After 162,784 cups of coffee, fantasy role-playing game The Elder Scrolls Online finally launches

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
April 4, 2014
Updated June 18, 2025
1 min

After years of development and player testing, The Elder Scrolls Online formally launches today, according to publisher Bethesda Softworks. More than 5 million people have registered for the beta test, making this title quite possibly the strongest contender to steal the online fantasy audience away from the top massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. The number of players so far is equivalent to the population of Norway.

Here’s an infographic from Bethesda Softworks, a division of ZeniMax, about the game.

There are some kooky stats in this image. My favorite is that the Bethesda team said the consumed 162,784 cups of coffee, or about 272 bathtubs of the caffeinated drink, since development began in earnest in May 2011.

The game is now available on the PC and the Mac.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.