As the long, long wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 goes on, the developers of MMO The Elder Scrolls Online have seen players take to their game to scratch their Elder Scrolls itch. In fact, they even saw a player bump following the release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered.
Remarkably, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out nearly 14 years ago, in November 2011. Its sequel, Skyrim, was officially announced with a teaser trailer at E3 2018 an eye-watering eight years ago. Yes, Skyrim has released on multiple platforms in the years in-between (so many in fact that it’s become a Bethesda meme), but there’s a tangible clamouring for a fresh Elder Scrolls experience.
Enter, The Elder Scrolls Online.
ESO launched in 2014 and struggled at first, but 11 years later it’s still here and continues to receive updates. The development team at ZeniMax Online Studios have survived multiple rounds of Microsoft layoffs, game shutdowns and studio closures, and recently reshuffled the game’s leadership team to help it survive another 20 years. A significant overhaul is planned.
In an interview with IGN at gamescom 2025, ESO game director Nick Giacomini and studio-wide director Rich Lambert said they’ve seen plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests Elder Scrolls fans are playing ESO as a single-player game to help fill the void while they wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 to come out.
“We hear that a lot,” Lambert said. “It's really interesting over the years going to the various shows and community events, you hear that a lot, right? I can't tell you how many times I've answered the, ‘When's TES 6 coming?’ ‘What’s TES 6?’ ‘Tell me!’ And it’s like… That’s a different studio, right? But yes, people are super passionate about Elder Scrolls. For a lot of people, this has been their home because they love Elder Scrolls and they just want to play more of it, and we're able to provide that.”
According to Lambert, a lot of ESO players play the MMO like a single-player game, which it is well suited to after the developer tweaked how the game worked following its troubled launch.
“In the early days, at launch, we tried to walk this kind of tightrope where it was MMO and Elder Scrolls, and we didn't really hit either one particularly well,” Lambert explained.
“And when we decided we were going to make it Elder Scrolls first and then MMO second, that helped solve a lot of the problems. And we started to see the players coming in and saying, ‘Oh, you mean I can solo all of this stuff? Oh, I don't have to play with other players. They just happen to be there.’ And then you have these organic things that happen.
"There's a lot of people that play the game that way. And then there's a lot of people that just do housing or just PVP or just play the card game. We built on more systems to that over time, but at its core, a lot of players do play it like a single-player game.”
Bethesda released Oblivion Remastered earlier this year and it proved to be hugely popular. You’d think, then, that its release would have negatively impacted ESO’s player numbers. It did, for a while, Lambert revealed, but then player numbers were boosted after those who finished Oblivion Remastered were left hungry for more Elder Scrolls.
“The Oblivion Remaster was another big thing,” Lambert said. “That came out and we were like, ‘Okay, that's going to hit our numbers for a while.’ And there was a small blip and then the numbers went up. Kind of like the Fallout show. We were like, ‘Wow, this is cool. Right?’ So yeah, it's interesting."
Nick Giacomini added: “we saw a lot of new and lapsed players come back very quickly after [Oblivion Remastered], and it continued actually for quite some time. It was pretty exciting.”
So, ESO continues to benefit from the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6, but what’s the latest on the hugely anticipated game? The studio confirmed The Elder Scrolls 6 had entered "early development" in August 2023, and "early builds" were available in March 2024. The six year anniversary of the announcement arrived in June last year and even Bethesda development chief Todd Howard paused to say, "oh wow, that has been a while."
In January this year, The Elder Scrolls 6’s June 10, 2018 announcement became as old as predecessor Skyrim was when The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced.
The Elder Scrolls 6 was thought to be set for 2028 at the earliest, presumably on the next-generation of consoles as well as PC. If it does launch then, it’ll do so an incredible 17 years after Skyrim.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
