I'm curious, when EQ2 and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes came out EQ all but died for a long while. The game was damn near flat out dead. A few years later something happened though that sparked life back into EQ...progression servers. Now the game seems to be thriving quite well. My question though is this; What has happened in this game that has created its resurgence? I'm having troubles believing its current popularity is solely due to the TLP servers so I ask you, what has EQ done in the past couple years that you like so well that has kept it kicking. Is it the progression servers? Have the devs actually overhauled the gameplay to make it feel current and fun? (remember spamming heals on mounts, yeah, that was fun >.<) What are your thoughts, what's your most fondest addition to the EQ phoenix?
Modern games are mere replicas. In the end the original design of this game is its saving grace. This game despite its shortcomings is vast and has a little for everyone. There are some things they got right and some things they got wrong. The things they got right... They got really right and that is why it keeps on trucking.
agrees with shiftie when they got it right they got it really right I have been here since its incpetion in 1999 beta and still play today
I believe without a shadow of a doubt that Everquest would have been dead and buried years ago had it not been for the addition of mercenaries to fill in key roles in groups. When WoW came along and snowballed into the giant behemoth it became, EQ subs dropped drastically. When Seeds of Destruction came out in 2008 getting an extra healer or tank was as easy as hiring a mercenary. What's that? You need 6 people to run this task? Fine. Me, Frank, Joe and our 3 mercernaries fits the bill. It wasn't like the old days when you'd spend half an hour looking for the perfect group to put together. You find who you could and hire the rest (as long as it wasn't a raid zone). That's why SoD will always be one of my favorite expansions. In fact if it weren't for the mercs, I would never have returned to EQ after leaving once before in 2004.
It survived because it is one of many cheap sources of entertainment and those of us who started in 1999 with the initial expansion still enjoy this game. I've seen many folks quit in the years since for various reasons. I'm currently ready to quit also, due to terrible customer service. In the past the GMs would actually help if a quest was bugged. Now they just copy paste the "we can't help" text and hit autoreply no matter what your issue is. 1. If your product is broken it is the customer service representative's job to make the customer happy so they will stay and pay their money, that is what Sales folks call "retention". 2. It is also a well known fact that if you have a good experience you tell 3 people, bad experience is more like 20+ people will be told, probably more these days with social media. 3. Retaining a customer is 10x cheaper than acquiring a new customer - which, since EQ is such an old game, the new customer acquisition is probably non-existent, any new accounts are existing customers 2, 3 or 4 boxing. This game is not the prettiest, graphics wise, or fastest, or coolest, or most popular. Gutting customer service and treating existing customers like crap is going to lead to the demise of this game. People will only take so much before they leave.
+1 to what Calia said, SoD happen to have been the expansion that drew me back into this game. The addition of mercs really helped the game push along. I had played with mercenaries in Guild Wars prior, so I've always liked the idea of mercs. When I saw it became a thing with EQ, I just had to come back and give it another try. Mercenaries, along with SoD's inclusive design, helped draw people back into EQ. SoD was an expansion where people happily played their alts and went through progression with alts. Because it was doable, and it was fun. I leveled so many characters that year when I came back to EQ (after being gone for over 5 years). This is why I could never forgive them for Underfoot, that expansion single-handedly punched all the returnees in the guts. It pushed me away for a year, before HoT drew me back again. In HoT housing was an awesome new feature, progression was also doable and fun again. I really wish the devs would get what draws people back, and what keeps people around. Times have changed, people really don't want to get punched in the stomach and walk backwards up the hills anymore while trying to relax and play a game. SoD & HoT make more people happy, Underfoot & TDS make people angry. Take a note. Each time you mess up, people leave and many never come back. EQ was not dead when EQ2/WoW launched. A good portion of EQ playerbase simply jumped into EQ2 thinking EQ2 was going to be the next EQ, myself included. It took all but 1 month for me to quit EQ2 before getting addicted to WoW. Let's face it, vanilla WoW was built by ex-EQ players. It was EQ on steroids set in warcraft universe. It had holy trinity, crowd control, it had large scale group content (upper BRS requiring perfect cc and more than 1 group to clear), it had large scale 40 player raids...and above all it embraced PvP where EQ (and SOE as a whole) shied away from PvP. But keep in mind it was said EQ1 had more players than EQ2 for at least 3 years after EQ2 had launched. So EQ was never dead, its playerbase simply dropped off temporarily and some servers had to be merged as a result. Nice try mentioning Vanguard though, Vanguard didn't threaten any games, it didn't do anything to any games. It had enough problems on its own and lost majority of its subscribers within 2 months. Why did EQ stay alive? Because like it or not, SOE kept it alive. I've always had this love/hate relationship with SOE. I loved the fact that they kept EQ alive by releasing expansions, adding new features, changing the game to fit today's gaming standards (such as adding mercs)., and kept evolving the game because the genre had changed. SOE & EQ devs deserve credit for EQ being alive. On the flip side, I never liked SOE's decision to go full throttle with EQ2, advertising it as if it was its flagship game for awhile. SOE also went with quantity above quality with their collection of games, this all directly affected the quality of EQ expansions because with every new game they pulled resources from EQ. EQ could've been kept alive more had they kept releasing expansions like SoD & HoT, rather than go with design decisions like Underfoot or TDS. A game is dead when the company stops releasing content/expansions. Look at Asheron's Call, Turbine stopped developing AC1 recently, the game is now dead to many. Even though thousands still play it, without monthly story patches, asheron's call isn't asheron's call anymore. We are really lucky SOE/Daybreak is keeping this game updated. Because frankly lots of games are no longer receiving content, many have been closed down, including many games released after 2007.
I agree EQ's basic formulas are classic: Kill dragon, rescue princess, $$$ and the myriad of variants. Healer, Tank, DPS, Puller, CC character advancement/progression with levels and experience. Not skill tree/sandboxy RvR And some changes helped: episodic/gear reset with occasional catchup content mercs And great content like PoHate, PoTime, ToV, and TDS. Forgive me for saying so, but EQ can be played in 1st person view. If I'm flying a jet, captain of a starship, driving a racecar, or operating an avatar I want to be inside the PC looking out. 3D PoV reminds me of Pac Man, Asteroids, and old/cheap pseudo 3D orthographic games. I can't abide by that stuff and I don't buy it.
1. addiction 2. the people you meet, know already or return to 3. there's a raiding system, unlike in many new games Everything else are reasons that all lead back to point 1. And no, Eq is not cheap. This is the part that troubles me, you really have to spend 40 bucks and then sub to play content that actually matters. If you already have subs (which is ok, if i want to play for a month i happily pay and this was always a much better system than f2p), new content should be delivered to people for free as reward for still playing. Or at least much cheaper. That part is simply outrageous, and one of the main reasons why population is declining.
Time. Every other game did not require you become intimate with your character/skillsets. You simply played, and anyone could play. EQ required you to get 'good' at it. It required you to invest your time, invest your self into the game. Doing so imprints it upon you just like owning something for years and years. It's much harder to quit something you've worked hard at. I've got several years of login time spread out of my toons. When you spend several years with something.. it's hard to just.. walk away. WoW I went to and in under a month I was max level and geared. Without powering, without real help from others, without having to form bonds. EQ? You can do that too, but you gotta find friends, a guild, etc.. you have to work together and really learn who you are and your role.
I like this thread because I often wonder the same thing. I loved the addition of merc's and agree totally that it probably saved the game to a good extent. I would also say that you need that content that "Punches you in the gut" as well as the content that is geared toward casuals. I don't mean to get all "Political" here but we can't all expect to get all the same things when we are not all putting in the same time. I like knowing that there is content out there that will just straight out demolish me. And I've always like seeing some raider come by and just solo stuff that it's taking a whole group to kill because that dude has put in some serious time and is a beast. (Back in the day's of Wall's of Slaughter seeing this decked out cleric just solo boss mobs). I like knowing there is content out there that takes a full group of people intelligently playing their characters with some CC going on, it's that kind of group co-ordination that really makes the MMORPG exciting for me. And eq has been able to provide that challenge for me where others have not. If I wan't to be challenged in a group setting then I can do that and if I want to try and multi-box and test myself that way I'm free to do that.
it's amazing how EQ survived that long despite it's profit being reinvested in other game ( EQ2, vanguard and now EQnext) instead of being reinvested in EQ itself.
I dont agree...mercs are killingthis game....im so tired of seeing people lfg and others in a zone refuse to drop a merc n add a real player, and still to this day there is lots of crap thzt you need a full group of live players and STILL people refuse to drop a merc
I doubt SOE/Daybreak could comment, but it's fun to speculate. I'd bet that there was some kind of insider scam going on with their old customer service team. Something with restoring the "hacked" and "deleted" characters transferred to FV. What leads me to believe this? -Barren Customer Service Department -All those threads about FV and that whole controversy, which lead to Roshen saying "if there is a legitimate hack, your stuff will be restored," (paraphrasing) -Then, when the scam was busted, the character restorations stopped, causing the people to come out and claim they are hacked to insight outrage in the community (which happened) So now, we are stuck waiting while the new customer service team is being trained. That, or the current state of "Copy/Paste Auto-Reply" is indeed permanent and this is just the start of attempting to put EQ1 on Auto-Pilot, which means we have ... 2-3 years left?
EQ players are sometimes oblivious to anything and anyone except themselves.... truths are :90% of players dont care at all about any progression servers one bit. mercs ruined EQ. ask yourself how many new friends you have made in game since 2008?
I have made dozens of new friends since 2008. EQ is a social game and if you attempt to work with others its amazing how many players will work with you. Ruven
I came back to EQ because vanguard died. Vanguard was a worthy successor to EQ, but it died because: 1. Poor coding at launch caused people to leave. Great game design but poor coding. 2. Then lack of subs made it impossible to produce expansions. That lack of new content ultimately killed it.
My short answer to that is the last time I came back to EQ after a break I made about 4-5 really good friends in the game. 2-3 of those people I was grouping with so much that I got their cell phone numbers so we could text each other and coordinate grouping (not trade D#$k pictures lol). I'll agree that to some degree having merc's might dicourage grouping with other people. This topic of "yes mercs/mercs suck" has been beaten to death for sure. Do you want to group with someone just because they "need" a healer? Chances are the same -clown that doesn't take you into a group over a merc is either A- A D bag that is basically doing you a favor because he's such a jerk. B- He'd probably be boxing a cleric without mercs anyways. C- You're healing abilities and sense of awareness are so terrible that someone else is willing to have a "robot" do your job =(. If you have 2 other RL friends merc's help you fill roles that might not be around at the time.
I agree. Mercs ruined EQ. But without mercs, EQ would have died. So pick your poison. I'll take the watered down version over nothing at all, and certainly over playing World of Snorecraft.
I go against this. Bad players ruined eq (those not of equal skill or ambition) mercs are only a place holder until you can fill that spot as often exercised by my friends and I. We love real tanks/healers. Sometimes they aren't available. Pop a merc. It's the people who only cater them themselves with their merc that make "mercs ruin eq".
