Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

You must be as old as I am if 5 years ago feels like "just happened".

LOL.
It feels like "just happened" because Nov 2012 was only 2 years ago.

But... yeah...
I miss the good ol' days where 1 year felt like a WHOLE YEAR and not just a series of projects at work and another season of Game of Thrones

Kickstarters might be the future, i was sceptical but...
having a blast with Divinity O.S . currently, so much work was put into that game it shows good things can come from kickstarters.

How many people would pledge for Eq1?
Prolly more than for Pantheon heh, which could have been a success too if not for you know what.
People like getting involved these days anyway, i would rather donate for Eq than buying the newest mobile crap that's for sure.

To put the point I think many people are trying to explain or having trouble understanding, I'm going to try my hand at an analogy I think most everyone has dealt with.

Imagine Sony is a big name car dealership. Let's say ford, I think they fit this scenario better than most.

In 2006 ford makes 600,000 mustangs expecting sales to exceed 400,000. Instead the market repeatedly crashes and no one wants to spend money, they feel burned and don't trust investing money in things like car purchases. (See Sony and making new games) so at the start of 2007 they have 500,000 mustangs left and sell them at cost to a third party investor. This investor buys them because even if he marks them up only 2% he's made his profit. So he goes about selling them off in pieces and chunks of hundreds or thousands in order to make a marginally higher profit. Then the various dealerships double or triple what they payed, still at a huge mark down of the original Ford 2006 lot price, they make money and the buyer still payed three times what it was worth for their car.

In this scenario Sony is ford, I'll let you figure the rest out but my point is management and investment groups simply do not so the "long-term ROI" - they have actual human beings that want access to liquid assets. To get even simpler Everquest is not an annuity, it's a savings account...you earn a few % interest and cash out when you feel it's enough.

If they really want to dispel all the conspiracy theories and doom and gloom they need quick and decisive long and short term goals for the game or no one is going to trust them and continue to deposit pennies into a piggy bank that the town bully can come break open at any point no questions asked, which is the situation we are in as a community.

^ This.

John Smedly will have to go. He should have been axed after Star Wars or Vanguard. The only reason Sony International departed from SoE is it wasn't making enough money to stay in the umbrella. With a new investor group, they will keep Smed on for 365 days at the most and then he'll leave. As the days tick down he will have more and more of his present responsibilities and task handed over to his MUCH NEEDED replacement.

After this is gone I am very interested in seeing where these games will end up. I'm resigned to the reality that EQ will be retired and once it goes I won't shed a tear. It had it's time and did alright for itself despite lack of creativity the developers had regarding the 15 year old code this games architecture sits.

What I hope happens is the new devs hired will do something different than a WoW clone and catch us off guard. A walking away from sword and board fantasy into something unexpected--an undiscovered Pac-Man.

I'm 46 years old and I started playing EQ when I was 32. I know I am at the age where no products are designed to my generation as we have a tenth of the disposable income 15 year olds do today. I hope Nova polls and really listens to what these new young gamers want as effective competition is fantastic for the marketplace and that's the only thing that will save gaming for the future.

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EQ has been at $14.99 for about 9 3/4 years (May 2005); before that it had changed to $12.95 in April 2002; and before that it was $9.95. If there was a price lower than $9.95 then that was before my time, and I can't find any easily available record of it (though for some reason I do have $8.95 running through my head).

So, sorry, there was no change from $9.95 a month to $14.99 a month when SOE got rid of Gold and simply made everyone All Access. It sounds to me like you had either special priced yearly subs or a 2-year sub which you turned off auto-renew and let expire. Then you came back and started paying monthly and blamed the price change on All Access. All Access was $17.99 (or more?) a month before the change.

Guides have always been volunteers and never been paid, just allowed to play their account for free. I highly doubt that there are so many guides so as to make $14.99 a month times the number of guides anything more than a drop in the bucket.

I am quite sure that Player Studio brings in a good bit from EQ especially since they introduced the Robe ornament options.

This is not a new company; this is a rebranded company with a new parent company. EQ and EQ2 are still far more profitable than CoH ever hoped to be. When your company is staffed by the exact same people as it previously was, and you are trying to market a new game to those loyal to your game, you kind of don't want to piss them off and make them leave. EQ and EQ2 are not taking away any search hits for EQNext, if anything the opposite is true.

As far as the one person who posted about how Sony hasn't mentioned MMOs in their plans for a while, Sony has always been more interested in developing the console gaming side as opposed to the software side. I could quite easily argue that had EQ and SOEs other MMOs been given the same amount of marketing and development revenue that the PS2/3/4 were given then all of these games would have had a considerably higher success rate and profitability.

For all those people who keep bringing up what the new parent company is most known for being involved in; why don't you go back and look at what the parent company of 989 Studios, Verant, and SOE was most known for being involved in at that time?

The fact that the parent company is different is the reason why it could be better. Sony never made any effort to market or develop the MMOs of SOE effectively. Sony kind of used SOE like a 'puppy mill' for the next new throw away MMO they could make a quick buck on. It is entirely possible that this company sees these games as having potential to be a reliable income with a reasonable influx of capital to fix long standing issues and improve development; both of which improve retention and return of players. As I implied earlier Sony has always been more of a hardware company, and their treatment of SOE has reflected that. With our new parent company being more diverse, I think that they are looking to expand what their new acquisition can do as opposed to reduce it.

Poorly done ports are bad for any game regardless of which way they are done, PC to console, console to console, or console to PC. PC games are not hurt by it any more than any other game type. That said, I really don't see them expanding any of the current games or those that have been in development to consoles.

I am going to be optimistic one of the bunch maybe just maybe
We will see them put an influx of money hoping to make much more money by increasing advertising put more developers into place and if they did do these things and saw an increase of revenue they would open new servers and invest more. Or maybe I'm wrong and they bought out are game just to close down our game and try to have us all go to eq next (which I am gonna try it looks fun)

I love your optimistic tone but I am less sanguine about this than you are.

It is very likely that the reason CN bought SOE is to pick up its monthly cash flow. They bought an "annuity" so to speak. If this is the case then it follows that they won't be plying EQ with cash for future developments.

This is the old "Cash Cow" metaphor that many are familiar with. The little bit of hope here is that as long as the Cow is providing enough milk it won't be heading to the butcher shop. Stop giving milk; ... hamburger and steaks.

Well this makes me feel better about the whole thing:

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/562352558916632576

Thank you Mr. Smedley.

I just checked on Google. Ultima Online actually just announced a new release, something called Stygian Abyss.

Further checking, Meridian 59 is now Open Source, and has an official server to play on, and was released in 1996!!

I think, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of EQ's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Sure there is a great period of uncertainly in the future, many who have been parts of RL corporate acquisitions understand this, and all the reasons surrounding it as well. However, with a fairly loyal and stable user-base, I suspect that if plans dictate that EQ not be continued by Daybreak, they would still sell the asset off to whatever small group cares to keep it running. Companies do value money, and while EQ might fall below their ROI expectations, at the same time it would be recognized that they have value in the EQ brand and subscriber base assets. Just as there are companies that specialize in rapid turn-arounds, there are other companies that specialize in milking cash cows.

It is possible that they might consider changes once EQ Next is out, under the assumption that EQ would then be cannibalizing EQ Next subs, but we will just have to wait and see.

As for those pressuring for more announcements, don't bother. Anyone who has any business acumen at all understands that if there is anything less trustworthy than a politician's pre-election promise, it's the words on a corporate press release

Actually, I'd dare say that EQNext is big for the future of EQ/EQ2. If Daybreak decided (had decided for them) that EQNext wasn't going to happen, then they probably would have little reason to keep EQ/EQ2 around. But if (as it seems) Next is still really important to them, then they'll keep EQ/EQ2 around. EQ/EQ2 at this point are stable and pretty cheap all in all; They are also the foundation EQNext is built on, lore wise in particular. Were they to spin off EQ/EQ2, that would make a copyright quagmire no company would willingly get into. And shutting them down would be a PR disaster they'd probably want to avoid too, even after Next comes out and especially before it comes out. Since Next is probably at least 2 years out from public view, that gives us at least 2 years, and most likely more.

Now if Next comes out and is a DNF-level flop, that might lead to some reevaluations down the road; but for now, I'm fairly confident things will be fine with the Status Quo as is.

I see this being distinctly possible in a few years... "SONY" wouldn't have wanted to open the public relations / brand image door by selling off the intellectual property rights to one of its games to the public, an investment firm is less likely to have the same issues to deal with, if a group was to put together a reasonable offer, they would be likely to agree and move on.

My personal hopes for the long term plan:
1) Daybreak continues development to at least the 20 yr mark.

2) We (the players) continue to work with them (the developers) to identify and fix the bugs / issues as they arise and provide the feedback on the direction of the game

3) One of the updates provides a new layer of graphics (THAT ARE OPTIONAL) in a similar way to the updated Luclin models over the original. Players would now have the following graphics levels to choose: stick figures, original EQ graphics, Luclin Models, Heroes Forge / NextGen Models. This variable graphics quality would also apply to structures and landscape. Those that like the fuzzy look of signs and etc, can keep the existing graphics and play on older machines, the kids that have super mega video cards and want to see shiny pretty graphics can have their increased realism and etc.

4) More connections are made with real world merchandising opportunities. I, for one, would certainly want to buy a 3D printed statue of my character with certain class specific options. I would certainly like to own a metal cast keychain of my Epic (1.0, 1.5, 2.0) like the sample ones that were part of the Omens expansion. I'm sure there are other trinkets that would sell readily as well.

5) EQ wouldn't work (well) as a console or mobile game, but there are pieces of it that could be mirrored outside the game. By allowing players to interact with the world when we can't actually stop and be in game would likely increase the desire to play. For example, a mobile app that caught things like the alerts in game, GM speak etc, a way to view / buy from the marketplace (and maybe bazaar) without being in the game, reconnecting our in-game email to our regular email to allow our friends in the game to reach us in real life (but without us having to give out our real email address)... I'm sure other players could identify additional ideas.

6) When Columbus Nova or Daybreak is ready to retire EQ1, we the players have an opportunity to intervene and work out a process to transition the existing servers to be community owned (and maybe partnered with the staff that currently operates the EQ servers that exist in the world).

...

Stygian Abyss was released in 2009. Sorry.

http://recode.net/2014/05/14/sony-misses-fiscal-year-expectations-with-profits-down-88-percent/ " However, its game division still lost $78 million, in part due to the cost of launching the new console hardware, but mainly as a result of a $60 million write-off from poor sales of Sony Online Entertainment software"

Couldn't this loss be for the games they actually ended? So things may not be nearly so bad now.

Why do i get feeling I am hearing The Doors song 'This is the End?' Just be honest with us and tell us the truth please is EQ dead now?

Cheese and crackers people, freaking relax. The minions in the trenches probably have as much clue what's going to happen as we do. Let the dust settle and see what shakes out.
If it's the end, so be it.
A lot of you have that sky is falling syndrome.
Keep playing until you can't anymore.

Blaming Sony for SOE's mismanagement is a copout, I'm sorry. SOE was the king of MMO's in the early 2000's. EQ1 was the biggest game in the genre, and EQ2 was well staffed and funded when it went into development. You can't blame Sony for EQ2's inability to compete, the problems with EQ2 had more to do with game design and SOE being out of touch with the genre than anything else.

Getting knocked off your throne by a quality gaming company like Blizzard is one thing, but being erased from top charts and stepped over by other smaller gaming studios is quite another. SOE went from #1 to not even having a top 5 MMO in the U.S., Europe, Asia, or anywhere else. It spells mismanagement. You can't blame Sony for that. Just as I'm sure it wasn't Sony's call to buy Sigil and bail Brad's failed Vanguard venture out (which lost SOE a lot of money as a result).

It also isn't Sony's fault that SOE created Planetside 2 failed to attract players. It's a free-to-play game that should've done well but didn't, it can't even compete with paid games. SOE had big plans for Planetside 2, they wanted to do the whole Major League Gaming thing, and taking it to Playstation 4 and such. But the game has failed, there's now only 1 server in the West and 1 in the East in United States, and the servers are not packed either.

All these point to problems within the division, not the parent company that has been feeding them money for the past 15 years. Maybe the "visions" have gotten blurry. Perhaps the management needs to be replaced because they are not making the right decisions anymore. Maybe people really don't like SOE's hybrid f2p system. Or it could be simply that SOE was out of touch with what gamers want (lack of PvP options in SOE games as an example, as that's a big chunk of MMORPG population they are not attracting). I mean just look at EQ1, can anybody say TDS is what players wanted out of an expansion?

I disagree Sony is to be blamed for all the decisions SOE has made these past 10-15 years, which lead to a slow bleeding of playerbase across all SOE games, including EQ1.

A lot of us don't want pvp. I can get all the pvp I want in Call of Duty.

Yup, the management needs to go.
But you don't need to look far for the reasons why SoE failed, Mardy.
What is the most common reason that customers get fed up and shop somewhere else?
Right, when they are not treated well. I felt like crap (the gaming part of me) with how they handled Eq1.
SWG players still hate SoE. European players hate how they had Pro7Sat1 in front of their nose.
How they put patches in our prime time (at 8 in the evening..).
How they turned the beauty of Eq1 into a simplified progression game.

But while you got nothing, they always acted like top of the world. See FanFaire.
Do we need any more reasons?

LOL! Perhaps...