Should we be worried?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Grumpy007, Jan 25, 2014.

  1. Grumpy007 New Member

  2. Tarrin Augur

  3. Cronos Journeyman

    Lmfao they are already closing Wizardry online? That's hilarious, it was up for like a year, but it had no class balance, and grind that made old EQ look like a joke and was 100x more boring, so not surprised. I'm not worried though, you look at the amount of servers EQ has, and the fact that most of them are medium populated, some being high, I think until we merged down to like 4 servers, there's no need to worry.
  4. Trellium Elder

    SOE has already responded to this sort of silliness.

    All the more resources available to the other games. That's just fine with me. I liked Vanguard, but it was never a heavily populated game, and it had/has it's share of development issues.
  5. Tobynn Augur

    Shutting down Free Realms because the player base grew up? Wow, sure glad no one applied that thinking to EverQuest.

    Clone Wars? Already? Thought that game had like 10 million players just a couple years ago. Talk about a ship sinking quick. Yikes.

    Vanguard, I am still amazed the game managed to survive beyond launch; total disaster from day one and been on life support ever since.

    Wizardry made it a whole year before becoming a liability. Now that's disturbing.


    Doesn't leave SOE with much of a PC game portfolio. Wonder which one hits the chopping block next. /eyeballs DC
    Leerah likes this.
  6. Edrick Augur

    j_smedley, when asked on the official forums for SOE games, which happens to be exclusively on Reddit for some reason:

    So no. When EQ stops getting content updates, and has one or two servers left, yes, I would start worrying.
  7. Crystilla Augur

    Yeah - there's not a reason to be scared for EQ currently.

    Wizardry isn't an SoE product top to bottom, and with the kids games there are other things that come into play.

    It does suck when any game closes (several prior SoE FB games I played and heavily enjoyed had been closed earlier). But last year it also was stated that SoE was going back to its roots in focus, etc.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  8. Silv Augur

    Piestro (among others) have already reassured the community that you will be dumping a lot more $$$ into EQ for years to come.

    There were server mergers in 2005 and then 2010 (maybe others I can't recall?). I would expect a few more rounds of mergers before speculation of 'the end of days' is valid. Given the high level of instancing (which avoids raider conflict), more mergers would probably improve some aspects of the game (revitalize PUGs for example). Overall, things seem to be okay, at least that is the impression the higher-ups are giving. Bad signs would include mass guild folding, diminished dev resources, and apathetic community relations. None of these are present - perhaps there is a strain on dev resources, but pretty much each "aspect" of the game has a single devoted developer. I'll start to worry if Aristo starts doing spells and AA for example :eek:

    Look how long they supported the Mac server... the last expansion they received was PoP and they had a devoted dev for that server. Finally, the server shut down 2 months ago. They maintained that relic for that many years and even after F2P went live. In fact, there was such player outrage when they first proposed a sunset years ago that SOE decided not to shut it down.

    Sure, some people are less than thrilled with the new staggered release model. IMO, it was an experiment in content delivery. They used one of the most loyal playerbases to determine how that kind of model would work for future games. This is my own speculation but if there was ever a game to test that kindof thing on it would be EQ. Just look at the example of how many other games have been sunset and yet EQ has never been a target... that should speak worlds about the future of the game.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  9. Bigbear Augur

    EQ1 has 17 servers...EQ2 has only 16 servers...all the other SOE games only have 32 servers total... there is no way EQ1 is ever going anywhere for a long long long LONG time to come....unless of course sony goes bankrupt...just saying

    if u add wizardry online...then that might put all the other games over the top of EQ1 and EQ2
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  10. Moklianne Augur

    Supported and allow to exist on life support are two different things. Also, the dev was a part time dev, whose job primarily was (oddly enough) to support Vanguard. Don't get me wrong, I applaud what Hobart did for the EQMac server when no one else cared, but receiving a handful of content fixes every 3-6 months is not enough to call the server 'supported'. Code fixes didn't exist, since as they kept telling me, the source didn't exist.

    In the end, they let it exist because they didn't need to have any dedicated resources on it at all. Once there was a situation where dedicated resources were needed (client was hacked up allowing lots of exploits), they pulled the plug.

    Most EQMac players would have went back to a subscription model to keep the server open, but that wasn't even on the table.

    Please please please re-assign Hobart (hopefully to EQ). He is an asset to any game he works on.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  11. Edrick Augur

    Reassign all devs and coders to EQ! Every single one. Make the offices so crowded that you'd need bunk-cubicles.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  12. Grumpy007 New Member

    Reading the forum posts especially from vanguard, you can see similarities to the EQ community. What's concerning is that many of them had just resubscribed with no idea this announcement was coming.

    It's just deflating to see what inevitably is going to happen to EQ. If you played vanguard for the last 6 years, was it time well spent? How about 15 years on EQ?

    Why isn't there an option when it comes to pulling the plug? I know there's emulators but does the average player want to invest another 5, 10 15 years building character(s) and relationships?
  13. Qest T. Silverclaw Augur

    They're not offering the server code to the public, or even for sale. They'd never do that with the EQ name, especially since they're still using it for their new games.

    Essentially, they're taking their (nerf) bat and going home leaving us high and dry. No, it won't happen this year to EQ (unless you play on a Mac, or PvP, or...), but it will eventually happen. They don't deny that at all.

    Their handling of Vanguard was the most shameful. That was the best game ever. It simply suffered from some launch bugs, and the fact that, for the time (7 years ago), you needed a pretty beefy computer to run it well. This resulted in too low a population base. All it needed was just a little work, and a little money. Early on, simply squashing the bugs, and advertising "Sorry about the bugs! Come back!" would have worked. They sold plenty of copies of the game, people just left when their computers wouldn't run the game well, or when the bugs were too bad. Later, a small expansion and a relaunch of the same game under a different name such as "Vanguard 2: Electric Boogaloo" would have catapulted that game to its rightful place.
  14. Tarrin Augur

    Of course it will eventually happen. Denying that for any game would just be silly.
  15. Abazzagorath Augur

    Clone Wars was probably shut down due to their license expiring with Disney. Why anyone would ever play a Star Wars mmorpg that is run by a third party and expect it to last is beyond me. Just not going to happen, soon as their contract runs out the thing is getting shut down.
    Gyurika Godofwar, Rouan and Crystilla like this.
  16. Rouan Augur

    With the death of the cartoon it lost a lot of it's ability to gaining new players.
    Crystilla and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  17. junglenights Augur

    NO. Just no.

    Well...

    I'll give it to you the system requirements WERE high. The hitching WAS bad. There WERE bugs. But the game was also unfriendly to casuals and you couldn't solo past 10-15. You have to keep in mind gamers in 2007 were looking for games like WoW - it was all the rage. The people that did play it probably expected something less buggy and more friendly. They didn't get either. And during that time period MMORPGs were coming out like hotcakes and everybody was scrambling to play them.

    The bulk of the 200,000 who bought the game quit and never got hooked on it.

    After that advertising couldn't win back people because everyone had lost faith. I can recall asking about Vanguard and hte standard response was "That loser game?" Vanguard acquired a negative reputation.

    Why play Vanguard when they could play LOTRO or something similar?

    I'd agree if you said a version of Vanguard more bug free and more casual-friendly and with lower system requirements straight from the get go would have been a much larger success.

    If poor Brad would have just allowed for soloing to max level or close to it and had added a few extra casual-friendly features it would have went a long way to preserving the rest of his vision. No other change he could have made would have as large an impact. He could have kept the open world. He could have kept factions. Being able to solo is a huge game changer. Obviously, Brad's vision for his game was intimately tied with the grouping system and held the game down.
  18. McDougal Augur

    That's just not true and I played since the beginning. A lot easier to solo than EQ actually with a lot more content available in that path.
  19. Retty Lorekeeper

    SoE is like Fox Network is to their sitcoms.

    Brutal.
    Moklianne likes this.
  20. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    Insight into why the games were closed.
    http://www.reddit.com/r/EQNext/comments/1w2lu2/im_john_smedley_president_of_soe_amaa/cey45vc