Isn't speculation fun? Curiosity over two trademark filings has now morphed into a sort of business class. If i worked for DBG I think I might be chuckling right now. Now back to a game I enjoy playing and expect to be able to play for at least a few more years.
We aren't just a smattering of bored MMO players toiling point-counterpoint. We're a collection of pretty intelligent working professionals with varying points of view. Chuckling or not, Verant, SOE, and now DBG have made some pretty serious missteps. This cannot possibly be argued. I enjoy speculating in a thread that, for all intents and purposes, has maintained a civil tone with a note of aspiration. EverQuest has already done the impossible. One has to wonder what tricks the franchise has up its sleeves.
I don't know where the future is heading, but Everquest could have done with an overhaul port to an updated engine years ago. The current engine is stitched together with string and tape, and only long time and returning players even consider it as a mainstay game. Add that to some very poor efforts to advance immersion, like better houses, housing zones, cities, guild halls, and the need to use older zones, has made the game into a raider guild catered expac game. EQ2, coming when it did, was a mistake. EQNext didn't look promising at all. After 20 years, the world of Everquest still has potential as a franchise, but I don't believe DBG is willing to take the risk to reap that potential reward.
Well said, I'm not disagreeing with you personally, but with the philosophy you outline. And in case it wasn't obvious yet, I'm an old geezer and a bit of a hippie. What you describe is what I call the "Greed based philosophy". In short, 'money buys things so you're always gonna need more money'. During my time in software development I read some studies about pay/compensation for work. What studies find is that once your income covers your essentials (food, shelter, transport) and a small amount more for entertainment, increasing income does not increase productivity. Most developer types appreciate acknowledgement over mo'money. There was a comic book called 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' and they had a saying. "Pot gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no pot." You can count me as a long time believer in that philosophy, and all that it implies. When you look at upper management and owners, then you see the philosophy, 'always more growth, always need more money'. I'm willing to acknowledge that there may be some case where giving more money to a development team reaches diminishing returns, and doesn't make sense. But it is my firm belief the SOE/DBG-EQ team has never been in that case. They have always had too few staff to completely accomplish the initiatives management set out. Currently they are at an all time staffing low. So I stick by my belief that, in this specific case, EQ would have benefited from keeping more of it's profits and keeping more of it's staff on EQ work. Just one hippies opinion. And I've seen nothing from DBG or this thread to credibly dispute that. Here's another one for ya. You can't know that I can't know...maybe I do know
It does come down to saying we can't ever no unless someone gets an inside scoop from some one high up in DBG. It's just fun to discuss it.
The word today is that Daybreak has been configuring domains related to the Darkpaw Games trademark, which makes it sound like this is getting real. https://twitter.com/MSandersonD/status/1151832350457761792