May be late to the party here on the eq forms but don't see much posted on this. Apparently Landmark is now shut down. Myself, I never really played it over 30 minutes because i am not a very creative artistic person. However with changing of the guard with Sony to DBG it seems more and more like parts of the IP are being milked and sold/shutdown for some larger goal. Now what that is I am not smart enough to know. I know some will say a business has to make money. blah blah blah .. not here to argue that. Nor am i here say that it was a good game. My concern is, in only given the past track record so far, is Everquest on the next chopping block? Only from what i have read and heard on other sites.. DBG has not created its own IP H1z1 included. They seem like an acquisitions company to simply try and turn a profit. Now dont get me wrong, I have thrown quite a substantial sum of money to this world since 1999. All sorts of pictures, schwag, in game items and of coarse sub fees. And i would love to continue to spend money on it. I love the game!! It is stressful at times yes. It is imbalanced at times.. yes. There are a lot of things that could be improved on. There are folks who feel that this is there home, can't explain it, but this is were we belong. I have tried to take the news of eq next as a positive sign that money will be sent back into current games and a refocusing on current content. I want to stay positive about all of this. When i heard news of Landmark just up and closing down has not sat well with me and i guess its made me question if i want to keep supporting something that might not be around soon. There are different games out there, and i have tried most of them for a bit, this is sort of my "You can always come home if your in need." Corny yes but i bet a lot of you feel the same way. So what should they change in order to bring in more people? Everyone has their own opinions that .. really not everyone can agree with. Get downright hostel to each other over a disagreement. Sometimes thou its like where I used to work.. if we did not complain about something, then the company knew that we didn't care about it and would not do anything to change it. So with that i would say? Without any game play mechanics changes, maybe a facelift on graphics in areas and a more lore involved story line. Really thou my opinion really does not matter on this forum. I prefer to try and make the most with what I am given and try to overcome its challenges. So with a risk of the corporate hammer smiting me to nothingness.. I understand there are those of you devs out there that might share this feeling. I guess i will just ask.. Am i overreacting? Is there something we as players should try to do and help the future of the game? Thanks for reading.
Landmark/EQ next was a money sink. It was sapping money from other games to fund it. They decided to stop the sink and just focus on the games they have. Yay us, we got decent expansions recently vs throwing our subscription money into the ether.
Ya Bigstomp summed it up pretty well, DBG is basically trimming the fat. Landmark and EQ Next were losing money so it was an easy decision to scrap them. EQ is still going strong, they've already mentioned plans for the next expansion are already in the works. I think the TLP was a smart move for them, as much as many of us on live hate them, they are bringing in more money to the game. We might even be getting some new members on live from them, as people catch up and want to jump into live. So I don't think you have to worry about EQ shutting down anytime soon, it's probably there biggest money maker still.
EQ will be around for another 10+ years.. as long as it makes them money .. dont know if they will still offer support (ie new expansions etc) but I seriously doubt they will shut the doors .. I used to play UO back in the day and stopped as soon as EQ came along , but UO is still going ..
As other have mentioned, the first expansion(EoK) after the landmark/eqnext shutdown has been much more polished and expansive that the previous expansion(TBM). Only 1 zone was a copy-paste-job asset-wise(droga), compared to pohealth, codecay and cosul in TBM(I count the demiplanes as 2 original zones here). The only thing EoK seems to be missing to reach the glory of older expansions seems to tradeskills(unless they are simply just undiscovered at this point?). EoK also seemed much better tested and had less bugs at launch. EQ doesn't seem to be suffering. IMO EQ could use a graphical facelift. An overhaul of the UI would also be welcome: (Warning: rant incoming....) The main problem with all the additions they make, is that each time they add something new, it doesn't integrate well with older features, hence we have 6 different types of quests(tasks, quests, ldon-adventures, missions, expeditions, and the old flag-based quests that are not shown in the UI at all) and several different types of currencies(don-crystals, ldon points and modern currencies). They also missed an opportunity to integrate the ldons into the new HA-system, or the CoTF HAs exp reward-systems into the newer HA-exp-reward system. This deveopment style makes the game a confusing mess. You can't always just add on top of an existing system without some refactoring of the old, I hope they figure that out soon.
As someone who played Landmark a little (I probably watched it way longer than I was in-game, because hey, who wouldn't slow down to look at a nasty trainwreck?), I can say in comparison that EQ is far better off in the future. It's EQ2 you need to worry about - they're really wringing it to death. Landmark was such a bad game design and full of so many bugs that it was worse than the hyped release of No Man's Sky and the abandoned launch of Starforge. Daybreak had two options - cancel the game and refund everyone from early access (see: Smedley and Hero's Song) and lose millions, OR spend a little and keep everyone's money with minimal effort and time. So Daybreak put Holly to work and pushed it to launch, knowing full well it would fail and be shut down, as long as they kept players' money it was fine. 4 months ago the game didn't even have any active developers left on it. They were quietly transitioned to H1Z1 or left the company entirely. Some are so miffed they are trying to start a class action against Daybreak. Don't know much about it or if it will go anywhere. EQ2 has few players than EQ, macrotransactions, long grinds that most players don't want to do, or P2W shortcuts very few are willing to pay for. While I think EQ is safe for now, if EQ2 dies then they'll turn their horrible game-killing methods on this one. EDIT: and yeah they saved nothing and compensated nothing. They didn't even keep the credits. Weren't you supposed to be a "proud executive producer" of Landmark, Holly?
Here's Everquest's sole problem with lack of business or that there of. They do not have a marketing system or team whatsoever. When's the last time you heard of an Everquest commercial or advertising. I'd assume that i'd be Everquest online adventures. "It's time to slay the dragon." And that was what, 12 years ago or so, not being exactly literal to the time line. What do we think about with an MMO. We all think of WOW. Why, because they have an advertising team and continuously put their product in the spotlight. Everquest not advertising for the last 12 years+, they are doing relatively well, in theory the business should be dead from such a toxic practice of non marketing. So in that sense, they are doing well. But if they want to do better and want to do something well for DBG and well for the game, and continue to reap revenue. They need to develop a marketing team, it's that easy.
When is the last time you heard of an Ultima Online commercial? Dark Age of Camelot? Eve Online etc etc... I don't really recall any ads for very old MMOs. Sure I would love to see them but what do you expect. Of course I haven't even seen any H1Z1 ads so maybe I don't get around much. I think if we want Everquest ads we would need to do them ourselves. Who knows if we all went out and talked up the game on various forums maybe we could get a few new players.
I wouldn't worry about EQ1 or DBG for the time being, sunsetting Landmark makes sense because it really wasn't going anywhere with EQN being scrapped. The devs got shuffled to other teams over a year ago and there hasn't been a whole lot of work done on it in that time frame, they just finally removed life support from the game - it's a smart business move. H1Z1 - King of the Kill's "Fight for the Crown" tournament is going to be televised on the CW on April 20th. So that's pretty big, but your point is right.
There we go, three everquest commmercials. I know there's a few more, but right there that was the peak of everquest. They we're in the spotlight, in magazines, etc. They had a marketing team. Do you not remember the old customer service? Do you not remember the old cloth maps? The action figures? That's marketing. It's dead now, dead marketing means dead product. DBG aquired a golden goose, how they treat it from there on out is what will become of this. If they encourage marketing and getting new players in and pertaining to feedback. Then they will thrive, become rich. Wtf ever they desire. But if they want to continue down their destructive path and ignore players, ignore the market, and ignore feedback. Then they set their golden goose on fire. Just speaking from an It innovation approach, where my experience lies, there with software engineering and a few other. From my perspective, that's their "fork in the road," chance. What they do here on out I believe will define their company. ~Safe travels~
DBG is, for the most part, the same company as SOE. It was just a name change. You are thinking of Columbus Nova, who bought SOE from Sony. Did Sony do much more for EQ than CN has? IDK, my impression was that it was all SOE and Sony was strictly hands off. That's quite a stretch to claim that EQ was ever "in the spotlight". In any case, those commercials are ancient history and the marketing was discontinued long before CN bought them.
I aplaude your passion for our game, but I think you are wrong in your business analysis. My interpretation is that EQ is in the best place it has been for a number of years, business wise, with stable growth in returning customer base, continous development, and good expansion(s... I expect the next one to be up to EoK standards). IMO, EQ is run more professionally now that it has EVER been. It is easy to throw away money when you swim in it, but it does not a better game make by default. I think if you would take a time machine back in time, you might be as dissatisfied, albeit over different topics, as you are today? There are many ways to drive a business, and I think the DBG business model is the right one for games like EQ. Cheer up!
Don't bring logical thought to these forums, this is no place for that. On topic, since returning to the game, I've thoroughly enjoyed EoK so far. Haven't raided in this expansion yet but the group stuff has all been pretty on point.
