A Vision 3.0: The Future of Everquest is Us

Main issue with a crowd sourced EQ is the money aspect. I highly doubt DBG or any company with a vested interest in the game will OK a release of the code while the game remains a viable and profitable enterprise. As was stated, reverse engineering would be only way to get this going, which would essentially be a labor of love unless some third party financed it, which seems unlikely. Then there are intellectual property issues once this is done, preventing any true development.

Maybe once EQ is sunset as a product, it would be possible, but that would only happen if all vested interest in the game was written off and basically thrown to the wayside.

More likely (though not a very good chance), a player based development along the lines of the player studio might be allowed, but with all the headache of keeping the game plausible for consumption by consumers with a reasonably equal experience would probably render this improbable.

Way to add value to a thread.

That implies that there was any value worth discussing in the original post...

um. no it doesn't. You can add 1 to 0.

Why? EQ2 still has a lot of people playing, on top of being a decent game. Just because it has to split resources between itself and EQ1, doesn't mean one should shut down the game. Just because *you* personally don't like the game, doesn't mean everyone hates it. Take me, for example. I play both games. I enjoy both games. As much as it would sadden me to see EQ1 go away, I would feel the same about EQ2.

Don't be a dingus. =)

Funding?

You mean coding and assets that already exist and were spend in development back in 1999-2002 onward that have already paid for themselves many times over. The game is "built."

You mean Kickstarter and Indie Go Go for funding.

"Napster" already exists for Everquest with several emulators out there. I'm not a user of these products nor an endorser, but I just know they exist. Ultima Online also has allowed players to run their own servers actively for years.

Technologically the pirates already figured it out, we're already there.

The question is putting it together and whether the permission to attempt it from Daybreak or Daybreak initiating it themselves would be a better idea.

This game is several games over several years, but this development team can't build a game that grows each year.

What I'm saying is, yes the game is old, yes the game is declining. Age of Empires 2 came out the same year as Everquest.

Here's a good article on that:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/12/28/age-of-empires-2-forgotten-empires/

It took a mod team to revive Age of Empires. This is after the original development team had long since moved on, this is long since the game was released. That game is producing new expansions, new content, and new longevity because of a dedicated player base.

Everquest had 200,000 active player at the height, this was during Lost Dungeon of Norrath in 2003. Good game are now multigenerational and modification teams and people like that are how brands stay alive and grow.

The problem is the current teams are also pirates. They are stealing IP that they did not necessarily pay for. While I understand some of these people's philosophies and the like, we need to be realistic. Is Daybreak going to go after these people? I don't know, I don't care I'm not affiliated with them.

I've heard this time and again. Impossible. Improbable. Even from one developer stating "All classes are balanced." You know what?

There are people who are dismissive of an idea, the question is not feasability but is if there is enough profitability to sell units.

Classic Everquest is a brand.

Everyone can be a game developer these days, quite easily.

Just not every has had the opportunity to be an Everquest developer. Selling that opportunity has value for the right price.

This would be an awesome "thanks for all the fish" move when the game is finally sunset. The day they shut off the servers, EQ uploads a package of source code and data to the web.

Has any developer other than small indies done that before? The only one I can think of is Arkane Studios with Arx Fatalis, they released the source code eight years after release, with a compatibility patch to boot. Very classy move.

It's extremely rare in any case, Daybreak and Columbus Nova don't seem like the kind of people that do that. Arkane has PC gaming icons like Harvey Smith, famous for System Shock, Deus Ex, the above mentioned Arx, and Dishonored. Dishonored is less than a month away from releasing its sequel, too.

point being everquest is a better game than wow yet our numbers are dwindling.
everquest offers nothing to attract new players to our base. if this keeps up well.. bye bye eq.
retooling is a normal thing for many corps.
i'm not talking about re-tooling Your eq.
i'm saying retool a new stand alone classic. new graphics. new servers,same game play. same eq hook.

you're the five millionth person to suggest new graphics will somehow attract new players, when graphics isn't the reason people play everquest. just stop it with that broken logic, please

While I don't think updated graphics would be the one thing that would turn subs around/bring old players back and new players in. If it could be done at minimal cost or funding mysteriously found for it; it certainly wouldn't hurt. But please no cartoony EQ Next graphics, any graphic upgrade should maintain the existing look and feel.

I think a much higher priority would be moving the client to 64-bit and fixing all the crashy-ness and memory problems of the existing 32-bit client. Players frustrated by an unstable client are people that don't stick around and move on. We need to square up the foundation before we bother slathering on a new coat of paint!

What I'm truly curious about is: what one feasible/reasonable thing do you and everyone else think would attract new players?

To answer that, you answer this question. What is the biggest hurtle new/returning players have? Answer is getting up to a point where you can actually play the game with other players.

There is a simple fix, but a lot of people would get butt hurt.

Change the free to play model to include free Heroic characters at the starting point of whatever expansion is open to free to play. With CotF soon to open, that would be LvL 100 toons with AAs/Spells/Gear from RoF.

Those players would then be able to dabble in relatively new content and decide if they want to play the game. It would also allow those who actually want to play to quickly go to Gold Status and immediately begin playing with... get this... Other people in current content! I know that sounds crazy, but that is generally what people want to do when they start playing a game.

The alternative is what we have now. New/returning players left in desolate zones left to their own devices with virtually no contact with others. Even with the current Heroic toons your asking these players to pay X amount of dollars (toon, sub, expansions) to play a game in which they are still light years behind with few if any other players around. That isn't and doesn't attract or keep new players.

People generally don't like this idea because...
1) People complain it's not fair because they had to spend x amount of time on their current toons to get where they are. They ignore the fact that for nearly everyone, all that time was spent playing their toons in and experiencing current content throughout those years.
2) People complain that said players will be bad, because they haven't played those toons long enough and it will create even more bad players than we have now. This too ignores the facts that these people wouldn't learn their toons grinding away solo (forming terrible habits/not learning anything while they do it), that the amount of time someone plays doesn't equate to skill/ability (there are tons of people with years of experience that are horribad), and I would think having more bad players (that might learn) is better than having no players around. It might even help PUGs.

But that is just the most obvious, easiest to implement and proven method in other games at attracting and retaining new/returning players. So it wont happen here.

Edit: Longer rant than I originally intent, but reading the constant stream of these threads gets to me after a while.

Advertise the game and hire enough people to make expansions with enough good content.

So we bemoan the perceived loss of population and then go on to say that we should start up unofficial servers? The result would be further segmentation of the player base and produce less revenue for the official product. If you guys haven't noticed, EQ is not shutting down servers. Instead it is launching new ones. (Numbers on Live servers may be down but a large part of that is due to the success of the new progression servers.) It's much too early to be having this discussion.

But what do they do when they don't have the money to do either? I mean clearly they don't because they aren't doing either of these.

The way I see it any money spent:

• has to be spent very strategically, otherwise it's too expensive i.e. the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
• have a foundational and long lasting benefit to the game.

If they don't do something to:

1. ease the transition for new players into the complexity,
2. make the slog from 1-85/95 (where the majority of the playerbase is) enjoyable,
3. make the game stable (64-bit client, whatever server side changes needed.)

Then people aren't going to stick around long enough to experience the richness of EQ's gameplay.

1. could be solved with a better tutorial,
2. I don't know how to crack this nut. There's got to be something interesting, innovative, and fun that could be done here. Heroic Characters partially solve this, but doesn't do right by new players (a new player having to buy their way past the wasteland of the low end game on live servers just doesn't sit right with me, players with a char already leveled to 105 and want a pre-leveled alt sure.) I recognize TLP kind of solves this as it makes the low end game current, but I don't think it does enough.
3. just needs a commitment from DBG and programming time.

We all know there is a great game here; hopefully DBG can figure out a path that will extend it's life and make it even greater.

@Caell;

Imagine having to go through several level specific tutorials where you have show mastery of any number of skills before being automagically promoted to say levels: 20, 50 and 85. In other words the old "big steps in evolution" from the old/orignal game aspects. Interesting idea and not without its merits but I will allow the two biggest naysayers jump in on that later.

A 64-bit client seems like an obvious path but technically very challenging, Really requires more than just a recompile. Then again, I am not entirely sure we are talking C++ or not. I am confident someone knows the answer to this better than myself.

The last paragraph outside of more "automagic" or more realistic conversation outside of "No" or it's not worth discussing petulant discussion threads is what is needed. Anything less just shows a declining base of interest and the opposite of what is needed at this time but hey, thanks for playing.

If the game is worth moving forward its worth talking about what it would take to move it forward.

- Coa

See now that's an interesting idea! A set of quests to prove ability/capability and your char gains levels/AAs. I like it! No more newbies with an 85 HC and lost on how to play their char.

Obviously, this wouldn't be easy, otherwise they would have done it by now. But for the longevity of the game, I believe it's worth the effort and much needed. And I bet in going through the conversion of the code they would find some bugs they didn't notice before.

You lost me here, not sure what paragraph is being referenced.

Agreed!

Reincarnation system would greatly alleviate the high end problem but it really needs a reboot but to many disagree so I purpose this a new expansion one where everyone starts off at lvl one u can go back to ole eq with its lvls and was. Veteran players maybe get some sort of Small bonus in the new expac essentialally a eq3. Eq gets new players WO having to start over. It serves as a on ramp to the end game and gives people things to do. People get a achievement/as for "beating" the new area

You won't be able to sell an overhaul with the same difficulty curve of gameplay. The only developer still making games like that is From, and the Souls/Bloodborne genre is absolutely not for everyone. Accessibility would be a must out of the gate.

New Graphics would help.
That way you can actually advertise the game , make Trailers and do some Marketing .
Graphis are expected of a Computer game. They are the de-facto Standard.

I am not sure a 64bit Version would help. As you can run 32 bit application on a 64 bit host System just fine. Streamlining, optimizing more efficent Memory use and Hardware Support - hell yes. That would go a Long way.

I do vote for some Player generated contend. EQ was new and innovative so i do think this would fit well. There are most likely some experiences and Projects to learn from on the web.

to the People crashing:
i have had that Problem too in the past when zoning. After i reinstalled my System (hdd went splat) ,did some Driver Research, it got a whole lot better. so worth looking into that.

the bottom line:
Does DB and their shareholders want the game to be there in 5 years ? Short term vs Long term Revenue. My guess is less then 30% of the Money generated by eq is actually invested back in it.