The Darkened Sea Launches Tuesday, November 11th!

"Much of that loss was composed of a ¥6.2 billion write-off in Sony Online Entertainment, which incurred costs in development its as-yet-unreleased Everquest Next and H1Z1."

*6.2 billion yen is a little north of 53 million dollars.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danieln...ng-the-console-battle-losing-the-profits-war/

Poor management of money. Sony Corp. should make some changes at the top of SOE.

I wonder if $60m has even been spent on EQ1 in 15 years.

Comon, they purposely have let this lemon dry up, .....EQ1 players are dehydrated vacuum sealed , and preserved for the tomb of SoE's EQ1 indifference. They take us completely for granted.

I agree, and it does seem that SOE have decided that Test no longer serves a purpose beyond that of any other revenue generating server. With the inevitable reduced Test player numbers it does have to be asked whether there will be any value in pushing changes to there between the deploy to SOE's internal test servers and the general server-base, but I think that is a question that SOE have already answered to their own satisfaction. I would guess that Test won't be around to celebrate Christmas 2015. A shame, but it's a business and you have to be pragmatic.

To be completely honest I wouldn't be surprised if EverQuest isn't around to celebrate Christmas 2015 & if SOE keeps bleeding money Sony may decide that SOE won't be around to celebrate Christmas 2015 & sell it like they did the PC/Vaio division & the television manufacturing division. At the very least they might restructure & change management like they've been doing over on the Playstation side. Maybe if it does get sold Activision Blizzard or Bioware or Bethesda will scoop it up & realize what gem they have & start making more content for EQ & advertise it again

honestly, soe keeps their mmos going long after their hay day, if anyone else was in charge, eq would have been dead long ago.

Since the main office is in California $60M will cover part of their tax bill for 15 years. Add in paying their employees, purchasing hardware, software purchases/upgrades, bandwith costs and a host of other expenses and $60M will be a drop in the bucket.

Taking a $53M write-off doesn't mean money mismanagement but more than likely is a change in tax code that allowed them to take a tax credit.

I doubt SOE has that big of a budget with all the cost cutting measures Sony Corporate has been implementing in the last few years. I could be wrong as I haven't done a ton of research but I've read a lot of articles about how badly Sony is doing financially & how they are losing billions each year & selling off a few divisions here & there.

Feels to me like TDS is EQ's swan song. (I know.. I know. Incorrectly predicting doom of EQ is a yearly hobby.)

This feels different to me. In terms of abilities the AA line is depleted of any real efficacy. They acknowledged this over a year ago and most recently have resorted to asking we the players think is good idea for AAs.

Levels and grinding have gotten to the point that Sony nerfs their most-recent expansion's attraction to up-and-comers as well as the casual crew. The worst part is that they do so with absurd reasoning that contradicts themselves.

The hypocrisy points to the idea of a flailing dev team reacting in panic. Thing is, these guys usually have decent reasons (whether or not you like them) for their changes. These 'reasons' they're coming up with smack of hastily made decisions in meetings where someone with eyes bugging out says, "I know.. we can say THIS," and the rest uncomfortably agree but simply don't know what else to do.

You can see this flailing when they come back to these boards and say 'Yep we made a mistake' and then come back with an even WORSE proposal. They just really don't know what to do.

At all.

Filling in the spreadsheets with proportional increases is a drab and dreary way to continue this effort. They know it, and probably hate it.

This is the point at which they should just buck up and sigh. And leave things alone. I would like to see that what remains of this player population continues to hang around.

Short of implementing some kind of hybrid system where say, a Mage can specialize in being a 'Battle Mage' with reduced spell casting and stronger physical defense ala the Red Mage in the FF series, or go the route of the Sage in the DQuest series, then we aren't going to see anything different, and they're not going to know what to do.

One of two things will happen. i ) The game will wrap-up or ii ) this brilliant dev team will sell their souls a little bit at a time each new expansion with ever more outrageous justifications for funneling us into what is starting to feel like a cage, instead of an open landscape.

I don't imagine they like it anymore than we do. But they can do something about it, and we can't. There have been flashes of brilliance in this game, and particularly with quest design which acquaints us with every area of each zone, and also in tradeskills where I have seen such intelligence as to give me hope that these jaded, overworked men and women can come up with some solutions to this infinite-returns conundrum that they can be proud of.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

i have said this for a long time, seeds opened up alternate realities or timelines i believe, so what is stopping them from going back to old favorite zones and revamping them to high level encounters?

hell, instance it and give missions that are "take out this named mob" and you have to fight your way to the mob and deal with a powered up version of it.

an entire expansion built on revamping some of my favorite zones for a high end experience... hell... you could even revamp them into raiding zones, with a chest pop after you take out all the named, with a time limit, and trash that would all hit like current named at 30 million or so hp... give it a time limit of 30 minutes or so and now you have a new challenge, making an entire zone submit to your guild...

i mean what i just said would be the laziest thing they could do that i would be willing to pay for.

I was curious and checked how much $40 is in Euro for you guys...
37 Euro huh (it's 32 for the rest of the world, unless Oanda suddenly has different rates).

Seriously...

Just an FYI, the advertisement on Steam shows the EQ2 rewards for the CE:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/332890/
About This Content

The story of the Darkened Sea finds Firiona Vie traveling to the Buried Sea on a mission from Tunare to restore balance to Norrath. Firiona meets with the Combine in the domed city of Katta Castrum with hopes to heal their emperor, Tsaph Katta. The city is attacked while Firiona is attempting to heal the emperor. In the chaos, Lanys, aided by a corrupt splinter faction of the Combine, kidnaps the emperor. Norrath’s heroes must track Lanys and her allies down in order to thwart Lanys’s plans and rescue the emperor.

Features:
• Level Cap Increase — You can now level up your characters to an unprecedented 105!
• 8 New Zones — Brand new zones such as Thuliasaur Island and Combine Dredge offer immersive and captivating adventures.
• Mount Key Ring — Easily access your entire mount collection in one easy location!
• New Quests, Missions and Raids
• New Tradeskills, Spells, AAs and Items


The Collector's Edition provides SEVEN amazing in-game items including:
• Elite Battle-Mystic Merc
• Striped Savage Pterodon Mount
• Mage Tower Mirage
• Prehistoric House Pet
• 3 Gems of Armor Advancement
• 80 Days of Spell Research
• Painting: Lanys T’Vyl

I suppose im writing this for the sake of my own conscious, rather than expecting anything to come of it.

TLDR: I went to the test server for the exp gains and to not worry about plat now that I have limited play time. Also so I could box any combination of characters I wanted on different account but now this has backfired on me. Now I have over a half dozen accounts for different toons which means I either pony up hundreds of dollars for transfers and expansions or quit. I dont mind paying for the expansion on a few accounts but I cant justify saving more than half my characters now. Please help?

I just came back after some months of break form EQ.

I've been playing this game for long time on and off. Nearly half my life. I still love everquest but over time I've had a harder and harder time playing for long enough periods of time to keep up until I was about to quit but I then heard about the test server. A server where you gain Xp much faster and can copy items so you don't have to worry about plat??? sign me up!

I don't mind paying for a few expansions or even subing some accounts.
But now every character has his own account and I can't possibly justify saving most of them through transfers (can you even transfer accounts on Test???) or getting expansions for all of them. I don't want to quit but it seems like I have no option now...(especially since I have no idea what else they will do to test.)


Please allow for free transfers to other accounts for test players, please....(or something ?else?)

I am disappointed in SoE. close to 15 years ago i started this game. Over those years I played on multiple servers including Stormhammer and Mayong. About 2 years ago I went to test after they changed it and made it worth the trouble. I always have had 3 gold accounts even while on test. But the going back on their word has killed it I am done. At least the other MMO's stick to what they say they will do. well for the most part anyways hehe. Maybe if SoE gets there heads out of their back sides I will come back. Do not get me wrong I have bought every Expansion for those three accounts and would have bought TDS as well. But I don't like being lied to so its more about the principle then a money thing.

Any status update on this? Are we getting it at all? If so, when? If never, then say so.