After 10 years of reinventing The Elder Scrolls Online, its devs say they'd have only done one thing differently: 'Pick the game you want to make'

At Gamescom last week, PC Gamer's Harvey Randall sat down with the devs of The Elder Scrolls Online to talk about where the game's headed in its 10th year and how it's changed along the way. For Matt Firor, studio director of ESO developer Zenimax Online Studios, those ten years have been a testament to Zenimax's willingness to reshape the game for the better.

ESO has seen some drastic evolutions since its April 2014 launch—a launch that earned the game a less-than-stellar reception. A year after its release, ESO underwent its first major redirection, dropping the traditional MMO mandatory monthly subscription model and reworking its crime and justice systems. Its next overhaul came in 2016's One Tamriel update, which removed faction barriers and replaced area level requirements with a scaling system that allowed players to adventure wherever they wanted.

Since then, ESO's Tamriel has only gotten bigger: expansions have added the Khajiit homeland of Elsweyr, reopened the Oblivion Gates, let players return to Morrowind and Skyrim, and more.

«Sitting here at the 10th anniversary, you can take a 30,000 foot view and see just how much change we've introduced to the game over time,» Firor said. «Not being afraid to change things when they really need to be changed; that's the philosophy we use. The game industry changes, player habits change, the platforms change. That change is a constant is something we embrace.»

Despite that willingness to change, asked whether he'd have taken a different tack 10 years ago if given the opportunity, Firor said that even ESO's early stumbles proved valuable in the long run. «I don't think I would have changed a thing,» Firor said.

There's a temptation, looking back on ESO's history, to say that Zenimax shouldn't have launched with a mandatory subscription. But, Firor said, assessing the game in real time as players were engaging with it let the studio find a better solution than it would've otherwise. «We knew much more about the game