Trade an expansion for a year of fixes?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Shakara, May 16, 2021.

  1. Tucoh Augur

    If they announced an expansion of fixes I'd nope out and come back next year. I skipped CoV, would def skip whatever they'd call this.

    I wouldn't mind seeing them go to a once every two year release schedule, but this probably wouldn't be as profitable as what theyre doing now.
  2. Metanis Bad Company

    I think they could survive skipping new end-game content for a year if they concentrated on making TLP servers profitable. Those people don't care about new content they'll probably never see or play.

    But having said that you know they'll keep the current release cycle because they're like addicts, they gotta have that revenue fix every calendar year. And why not? They know we'll pay it.., beetch about how minimal and cookie cutter the expansion is, and just keep playing (paying) anyway.

    The only answer for "fixing" EQ was to have made it open source about 15 years ago. It's locked into it's death spiral now. It might be years yet before the final swish around the bowl, but we all know it's coming.
    MasterMagnus likes this.
  3. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    I am taken aback by some of the criticism of the game here.

    EQ1 - which is 22 years old - is in a much better position than infinite vaporware Pantheon MMO and Ashes of Creation.

    Does that mean I think we should crumple in a fetal position when it comes to game issues? Of course not. But there is an easy distinction between pragmatism and actually creating a self-fulfilling reality of failure.
  4. Laronk Augur

    it would be one thing if they were to not include an expansion level feature so they could have more time for bug fixes or what ever but without new content people will just leave the game.

    Also per the numbers when DBG was sold the EQ franchise makes money they just need to actually invest more into the game. Expansion sales also make money, most players on live buy the expansion.

    The likely reason that more resources haven't been added to fix some of this stuff is they don't feel that the cost-benefit works out. Hopefully the new owners will add more resources to the team and will see the cost-benefit of fixing some things or having meatier expansions.

    Honestly If given the choice of having an expansion with double the content or having more bugs fixed I would choose double the content. They do need to fix the lag issues though with a better answer than raids don't lag nearly as much if you don't play primetime.
  5. Shakara Augur

    Personally I have noticed that they do listen to the community and make changes but the changes seem to be so delayed about 2-3 years after issues have been observed. For instance TLP players since the dawn of TLPs have complained about the many bottlenecks in the epic quests. While DPG has delivered at alleviating these bottlenecks it took 5 years to do so. Another example is that raid lag started cropping up in EoK and here we are 4 years later and still struggling with it. It seems DPG knows its an issue but with their team size and their expectations it keeps some of these things from getting fixed in a timely manner. In addition these are not issues that just go away next expansion and keep piling up and the more successful EQ is the bigger these issues become. There seems to be an inevitability that they will have to fold eventually as the game gets less and less playable.
  6. Svann2 The Magnificent

    By the time the next year got here everyone will have forgotten EQ exists.
  7. Zarkdon Augur

    EQ already doesn't have enough content on a year by year basis.

    I could handle a 1.5 year expansion gap if the expansion was large and added more quests/interesting raids.

    I could handle a year gap if lead to a 64 bit conversion.

    I dont care if some quest from 2008 is broken.
  8. OlavSkullcrusher Augur

    13 year old content? Sure, that's a problem where 'fix it when the problem is clearly defined and someone has a spare moment to deal with it quickly' makes sense, not a matter of investing who knows how many hours tracking down the exact problem and then coding a fix. But there are quite frustrating problems that exist with content released within the last year or the last few years that are still unresolved. Someone that is always playing in the most recent expansion might not care about broken content from 2-4 expansions back, but some people are still working on it, whether with their mains or alts, even on live servers.
    Metanis likes this.
  9. CrazyLarth Augur

    this is a loose loose idea, with out new Expansions the game would stall. peeps would move to other games. Plus the idea of fixing stuff lol - we have threads of why did you change this making peeps mad at the nerfs.
  10. Viper1 Augur

    I'd imagine that if you do an entire year's cycle that things like 64-bit client and upgrading to DX12 become reality, not just minor fixes to 12 year old quests.
  11. Gidono https://everquest.allakhazam.com

    What if they aren't able to get those changes done in a years time? That wouldn't go over very well.
  12. Vumad Cape Wearer


    The way to fix EQ was to hire a dev team for Phinny to setup a new client so that every expansion launch on Phinny was actually occurring on a new game engine. Had that happened, all of EQ would be seamlessly switching to a new engine next expansion. New graphics with legacy graphic packages for the first several expansions would have opened EQ to a lot of new player while keeping the TLP recyclers happy. It's a shame that they don't have a team doing this.
    Metanis and MasterMagnus like this.
  13. Hellowhatsyourname Augur

    Remember when we had TWO expansions per year?? How awesome was that???

    /veto two years in the same content.
  14. Tucoh Augur

    /Unvetoed
  15. Coagagin Guild house cat

    That would require rewriting the entire code base to 64 bit. Maybe a year with say a dozen more developer/programmers on staff familiar with the code base itself.

    Been there done that with similar. Might as well just create a separate EQ with a different engine but leave the storyline intact. Sounds easy but is really the stuff of nightmares.
  16. Moege Augur

    People are already not buying expansions as what they offer is not enticing e.g CoV (small expansion, no real character progression except some AA). Have a few friends that opted out cancelled subs and said they will relook at when next one releases. Doubt they will be coming back. If they did can do the whole CoV expansion in 2 weeks or so, if they really wanted to.

    Guilds have problems during summer with raid attendance. the farming cycle, just endlessly repeating the same 9 raids each week. People get sick of repeating the same thing.

    Now OP wants to skip a year for bugfixes/client upgrades... Do not see that working out well.
  17. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    A 64bit update will eventually happen:

    Pay attention to 1h37m26 in that video.

    The answer from last summer, was "no immediate plan, but an early warning to gamers that they should upgrade their boxes to 64bit".

    There have been changes at the corporate level and hiring of more devs since then, and the answer might have changed.

    On a side-note, they are hiring graphics-programmers to upgrade the planetside2 engine..."porting" EQ1 to the planetside2 engine would not be a bad move...Having a "unified" in-house maintained engine for all their games would be a practical solution...

    But that is just a wild guess. :)
    Niskin, Yinla and Skuz like this.
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Not a dumb guess though.

    Upgrade the PS2 engine (to 64 bit & DX 12) then port a bunch of titles to use that same engine would potentially be a more cost effective move than coming up with bespoke engine solutions for each game, after all even EQ2 could probably use a graphical revamp at this point.

    Definitely an idea that has serious merit to it, even if that's not what they have in mind right now.
  19. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    It wouldn't surprise me if they have been working towards this for years. A lot of back end work has been done, changing how files are strored etc, Dzarn was cleaning up code years ago, who knows where that that will lead us to.

    Also JChan says no immediate plan, but that doesn't say that there isn't a long term plan that they are getting closer to every year.
  20. Slasher Augur


    They created an in house game engine forgelight spent 10s if not hundreds of millions on it over a decade and were supposed to use it for all the new games. The only game that uses it now is PS2.