General:Reflecting on ESO's First Year

Originally published April 6, 2015. The original article can be found here.

As we celebrate ESO's one-year anniversary, we pause to reflect on the last year and remember some of our favorite memories.

On April 4th, we celebrated one year since The Elder Scrolls Online's official launch. Many of you have been with us since the official launch—some even earlier! In the last year, we've explored Craglorn, tested our mettle in Dragonstar Arena, braved the dangers in Veteran Crypt of Hearts and Veteran City of Ash, experienced the Champion System and Justice System, launched Tamriel Unlimited, and a whole lot more. It's been a wild ride, and we're so grateful to have shared it with all of you.

As we reflect on the last year and look forward to the year ahead, we'd like to share some of our thoughts and favorite memories from the last year with you.

Nothing – absolutely nothing – makes a game developer more proud than seeing customers running around in a game they had a hand in creating. One year ago today, we all got to log in and play ESO (a game that we had all been playing for years) with an entirely new community who was experiencing it for the first time. It's a rush that is hard to describe – a mix of emotions that runs from joy to pride to exhaustion, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

The last year has been an exercise in making things better, finding and fixing problems, listening, and talking with our community. I'm very proud of the team that made this happen and I look forward to the next year (and beyond!) when ESO only gets better.

Here's a screenshot I made shortly after the servers were opened (and after I made it through the tutorial) – this was my first experience seeing others play the game after it went live. – Matt Firor, Game Director

It is almost impossible to pin down a favorite memory for a game that holds so many. When I reflect on the first year of ESO, I think about all of the people who were involved in bringing the game to our community. I think about tough meetings where favorite features had to be removed, and I think about tough meetings where favorite features got added. I think about late nights and weekends people had to stay to meet deadlines. I think about the difficulties it takes to keep creative people working on a path that not everyone agrees on. I think about criticism, and I think about praise. Launching such a project is tough and emotional in a way that few people understand. After all, it is just a game.

So what is my favorite memory? It is seeing people simply play and enjoy the game. It is hearing the very kind words of a community that sends along their thanks in a video (wow, was that awesome.) It is watching and playing alongside people who have no idea I am in the game with them, and hopefully wouldn't care if they did. It is knowing about people who are having a rough time in their life, and having them send their thanks for being a bright spot during that time. It is seeing these words: "I can't wait to get home today and play The Elder Scrolls Online." - Paul Sage, Creative Director

There are huge challenges in building a game at the scale and complexity of ESO, and inherent risks in doing so while also building a new studio and business from the ground up. Working through all of the art and design issues, production hurdles, technical constraints and nerf gun fights that arose during the development process wasn't easy. After several years of sweat and tears, launch day arrived and everyone understood that the work had only just begun.

So looking back on the last year, I am super impressed by the dedication and focus of our entire team at ZOS, who has worked very hard to keep up a steady pace of meaningful bug fixes and major feature additions to the game (killing the bots, fixing quests, combat responsiveness improvements and improved facial animation, just to name a few) despite being worn out after a long slog to get the game live. Thanks guys – great work!

I am also extremely grateful for the support from you, our players. Rather than a technical or artistic achievement, the most rewarding aspect of the past year has been watching the community grow, and playing the game with such awesome people. We can't do what we do without you.

Happy Birthday ESO! – Jared Carr, Art Director

I am honored to be part of the company that put out Update 6, which is probably the single biggest addition and change to a game in my career, bigger and more complex than most of the complete games I have worked on, and one that has met with a great deal of acclaim. Deservedly so. It is an amazing accomplishment. – Michael Craighead, Director of QA

It's been an intense year here for us at ZOS. From the moment we launched the game, the team has been working non-stop to improve and expand ESO. Watching everyone pull together to deliver 6 substantial updates over the last year while fixing thousands of bugs and adding additional polish to the game has been amazing. I've never worked with a team this dedicated and committed before, and I've been doing game development for over 20 years! We're not done by any means, we have the console launch coming up soon and much more after that. Stay tuned! We'll have more information for our awesome community soon; we wouldn't be here without you! – Ala Diaz, Senior Producer

Has it been a year already? Incredible how quickly time has flown by. Launch was such a crazy time around here – seeing the servers finally go live and watching the flood of people jump in and start playing the game. A lot has been accomplished in this past year – tons of bug fixes and improvements have been made. It's been a long, draining, and exciting experience so far. It is gratifying to know that all these efforts and late nights are paying off... seeing the level of player excitement and praise since update 6 has made it all worth it. As cliché as it sounds, making games is really a labor of love – I wouldn't trade it in for anything. – Rich Lambert, Lead Content Designer

We always knew the launch of ESO would be a challenge for customer support, but who would have imagined 1 million tickets the first week? The "war room" became a battlefield of innovation where we saw new technologies and processes invented and deployed in the same day. Thankfully, fans were patient with us as we figured things out. The game and the service has come a long way since then, things are stable now...and lots of FUN! But every now and then when it gets quiet—we just remember launch—and thank our lucky stars we survived it! – Boyd Beasley, Director of Customer Support

The war room. The war room never changes. For weeks we huddled there together, bathed in the light of server status graphs and concurrency charts. The regular heartbeat of check-in calls from customer support and the chemical-sweet odor of energy drinks. It's a little like Vegas – lots of blinking lights and no one knows really what time or day it is, but you're having the time of your life, so who cares? Many folks here have shipped an MMO before, so we know how rare and precious this time is—how important it is to celebrate it and thank the players for joining us in this adventure over the last year. It's not a massively multiplayer game without you. – Jo Burba, Live Director

We look forward to spending the next year of memories and milestones with you, starting with ESO's console launch on June 9th!

Discuss this on the official ESO forums.