It wasn't about looking good to the public. They wanted P99 to delay bringing out Velious on P99 so they agreed to acknowledge them publicly so P99 wouldn't take players away from the progression server coming out. I suspect Daybreak doesn't expect to create another progression server after the one in the summer or this was the best they could do to slow down P99.
Slow down? If they're thinking with that sort of mentality Daybreak is done for. The best thing they could do it get closer to the community and hopefully bring it and its community back to Live. They have an opportunity here to do things a better off company wouldn't think of that could wind up having Everquest getting a fresh dose of Classic-like content, something that to varying degrees the remaining community of fans want.
Yeah but you still play some and thats good. You're fodder for people that do pay for micro transactions
...which you can already get from the now officially endorsed p99 server. Have fun. ^This x1000. Granting p99 legal immunity was one of the most intelligent marketing schemes to date. Also one of the most obvious. P99 was going to steal away potential customers waiting for the new TLP server if they launched SOV before it went live. Now, DBG has made a contract with them that basically removes p99 from being competition. Idunno how many times people have to explain this for all the p99/TLP fanbois to understand what is going on. Their marketing scheme worked - I've already seen tons of posts from people saying, "WOW, since you acknowledged p99, this makes me want to come back to your game for the TLP server!" Now, I don't see any logic in that but numerous TLP supporters said it so who knows. Anything Smed says is meaningless. Next year when poll numbers are in and people want games that require 72!? hour settings, he will backtrack. Smed is best served with a nice Grain.of.Salt.
Smed is right. Power gamers need the casuals to subsidize their hobby. Casual players outnumber the power gamers 100 to 1 and AAA titles are so expensive to make. In today's market, the casuals would rather jump into a console game and play some multiplayer for 30 to 60 mins... which means the cost analysis for the investors doesn't look favorable toward grind-oriented MMOs. Sure, there's a niche for the "Everquest genre", but it's not a AAA niche.
If you read the release part of the agreement was for P99 to delay adding Velious. So slow down was the intention. I don't see acknowledgement or ignoring P99 as being a factor in Daybreaks success though. I agree it's a win for the crowd though. A fresh dose of free classic content does nothing for their bottom line nor does the goodwill of those who want to play EQ for free on an . All Daybreak was doing was making the best of a bad situation.
Faster pace games have faster logout times. You play a shooter, you're likely to log out after 45 minutes, it's true. In addition to the very pace of the game tiring a player out faster, you don't have the same socialization and other factors keeping a player online. Selling and banking after the mob killing is done, etc. Not to mention, if you're playing Planetside 2 (for example), I, at least, never had that feeling of "oh I need to get ONE more level and get my spells! Woops, got my level, let me get a few more kills for a buffer so I don't lose it with one death...". Just doesn't work that way. Back in the day I would play 4 hours EQ then play 1 hour Battlefield 2 before sleep. Two different games. EverQuest might be losing steam with age, but that's no reason for Smedley to start saying that the very type of gaming is dead. And in any event, if MMORPGs ARE getting to where they have to be extremely short playtimes, it's because the gaming companies caved in to easier/faster/shorter/every character should be able to heal/teamwork not required/etc; it's because they caved in to those things and let the landslide begin.
The heavily corrupt sever with a very unprofessional staff? One of my guild members who used to play there committed suicide a few months ago and the staff joined in in talking about him after we asked people to keep in mind that someone we'd known 12 years had died, including Rogean. VZTZ corruption, incompetence and unprofessionalism burnt me out from playing on years ago. I'm looking for a game run by people whose actual job hinges on it.
No you are wrong, there are more gamers who want to play endless hours a day (as much as they can afford) in the same game. I really don't know where this is coming from, but even the WoW players i know make tons of toons and stock them or their homes etc up (whatever you do exactly in wow to advance, i forgot). Aka they spend lots of time in the game. I guess one day random dude said "hey there are more casuals than power gamers", and they all said "okay". Nonsense. Those so called casuals usually don't grab mmorpgs anyway. The other fairy tale is that you cannot achieve something in EQ in 45mins...hello? Most classes can take a merc and burn their lesson or do a merc / partisan thing no problem in that time, i have zero problems doing that.
This is and always been the dirty secret of lots of games and activities. The top end(professionals) that do things that are interesting is both not a significant source of revenue, and an inspiration/goal/entertainment for those who are invested in that activity. From personal experience I know this from Magic:TG, road cycling, and EQ1 (the only one were I'm in the "pro" class). In both magic and cycling, the pro level competition is regarded as a marketing budget for those involved in it. WoTC doesn't make money off LSV, BMC doesn't make money off their team BMC. The money is made off the much more populous aspiration pros and casuals. From magic, I can easily say that the number go up by orders of magnitudes as you go down the chain from Pros, to grinders, to store competitives, competitive casuals, to casuals. Each of those tiers looks up to the other tiers for inspiration, ideas, and as mentors. If someone high on the chain is burned, that will be multiplied when they complain to those who follow them. In the EQ realm, Furor and Tigole had guilds of what? 50-80 people each. But their reach from front page updates was MUCH higher. When either of them posted about anything good or bad in EQ, it would be a topic of discussion in my guild. We raced to get 2nd on an SK weapon from Telkorenar because of an FoH post. And the damage from them saying "F EQ, and its buggy GoD expansion, we've moving to (and hired by) WoW" was immeasurably bad. Successful activities do need to cater to participants across the engagement levels. Having a good top end and lower base are both an important part of the larger experience and success of that activity.
Smedley is wrong. Casual players flock to casual titles like Tetris, FarmVille , Mafia Wars, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Peggle, Zuma, etc. While some of these games make garage software shops big money most end up being one hit wonders and there's a huge pile of titles (and companies) that don't make the rather low bar cut. There isn't much of a technology battier to produce such things and as a result the market is flooded - hard to make money in that environment (see the video game crash of 1977, 1983, etc.). Survey the big name franchise titles and its a different story - GTA, WoW, Dark Souls, ... These games are not Mine Sweeper and you don't spend 40 minute or less playing them and then texting for the rest of the weekend. So Daybreak... wanna be a GAME company or an LCD watch "game" title producer. Opt for Mystic Dolphin Wars and the joys of eating herring at 100 points each and y'all can "casual" alone. People who aren't gamers might be amused by those applications on their smartphones but I sure fire would rather make games for gamers.
I think a mix is needed, some days I'm in the mood for hours of everquest other days an hour of this an hour of that.
Long post but maybe worth reading for true gamers and for the older generation of gamers that played in the glory days of EverQuest in 1999. Smedly Has made the biggest marketing assumption mistake of all time. To assume you know your market is business suicide. To assume is to make an out of you and me. I'm 41 years old a business owner I will not or ever tell you, I know what my customers want. I can only use the law of averages and sales statistics.. I introduce a new product it sells for the first half of the month then it tends to die down. If I sell a product that has proven itself time and time again. I invest my money on it because then based on my sales and return customers I have something. I then know that my customers want that particular product or feature and I have return sales and happy customers. Bad weather rain cold affects my business and people don't want to go out in these conditions to come buy my products. Job loss, people leaving moving from the area affect my business. Baby sitter for the kids so on and so fourth. There is a solution to guarantee their return to my store. Customer satisfaction and caring about the products they have come to love and depend on. 45 minutes of game play is not the standard nor will it be. He's not factoring in all the variables. There is a market out there for EverQuest Style of game play with a few modern touches People need a reason to log into play. You need to bring back the reason to play your game or buy your product. Quality needs to be a focus and interacting with your customers and show them you care about their purchase of your product. You need to stop practicing what your competitor is doing because his product will fail or loose interest with time and variables. IN my opinion the free play model does not create a committed loyal fan base or customer base. Free to play only works for the Asian market because they can build the next MMO for pennies for what it cost Day Break Games. They can keep their free to play base interested because they bring out new look. Asian games keep coming out faster than western MMO RPGS. They can pay some programmer much cheaper. Why do you think everything has moved to china? Cheaper labor they can build it quicker because they can hire more at half the cost and make more. Remember the fluff looses its luster overtime. Customers aren't stupid and they can and will get tired of seeing it and you begin to ruin your own product line with what you think are new ideas that are nothing new like a Pepsi can or a coke can with a new look. Day Break Games needs to go back and take a hard look at why Ever Quest was so successful. They need to embrace those core concepts. I played Ever Quest for 8 years and as time went on I didn't get bored of the game. I lost interest because they sabotaged the core mechanics of the game. Social grouping having to work for progression and challenge made me commit more time to a game that I loved. I was a casual player and I was dedicated to the progression of my character along with my friends and I had to work for it. I had to wok with my friends on corpse runs and organize events with guild members. Yeah corpse runs sucked....I was punished for being stupid or not tactically smart. The funny thing is you know I might have been pissed and disgruntled, but guess what I wasn't about to let Ever Quest Beat me. I spent 8 years until they watered it down and introduced group destroying content and catering to a base of players that showed to log in for 45 minutes and complained about the how hard the game was and then left never to return. There is no challenge in todays MMORPGs and a lot of them are no longer truly MMORPGS. A lot of them don't require social interaction and they all make you a super hero in less than 45 minutes of game play. I'm sorry but in the real world no one is a super hero. This was posted by a player in the forums years ago. I think the hit some of the points that I think a lot of folks would like to articulate when they want to convey their feelings about todays MMOs. First of all. My English isnt he best, so dont flame me for grammar please In my Opinion the problem with the MMORPGs these days is: Too many Non-MMORPG-Players playing MMORPGs. Sounds silly but let me explain. When i started playing Online Roleplaying games with Meridian 59, Ultima Online and EQ1 only Peoples who like those kind of Games played them. I didnt see any Forum Posts or ingame Peoples crying about the game style. Some Smart Developers had the idea to bring the other Players out there in thier Games too. They wantet the Counterstrike, the Strategy and even the "The Sims" players in thier games too. Today we get alot peoples in MMORPGs who dont even like the Genre at all. MMORPGs forum from newer games are full of Posts where peoples cry about the game they playing. They want the games be like offline games. They want a silder for playing the Game at "very easy" they decline to use thier Brains to make plans how to play the Charakters and the game at all. Ther are peoples who ask (before they even start the game) for the best Class ingame. Ive even seen Posts from peoples demand "Solo Raid Content" in the Game they playing.. i mean .. W.T.F? Solo Raids? That doesnt even make sence to me. They dont want to play a supporter or Tank or Healer.. they want Classes who can make it all in once and cry if they cant to all at the best. The result of this are games like Guildwars2. Where everyone can do everything. And the worst is the Game magazines. They hype these kind of game to Heaven. For me, almost everything Game magazines say its positive, its a big Negative for me. Things like "Short and funny Dungeons" sounds negative for me. I want Huge, hard and Explorable Dungeons. The most Favorite Dungeons ive played in my Life was "Lower Guk" in EQ1 or Soluzeks Eye in EQ1 and EQ2. Im not a big fan of Easy 10 Minutes Dungeons with an almost instand Reward. So today we got alot Non-MMORPG-Players who dont like the Genre, we got the "I only can play 10 Minutes a day but i want to finish the endgame because i payed for it" peoples together with Developers who try to make every Satisfyed. And on a strange way they almost all end up as Free to play games in a very short periot of time and wonder why. -I like Downtime. Downtime makes a Comunity. You sit there waiting for mana and you Talk with others playing the game. You cant build a Comunity if you are busy pressing 100000 Buttons in 1 minute. (That happens in Wow where you dont even say more then "Hi" and "Bye" in a group) -I like Dungeons and Classes where you need to make a Plan how to manage the Dungeon. You cant have a Comunity if the only plan you need is "Pull everything in sight range and Bomb it all to Hell" -I like Death Penaltys. If you dont lose anything by Dieing there is no need to talk. You just make stupid things and Win. I dont think to win every time no matter what you do is very Fun for a long time. And finaly i dont want to have my Hands holdet by the Engine. If i want to jump from a Cliff and Die. I dont want to have a f****n invisible Wall to Protekt me from beeing Stupid. I dont want to have a Door at a Dungeon tells me "Oh no you are to low level you cant Enter" I dont want a Crafting System where all i need to do is to press the Combine Button and get the wanted Item with a 100% chance. If you made it this far you care about games and were they are going thanks for reading fellow gamer.
I think what makes this game less challenging these days there are no corpse runs. Where it actually means something fast regen Mode Etc. When you died in a dungeon and had to fish your corpse out. I wish double invis was not possible and there were a lot more see invisible mobs that require a skilled puller to split mobs.
You want this game to be challenging again do away with guild lobby and guild hall make ports useful. No more fast regen no way to summon corpses on command without a necro Etc. Do away with instant fades and make it so you can't zone if you have agro.
I actually interpreted his comments as some foreshadowing to the death of EQN. Why put resources in to building something new that's already a dead market? One could argue that even starting on EQN was a mistake.
I can't find it now, but last night read a post by a Dev who said "we had this great idea for a seasonal server and you guys all shot it down". OK, that is a *PERFECT* example of a development team who has no clue what their customers want and are unable to admit it. The fact that it was shot down proves that it was NOT a good idea. If it was a good idea, customers would embrace it. Saying it's a "great idea" is just another whiny argument because YOU like it. And saying "all you guys shot it down" is basically being dismissive of your customers. You had a stupid idea, all your customers hated it, you're bitter and so you blame the customers. Perfect example of the dysfunction that is threatening to end this business. My son is an avid gamer. He is the target demographic for the gamer marketplace. He and I played EQ a lot and he has moved on to many games. We were talking last night and his comment was: I will never, ever play EQN or any other DBG title ever. They ruined H1Z1 and are so incompetent and have no idea how to run a game - they are the worst on the market. I asked him why and he said the game is full of nothing but asian hacks and DBG refuses to region block or do anything to stop this. The Internet is full of hacks and cheats that they refuse to fix/stop. The game is rampant and overrun with cheaters and anyone who cheats gets a tiny temporary ban. Their complete lack of leadership and firm management has eroded the entire game. He and I have been playing MMORPG;s together since 2000. He is way beyond me in involvment and expertise now. I had an intelligent discussion about this and believe H1Z1 is doomed.
Oh come on you should see through that crap they feed us. It's not like DBG make Farmville type of games, there are few real casuals (those who play 45mins / day like Smed says) in mmorpgs or H1Z1. Professionals like ROI are not the only ones who spend lots of time in there, most of the money in Eq comes from people with alts. And most of the money in H1Z1 comes from pvp players who hang around forever in games to gank others, those are far from casual. It's no surprise that first SOE and now DBG will go nowhere with such beliefs...they are so clueless. The most successful blizzard games were always aimed at gaming addicts, i don't like blizzard much but unlike DBG they have ideas that work.
