ESO is 10 years old and Zenimax is celebrating for 15 months, which was the time interval between the PC launch and the console launch.
There should be more stuff coming but for now there is extra loot during the Anniversary Jubilee. Every year in April they have an in-game festival that grants Jubilee Boxes for various activities – completing a daily quest, killing looting the final boss in a dungeon/trial/delve/ etc. During this period there is a 2x multiplier on experience, so it’s also a good time to level an alt or two.
On top of the usual Anniversary content, they’ve released a few “style pages”, which can be used to alter the appearance of gear.
The specifics of how to get these style pages are on an official webpage:
- As a small chance from any fishing node during the Jubilee, you may find outfit style pages for the Trueflame Sword Replica. Yes, really!
- Any Dolmen reward chest has a small chance to contain a style page for the Staff of Worms Replica, in recognition (though not honor) of Mannimarco’s dark deeds.
- Any World Boss in Vvardenfell has a small chance to drop a style page for either the Sunna’rah Replica or the Barbas Helmet Replica, as seen during that Chapter’s story.
- Any Abyssal Geyser trove clam in Summerset has a small chance to drop a style page for the Ul’vor Staff, as seen during that Chapter’s story.
All these items are steeped in lore, wielded by NPCs or seen during in-game videos. Thus, interest is high in getting them, and every event is crowded.
The gameplay to get these items highlights the highs (group content) and the lows (grinding for low drop rate items) of MMOs.
The highs are group content, of course. It’s fun to tackle content in a group.
Typical geyser during the event, with ~20 players.
The lows are the grind in the presence of a low drop rate. What’s even worse is these events are all world events, with dozens of players participating at any given time.
The main problem isn’t the grind – I’m an MMO player, I’m used to farming content to get the stuff I want. 😉 It’s fun as long as there is a challenge to overcome.
These world events are generally balanced for solo or small groups, so when 20+ show up, the enemies are defeated in seconds. You don’t have to do anything except get one hit in to be counted as a participant.
The result is, except for the fishing event which is solo, the events are reduced to traveling around for a few chances an hour at the drop (thought to be a 1% drop rate). That likely isn’t a 1% drop rate per player, otherwise several players might get a drop off the same event, and nobody sees that happening. So only 1 player out of 20 (or however many show up) gets that drop.
So for a 1% drop rate, I expect to do ~100 geysers to get my drop. (If I were there solo). Which will take (100 / 6) * (25 / 60) = just under 7 hours. Might be half the time, might be twice the time.
If 20 players are also chasing that drop, I can expect to spend 20 times as long… 140 hours!
And that’s the downside of MMOs… I’m faced with doing essentially trivial content (due to player turnout) for hours hoping for the drop.
What’s worse I think is the grind for 2 of the style pages that drop off Vvardenfell world bosses. That’s because bosses spawn every 5 mins, so on 12 chances to get the drop an hour. But, you have to be either top 8 dps* to even loot the boss! So you are shut out entirely if you aren’t spectacular dps because you have a zero chance at the drop.
*Note: I’ve heard a bunch of different numbers for who gets to loot the boss in world events. I believe the way it works is – top 8 damage get to loot, then another random 8 also get to loot. There is some consideration players that heal, their healing is counted as damage for looting the boss; however I’m not really sure. If this is correct, it means if 50 players are fighting one boss hoping for the loot, only 16 have a chance at it.
My feedback to ZoS (not that they would really care) is run some statistics modeling before subjecting players to low drop rate events. It isn’t as fun as you might think it would be. I would go to say that the event, meant to showcase and celebrate ESO, is kind of terrible so far.
MMO Juggler 