The Elder Scrolls Online team has had to go through a lot of changes lately. Earlier this year, the studio announced a change to the way new content for the eleven-year-old MMORPG would be released. Previously, ZeniMax Online Studios used to launch expansions (called Chapters), but now they have shifted to a seasonal model that began this June with Season of the Worm Cult.
The studio itself has gone through a leadership change. Following the departure of founder Matt Firor, Jo Burba has stepped up as the new Studio Director, and now Elder Scrolls Online Game Director Rich Lambert has moved into the new role of Studio Game Director while Nick Giacomini is taking his place. I discussed all this, the state of the game, and even the cancellation of ZeniMax Online's other project in a chat with Rich Lambert and Nick Giacomini at Gamescom 2025.
Rich, what's going on at ZeniMax Online Studios? Tell us about it.
Rich Lambert: There's lots of change in the air. I am moving up a role, so I am going to focus more on studio-level things, and Nick is coming in and taking over the game direction. It's something that I'm really excited about. I've been working on ESO for 18 years now. It's amazing and super fun, but I'm ready to try new things and spread my wings. Nick is the right person to do that and help take Elder Scrolls Online, with the team, to new heights.
Your role is still distinct from that of Studio Director, right?
Rich Lambert: I'm the Studio Game Director and will focus more on studio-level initiatives, future projects, and things like that. I'll still be working with Nick, who is going to be 100% devoted to ESO on a day-to-day basis.
Nick, do you want to introduce yourself and talk about what you've done before?
Nick Giacomini: I'm a huge gamer, have been my entire life. MMOs are my favorite genre by far. I've been playing Elder Scrolls Online since day one. I had just built a new computer to play the game. And in 2019, when I got the job at ZOS, I was literally jumping up and down in joy. I've been on this incredible journey since then, getting to work with incredibly talented people to create this game and continue to update and provide the experiences our players love. I joined as a Senior Product Manager and then became Project Director. I got to work very closely with Rich throughout the entirety of this time, and I've got the work with many different teams on multiple features. Stepping into this leadership role is just such an honor.
What's your vision for the game now that you took the reins from Rich?
Nick Giacomini: Rich and I share a lot. I actually love the community. When we talk about what makes Elder Scrolls Online great, by far the most important things are the players. The players are so central to the decision-making. That's, like, the first thing, doubling down on communicating with our players and being more transparent. We must do right by them and provide the experiences and stories that make ESO great. Passion and excitement are another thing. We have a lot of very passionate developers. This has never been about a single person. We are a large team of very talented developers and I want that passion to shine through. We get excited and we play the game too.
Another part related to that is evolution, right? So, 10 years, 11 years now, it's great that Elder Scrolls Online has been successful for so long, and we want to honor those roots. But at the same time, the expectation has changed. We've got feedback that the game has been too predictable, so another thing is how can we provide things that are more exciting? The players are choosing to invest their most precious thing, their free time, in our game, while there's so many games, there's other forms of entertainment, so why should they spend time in this game? I'm a strong believer that every second that players spend in Elder Scrolls Online should be valuable and rewarding.
I was reading the blog post that went up recently, and the Studio Director (Jo Burba) said that ZeniMax Online Studios wants this to be a thirty-year-old game. What do you think you'll have to do to achieve that? Keep doing what you're doing at your best, or is there more to it?
Nick Giacomini: Eleven years is already a pretty incredible accomplishment. Like I said earlier in the conversation, it very much has to do with the players, right? I don't think that 30 years is some insurmountable challenge, but it's also just not going to be easy. I believe we do have a core, and that's one of the wonderful things about MMOs: we have a core of very passionate players who have been playing for a long time.
I think the path to 30 years lies there. That's one of the reasons we're moving to a seasonal model. Player feedback has always been a critical component of the development process, but we are now doubling down on that, and I think this is the best possible way to get to 30 years. That's not a roadmap but a perception of the mindset we're trying to impress: that we want to do right by the players.
Rich Lambert: The players are changing, evolving, and growing, and we need to do the same. Players have said we have been a little formulaic, so we have done something different, and I think we've shown over the years that we are not afraid to make big changes and do crazy things sometimes, in order to make the game into what players are asking for. That's more of the mindset that we have right now.
You mentioned that one of the big news this year in Elder Scrolls Online was the switch to a seasonal model. How is it going for you? What was the reaction of the fans compared to the Chapter model?
Rich Lambert: It's hard because we're still in that transitional period. We knew it was going to be a little confusing because it takes a while to build the things we wanted to build, but overall, I think it's pretty cool and positive. I think players are starting to see some of the things that we talked about in the global reveal, which is that we want to iterate, change, experiment, and do different things.
We updated the new player experience, and we updated the returning player experience. We are doing the Writhing Wall; it was a completely new style of event for us. I think they're starting to see those things, and I think they're starting to understand and sort of gain that trust that, yeah, this might be the right way. Sure, there's some detractors right now, but I think as the year rolls on, as the next year comes in, they're going to start to see more and more of that. And I think it's going to start to make a lot more sense.
Nick Giacomini: I think it's a step in the right direction. Again, we're in a time of transition and change. That feedback is going to be critical. Part of the philosophy change is that it prevents us from getting locked into this extremely long development cycle, so we have more opportunities to try things to engage. I think this is very much a transitional year. By the next year, players are going to see more change and understand it better.
You decided to focus more on system-driven updates maybe last year or a couple of years ago. Will that direction continue?
Rich Lambert: I think so. One of the things that the focus on the systemic stuff does is it gives more opportunities for replayability, right? It's less one-shot, one-and-done type things, but a lot of that, too, is going to depend. If players love that stuff, we'll do more of it; if they say no, we want more of this stuff, we will try to do more of that stuff, and that's the whole point. As Nick said, building Chapters used to take us 18-ish months, so we were committed for 18 months and when players wanted some change, they had to wait until we finished that Chapter. In this new model, we have a number of smaller teams that are a little bit more agile and can go through and do things a little bit quicker.
Nick Giacomini: Generally speaking, I agree with that, and we're trying to do more of that. We characterize it as systemic, but it's also just a more unified experience for our players. We have a lot of different teams with a lot of different ideas and we can bring everything together into something that is holistic and turns into a great experience for our players.
More specifically, for example, will the Infinite Archive still be expanded upon?
Rich Lambert: We'll see, but we just added in the rerolling of Visions. That was a big piece of feedback there because players previously felt that it was too reliant on RNG, so now we have implemented a system that allows you to use the currency you earn while doing Infinite Archive to reroll those Visions to try to get the ones you're hunting for, and so far, it's been pretty well received.
Another big system you added last year to Elder Scrolls Online was Scribing. Is that one of those you will be updating, maybe with new skills and/or modifiers?
Rich Lambert: I think it's an avenue that we can go in. We did just give access to it to everybody, so now we've got a much wider pool of people to go in and explore the system and play with it. We'll see how that goes. If the players want us to keep working on Scribing, we'll do that; if they want us to do something else, again, we'll do something else.
Nick Giacomini: It's hard, and we're not ready to talk about specifics happening in 2026. But ESO has so many different types of players who engage in different systems, be it housing, Tribute, or PvP. That's always a balancing act since we have limited resources ourselves, and we try to apply those resources in the best way possible to provide something for all these different players. But the two specific examples you mentioned are absolutely on the table.
This year, you added multiclassing, or subclassing, to the game. I recently came back to Elder Scrolls Online after a period of not playing, and there's a lot of talk in the community about the Arcanist being a necessary part of the meta for DPS characters. Are you going to make any changes in that regard?
Rich Lambert: We're looking at all of that stuff. The whole meta discussion is a very interesting and kind of detailed thought process. The meta is really what somebody says it is. Yes, it is one of the optimal ways. There's other ways to do it. But you also don't need to have that crazy level of optimization in order to do anything in the game. I get that players love to optimize everything. I do a lot of that too, as a player, right? I want to be as efficient as possible. I want to be as powerful as I can be. It's just this really interesting, nuanced discussion, but it is one of those things that we are looking at because we see that feedback, frankly. 'You have to be an Arcanist with Templar and Nightblade, that's the only way to play.'
It's not the only way to play. One of the things that I pride myself on as a player is like, what can I do that's off meta, that's different? I played a Stamina Templar before it was decent, right, and I was able to complete those things and do all the content in the game. But there are some outliers, things we're looking to change. This is probably the best way to say it.
Nick Giacomini: Yeah, we're talking about it. Subclassing is a really new system, like Rich said, and it caused players to be very creative. I have been playing an elementalist build right now, which is a fantasy that I want for my main character, and it's really fun. It is fantastic. We're seeing some really cool combinations that the players are using, and it's fun and it provides a freedom for players to play the way they want, which is something that's very important to us. But absolutely, I think it's a valid point of view that players are bringing up right now, feeling that in order to be competitive, they have to choose certain things. It's something that we've actually talked about quite a lot since the feature has been released and we have a lot of plans. It's too early to provide specifics, but this is something that we hear loud and clear from our community, and it's something we're going to try and address to make more builds viable for those who want to optimize.
Personally, I think subclassing is a great addition in general. With regular classes, in most builds, you didn't really use one of the class skill lines, so that wasn't very useful for the player. Subclassing opens up a lot more options, though there's is definitely some fine-tuning to do. But it is also understandable since it's a new system.
Rich Lambert: The other thing that's really hard to communicate to the community as a whole is that we have to look at everything, all the data, all the things that players are doing and not just a small group. When you're making balance changes, it's not for the 0.1% of the player base, it's like, what is going to be the most effective use of our time, and improve the lives of as many players as possible when they're doing that stuff. That's where some of the nuance comes in. Maybe one group over here is saying do this thing, and another group is saying please don't do that. It's really hard to please everybody.
Of course, everyone can choose to do whatever they want, stick with one class, or use subclassing in whatever combination available, but as a philosophy, in Elder Scrolls Online, to be competitive for PvE Trials, is it your vision that you have to subclass, or would you want players to be able to stay with just one class?
Rich Lambert: You can stay with one class. Yes, you are more powerful when you multiclass. I think that's one of the things that we're looking at for a number of supplies, but like I said, there's nothing in the game that requires you to have that level of optimization.
Even for the no-death, speedrun, those kinds of things, you don't need to be that optimized. You need to be very coordinated. That's one of the reasons why we started doing the streamer Trials that we do with the communities, just to show that, yeah, you can put a ragtag team, a bunch of people together who may or may not be a little inebriated, and have fun in there and complete Veteran content.
Nick Giacomini: Philosophically, we want as many builds to be as viable as possible, and for players to experience the fantasy they want and still be viable to do things. We think we can do better, and we're trying to do better. I'm sure you can imagine it's complicated and it's going to take time, but absolutely, that point of view is extremely valid. Nobody wants their build that they love to be not good compared to these others and feel like they're being penalized for not doing otherwise. Our goal is, like I said, to try to make as many builds as possible, as viable as possible. But that's going to take time; it's a lot easier said than done.
Especially since there are a lot of new viable builds that you can do now with subclassing.
Rich Lambert: Exactly, there's billions of combinations.
A final question about what happened recently with the other ZeniMax Online Studios project. I don't know what you're able to say about that, but I gotta ask. Did anything change in the aftermath? From the outside, people think maybe you are more focused on Elder Scrolls Online now that you've been in a while.
Rich Lambert: Obviously, there was a massive change, right? And it was a super emotional thing, and it was really difficult. There were people that I had personally worked with on the Blackbird team for 10 years who are no longer with us. That hurts, frankly, that's a really meaningful thing. But we do have a job to do. We do owe it to the community to continue, move forward and press on. So that's what we're doing, and we're focused on that, and that's kind of where Jo Burba came up with this idea of like, we want to support the game. This can be a 30-year MMO.
We are not shutting the doors and backing down and cutting, mothballing ESO to run it out; we're focused on moving ahead and forging ahead with the people we have left. We want to make ESO the best thing it can be, and that's the goal for all of us. Are things different? Well, yeah, of course, right? It's still raw, still emotional, but the team has rallied around and galvanized around Elder Scrolls Online.
Nick Giacomini: Yeah, exactly. It's been hard and challenging. As Rich said, we lost friends. We're definitely looking to the future to try to make ESO as incredible as possible. This transition between Rich and me had been planned in advance, it just happened at this time, unfortunately. This year was already one of transition. We've been on this path, and we're continuing down it. We are as committed as ever to try to make Elder Scrolls Online as fun as we can.
Thank you for your time.
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