I like the game and appreciate the developers... however, the downright mean-spirited adding of "lol" to captain names when they nerfed the Queen of Chardok in EoK (originally she needed help to kill her captains) is something I will never understand. It was petty and cruel. I think "lol" is still in those mob names, too. That nearly destroyed my guild (pre-merge into IL) at the time, set us back like three months in progression, and led to several players quitting the game. A lot of people in my guild laughed off the "lol" thing, but as raid lead I knew it meant months of recovery. That one hurt. I had a hard time focusing to so much as put groups together that night. I'm really concerned about the nerfing of older events when newer ones come out. Adding a large DD + dispel to Lucia when TBM came out, the Demi-plane of Blood-tuned Hanvar incident way back in Omens of War, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. Minor changes, if not notable at all, to the strongest raid forces, but potentially deadly to the ones struggling to keep functioning. Because my guild is strong, I don't know how it feels to be doing ToFS with the changes that are minor inconveniences to us, thus far. But if those changes put an end to raiding for some in the game, I feel for them. The developers have to balance what's good for the game and that's not going to match every player's opinion, but I've met plenty of people who genuinely think the developers only care about the top couple guilds and things like changes devastating weaker raid forces that are barely hanging on are inconsequential to them. I highly doubt that's the case, but that "lol" incident hit me harder than the utility rollback nerfs a few years ago.
I have an idea. DPG reduces their subscription fee to $12/mo but charges an additional $0.028/hr for every hour an account is logged in, and allow a Bazaar mule and real character to be logged in. That would discount hardcore-ish players (5 hours/day) down to around $16.30/mo, incentivize more people to subscribe via PED, penalize DPG for server downtime, and satisfy the people who want "refunds"/compensation for downtime. Not accounting for Bazaar mule accounts, additional DBC purchases and Kronos, DPG would only need an additional 4-5% subscription rate to turn a profit on subs alone. I'm mostly kidding as the losses would be devastating if no one ever logged in. But it's a feasible way for the game to survive when they really sunset new features and resort to just keeping the lights on. And yes, I was really that bored during downtime.
It happened today when I logged in and found they stole a feature from the store bought Worg I paid $35 for.
I just cancelled my 3 accounts. I was prepaid for a few more months. Once I hit that limit I'll ponder whether I care enough to re subscribe.
I think they are trying to pursue growth within the returning player category. If you are just realizing they are not pursuing growth in brand new players well... been that way for some time in my opinion. Although retro is all the craze these days so maybe they should do some advertising from the perspective.
For me, the end was obvious when they released the "lifetime subs." Further evidence of the end came last fall when they started charging FULL price for non-existent expansion content they obviously were unable to deliver or even reliably promise. They literally convinced a majority of the EQ player base into buying vapor ware for an expansion at full price, and now six months later they still can't make it anything other than vapor. Oh, but they sure did like taking your monies.
What feature did they steal? Seem to recall them announcing they would add some mounts to TLP but they would be cosmetic only (ie no game stats) until the expansion the mounts normally came out in. Was that it?
Agreed, I think the market growth stopped being a pursuit in early 2004 with the release of GoD and hitting the crunch with EQ2.
The Serpent's Spine was a major push to pull in new players. They put level progression from 1 to max in that expansion.
Quite some time ago, actually, but when I logged in repeatedly today to the expansion, The Nutcrusher Ballet to see four months of effort to still screw it up, I can't even shake my head anymore.
Sorry, your first answer is the only that counts, can't vote twice. So I played during SZ and then WELL into Zek. I think the time I realized it had started dying, was awhile after all four of the pvp servers merged, when a few of the top guilds there crumbled to dust. It became apparent, that even with only 1 PvP server to all of the playerbase, and the fact that there was only 3 top guilds on it, when they merged with 6 front runners was that time for me. Eventually moved back to Fennin/Cazic after a long break, played for a year, saw more of the ghost town this was turning into, took another break, and now Im finally back to ride out the final waves, whatever they might be. Today is a clear implication of what's to be though. Lockdowns or Covid19 aside, "being asleep" during each crisis is not an excuse. Especially after we haven't really received a formal apology.
For a good long time, on the TLP servers you could pay $35+ to get a mount that was fast, and which gave you a buff of HP, Mana, End, and Resists. Then they decided that those mounts were "not in era", so they removed them from the store (without warning, I think?) Up to that point it was fine. Annoying, to people would have bought more of the mounts if they'd known they were going, as well as players who joined later, but fine. The people who paid for the mounts got to keep them. That's fair. Then yesterday they went in and recoded the game so that the buff feature, which was the only real reason to buy the mounts in the first place, the buff feature is now tied to a specific expansion (House of Thule I think?) This devalued those mounts. So people who paid $35-40 PER MOUNT, and some people bought at least one per account: now have lost that feature which they paid for. The mounts are still fast, but there are also fast mounts in game for plat and they cost a lot less than their equivalent cost if you converted a Krono to plat. On top of that, I have a sneaking suspicion that retroactively nerfing existing item like this in order to tie them to a particular expansion requires database schema changes. And coincidentally, for the past several days they've had 'database problems'.
I agree with this, (not with adding new classes) but def agree with this. DPG allowed FTP players to join in the fun on the TLP servers and everyone has praised you for it. Unexpected surprises = a win for the company. New content = a win for the company. Just don't sell the new content as something it isn't like you did with Overseer. Know what would be nice? Dropping a new raid (just 1 boss) in past expansions. Tune it for characters of the current level for the expansion so people that play on the TLP servers have something new to look forward too (makes them starting over on a new TLP exciting). Just don't make the gear overpowered. Heck I'd be happy with no gear, just maybe an illusion item or mount. Just be fun to fight something new every few expansions. For live servers, drop a new at level raid boss in past expansions also (Level 115 Plane of fire mob or PoT boss). Make them up for only a limited time (2-3 weeks a year so people dont get bored with them). I dunno...the ideas are endless...but you would either have to hire 1-2 more coders or hold the ones you have more accountable for the content they do release first.
