Update 44 PVP Battlegrounds Follow-up 

Hey all, we wanted to give you a short update on some fixes and improvements we have in progress for PVP Battlegrounds, following Update 44, as well as respond to just a bit of your related feedback.  First, we wanted to lightly touch on the Update 44 livestream. Sometimes we try new things, and they don't land the way we’d planned. We take these experiences, learn from them, and move forward with the goal of applying those learnings to and making the “next time” better. Part of that process includes listening to our community’s feedback and taking that into consideration as we plan future efforts. We also want to acknowledge that we did set the Update 44 livestream VOD to unlisted on Twitch. While no one on the stream did or said anything wrong, we were seeing an increase in abusive comments and harassment toward our developers as a result and decided to do what was right for them. That said, we recognize that we should have mentioned to you all that we took that action when we did, and why.  Going back a bit to earlier this year, we’ve seen some of you ask what became of the Cyrodiil testing we did. While we did post a short post-test follow-up here, we recognize that we could have provided a bit more detail. Ultimately, the test – a stress test, really – was to measure game performance and overall player experience in Cyrodiil when we raise the population cap closer to what it was at launch. It was a “What’s possible” test. The results of that test were valuable, and have informed discussions we’ve been having since then about next steps. Ultimately, with how much the game has grown and changed in the last 10 years, just raising the population cap to what it was at launch does not result in the play experience we want. Some larger changes will be needed to get us there. More on that very soon.  Onto the present and the Update 44 PVP Battlegrounds changes. Since we launched Update 44, we have seen a significant increase in PVP Battlegrounds participation. This was one of our primary goals for the Update 44 PVP Battlegrounds changes. We wanted to streamline the overall battlegrounds experience in ESO and make it more fun, easier to hop into and enjoy, the structure easier to understand, and generally make them more accessible for all our players. We acknowledge that some of our players have expressed enjoying the previous 3-sided format more and are continuing to monitor feedback paired with in-game data. We are not planning any other major changes to ESO’s PVP Battlegrounds in the near future; rather, we’ll be focusing on addressing some of the main pain points outside of general personal preferences between the 3-sided versus 2-sided formats. The main two fixes and improvements are: 

• Continuing to investigate cases where Battlegrounds matches sometimes still start with less than full teams. This is a high priority and includes adding additional logging to help aid the investigation. 
• Improvements to the MMR matchmaking logic, with the goal that teams which are formed by the matchmaker being more equal MMR-wise.
(i.e. - total MMR score for each team is more equal, vs just individual players.) 

Thank you all for continuing to share your constructive feedback and suggestions with us!