Daybreaks early plan to Compete with Pantheon

Seeing how the game has gotten much harder for casual players, if suggest it's a way to keep as many of the hard core players from leaving EQ and going to Pantheon

Why would making the game harder for "casuals" help with "hardcore" player retention.

Pantheon will unlikely pull very many hardcore players from the Live servers. They are active, doing end game raid progression, and very invested. That's a lot to give up for an updated graphics engine.

Pantheon will be Hardcore old school EQ basically. So EQ if you notice with last 2 expansions are headed back to that same dynamic (similar shall I say) as it was back in 2000-2002. DBG is trying hard to keep as many players as they can because they know when Pantheon comes out, they will be losing at least 40 percent of their player base.

I think you're misunderstanding Pantheon. They have stated, similarly to Vanguard: SoH, that the game is intended mainly as a "core" game, meaning "hardcore" players are the raiders, "softcore" players are the solo casual types, and "core" players would represent those that want to log on, forms groups, and complete group content. I think they've said it's going to be roughly 20% softcore/casual, 60% "core" or grouping, and 20% hardcore/raiding. I think Pantheon is trying to get away from the "solo my way to max level" attitude and "one click easy craft" mechanics like many other modern MMOs. More complex? Yes. More social aspects and reasons for people to work together? Yes. Designed specifically for raiders? I don't think so.

Are there going to be some players who jump ship? Probably. I've honestly been eyeing the game for a while now, but many players may end up playing both, or as Gerbert mentioned, they would never want to bail on EQ after spending such a significant amount of time into gearing/raiding with their toons in EQ.

Just my 2 coppers.

I think it will be much lower, maybe 25%. Most of what I've seen left are Raiders and M-Q-ers running their boxes. Both groups are pretty invested in EQ. Most of the casual crowd will flee elsewhere or stop paying because of changes before Pantheon releases. I've already stopped paying and am leveling newbie toons. I won't make the mistake of spending money on expansions again. As long as DB keeps releasing TLPs they will have plenty of subs and krono sales to keep things going.

thanks for making a new thread about it

I don't know how many if you played Paragon, a third person MOBA, the game was active for 3 years and was amazing but the developers at Epic Games did exactly what the devs here are doing. Ignoring the masses and just throwing stuff in game weither we like it or not. And unfortunately Paragon is shutting down because of what the devs did to the game.

For the first year or so they released to champions regularly and we're FREE and always we're, then they introduced loot boxes for income...okay great no problems...then they got rid of the legacy map and replaced it with monolith...BIG NO NO from the player base, mass people left...then they had a great card system for making your heros as best as they could be...then they removed that and added another system that ruined gameplay for almost everyone. Thus losing even more people. The player base has all but disappeared. And now the game is shutting down.

All I gotta say is if DBG keeps up with their current model it won't bode well for the game. Revert pretty much the entire last patch and call a mulligan and try again is the best option because everyone keeps seeing the " I've cancelled all my subs" and what not, although some are just rants and whiners a good portion of them actually are leaving which financially is not good.

I hope this game keeps going for years to come and I know one day it will shut down but I personally have spent years playing this game and I want to and will continue to play no matter what, but I'm only one person.

Why would they need to come up with a plan to compete with a game that's never going to come out anyway? In case you missed it, Pantheon missed it's last date for the closed Alpha again - they let people in for a stress test, but there was no playing - and entire classes aren't implemented yet. Pantheon is simply not going to happen. Period.

LOL Kolani that is very optimistic of you. And is be willing to bet you are absolutely wrong.

IM betting it will make it.

If I had a dime for every day they've been working on pantheon...
wouldn't hold my breath.

Um... current EQ is nothing like it was back in 'old school' EQ. None of the 'dynamics' as you put it, are that similar. Also, most of the 'hype' for pantheon is people hoping for that old school EQ experience that they will never get, and probably can't actually get anymore anyways, because of life changes. Pantheon might do ok. It might not. But it's not going to make a real difference to EQ, unless it's people leaving EQ hoping for a classic experience, and instead of coming back, not playing either game.

If the game is good they'll just get bought out and they'll tone it down to EQ-for-infants to attract a wider demographic like every other game in the last 15 years.

Computer gaming died 15 years ago, it's why we're playing a 20.year old game still. All the innovators were bought out and made to develop games that can be co-released for console, this is what capitalism looks like in late stages, the big companies buy the small ones to make money off their reputation or simply so they don't have to compete with them, games are made for mass appeal, & the monopolization kills innovation.

Why make a fantastic and complex game to sell 1 million copies when you can make a complete sandwich for console and it'll sell 20 million copies because a doting grandma or parent doesn't know the difference when they go to buy Timmy a birthday present.

Despite all the whining about this expansions difficulty, there's a reason people still play this game, because it's difficult, and they really don't make games that way anymore. I play another game on and off that's 19 years old, too.

In reality the hardcore crowd who can knock out expansion progression, max level and AA in a couple months time will probably do both. I have known raiders in EQ who have raided in two different raids at the same time and made top 5 parses in both raids so its not unrealistic to think that some people might play both games at the same time. If they were smart they would balance the game well and by that I mean make content that is playable year round for casuals and the hardcore crowd. The MMO genre in general has been on the decline mostly in part to what I believe is the amount of time required to invest in games like these. A smart game design might be to have 3 tiers of every zone with easy, normal and hard tier and the gear that drops from each tier matching its difficulty and progression rewards would be better for the more difficult versions. This way even someone who is not hardcore could experience all of the content but in no way would they be as powerful as the hardcore player doing all the hell zones.

Given the fact that the game was announced over 4 years ago and the history of some of the people associated with it, I will believe it when I see it. And even if it is released at some point, we'll have to see how closely it matches the original vision.

The original vision - ISWYDT.

Well if hes trying to get rid of the solo to max level and stuff a lot of people will be leaving. I have 3 accounts and I play with my merc with my main (108 wiz) this isn't evergroup or everraid its everquest soloing is part of it if you wanna do it. making the expansion so hard will turn people away just look at the ha's. whos idea was that anyways. pretty stupid if u ask me. this game is suppose to be fun not stressful anyways just my 2 cents.

Andarriel

Fake news or you're confused about another game.

First, they've never set any sort of firm dates (what game company would do that for those sort of stages?), so there's no "missed date for the closed Alpha again". They spent most of 2017 stating they wanted to do Pre-Alpha before the end of the year, that's about it, which leads to...

Second, they are in Pre-Alpha - it started mid-December.

Thirdly, you're not in Pre-Alpha obviously. There are absolutely players who have played the game in Pre-Alpha, and not just "for a stress test".

Lastly, while it may certainly not come out, you're pretty much stating the game is vaporware, and that's simply not the case.

That's cute...you actually think Pantheon will actually be released.

How do you compete against something that doesn't even exist.