EQ1 Numbers Revealed

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by KrakenReality, Dec 2, 2020.

  1. ikarinokamii Elder

    honestly the problem is they know that a rebuild of EQ probably wouldn't lead to increase users i.e a return on the investment, so there really isnt any incentive into rebuilding and modernizing the graphic and server backbone of EQ
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    I disagree. There are so many old users that if they did a huge expansion, addressing a lot of big issues with a lot of major features and things, then advertised the heck out of it to prior subscribers for like 2 months, they would easily bring back 20-50k subs at least for awhile.
  3. ikarinokamii Elder

    I'm not even going to pretend that i'm an expert or anything, but i've heard it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make a good quality mmo. I would imagine the cost to modernize a game the size of the current EQ would be even more, and i dont think 20-50k subs would be enough to justify the cost.
  4. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    They have done big game-engine updates before, I think both Luclin and Underfoot, had a new GFX-engine-update for example. Tbh, it won't be long before they have to, I doubt most GPU manufactures even cares about dx9 support for much longer... The fact that dx9 isn't even a part of the standard win10 installation anymore, says alot...

    And resolutions are so high nowadays, that EQ can't even handle fullscreen without bugs afaik.
    Caell and Raptorjesus5 like this.
  5. ikarinokamii Elder

    most Directx iterations are backward compatible for the most part. So i don't think that will ever be a problem, most directx 8 games run just fine. features are rarely ever removed. i pretty sure that is why Xbox is able to maintain compatibility across 4 generations of games.
    Jumbur likes this.
  6. Nennius Curmudgeon

    It would be a gamble. Investors gamble every day though so I can't say it wouldn't happen. But, 50k subs @ $14.99 per month is $749,500 a month. IF you could draw back 50 k subs for 3 months that would bring $2,248,500. If that increase in customers were to continue over a speculative 6 month period or even longer; Would that revenue increase even come close to covering the costs? If we look in our magic crystal ball and say the run of increased revenue would continue past the 6 month period, I still don't think it would cover costs. It seems to me that an increase of customers for at least two years would be needed to be able to justify the costs.

    Without knowing any actual figures on the costs of a revamp/large expansion all we can do is speculate. On the other hand, if you were working on a new game that was intended to use a new graphics engine, then perhaps the development costs of a new graphics engine could be shared across platforms and make the whole thing possible. The cost of a larger expansion would have to be borne by EQ entirely.
    Stymie and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.
  7. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    They would really need to count on bringing in a lot of new players and I am not sure that would be likely.
    Stymie likes this.
  8. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    They spent 3+ million on everquest during that time period. They made 7+ million.

    Most of that 3+ million is on administration, overhead, insurance, payroll. Adding more content is as simple as adding more payroll, its NOT a significant investment. You add 5 devs you probably double the size of the expansion (remember all the non-pure content development tasks that take up time from existing devs).

    While a graphic overhaul or something like that is a big expense, just adding more content and features is NOT.
    IblisTheMage, Riou and Sancus like this.
  9. Vaeeldar Augur

    actually the way to go is to test the impact of a large expansion and see if they can ge the uplift. If they do and for how long new players return, should give some data to vet the impact some level of overhaul.

    I’m in the minority but I don’t care about graphics. And overhaul to some of the old architecture to make it easier to work with and more flexible moving forward -I’d be interested in that big time!
    trakk likes this.
  10. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Yea they could leave the graphics as is.
    But what Id like is for them to fix their servers so they can keep up.
    Metanis, trakk and Nennius like this.
  11. trakk Lorekeeper

    I hate graphics on most games, except EQ. So yeah let's not turn eq into all the rest for no reason but looks. It's fine, add developers fix bugs and more content instead. Oh, and ADVERTISE
  12. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I think advertising doesn't do much without some graphical upgrades.
    Stymie likes this.
  13. trakk Lorekeeper

    Something else to think about: Kronos can't be claimed as income under and 1 game until consumed, even though the bulk are probably for eq, then eq2, so I'm betting our income is much higher even without expansions
  14. trakk Lorekeeper

    Eh...nostalgia. people that knew eq but don't know it still exists. People that watched their parents play. People that just like old stuff. People that care about content more than graphics(hello, have you met Minecraft? It has neither)

    Hell, if they'd advaertised when TDS was launched I'd have bought 4 copies of collectors edition even though I couldn't play, I knew the game existed still but paid no attention to anything when I was off.

    Advertising keeps eq in the minds of people not currently playing a d may decrease time spent not playing(out of sight out of mind is NOT a path to profit in video games)

    At their peaks, Farmville and Candy crush had ads everywhere even national TV and neither were anything but free flash games with optional microtransactions
  15. Riou EQResource


    Just look at Runescape, if the game is decent the graphics aren't that big of a deal
    Accipiter, Svann2 and Skuz like this.
  16. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Runescape mostly boosted its revenue through "old school Runescape" on mobile phones, that worked as well as it did due to the extremely simplistic UI that game has.
    For everQuest to anything similar I feel like a modern EQ UI would be impossible on a mobile device, it's been moving ever closer to unworkable on Desktop in my opinion just due to feature bloat bogging it down whole dang thing needs an enormous & comprehensive overhaul.

    Now were DarkPaw to create a EQ "Classic" with a stripped down basic UI for mobile phones, I think that could be quite lucrative, but it's development would have to be kept separate from the live game, I cannot see the codebase being able to manage displaying the desktop UI on PC's and the Mobile UI on phones, in any case I think that has a lot of potential.
  17. IblisTheMage Augur

    I think an update would have to be a very cost efficient one. I don't believe it would have to be a AAA-investment.

    Say they decide to hire a team of +10 game developers, add support for a new game engine, make a big splash by releasing 10 old zones running with the new engines, and then start trickle release 1 old zone + 1 new zone every 2 months, on top of the current yearly schedule and expansion. This would last what, a decade, before they got to newer zones?

    What if they make it so that you load adjacent zones as well, and make zone transitions a 1-5 sec thing, and spin it as " a transformation into the worlds largest open world RPG"?

    Say one of the above mentioned head counts is comitted to tech debt, another to build tools for the developers, so that they don't have to run around updating strange DBs designed a decade ago.

    I am rambling again... :)
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    The poorly implemented Freeport revamp & the following poor reception might have nixed that plan.

    As an aside, right after the Luclin character model revamp the 3d artists & animators went to work on the beginnings of another character model revamp, in one of (aloving robot) Shawn Lord's twitch streams with Tom Tobey (the chief animator for both the EQ franchises) Tom actually showed a short clip of a post-Luclin revamp of a male Troll - and it was really very good, sadly that new character model revamp never got the green light, though we did later get the excellent Frogloks & the rather less excellent Drakkin (who look great when stationary but whose stilted melee animations still look clumsy & awkward so not everything works well).
    Jumbur likes this.
  19. IblisTheMage Augur


    Interresting, you would not happen to have a link to that video?

    Thanks in advance.
  20. ikarinokamii Elder

    I

    I feel people are really under estimating how expensive and time consuming engine development is, look at bethesda games, arma games they have been uses the same old engines for a long time, probably because it would so expensive and tme consuming to make a new one. Given the complex nature of EQ and just how much has been built up i doubt you could even adapt it to any of the popular game engines like unreal or crytek. I think the best we can hope for is more expansions high quality kunark, velious, oow TSS. etc