EG7 Acting CEO (and Daybreak Games CEO) Ji Ham Presentation and Q&A

You should read up on how Old School Runescape turned into a multi-million player game, there is massive potential in investing in even an old & dated game.
Jagex made so much freaking money from releasing OSRS on phones they could afford to develop a new AAA MMORPG and have already started work on it. They hired a ton of staff and have over 100 developers working there now.

I'd say no on #3. I don't think the number of bugs is lower than it has been in the past. What is certainly worse than ever is how much they break things when implementing fixes and features.

Unless they are going to create a new client with better graphics (which we have been asking for for over 10 years), the do not 'have' to be doing so.

Windows (including 11) will continue to support 32 bit programs. The current limits on the EQ client are annoying and limiting, but I do not see that it cannot work going forward. Just not optimally.

TL;DR: If they just want to continue milking the dying cow, they don't need 64 bit.

Apparently my pessimism has angered the horde. So be it. I don't believe investing in EQ is a good move, financially. I don't need to be a game developer, a distributer, or a financial expert. I don't require your agreement and I damn sure don't need your approval. I'm a customer. Same as you.

Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to sink than swim. If you haven't noticed (or refuse to), EverQuest isn't getting any attention from EG7. I hope I am proven wrong. I hope you all are correct. I hope EverQuest becomes the MMO it always should have been. The longer it's left in its current state, the more faded my hope becomes.

If you haven't noticed, there are several new devs that lurk on the forums.

If anything, more effort needs to be put into communication and marketing (even just on the website and forums).

The state and level of ambition of the next expansion will probably be very telling.

The last few expansions didn't have any compelling new tech or improvements, only content. I wonder if this one will be any different.

Assuming any client update/improvement will be tied to an expansion release...

You mean to replace the gaping void left by senior Devs who took literal decades of knowledge with them? Those new devs?

Yep bad idea to invest in a game that has a 4:1 revenue/expense ratio.

Aint direct x 9.0c at end of life ? I remember reading it will not be supported for very much longer in windows. They will have to upgrade the client to 11 or 12 which would be a good time to also bring it to 64-bit.

I have a bunch of old games I hope they continue to support DX9.

It would be nice if EQ would do so.

Well, why would you spend more if you’re already making a 4:1 ratio? How does throwing extra money at EQ1 get them to 8:1?

TLPs are honestly a mixed blessing. It’s more revenue for DPG for very little effort, but it’s more money for very little effort. The money flow shows that doing basically doing nothing is the answer.

We lost Holly and Prathun. People complained about Holly in her role. Prathun had to do what he had to do for himself.

It looks like we gained about 5 new devs in addition to the senior devs that have remained.

Anyone has a guess about what "the big project that is 3-4 years out and is tripple A" that EG7 is investing in is?

It has "restrictions around licensed property..."

Daybreak have a Marvel license, the title is being developed by the Dimensional Ink studio - ergo it's likely to be an MMORPG set in the Marvel Comics or Movies Universe.

I do understand your pessimism to be honest, the history of EQ is a long line of producers and bosses and company people abusing the loyalty of the EQ players to finance the studios next big hit(s), and that pattern has been repeated for just over 2 whole decades.
Yes we lost Prathun an 18 year vet of the dev team and Holly who did make a lot of efforts to have more of EQ's revenue pumped back into the game - more of though not most of I expect.

That said we gained more devs than we lost, though it will take time for them to become fully versant in EQ so the future is looking slightly better than it did before January 2021.
64-bit will happen eventually, JChan's words not mine, so if you haven't moved to a 64 bit system already you should do so soon. She also wants to hear from a UI expert, an EQ UI expert ideally as she is very aware that EQ's UI is in bad need of a complete overhaul.
If we see more investment in EQ I will be happy, I'm not expecting to see much until after the DCUO & LoTRO graphics overhauls are completed though, and I am not sure I believe JiHam when he says, well anything in fact - I don't trust him or Epstein at all - they were the ones who decimated the dev team for EQ to begin with.

I think it's probably Marvel (see last bullet):


As far as EG7 with respect to EQ, the devs lost ToV -> CoV were Narlee (Programmer) and Prathun (Lead Designer). Holly (Exec. Producer) also left. Since her departure, we've gained:

• Ratalthor (Producer)
• Morrigan (Programmer)
• TrueNorth (QA)
• Zieri (Designer)
• Meeko (Programmer)
• Quioxte (?)
• Toasty (?)
• Qwalla (Designer - Content)
• Naylie (Designer - Content/Seasonal Quests)

There may be other additions (e.g. new artists) that we won't know about until the credits are published for ToL. That said, it's pretty clear there has been some reinvestment in EQ in the past year beyond replacing people. I'm sure it takes a considerable amount of time to be efficient/productive on EQ, so it'll be interesting to see the impact it has. I probably wouldn't expect a substantially different scope for this expansion, but we'll see.

You forgot some too like Narlee.

Yeah, I used the wrong name, but that is whom I was referring to. I didn't forget them.

I have always wondered: Those license agreements with thirdparty franchises(like Marvel and Star wars), don't they all have an expiration date?
Is it really that profitable to develop an entire mmo, that will close after just a few years?

It seems shortsighted to me...

more then half way through the presentation and the only games they talk about making big investments in are DCUO and LOTR . DCUO because superheros duh. And LORT because of the upcoming Amazon show.