After 11 years, Zenimax Online is addressing one of the most common complaints about Elder Scrolls Online: that it's too damn easy.
To be clear up front, ZOS hasn't explicitly revealed any concrete plans for ESO's difficulty, but the topic was broached during a roundtable interview GamesRadar+ attended recently. Specifically, one attendee asked if ZOS has any plans to add more of a challenge to ESO's story and open world, and this is what zone lead Jason Barnes had to say:
"There are ongoing plans for that, and it's in the works. We're not ready to talk about it yet, but we've acknowledged it openly, that it is something we're looking at, and there's people working on it. I'll leave it at that."
Again, it's bread crumbs. Tiny, stale bread crumbs that have been picked apart by rats, but it's something. The issue of ESO's difficulty, particularly for longtime players, has been discussed ad nauseum online for years, so far without any official acknowledgment from Bethesda or ZOS, so the fact that we're finally getting that acknowledgment as well as something of a pledge to address it, is worth shouting from the rooftops.
It's worth noting that RPG-style difficulty settings aren't terribly common in MMOs by virtue of the fact that many players can fight the same monsters simultaneously, but there are examples of MMOs adding options to tweak difficulty in certain areas. Lord of the Rings Online added the Landmark Difficulty system in 2023, letting players choose between 10 different levels in Landmark encounters, and World of Warcraft lets you crank up the difficulty in raids and dungeons.
I'm sure there are more, but you get the point. It's possible to let players adjust difficulty in MMOs; you just have to get a little more creative than the standard easy/normal/hard settings we see in most games. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's excited to see what ZOS has in-store for ESO in this regard.
In the meantime, find out where ESO ranks on our list of the best MMOs to play today.
