So the distinguishing perks for WoW and FF14 subscription are cross-server match-making (mind you, EQ1's engine cannot support those features) and Character Slots? Otherwise, in essence, you want to force EQ players to either pay for subscription (F2P will turn into a tutorial) or go into an even heavier micro transaction model? I'm all for capitalism (see my earlier posts) but your proposal would strip mine players. I'd rather follow Fortnite's dual Battle Pass/subscription* model than heavily penalize current F2P players on EQ1. *If you look at Fortnite's new subscription service (Fortnite Crew) they literally offer no in-game perks or features but 1 exclusive skin and 1000 vbucks for a monthly fee of $11.99. lol.
Actually I do hope they go deeper into the microtransaction rabbit hole as it is a proven business model for small to middle studios, and I'm all for them to convert the current all-access model to something like you described (free in-game currency every month but no in-game perks). This is how high grossing game works these days and I don't think this would turn off the current EQ base. Not sure about TLP to be honest. However I don't understand the mentality behind the "it's an old engine so this cannot be done" kind of thinking. Just go pick a successful game these days and tell me how it is NOT built upon something over decades of iterations. FF14's initial launch was an utter failure and they had to rewrite the whole thing and relaunch the game. EPIC's UE4 was built on top of UE3 which was a clusterfxxk back in 2010s and Fortnite itself was a massive mediocre failure before the battle royal mode kicked in. It is DBG's responsibility to keep their backend up-to-date and for us customers we have every right to demand good service. Something like cross-server activity or even a functional uninstaller is not rocket science.
I'd prefer to move further away from the Pay to Win. I pay a subscription to play I don't want to be forced to pay more to get nice items.
And its UI is awful and largely cannot be changed without overhauling the entire system from scratch. The dev team doesn't like retainers the way retainers work now, but they were stuck with that system because of the 1.0 launch. And that old code is why you can't eat or drink if certain other UI windows are open. Or open some windows when other windows are open. And why certain things take control of all hud elements and have to be exited to interact with anything. And why you can't open certain ui elements while in an instance. There are tradeoffs in all those systems. Can you imagine being in a group or raid instance and not having access to: guild panel, /bazaar, tells, chat channel commands, parts of your options window, the ability to invite anyone into a task/dz once you spin it up, or any way to see who you know that's online? Thats how 14s system works, largely because that's how 1.0 launched, and they couldn't fix everything for ARR.
Think about it though. When you activate or dress a new HC, you DO buy market items and go Gold to claim the AA updates. Think "long game." AND taking care of alts means more log-ins and higher game population. This looks good when they want to shop us to another company.
What stimulus money? I got my play money from our Hubby Tax. (Hubby wants a new toy, I get 10% of its cost. No nag. Everybody's happy.) He just bought an airplane.
I can't figure out how to get sewage sludge in the School Supplies quest. I guess I am just missing something.
Thank you! I finally figured it out earlier today but this will be helpful for anyone else who has trouble with it.
This is part of why this whole industry is dying, where thousands of studios once existed a small hand full of massive corporate covens now remain. Mostly because of unrealistic expectations by investors. If EQ thinks this anniversary will make them competitive with fortnite then they've already lost. After 20 years of never advertising anything until maybe 3 years ago, and 20 years of blowing the majority of the revenue EQ ever earned developing games they thought would replace EQ instead of reinvesting in the actual only profitable product they had this is the customer base and position in the market they've earned. If literally anything you just said here matters to them they'd be buying adds not picking favorites in their player base. P.S. after playing from 1999 -2010 and coming back a month ago ...EQ feels more like maintenance mode right now already than any game i've been on in years, with these pared down expansions, apparent lack of what was once the best customer service in the whole industry. and my own personal knowledge of having watched employees of the company that I'd had amazing interactions with over the years like the lady who was the community manager when the game was healthy get shipped off the property because of corporate greed, in ways their bottom line doesn't occur to be my problem to fix.
I would say that there are also unrealistic expectations from customers. I do not think anyone wants or expects EQ to compete with Fortnite. I was merely quoting how some people are making EQ's $11.5m out to be an injustice. There were bad business decisions under the leadership of some former SOE executives and EQ studio heads. I do not think anyone on the current team deserves any blame.
I think it’s sad that the official EverQuest forums, website, Discord etc is ALWAYS the LAST place to post information about any special events, promotions, etc. If test miners and EQResource have already been aware of what’s happening for anniversaries what’s preventing you from posting a producers letter and anniversary program announcement? We’re like four business days away
EQ would be a way bigger and better game today if they invested the profits back into it over the last 20 years. Look at wow and why its still going they make millions but spend millions on making sure it stays as current as possible with other games. Its a lesson for other studios. EQ2 was a huge mistake one that blizzard will never make with wow imagine the hundreds of millions spent on EQ2 going back into EQ development.
Whether making EQ2 was a mistake or not is a hard call. People legitimately felt that EQ had issues and that it could be done better. Enter WoW and a lot of people said, "yes, that's it" and left. They were wrong of course, but I'll never convince them of that. So EQ2 was more to compete with what people wanted EQ to be than an actual successor to EQ. It seems to be making some money so it can't be all bad, but it does feel like a waste of time to those who think EQ was fine. Funnily enough, the last time any of my old EQ buddies showed interest in EQ was Landmark. A few of us got beta keys or whatever and had fun building stuff. They didn't care that it was or wasn't EQ, they just liked the voxel stuff. Now that person is playing Valheim and telling me how it reminds him of Landmark. I wonder how it would have gone if Landmark tried to be its own Minecraft with some EQ flavor and less worry about making EQ Next. That never would have made sense at the time, but looking back, I think it would have had potential.
