to fix it. And, you know, what's the plan to go forward? And because we did have a lot of players. And they were very, very, Robert was very, very aware of this cadre of players that was smaller than we thought, but it was playing every day. And that was the argument that always won. And so he gave us the runway to do that.

A couple episodes, I want to get back. I want to let you go. But I do want to talk about it. We keep occasionally in this story coming back to Robert Alderman. And I mentioned, of course, the late, great. Was he special? It seems like everybody who ever talks about him in relation to this. Can you explain to a listener of you who doesn't know who he is, what his role was, why he was so special?

So he, you know, he was the founder of Xenamax Media. you start grinning because you're like, all right, here comes this. So he was a Washington, D.C. lawyer, banker, right? Work with Clark Clifford, who was one of the advisors to presidents and I think a secretary of defense back in the day.

And so he was a connected guy in D.C. And so in 1999, he started Zenimax to be a media holding company where they would buy different companies. And it was 1998. It was, you know, dot-com. era. So they bought a lot of companies, including this little startup called Bethesda Softworks, which have been around for 15 years. Then the dot com bubble burst, and they were basically

left with Bethesda, which is why there's only been Zeta Max in Bethesda. There were other companies in the umbrella for a brief shining moment before Rich and I were there. But it basically turned into, we're going to be the management company for Bethesda. So Robert was not a game guy. He was a business slash human guy, right? And so he very much looked to people to solve problems. And he mentored people to become the people that would be able to make big decisions and be the people that would bring the company forward. And so if you know anything about Bethesda throughout the years, very strong personalities, right, very firm vision on what we do and how we do it. And that almost universally

came from Robert. It was like, tell me what you're going to do and do it. Right. And don't, don't don't squirm around. I don't want to hear, you know. He did not like puffery at all. He could tell if you were bullshitting. But he wouldn't be mean about it. He would be like, just collect yourself for a minute. Tell me what you're actually trying to say. Right? Tell me the bad stuff. If I don't know the bad stuff, I can't help you. Right. And of course, we always tried to hide the bad stuff. But it was, it was near impossible

because he was really, really good at just understanding problems and then helping you figure out how to solve them. Even if he didn't know the answer, he knew the process that it would take to get there. Yeah, to me, his superpower was he made you feel like you were always heard. It didn't matter what level you were or anything like that. You could be a front-line dev. You could be a senior exec. He found a way to connect with you and actually make you feel like he listened. Yeah, you were always the most important person in the room when he was talking to you.

Yeah. He focused in and there was like any, he cared. about people as people, like not just as game developers or people that work for him. He knew, he knew your family. He knew, right? And he cared. I mean, it was very, very human level that I haven't seen anywhere else. Like, it's impossible to describe kind of the family feel that that ZenaMax had because it was a very close-knit organization of people that really cared about each other. Yeah. I've talked to other developers, other people connected, and I've always heard that. I don't think it's something that gets talked about enough because usually these podcasts, are so short. These interviews are so on here. But it is that idea of like, God bless them, right? Because like, I feel, and I'm on a soapbox now, but that's what's missing from the equation on so many of these companies. Where it is the bottom line, chase the profit. You said, you know, I love it. Failure is not catastrophic, right? But for so for so for so many people, they don't have the stomach for it. That's not what I was in here. I was in here to make a fortnight. You're not making a fortnight, so see you later.

Yeah. His going in position to any project was make a great game and the business will follow. Right. Right. Don't. This isn't necessarily. my story to tell, but there's a very, a Todd has said this many times, but the wisdom in the industry was not that RPGs were dead when Oblivion was greenlit. And Robert was like, is it going to be a good game? Is it going to be the best RPG ever? And they were like, yeah, and he's like, do it. Right? And it's like, that means no one else is making RPGs. And come out at a time when there were no other RPGs. And it was, you know, one of the best games ever made. Hell yeah. So that's his personality. It was like, if he trusted you that you were

passionate about it. It was that was the key. I love that. Well, rest in peace, of course. We lost him in 2021. Yeah. Mike, I want to get you back on your elder schools train. I know you got your cool. He didn't bring your glasses. That was so special. That's just a tough one to follow up.

That's why I'm going to follow it up by reminding everybody that this is the Elder Scrolls online podcast, a kind of funny games cast special limited series. If you like that, thank you, like, subscribe, share, support us however you can. And for right now, here's a word from our sponsors. 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. This episode is brought to you by Imperial. We've told you all how important it is to developers to wishless games that you're interested in. So if this sounds cool to you, make sure you wishlist it. Imperial is a complex feature-rich action RPG where you'll be sent to a planet in a far-off corner of the galaxy to explore an imposing monolith.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Kind of Funny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-com slash Kind of Fun BetterHelp.com slash kind of funny. Big dog. Yeah, let's get in. Let's have some fun. You know, it's wild where I want to go, and I know we have a lot of times

so we'll be able to jump all over the place. But yeah, I want to talk about zones really quick, right? We talk about the map and building it out and adding new zones. What is that like finding that balance of keeping a player in a zone, making sure they see enough of it before they move on to the next zone, the pacing-wise?

You always talk about it in the past couple episodes of like the Elder Scrolls player, you put them in the world and they just go wherever they want, right? And so is there a push and pull? I think it was so great before the outbreak of talking about the players are the ones that are driving this, right? So is it hard to be like, hey, we want you to go

from Quest A to Quest B, do all this, and then go to the next zone when really it's, well, now with the world that it is, I can go anywhere and just have a great time. It took a while for us to get right, but we learned a lot in terms of tricks and tips and things.

I think the biggest thing for us was just making sure that there was something cool over every hill, every rock. You know, waterfalls have to have chests behind them. P.S. My wife will kill me if I don't put one back there, right? Because she's, she's that explorer, right? You know, when you go behind it, it's just a surface. Like, what the heck? Right. You know, a player gets to a cool spot. They want something neat. And it doesn't always have to be a chest. It can just be like a cool little vignette scene. A skeleton with an arrow in its knee or in its head or something like that. and players can make their own stories up.

But yeah, so we focus a lot on just creating interesting locations for players to find. And then when we're telling our stories, we try to guide them through areas where they might get sidetracked and discover something else. So those are kind of the two big things. And then there's lots of world building tips and tricks with lighting and stuff like that. You know, if it's brighter over here than over here, generally your eyes going to draw you over there. so you go that direction. It's those kinds of course. Yeah, our team had

very much led by a guy named Jared Carr, who has since retired. He's an amazing art director, but he was very good at whenever you crest the hill, there should be something behind it that looks awesome, right? To make people want to climb hills and keep going, right? And the reveal, right, the scenes in ESO are all because of that, and very, very, very well done.

Also, ESO is basically a masterpiece piece of art style and fidelity, where because we have a really forgiving engine that can run on many, many different types of, on our PCs, right, it looks fantastic, but not everyone has super high-end gaming rigs, and ESO runs on just about anything. And so, but when you get to the running on lower power devices, it still looks amazing because of the art style, right? It's not, it doesn't have the fidelity of turning on all the settings, but it still looks amazing. And that's a very hard thing to do, and we managed to pull that off. Yeah, when we talk about the engine, what was that like of,

when we talk about console, in particular Xbox One, now we move on to the next generation. What was that moment of, well, we can do all of this? Are we leaving this behind? How do we find that blend to make sure everyone can see it in all of its glory? Well, this leads down a whole other tangent that we haven't even gotten to, and we probably don't have time for this. What are you talking about?

We have our own engine for ESO, right? And we started by licensing an engine, and we basically, over time before launch, just swapped it all out for our own. So it makes decisions like going to console or, hey, now the next generation of console is out and we want to do cool lighting and shaders. And since we can do that all ourselves

because it's our engine, it makes that possible. And our engine, our client, was specifically designed for scalability. Like it has to look great on high-end machines and it has to run great on low-end machines, within reason. There you go. Really quick before we get away from zones,

just two more fun ones. I was going anywhere. Stay here, camp. It's your zone. This is your zone. On the zones, I want to talk about revisiting some starter zones,

which we're about to do here. I think that's really important and special. We talked about the new players jumping in and what they're experiencing. What was that like to finally circle back? How long did it take the team after 10 years and be like, oh, man, the starting areas. Maybe we should go back there and relook at those.

I mean, over time, as we've launched new things, right? Our tools have matured. We've matured as developers. our art is matured. And a lot of those starter zones were, I guess, some of the last ones we built before launch, but they weren't up to the same standards as like our latest chapters or latest DLCs.

And so when we first started talking about, you know, looking at the new player experience and bringing players back to the game, returning players, we knew we had to go and do something there because they were good, but they weren't as good as what they should. be. And we started digging into what that meant. And we looked at everything. We looked at,

you know, specifically lighting, doing propping, doing clutter passes, and then swapping out like ancient, ancient assets for newer ones and whatnot. And it really changed the spaces. Like just doing the water, going from the old water, the new water was night and day difference. We have old water in the water. Very, very old water, yeah. So was there push back at all from the team, and I know the community is just learning about all this and stuff like that's but of like, well, why are we going back to a starter zone? Yeah, we have so many people. Absolutely, yeah.

Well, half the team pushed back. Why are we doing? The other half are like, we want to do more. We want to go back and fix everything. Can we just burn this down to the ground and start again? No. But yeah, it's, you know, like we were talking about one Tamriel, right? The team plays the game as well.

And they want to be perfectionists. And, yeah, looking at your older stuff, you want to redo it. And we had to find that balance between a complete overhaul and just touching some stuff up. I know I am number one when it comes to guilty of this, but I am the player that when I get something new, I always ask, well, what's next? What can we expect? And what is that balance?

Like, how tough is it to put out a new zone and then think about, okay, we're putting on another new zone and the next one? What's the balance of new zones? Of course, we'll get into new classes eventually. But what is that balance of, hey, let's do it this update, but let's skip the next two updates and then do a new zone. Is there a balance? Is there a perfect world or is it just,

we got to do it every single time? A lot comes down to what teams are doing what? Like it takes a while to build a zone. So like we're releasing this first half of solstice or in June, I guess it is. The team's been working on that for nine months already. And they're already working on the, second half of that as well.

And so it just, it just comes down to how much bandwidth does the team have. That's why we generally do like a dungeon update and then we do a story update and then we'll do like a systemsy update and then we'll do another story update and we just kind of leapfrog the teams that way. Generally we divide players into different behavior types, which is like co-op PVE, story based, you know, questing, systems based like crafting and, right? And we want to make sure that every year,

we kind of hit those groups, at least with a couple of new things, like new dungeons for co-op PVE, a new story, new quest, new zone for the story people, which is kind of the foundation of the game, of course, being Elder Scrolls. But we always try to pop in a new system, like the card game or housing or there's so many them at this point, antiquities. And those are the things that give players a ton of things to do over time, but we don't have to handcraft all of them. So you can put that system in the game for antiquities.

and then we just add a couple of antiquities every once in a while to give a new scavenger hunt for players to run around on. So we consciously have a cycle where we try to hit the different groups of players with new content like that. Can we talk a little bit about the wall? Of course, we have something new coming our way and it's exciting, right? The mystery, what is? Has there been stuff in the past that you've done that you really highlight,

like, this was a cool moment, map-wise, zone-wise, and just player experience-wise, similar to what we'll experience with the wall? I think this is kind of the next evolution for us in terms of a major event in the game. And let me stop you because I want to know. There's plenty of people who are the kind of funny who, yeah, they watched the direct like a month ago. What is the wall? What are we talking about for the new update? So the soul wall is this giant ball of soul magic, I guess.

Dope. That is separating the Western and Eastern halfs of Solstice. And so you... It's the two parts broken up. It's the two parts, right? Broken up. And the worm cult has kind of erected this thing to protect whatever's on the other side. And you don't know.

And so as a server, you are working together to bring that wall down to open that second half up. So each server will progress in their own way, their own pace. Wow. Which is cool, right? We've never done that before. Pulled together PlayStation 5. You've got to get this thing done. And it's going to be really interesting to see how this works, right?

we've never done something like this on this scale and the team's really, really excited about it. So now back to Mike's question, sorry, of things that were similar to that or learning experiences on that path to the soul wall. So I think the closest thing, you know, obviously we've got lots of events in game.

We've got, you know, the New Life Festival, we've got Witches Fest, things like that. We have our prolog quests. So those are the quests that kind of give you that little teaser into what's coming up.

So elsewhere is probably the closest thing where you unleash dragons on the world. So that's, That's kind of what this is all about. When you're talking about these giant events in this, and the little things you've done to build this prologue clip of it. When you look at this, do you compare it to other, I know we already talked about it, what both of you,

but what MMO online players you are? What does that speak to? Because you start talking about that, it reminds me so much of Guild Wars 2, where there would be those giant events, right? Yeah, they're living world stuff. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Is that an inspiration for you?

Sure. I mean, we're all gamers. We take inspiration from games and movies and books and TV and all that. Okay. That's really exciting. Talking about the new player experience, we talked on that.

Of course, updating the intro and welcoming players on that new onboarding experience. I know me and Greg have jumped on to a couple of MMOs where they've had something fresh and new to welcome players that have maybe never been in the universe, or it's been quite some time? What has that been like talking about jumping back to the starting areas, now creating kind of a new welcome, Matt?

What's that like? He's being careful. I wanted to figure out how we could go through and do this. But I think the best way is, you know, we use a lot of player metrics and player data to kind of help inform some of our decisions. And the launch tutorial that we had, a lot of the feedback we got was it was too long, just get us into the game. We want to play.

Update six. It was our first new tutorial. Yeah. And now we're on, we just launched what, 46? Yeah. Something like that. So, you know, we try to use that to inform it. And that was good.

That was an interesting thing. And then when we switched the model to chapters, we started talking about, well, how can we make it so that the tutorial kind of feeds directly into the new chapter? So you kind of get an idea of what it is and maybe more players will go to the new stuff. So that was when we started thinking about, okay, let's do a new tutorial every year that, you know, looking back, probably not the right thing. Pro tip. Don't do that. the right thing. But yeah, and so we just started continuing to iterate through that.

And then we took a really hard look at that in what it was doing to player retention numbers and things like that. With Gates of Adamant, I don't know if you guys remember that, but that was, I guess that was last year's tutorial that we did, where you get to the end of the tutorial and then there's different portals in the room that allow you to pick whatever zone you want to go to,

depending on what access you have. Which sounded great to us. Yeah, it was awesome. But imagine your player who has never, experienced this world before and you go through a tutorial and then you're there's a choice of things that you have no concept of what you're choosing. Can I tell you

when you launched the game? I was on the phone with all my friends like, what alliance did you choose? Where are we going? How do we all stick together? So yeah. And so again, you know, looking back at it, it's kind of like, well, duh, like, why would you give players that many choices when they're just

starting the game? Hey, why not go back to the tutorial that has Jennifer Hale and John Cleese? Right. It's like, why would you ever not? And Michael Michael Gambonne. And so we did that and we went back and we kind of this latest tutorial that's that's out right now is very much the old one but with a lot of improving. Focusing on the areas that players need in terms of core mechanics to understand the game and be able to play the game better. And introduce the story, the main story, right? And not a chapter story. Sure. Because it got really confusing for people that started and say, Morewin and they did it and

they finish the story and then they're like oh wait there's more right and then there's like 70 not 70 but you know there's a ton of other zones and stories and uh and that they were kind of sheltered from until that and this is a much better way to get players in to see kind of the whole game and explain the alliances because you go to an alliance city first now and and so forth and so on and the new the new starter zones too i'd like that we'd come all the way back to starter zones and how you start the game because i still want to talk about this whiteboard and i'll get out of here i'm sorry i love it but it's you guys it's

Bethesda Game Studios you're figuring out you noodle in the story you get this thing going and then this is something I honestly don't know like what happens next is we talked about it being mechanics and a PVP pace and this so is it that somebody goes and you

start really rough with an engine do you also hire writers at that time to start noodling on this store like where does that kind of thing go so project wise yeah we started with the whiteboard map of what the alliances are and which provinces were in which alliances. And that made a world exist.

And then inside of that, it's like, okay, then you have to, then it gets to your point, which is, what is a zone? And it's like, and that's usually a technical exercise of how much stuff can you load in at one time. Are there loading screens between zones? We actually had a version of Tamriel that there were no loading screens, and then we decided to go to loading screens. for a whole other reason, which we haven't talked about, which is our mega-server technology,

which allows a lot of the social systems that we have in the game. But it was the right call, but we had to go back, which is why in many zones, you just walk and you hit an invisible wall, and then you zone, and that's because that's an original game zone that used to just be able to walk into the other side. Interesting. And we didn't have to worry so much about memory and stuff in that sense.

But, yeah, so it's like you're making the Daggerfall Covenant. Okay, got to have Daggerfall, right? okay, let's start in Glen Umber, which everybody knows from the, from the game Daggerfall. And then what's in there? Okay, the Red Guard are there, so you've got to have Sentinel. And the works are there and we're not going to give the works of homeland until I have to launch. Yeah, they're the underdogs for sure. Right, but that's where it starts.

And yeah, we had an engine. We started prototyping things. We actually had zones that were too big, zones that were too small, zones had made no sense at all. And then we've, like I said, in last episode, we fixated on Storm Haven. because we needed to focus the team on one zone. Let's get something correct. Let's get something correct and replicate that throughout the rest. And so Storm Haven actually grew and shrank and had many quests in it and had not enough quests in it.

And finally we hit the right balance of its 15 hours to get through zone. I forget we came up with a metric. Yeah, it's about 15 to 20 hours. Right. And then we replicated Stormhaven to Rivenspire, which we also redid about 50 times. It was only five. but it was I mean it's known to us

internally as revision spire because we read it some of the size yeah I love that okay so then it's playing trial and error yeah at what point or is this while you're doing all the trial and error

for the zones are you having somebody concurrently right and right oh yeah yeah so we knew what the stories were going to be for the zones early on gotcha so there's a main story that goes that carries the player

from the tutorial through to the alliance to the end of the alliance and then into Cold Harbor, which is where the story ended in the launch version of the game. And so we had that spine, and then you see what POIs, where points of interest there are in each zone, and then you start writing a little quest thing for each of those,

and then so the stories just kind of grow from there. But it's pick your characters, pick the spine that moves the player through the zones, and then go from there. And we had 10 voice, really good voice actors, and we made sure to split them up among alliances or in the main story. You already gave a shout out to Jennifer Hale, of course.

Oh, yeah. Commander Shepard herself. I think the best way to think about it is we tried to build a box for the teams that, you know, had that spine, had a couple of key points, and then let the team go and fill out the world. And so a lot of that stuff just kind of started to organically happen as the team started to iterate on things. Talk to me about, are you guys then, I know it's not really your. thing, but are you going to these, like, I got to see Kate Beckett'sale. I got to go listen to John Cleese do VO. Some people were lucky enough to do that. Yeah. You guys. I wasn't, but yeah. And there's lots of neat stories. Give me some of them. John Cleese, maybe. Going to his, uh, his island in order to record him.

That was the second one. The first one, the first one was funnier, which was, uh, um, so you always get contracts, right? These are busy people that have a lot to do. And we got the message that based on his schedule, right, he was going to be recording in Morocco. Right. Because he was, he was there. And so, you know, which is fine, right? This is voice over. You know, you set up a, you can set all this up. Put them in the closet, put a, put the blanket over the door. You're all set. Exactly. So after, after going through the technical exercise of getting the equipment to Morocco and, uh, which we have a team dedicated, which we still have a team dedicated to doing V-O it's loss. You know, they set it up

and then, of course, it turns out, we basically financed a week of John Cleese vacationing in Morocco, right, where he worked for a couple hours a day, very professionally, right? Right? To record the lines. You're like, what are you in Morocco for? John? Oh, you guys. And then

when we brought him back for elsewhere, it was the same story but in the Caribbean. Yeah, I love that. And they went to a big ballroom and built a blanket fort as a sound booth. And he crawled under this tent and recorded his lines. I love that. I love that.

Meanwhile, Kate Beckettel just went to a studio in L.A. Well, the L.A. actors, right, that's what they, it's all set up. You don't have to do anything special for that. But, you know, we released a video right before launch that actually has some behind-the-scenes stuff with all the actors talking about their characters and everything. And it's well worth it to go back and look at that. Yeah, because this isn't like, you know, oh, it's a line and they're gone. Oh, no. With these characters.

Yeah. And we brought Kate back in... I mean, every time that the queen, right, is in there. There's a chapter she was in. I mean, Somerset. She was in Somerset. With Rathrass and whatnot. We're finally seeing them turn on each other.

I know. There's so many stories. No, no, it was high aisle. High aisle, yes. When the Alliance leads came back. And then, like, Alfred Marlina came back for Edmund Thorn. And elsewhere. He's amazing to work with, like, super professional.

Is there a moment? I mean, I know again, okay, there's Hollywood people on the board. But is there still a moment where I can't believe we're working with these people? Oh, yeah, every day. I mean, Troy Baker, right? Who's like... Yeah, but Troy sucks. It's fine. But it's like, you know, he's a voice of Indiana Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's additional voices in ESO, right? But he's done so many lines for ESO just because they're so good at doing different voices. Yeah, Troy's amazing. And, yeah. Laura Bailey's been in there, too. Laura Bailey's there. She's one of the major companions that you can get, have follow you around and talk to you all the time.

So her character's great. Yeah. One of the things you talked about back there, and I think we're starting to get, you know, as we move on in the timeline here and flesh out there, is what was it like, you know, you talk about, okay, well, oblivion was there so we don't want to go there. But then, of course, you've done, okay, well, now we're going to morrow in.

Now we're, you know, you started going back to the places, obviously, that people know from Elder Scrolls. What's that like? And is there a process with that again of having to go meet with Bethesor and check with their historian or somebody of like this, that the other? And also then the expectation of, well, I know this. And in my play through of Skyrim, there was this thing. And it said it's been there for thousands of you.

So we have to have the Lawrence discussion now. We do, yeah. The Lawrence. So Lawrence Schick is one of the original ESO team members. Many people watching this have just gone. I know that guy because he was one of the original. 10 designers of D&D. So he did a White Plum Mountain module in 1970,

whatever, right? He was an original OG game designer. He's amazing. He ended up, he worked for us for years and years and years. He was the lore master. So his job was literally keep everything on a timeline that made sense. Because this is canon, right? This is all... It's all canon. And so he was the liaison to BGS, you know, so we could make sure that

that everything was copacetic on the timeline and our character names were right, right? All that stuff. That all went through Lawrence. And he kind of whipped all that into shape with, with, like, guidelines for everything. And basically made, made the characterization of ESO and fitting into the timeline, like, was coherent. Because before he was there, everyone could name things and there were crazy names all over the place and write. Yeah, it was kind of the Wild Wild West.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so he then tightened his belt and said not at my watch. Yeah, and I mean, and then when it comes to like where do we go next, how do we choose the next thing? A lot of that is like conversations between Matt and I. And it comes down to like looking at what we've done and we try to do almost the exact opposite the next time. So it doesn't feel like it's samey. And a lot of times we talk about like a word to kind of evoke the emotion and rally the team around things.

So like elsewhere was, I think it was revenge. Yeah. The dragons. Morewin was nostalgia. Exactly. I love that. Gray Moore was Gothic. Yep.

But yeah, but your question about zones, Morwin, we literally used the height map from the game, Morwin, from Elder Scrolls 3, we imported it and invaded our zone based on that. That's awesome. So we actually leaned in to making sure that we had, because we were 600 years before the events of Morwin, so we could have lots of callouts to what was going to happen 600 years later. And if you play through it and you played Elder Scrolls 3,

you'll be like, I know that guy. Oh, that's the grandfather of that guy. Or, right, so it's full of references in Easter eggs if you played Elder Scrolls 3. My question then would become, as we move out of these, the zones, the story that this, how do you get to something like nuts and bolts of like, all right, here's the classes we're going to have? And obviously you've added since then. I mean, there's been a whole bunch of stuff. But like, for this starting core, here's who you can be. How do you zone in on that, Ridge?

that was really hard. It wasn't, we didn't really start nailing that stuff down until like 2012. Warrior and Storm Haven. Yeah, it was, and we don't even have a warrior in the game. That's, that's funny. There is no class called Warrior, but there was for three years. Warrior and footy pajamas in Storm Haven.

Yeah, that was, uh, so it was just a lot of trial and error, a lot of trying to dig through. Like, what are the kind of core fantasies that players want to fulfill as their class? and we ended up, you know, digging in on, like, the Dragon Knight and the Knight Blade and the Templar, you know, Paladin Healer kind of thing. Yeah. And then Sork, right? Those were the originals. Yeah. And how do they balance?

A PVP game, how do you make sure no one's overpowered, right? It's constant figuring out. And the fun, too, with that is you could use any weapon and any armor type. So, like, how do you balance with all of that? And how do, you know, we've got this deck builder game, but you can, your class is really just three skill lines. And then there's 10 others that you can add to. You can make a healing base rogue, a healing base,

or you can make a heavy armor or two-handed sorcerer, right? It's like, you can do all that in ESO, right? It's, you can basically build really weird characters. And it's cool, right? Obviously, if you want to do the most damage or you're into that, right, there's a clear path that you need to take. But if you want to roll play some pretty crazy combinations, it's all there.

And it's only getting crazier now, right? Again, the director a couple weeks ago, we're talking about subclasses. Yep. It's going to be... But we're taking skill lines. It's going to be interesting. But we're taking skill lines

that were balanced, right, and mixing it with other skill lines that were already balanced. So I'm sure there will be some revisions at some point because that's the way these work. I was going to say, you were talking about balancing,

but I'm sure you've been shocked time and time again of what people figure out and, oh, this is... Not so much shocked. Okay. This is my shock, please. Yeah, exactly.

But we're not surprised. Okay. Like players are super, super ingenious when it comes to, like, thinking outside the box and doing things. There's the meme video that I'm sure everybody's seen about developers where the square peg goes in the round hole and the triangle goes in the square. Like, that is game dev in a nutshell. And I laugh at that video anytime I see it because, yeah, we built it with this in mind and players do the exact opposite. You're like, huh. Yeah.

Okay. Good for you. Right. Exactly. But, you know, leading up to subclassing, the last three, four years, we've been focused on balance and standardizing things and, like, going through literally every combat system and do that. And a lot of players are like, why are you doing it now? Why are you doing it now? Why are you doing now?

Well, it's because we were going to do kind of this at some point. And we had to make sure we got to a point where all of the lines were balanced to a specific point. so that when we started adding in all this other crazy, like, now I can be a Knightblade with warden abilities, right? Or I can be a necromancer and a warden and a sork,

right, and have just pets galore. Like, what does that look like? And, yeah, there was a method to the madness, but it was a long haul. Matt,

does this play into something I've heard you say before, but it's the fact that there's, there's no right or wrong way to play this game. And the other thing I've heard you say is like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was on McCaffrey's podcast, where you were like, I don't even call this an MMO anymore. Talk to me about that.

Our next episode is all about community, so I think it's a good build-up to that. That's a good GDC presentation. What is an MMO? And the answer, every game's an MMO. FIFA is an MMO. I mean, like, it's multiplayer in massive numbers is everywhere at this point.

But, yeah, it's, MMO is more of a technology than a game design now. It's a technology that lets people play together in whatever way the game designer wants them to play. Yeah. So then is that all tied up together then? Do you, again, same, look at the whiteboard and the stuff that didn't make it and laugh.

Do you look at your conceptions and your preconceived notions of, you know, hey, we're launching this PVP-focused, elder scrolls game? NPD, yes, yes, but it was one of your pillars. It was your first pillar. One of the three, yes. But do you look at it now and then go,

you see people just cooking or people just running around, building their homes or whatever? Yeah, it is, when you have, hand the game to the community on launch day, right? You lose control, not all control. You lose some control. Of course. Right? And then you look at what players do. And did we think we were going to have one of the premier end games in the game was going to be housing?

No, we had no idea. But we're very happy that it is. And I think the quote I did on that podcast, which is what I usually say. So I'm going to do it on this one. Thank you. And your face McCaffrey was doing your context. If you ask five ESO players to describe the game that they're playing, they will describe five different games. And to me, that means we've succeeded because we've made a virtual world where different activities are valid and fun, and players love to do them together.

Michael? I'm just going to mic drop on that. You covered on your stuff? Yeah, I'm excited to jump into the community. we haven't we've tiptoed around PVP and I think community really drives that so we'll talk about that housing is a fun one Greg the addition of all of that so I'm really looking forward to talking about the community that drives this game and the things that they really love the things that they want the things maybe they've given you a lot of feedback on and we've changed up and we'll talk more about that next time yeah we asked for questions there was one question that kept getting asked we're going to ask you next time don't worry about it I'm sure I'm very interesting no I know you have I don't think any don't worry about it everybody, this has been episode three of your The Elder Scrolls Online podcast, a kind of funny gamescast limited series. Thank you for your time and attention. Remember, of course, we'll be back in two weeks for our final episode on Friday, May 23rd. Of course, if you like this,

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