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Ask anyone to name a successful online multiplayer game and you're likely to get a handful of names in response. Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Roblox, Helldivers II. But there's another title, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, that's been a relatively quiet success.

The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), a spin-off of the hugely popular fantasy RPG series from Fallout makers Bethesda, has been played by 24 million people and made $2bn since it launched. Developer Zenimax Online Studios began work on the game in 2007 following the huge success of single-player game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion two years earlier. At the time, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, were all the rage, with World of Warcraft, Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot attracting millions of players.



So an Elder Scrolls take on the genre seemed, on paper, like a sure-fire hit to many. But the game didn't meet expectations when it was first released. Creative director Rich Lambert and studio director Matt Firor tell BBC Newsbeat the first version of ESO failed to fully land with either Elders Scrolls fans or MMORPG players raised on those titles.

"We didn't really pick a lane," says Rich. "We tried to appeal to both, and we didn't particularly meet either of their needs as much as those groups wanted." MMORPGs are, traditionally, all about levelling up your character by performing quests and other tasks to gain experience and unlock new areas.

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