My Two Weeks Back in The Elder Scrolls Online in 2026

ZeniMax Studios has been working on The Elder Scrolls Online for over 12 years. It's an MMORPG I've jumped in and out of at various points during its life cycle, and with the game's recent content plan shift in 2026, I decided to return with a fresh account on my PS5 - a new character and a new mindset about what I was hoping to get out of it, and if ESO is worth playing in 2026.

I first played the game on Steam and have around three characters maxed out. I've logged over 200 hours, which isn't much considering how long the game has been around, but enough to experience what's there once you hit the level cap. I've never tackled the game's more challenging content like Trials, but I've completed the veteran versions of each dungeon and spent time in the game's PVP offerings.

With that out of the way, it's safe to say I'm fairly familiar with ESO to some extent, and for the most part, I enjoyed my time with the game. It just naturally fell out of my usual rotation, and that's not entirely the game's fault. I'm just someone who moves between a lot of different games. But I noticed something the last time I revisited it: I was treating it as an MMO fix.

I have a history with MMORPGs thanks to World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and Guild Wars 2. Naturally, I treated ESO as a game that would satisfy my itch for chasing the best gear, building the perfect loadout, specializing in a role, then rushing to the endgame to tackle the toughest content.

Only now have I realized that's not ESO's strongest element at all. What this game does best is let you treat it like a single-player Elder Scrolls open world experience, so I focused on just that.

Focused on my adventure in Tamriel

When PlayStation Plus offered the Gold Collection in March, I took it as an opportunity to approach the game through a completely different lens. I jumped in as a Necromancer with little to no advance reading, and set off to explore Tamriel as a High Elf.

What stood out in the first few hours was how populated the game still feels, despite not offering cross-play support. Granted, this was during the height of the PS Plus promotion, so an influx of new players made sense, but there were also veteran players roaming major cities, dueling each other, playing instruments, or just passing through on their way to whatever they had planned for the day.

Approaching it more like an open world game, I naturally kept to myself, but the presence of these players going about their business still gave the PlayStation community a sense of life, even during my usual play hours as someone based in the Philippines, where most of this MMO's player base skews toward US time zones. The main chunk of the game's population also lies on PC, mind you.

The Main Adventure (Week 1)

I ventured off and focused on my first major zone and the game's base main story, a story I've completed multiple times before, so I mostly skipped the dialogue.

As I progressed, I noticed leveling was remarkably easy thanks to a 100% experience bonus from an ongoing in-game event. So easy, in fact, that the beginner zone, the first major base zone, and the main story were all I needed to climb to the level cap (level 50) within a week. And that was at my own pace, as ESO is currently my wind-down game before bed, so there was no rushing involved.

I made use of experience scrolls from rewards and ran daily randomized dungeons for the additional boost, which gave me more time to appreciate my class' abilities. I settled into a fun loadout of nuking enemies with Necromancer spells before finishing off stragglers with my skeletal mage and staff. I had a plan for this class and it was going pretty smoothly.

I was focused on the mage aspect of the class, but I can see the potential in a stamina-based approach, which I'm eager to work toward in the future. That's one of the beauties of ESO: a class isn't locked into a role, it provides a specific flavor or playstyle. I can work towards being a DPS, healer, tank, or a mix of all three.

The game also now has subclassing, which lets you swap core skill lines with those from other classes. I started dabbling in this toward the second week and I'm enjoying the flexibility.

Level 50 is really just the start

Once week two began, I started to see a routine building up. At max level, there's still a handful of zones filled with their own multi-chained storylines and rewards that entice players to complete the area. Getting my gear to CP 160 (the max gear score in ESO) and earning more skill points to add more flexibility to my character were just two of the goals I had after hitting level 50. At this point, I had spent over 30 hours on the game with this new character, and I still had a laundry list of things to work on.

I then started exploring Summerset, one of the game's expansions, which came with its own set of rewards. I unlocked the Psijic Order skill line and found that each expansion has its own daily quests with enticing rewards. The next 20 hours were spent focused on this single expansion zone while keeping up with the daily routines I had built for myself. Expansions are massive in scale, and to think I still have a couple more accessible to me feels daunting.

The Live Service Side of Things

Regardless of how I was treating it as an open world game, it's hard to avoid the live service features designed to keep players logging in. The Jubilee event rewarded me with a cake tool that earns 300 Trade Bars each day, a valuable currency for purchasing cosmetics. On top of that, there's a daily dungeon bonus for queuing with random players, daily mount upgrades that improve speed, stamina, and inventory space, and Tamriel Tomes, one of the game's newer reward systems that functions like a battle pass, where simply logging in earns you points toward it.

I'm not faulting these systems for existing, but a routine formed quickly, one where skipping them feels like leaving experience and gold on the table. Both still matter past level 50, as experience earns you Champion Points for further character progression, and gold fuels just about everything else.

At this point, I was slowly failing to treat it as just an open world game. That's just how I am, but none of this is required to enjoy ESO as a single-player experience. The amount of content and quests available stands entirely on its own.

Even those looking for solo challenges outside of group content are well served. Daily quests in expansions send you after world bosses, and they can be genuinely tough alone, as each one has a set of mechanics that force you to adapt on the fly. I had one boss that took me 20 minutes to beat. My experience and gear were clearly showing, but I came out the other side having completed the quest. Tough and rewarding in equal measure.

The bigger surprise came a few minutes later. After finishing, I stuck around to sort through my inventory. The same boss respawned quickly, and while I left it alone, another player came along and went in solo, taking the boss down in under two minutes. An eye-opener. With enough time invested, I could build my character to be just as capable.

The Elder Scrolls Online is a massive Open World Game

As I write this, I'm over 60 hours in and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I've only explored four zones (one of which is an expansion) and that honestly feels like about 10% of what the game has to offer. It's a big game, one that keeps expanding the list of things I can do on any given day.

Every new expansion I move into means another set of daily quests, new world bosses, and gear and encounters worth testing myself against. The stories are typical Elder Scrolls fare (subjective by nature), but ESO is a genuine treasure trove of storylines. I've encountered characters and quests worth lingering over, and plenty more that earned the skip button.

My first two weeks put me in a good position to really feel how ZeniMax will be delivering new content through their seasonal plan. Season Zero is live, but so far I've only experienced the new battle pass system. I'll be sharing my thoughts on that in the coming days. The new Night Market zone goes live on April 29 and runs until June 17, and I'll be following up on how it feels as a newer player once it does.

It's impressive what ZeniMax has built here. I understand now why this game has stayed active for over a decade. It's not a groundbreaking experience that redefines the MMO genre, but it leans hard into its strengths, as the developers continue to balance solo play, MMO-style content, and PVP in a way that few games manage. And I haven't even touched PVP yet.

Despite having the Gold Road Collection, I only touched the Summerset expansion. A player with just the base game will have a similar experience. Had I not had the collection, I would likely have gone to the Morrowind expansion, which is now part of the base game anyway, plus Orsinium, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Imperial City, previous paid DLCs now just added to the main game for all players.

It's a monster of a game with a lot to offer, and easily the best recent Elder Scrolls experience available while we wait for the next mainline entry from Bethesda. That wait will take years based on how long they are taking in creating The Elder Scrolls 6, but that's fine. We have ESO.

---

About the Author - Carlos Hernandez

Carlos Hernandez is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Too Much Gaming, where he writes about video games, reviews, and industry news. A lifelong gamer, he would do anything to experience Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time again and has a love/hate relationship with games that require hunting for new gear to improve your character.