Elder Scrolls Online is done with "massive content updates once a year" and is switching to "smaller bite-sized" seasons in 2025

gamesradar.com:

Elder Scrolls Online is making some genuinely massive changes to how it doles out new content, as well as to the size, scope, and frequency of new content.

In an end-of-year update from ZeniMax Online studio director Matt Firor, it's revealed that Elder Scrolls Online will no longer be doing the big, yearly chapters that have been series mainstays since they were first introduced with 2017's Morrowind release. Instead, the MMO is shifting to a seasonal update structure that'll see the release of "smaller bite-sized" content drops several times a year.

We will be talking much more about this in the future, but in 2025 expect to see named Seasons of three or six months duration with a mix of themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more. Seasons will be named and themed like a lot of modern live-service games, and they'll last anywhere from three to six months. Firor says there will still be "some larger items" the studio's been working on for more than a year, but there's still a tight lid on that stuff.

"Freeing up the dev team from needing to adhere to a strict annual cycle means we will be able to have teams launch content when it is ready throughout the year and not work to a date in June – this will let us focus on a greater variety of content spread over the year," Firor explains. "This supports the new Seasons model, and will enable us to release content, updates, fixes, and systems in a more efficient manner."

While new content-wise, it's hard not to look at this as a downsizing, Firor detailed some actual, meaningful changes designed to address various pain points. Chiefly, he says the studio needs "to experiment more, to shake things up and not be so predictable."

Going forward, ESO will start testing out new and experimental content that will be marked as such in the patch notes and "may or may not be fleshed out into full game systems. With our new focus on breaking up content into seasons and away from years, it gives us time to do these