While many suspected that The Elder Scrolls Online wasn't going to be a WoW-killer, it was hoped that the game would introduce a whole new crowd to the magic of MMORPGs. Following the pattern of just about every major MMO in the last decade, Elder Scrolls Online had strong early sales, followed by a rapid decline in subscribers after the first couple of months. The general consensus of The Elder Scrolls Online wasn't that it was a bad game, just that it was pretty average. It also didn't really make much sense that The Elder Scrolls series, known for its sandbox-style gameplay, action-packed combat and exploration, would be shoehorned into a theme park MMO, where all those attributes were nullified by the necessities of that genre.
