With Holly gone, what do you think the future of EQ and EQ TLP's will be?

SR Project Manager at Blizzard

This is a wild and crazy thought, I know, but...

Maybe, just maybe, Holly isn't some God and there are people who can do her job just as well or better.

Crazy I know.

This is pure lol because the server code supports way more expansions beyond Planes of Power. Just because P99 only supports up to a certain expansion does not inherently mean the server code doesn't support expansions beyond that.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

None of you heard? And I may be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure it was talked about back in the day when P99 got started.

They use the code from 'The Titanium Pack' discs, reverse engineered, and yes, it is at Velious. Again if I'm not mistaken.

**edit**
Yeah that nets some interesting google play.

The server is compatible with up to the RoF game client, so technically, you can have a server with original, kunark, velious, luclin, pop, loy, ldon, god, oow, don, dodh, por, tss, tbs, sof, sod, underfoot, hot, voa, and rof.

The thing is that for the later expansions, you will have to populate the database for them yourself if you can't find one somebody else has already done where as the database for the first handful of expansions is already made and readily available to all.

Back when I cared and worked on that type of stuff the biggest problem was all the scripted events that start showing up around PoP. You can’t read that data off the packets and basically had to rewrite what effectively is every single trial, raid, etc. as expansions go on.

I had PoP running outside of the scripted Trials I was working on at the time....nothing in P99 stopping you from doing it and getting the data, just had to write the events based on running them on live.

I'm pretty sure there are more than 2 devs that are working on EQ. As other people have pointed out, there are more than 2 people that have commented on forum posts, for example. Also, $4.5 million/year isn't really that much tbh.

- DBG office is in San Diego, not the cheapest place in the world to rent real estate

- Software engineer salaries are vastly higher than 100k, especially in California. The average in CA is 130k. Plus, taxes, benefits, insurance, etc; typically an employer pays an extra 30% of salary in costs per employee, so that 130k becomes 170k for each dev on the team, assuming they're making average salaries

- EQ staff is not just the dev team, there's also community manager, they have customer support staff, they probably have an office manager, they probably have an HR person, they probably have a management team

If EQ generates <$5 million in revenue per year, it absolutely makes sense why things are the way they are.

Well that does sound better than "2" lol.

Choices matter.

To keep EQ running, and eventually progressing and growing, choices have to be made. Unless they want to just sell it and move on, or watch the game die a slow death while milking it for every cent they can.

Rent and cost of living/business too much? Move. Saves money.
Not enough devs to do the work that needs to be done? Hire more, with the money saved.
Wages too costly? Hire "fresh out of college" coders/devs for lesser wages.

These things are rocket science lol. It's all common sense. It's the choices that matter. Don't think for a second that a company that makes 4-5 million a year is barely scraping by with no choices.

I run a business that makes about .5 - 1 million a year, depending on the year. Choices are made all the time to keep it going, as well as progressing it for the future. I plan, and make decisions that will keep it relevant now and whatever comes next. Preparations for downturns as well. RISK is involved in nearly all the choices. It's a part of business.

Anyway, I deeply care about EQ, and the IP. It has such a huge history and legacy. Would it be better to let it die and just create another IP? Probably. But why not take a risk, and do everything possible to keep it going, and help it to grow again?

Now is the time to make this happen. With the hype and delays of Pantheon, there's a ton of people out there clamoring for a new, "old-school" mmo. EQ has that in spades. But it needs a refresh to draw those people in. Obviously if they wanted EQ in it's current state, they would already be customers/players. So....how do you attract that market?

not bad ideas, but some just wouldn't make financial sense to develop and implement

I think Luclin was a great expansion other than the insanely high hit points of mobs they seemed to be obsessed with for content design. Introduced mounts which was awesome, new character model art which was meh imo, the Nexus which dramatically reduced travel time and was an absolutely positive thing for the game, focus effects which really helped caster itemization and the augment system.

Planes of Power I think is where people start wanting to puke their brains out... and only because of the ridiculous keying system for advancing thru high end content. The ability to travel everywhere is a great thing, tho admittedly it sucked on my Druid when I could no longer make any money teleporting people, but overall it was a great thing for the game as a whole.. reducing traveling time is a good thing

Some of your ideas want to take this game way way back, to like when I was 15 years old with nothing to do but spend my life playing EQ.. which was some amazingly fun times, but most of us aren't teenagers anymore and don't have that kind of time to commit to the more hardcore aspects of the game. Going too much towards that model will only attract a small niche of players

The number 1 reason the servers died around PoP tho is because that is typically about the time the next TLP would be released.. New TLPs massively cannibalize the playerbase of the previous TLPs and that is the primary reason for the population fall offs moreso than anything else

do they even teach the code that EQ is based on in college anymore? serious question

Good question. My guess would be no. That's another reason why it's necessary to rework EQ into a new engine. Remastered Everquest.

Yeah, some pros and cons to those expansions. Some very opinionated in either direction. I wouldn't say any of the expansions are horrible really. I mean it's all EQ, and any new content added should be welcomed.

But it's debatable on whether or not it is a viable option. It is absolutely risk. But that's what it's going to take to move this IP forward.....risk. It has already fallen way behind, and in desperate need of updating. That refresh could be massive to the company, or bankrupt it. But it's going to shut down eventually anyway if risk isn't taken.

As I said in a post earlier (might have been a different thread), this game isn't going to stay alive for another 20+ expansions. It's going to die. How then, do we, or the company help it to stay alive...and more so...grow?

Depending on school you don’t learn how to code in any of the tools any game on the market is made out of. Not overly that rare to get a BS in Comp Science and only program in Python. College is about learning the fundamental theories and concepts...work is where you learn how to code.

Not the point, I know, but this happens more than you might think. My team just got off Visual Studio 2008 a year or so ago.

C++ ? Uh... yeah, it's a thing still. LOL

The choice of programming language isn't a reason to rework the engine. Poor design and coding is, though. I'm not saying that's the case here but any code base that is 20 years old has some pretty horrific warts, generally speaking. Unless you want to stick your neck out on some new languages (Go, for example) then you'd probably still use C++ or C# for your game server.

I actually prefer making them all myself rather than trying to be true to the original. I find it more entertaining that way.

I'm pretty sure there is a fan made project for recreating the game client in C#. No idea how far along they are though.

It is truly amazing what some amateurs do in their spare time isn't it? Imagine what paid professionals could accomplish in a quarter the time.....

The entire mod-scene of various games screams this. From simple add-ons that everyone must use to be competent (WoW's DBM, recount/details all the way to EQ's Brewall maps) - to full blown actual content made for games such as Skyrim.

This leads back to the original topic.