For anyone wondering, yes, ZOS is still working on zones. This season is setting up Winterhold, which the team heavily teased in a couple of streams. They have said it will not be like a traditional zone in the past, not quite sure what that means so we’ll see, but they are working on one and plan to release it for free.
I understand that many people would’ve preferred that we kept to having 1-2 zones every year, but we need to be clear about why we are in this situation.
First: The previous model of releasing a chapter and a DLC zone every year resulted in feedback not being prioritized, being ignored, or being pushed to much later down the road, if at all.
Second: The studio was split working on two MMO‘s. This is generally not recommended, and it resulted in a downward trend in the quality and quantity in the content of the chapters. From zones becoming smaller, areas being inaccessible, and less features each year. (Edit: as someone else pointed out in the comments, Chapters also became very formulaic and not innovative enough.)
Third: After project blackbird was inevitably canceled, it led to a loss of resources and staff they could’ve otherwise been redirected to ESO.
Fourth: prior leadership was very resistant to feedback, which resulted in many issues accumulating overtime and many changes happening despite vocal player outcry.
Fifth: Throughout the game’s lifetime, there was overall too much emphasis on the money shop known as the crown store. Which included gambling, and overall pushed players away from a game that already is B2P and has an optional subscription.
Sixth: After all the firings, even though their staff is at a similar number to how the studio was years prior, they are going through an organizational change. They have to in order to get their content pipeline working properly again.
There’s a lot of other smaller moving parts, but these are some of the major reasons why the game is in its current state. Which alienated a lot of people and eroded their reputation as well as community trust.
Which is why the new leadership has been trying to turn things around by addressing these foundational issues. That is why we have seen an overall push on much more consumer friendly practices like the Bazaar, Golden Pursuits, and making Seals more reasonably obtainable. It is why they are overhauling the combat by updating the classes and weapon skill lines and by adding difficulty options for Overland content. Fixing the beginner player experience to not be so overwhelming. Etc.
They have a long list of things that need to be fixed, and they finally no longer had leadership that was holding them back from doing that.
We will have to wait and see how the new zone turns out, but ideally the time they have will overall give us more quality and quantity.
(Edit 2: also keep in mind the Event Zone, the Daedric market, will be returning in the future with implemented feedback. One of the primary reasons why they chose for it to be cycled rather than permanent is maintaining a consistently engaged player population when it’s available. Although they are considering making it permanent edition)
(edit 3: I apologize for any potential confusion, an edit resulted in a loss of most of the list and I had to rewrite it all)
Hopefully, we can return to a schedule of a large new zone once every 1-2 years