Why isn’t Daybreak making Everquest more inclusive?

Hey guys,

Coirnav is my third tlp after phinigel and agnarr. Phinigel, although a success due to new instancing, lost many players. Even me epicd in kunark, I knew it was too much of a time sink with the expansion rate. Agnarr was a huge improvement as far as capturing the classic crowd and I fell off the wagon because I got bored with shaman.

What I’m wondering is why would coirnav go back to low xp fast expansion? Are they trying to recapture the phinigel community? I feel like they still have a lot of work to do making this game inclusive to new players, returning players, casual players. Everyone wants to see the end game, get gear, beat the expac. Nobody wants to grind this much to start the game- it’s hard to put life aside to feel like you launched correctly. Too many people quit by 15-25.

What I think needs to happen is there needs to be a easy server. FV seems to have a huge population for the age of the server. Why not a slow expansion, quicker xp, Fv ruleset server? They’d make more subscriptions, sell tons of Kronos, and make customers who will probably make alts and spend just as much on xp pots (because they would do more, give more xp)

Also I noticed coirnav wasnt marketed, no hype or community communication. They seemed very out of touch on the official launch stream. It’s a poor decision to make this game even more encumbering and overwhelming even to returning players. It’s time to make eq as inclusive as possible so it has a healthy community, by allowing easier access to leveling, end game, expansion content, reducing grind. Waiting years to improve on instancing is too slow to react to customer demands. The zem changes seem like a huge step backward. Why try to confuse us instead of streamline classic? Even the fact that most players don’t go on the forums is an huge sign. I wish devs and dbg would do a better job directing, supporting this community and allowing the maximum amount of players to experience eq. There were a lot more people on phinigel and agnarr, and I’m shocked at how little corrective action dbg is taking, seemingly not learning anything and inducing a death spiral in the community. they even went from ‘we have no plans for a tlp’ to announcing cournav six weeks later, only six weeks before its release.

Between all this and the disconnect/sleepiness I saw on the live stream I am not understanding how you guys function as a team or can direct the future of this gaming community. How do you not market a new server? I just don’t get it and it’s apparent on coinrav it’s future is a ghost town. Because it was poorly planned and executed, and is a shame.

Not too slow though, I'm betting that by the time a new server gets a few expansions in, we might have a new MMORPG option.

But yea, I considered coming for Coirnav when I didn't for Phinigel or Agnarr, but the slow exp stopped me.

You make some good points. Years ago Richard Bartle the guy who co-invented MUDs -- the grandfather of modern day MMORPGs -- offered a great theory on people who play virtual worlds. He found that there are 4 types of player archetypes: achievers, explorers, socializer and killers. Having a healthy diversity of player archetypes makes for a far better, cohesive and deeper MMO experience for everyone.

In recent years, MMOs have become to be dominated by one type of archetype: achievers. A few EQ veteran players who were ultra achievers went on to create the most popular MMO of all time which shall not be named here. Their biases took MMOs down a rabbit of achievement and some PVP with precious little to offer explorers and socializer.

I feel that along the way EverQuest ended up catering to achievers as well over the years. The devs lost sight of the casual player who perhaps doesn't want to raid 4 hours every night. I think a big part of the problem is that I suspect that many devs have not walked a mile in the shoes of an average EQ player in recent years. If more devs were to actually play EQ (which is required in other MMO studios) I think you'd see a more inclusive, holistic and balanced virtual world.

I am confused what the exp has to do with not catering to the "explorers" and "socializers". Surely those folks who don't want to raid 4 hours a night don't care how quickly they level, as you can both explore and socialize at any level. The only people who should be upset by slow exp is achievers who don't have enough time to achieve.

You can only have so many record breaking TLP openings. There are only so many people who want to play on EQ TLP servers.

I'm curious why raiding and leveling speed have to be conflated here. I have low desire to raid (I would, in the right situation, but it's not all that important to me), but I absolutely want to hit max level and enjoy a character at the pinnacle of base power while still in-expansion. It's fun to be at max level and help others, camp rares/loot drops, upgrade loot via trade/buy and maybe tag along on some raiding as well--but regardless, just enjoy the benefits of being max level.

Beyond that, I want to do something I've never been able to do on EQ--have more than one main option/level a couple alts to max or close to max level.

I enjoy socializing very much on EQ, but exploring? I've done this content a million times. There's nothing to explore. I want to enjoy playing my toons and progressing briskly and socializing. The experience rate stops my progress on each TLP and I end up giving up a few months in to each one. You probably don't care and why should you? But for me (and plenty of others if you read any EQ related forum), a faster experience server would increase my enjoyment of the game by many magnitudes.

I think people drastically over estimate the population of FV, and even phinny at this point, just because of the server population bars on the EQ homepage. Have you ever played on FV? It has been a ghost town for years. I played FV a couple years ago for a while and I rarely ran in to actual players, even in PoK and guild hall. 90% of the characters logged in there were boxes. Phinny has been turning in to that same thing since PoP, where I think it's safe to say that the majority of logged in characters are boxes.

I think it's clear to DBG that the majority of players play between Classic-PoP and servers fall off from there. I don't think slow exp was the problem with Coirnav. It was the poor marketing and it not introducing anything new. It's low population because of poor execution makes people not want to invest their time on a slow exp server. If they created a FV ruleset TLP for the 20th anniversary, I'd honestly like to see them keep the exp rate of Coirnav or at least phinny. Agnarr exp is too fast.

Hmm, achievers, explorers, killers and socializers? That sort of makes sense. The thing is that if you want to explore then having max level is a good thing. There's a lot more to achievement in EQ than just raiding just /ach and look at your achievement window. Even on TLP there's quite a lot to do. I suspect one of the big issues is that socializer spend a lot of time doing that and soon they population goes off to places that they can't go.

Another thread on the Coirnav exp gain was 100% necessary.

If Agnarr wasn't fast enough for you to keep up I don't really know what to tell you, other than maybe EQ isn't the right game for you. Or perhaps you would be better served finding a progression guild on a live server, they do still exist.

Explorers can't explore unless they are able to level their characters. When experience rates from killings are lower it discourages and prevents exploration. Socializers can't socialize unless they have characters that can group with other players.

Achievers are going to make it to the level cap as fast as possible because they are good at achieving. It takes far longer for explorers and socializers to reach the level cap because they aren't as good as achieving (leveling, gearing up, etc.). Low exp rates penalize non-achievers.

The amazing thing about MMORGPs is that a well designed one -- like the original EverQuest -- has players needing to develop skills to achieve, explore and socialize. Basically, we all need each other.

I realize that the original poster was talking in terms of casual and hardcore but I thought I would take about player archetypes too. Each one of those archetypes have a spectrum of those that play EQ from a casual or hardcore perspective.

Lots of people haven't played EQ in 16 years, when a certain MMO that shall not be named exploded on the scene. Many zones have been revamped, so I'd argue that there are some new things to see and explore for some of us. Also, part of exploration seeing who is in a zone and what they are doing there.

UNless my 6am reading comprehension fails, you are saying original EQ was great for all archetypes, but that now the current exp rates are discouraging to both archetypes...

back in the day exp rates were even more abysmal then they are now, so your argument contradicts itself.

Because you would lead people to quit faster than they do now and many not to even bother with the server.

Basically, you want to rush people to the max level and then leave them there for longer periods with nothing to do.

That's not correct. People want to rush to the end, because that's where the gear is, and that gear can only be had via raids. So you have the peer pressure of keeping up with the pack and doing the raids as often as possible before people start to burn out (usually <6weeks these days). This desire to rush the end sells XP pots, but doesn't help reasonable players any.

Then after that 6 weeks is up people start to disappear, anyone who didn't get gear may or may not be SOL, and the wait for the next xpac comes. I do not think slowing XP down is going to help at all, it just plays out the same game in slower motion, except that burnout may set in before 6 weeks of raiding occurs.

Levelling in this and almost every other MMO is a pointless slog of little to no value. The only time I've ever wanted to be level locked was old school WoW for some of the more fun battlegrounds which were a lot of fun at say, level 19, but got progressively less fun as you levelled beyond.

Fixing this is redesigning EQ, nobody really wants that. I agree with OP, slow XP is almost pointless unless a) you are making money on XP pots, or b) making money farming krono off noobs.

The problem is that classic EQ is the least welcoming part of EQ, and the least casual friendly. There is a reason why new players on normal servers no longer start in classic but in Crescent Reach instead.


Anyway, they could do a few things to make TLP launches more casual friendly:

-Raising XP.
-Releasing Classic-Kunark-Velious-Luclin right from the start to limit travel times and give people more zones.
-Unlocking Newbee Quest Armor from the start so players are less dependent on krono farmers and they don't run naked for 30 levels.
-Put all spells on vendors like they do on regular servers, so you don't need to drag a group to the middle of nowhere to farm some silly item just to have your spell.
-Simply removing Krono from the server.


However, I don't see why FV rules would be more inclusive, they would simply attract krono farmers like moths to a flame. It would make the server much less inclusive.

I agree with Candystore on the FV rules attracting the Krono farmers. Although it's probably not possible, id rather see a rule set where all loot is no drop. Sure, the farmers would just sell the loot rights but that would make them earn their money since it would be way more inconvenient. A no drop rule set would probably bring out the positive social interactions too, OOC rots, helping friends get to drops, etc. Again, probably not possible, but still would be cool to see, imho.

You want an easier server?!?

Go play WoW.

Man once you've killed 100 orcs there is nothing special about killing the next 900.

Like I don't really care too much about XP rates, especially at this point, but anyone arguing for slow/slower XP and refusing to see the other side of things is just being obtuse.

I've done gobbie island from 45 to 50 three times now, that noise. People ask me all the time "Are you starting on this or that new TLP server?" and my response is "Is it starting in Classic?" and of course is it, so no I'm not doing that again.

It won't work. This will just encourage the black market sites. When this game introduced excessive item rarity, it created a market for those items on the black market, because sensible people do not want to invest that kind of time. The problem is not krono, krono is just currency. The problem is item rarity, versus a skill wall, which people I think would be more inclined to work towards w/o paying.

I don't know what people mean when they say FV rules, I am thinking specifically of loot that is never no-drop. I couldn't care less about "role play" in the cosplay/LARP/play acting sense of the word.

How many times do you need to run the same raid for the last item you need to realize your dream build? In 12 weeks of Velious, I saw one robe drop from Vulak, and it went to some silly casual that mostly was a carry, because my guild leader is a moron also escaped from an asylum. Meanwhile I have seen countless items drop that my alts could have used, or could have been traded for items that we needed that weren't dropping because of RNGesus. That is the power of no no-drop loot.

Now strictly speaking this will not help the balance between casual and hardcore, casuals will lack the currency to buy/barter the items they want, while the hardcore may end up with so many items they can't move or aren't worth the time and start deleting them. But it would certainly increase the trade and marketability of raid loot, and enable a game where you don't necessarily have to raid on all of your characters.

Of course without instances, this will just be a collection of bots locking down high value spawns and making the game totally not fun for everyone else. This solution only works with instances.