I see two sides to the situation. I am a player. I love challenges. I enjoyed Mearatas. I like difficult content. I like having to be the best I can be so that the group/raid can be successful. I am like you, like Sancus, like many others at the high end. I also am in business. And I believe that if I was the owner of a game franchise, I want my players to be happy. But I know I cannot make every person happy, so I want to make the majority of the players happy. And from all the comments that came out of the loot pinata that was TOV for example... there was a lot of happy players. So, the player in me wants a Mearatas. The player in me agrees that having the end raid be Mearatas can definitely help the guild rankings. It can definitely provide excitement and joy once defeated. But the businessman in me realizes that alienating 95% of my player base by providing content that is so demanding, so difficult, so challenging that only five percent of raiders can complete ... that is not good for business.
Possibly. I would hope that my thoughts and opinions are just that- thoughts and opinion, not to be confused as facts...
..Why not? Surely it's worse for business if every single raid event is considered a push-over to the hardcore playerbase. Even players who don't directly interact with the difficult raid content benefit from its existence #notall. Knowing that there are difficult challenges at the end of the road can be inspiring, or add to players fascination with the world of EQ, something in Norrath to talk and whisper about. It can also draw people in who want to experience a challenge. Whenever I ask a mate of mine about the MMO that he's playing, the first thing he does is talk about the difficult raid people are trying to beat, and how intense it is. (so my friend is throwing me a lure here, as a result of their devs creating something challenging/exciting to talk about). I recall some raids in EQ being unbeaten for ages, and I wasn't a hardcore raider for some of them, i was a grouper, but it added to my EQ experience knowing that there were dedicated teams of players working hard around the clock to come together and try to meet those challenges, it enriched the magical world I was escaping into and gave us stories for the campfire. ..the alternative, hearing that everyone just walked through all the endgame content doesn't provide the same draw, fascination or interest, for EQ players, or non EQ players. You want some of those challenges in your game and stories for people to tell about them. tldr: Having at least one challenging raid doesn't prevent other guilds from being able to hit easier raid targets that are more in line with their capabilities, and it provides a draw to the game, not just for those who interact directly with that content. And the notion that the content only exists for the % that beat it, or the % that attempt it, is wrong; You don't even have to interact with said content to benefit from its existence.
How many lost subscriptions happened amongst the hardcore last year during the loot pinata pushover expansion that is TOV? As far as being able to sit and listen to stories at the campfire... maybe in 2005 or 2010. Possibly 2015. But in 2021 EQ, I would venture to say that the majority of players are boxing or in a FS that does their own thing and does not invite random people to their FS group. I think the hardcore (which I consider myself to be) is going to consume content regardless. We are invested to see the game sunset, and are going to be around until then... difficulty be darned. But guilds 15-40 cannot continually die and wipe to content, because at some point players are going to give up and go elsewhere. Content needs to be achievable, and while I love Mearatas I don't think many others do besides the 1%.
There are some who will, some who won't. I've seen plenty of folks retire to focus on other games and they cite the lack of challenging content in EQ. The investment in their character not being enough on it's own to keep them playing.
I'd also posit that guilds 15-40 aren't all opting to chain-die on a raid event unless they want too. They can leave that one out of the lineup if they feel that it's beyond them, many do. They can try it the next year when the level caps increase. They can choose to hit the content that is achievable, and hold off on that which is not. There will always be that one guild somewhere that is so split on whether an event is achievable that it can create divisions within the guild, or cause players to leave for other guilds that cater more to what they want. So be it.
I've seen the reverse happen a lot. Folks just slowly stop showing up when you're hitting the brick wall. The guild then dies out because there isn't enough new blood to keep it going, and then you have 20-30 folks all end up quitting when the other 10-20 people server transfer off the "dead server". If you go look at the bertox raiding guilds we've seen a steady decline in the number of EQ players raiding.
As a software worker, and a manager of software workers (inc QA), I fundamentally disagree with your stance. It is totally common and good business (not crappy) to have clients take part in the Software testing process. Many clients are very keen to do so, and some even pay for the privilege. (I'm speaking about major corporations, not just individual users or consumers). This does not detract from the internal professionals who also do it, and manage such a process. Managing external beta testing also takes time & people to do so. I think the fact DBG has opened up beta testing to a broad base a good thing for the game and community. They should be applauded and encouraged to continue it.
You must really hate the 'Open Source' software movement then... And that right there is where most of the problems start. If you made RL money out of EQ then, (unless you were employed by Verant/SoE/DBG etc), you're in a totally different bracket to the rest of us who consider it a GAME, entertainment etc, not a source of income or work. People who leech real life money off others for a game sicken me.
It's always hard to pinpoint the exact reason when somebody decides to stop playing. But severe boredom and lack of challenge definitely contribute. We had some people switching to TLP and never coming back. Or just going to play other games and never coming back. Can't really blame them. ToV raids were so easy and dropped so much loot that high end (and even not-so-high-end) raiders ran out of goals to achieve way too quickly.
You're flat out wrong. When the content is ridiculously easy at the "top" end, people in those guilds quit, and then those slots are taken up by people from the next tier, and so forth, and results in lower tier guilds losing their better players and running into brick walls faster. When content is hard, but there is plenty of content to consume while progressing, people don't quit as much. This is why the anguish/mpg/tacvi/dodh/por era had so much longevity even though many guilds couldn't get over the top on the OMM or Daosheen or whatever, there was always enough content to allow them to keep going. Not having anything to work for is not fun for a character progression RPG that you put literally tens of thousands of hours into. It makes it boring and no sense of accomplishment. The harsh reality is that the content doesn't kill guilds, poor leadership and poor recruiting kills guilds, and always has. Even for successful guilds. My first major raid guild was the second on our server to kill The Rathe Council, was third in Plane of Time, had been a major raiding guild in various expansions and into Omens. And it died. I was in another guild during the level 70-75 era that did really well, and it died. I was in Triality, it died. It is the way it goes. And there are two content quirks that exacerbates that guild life/death cycle and exposes the weaknesses: 1) Stretches of easy content results in people quitting, and replacing them with worse players who are capable of functioning in the easier content OR that you can work through having them, weakening your raid force, and probably more insidious to survival, attendance % drops as people stop caring, and you end up going from a guild of 90% to 80% to 70% to 60% etc raiders that gets larger in "current" numbers but is pulling in mid 40s or high 30s raid numbers. BUT you can still kill stuff, so it keeps going. 2) Then a stretch of hard content hits, and those problems now become a major issue. You need 50 to beat things now, not 40. You have worse attendance, making flagging a problem (back before ToV I mean), the "weak" members are now a liability, the unreliable members poof, and you all the sudden are left with a core group of 20-30 people that can't get anything done. In the older days, when level increases and gear increases were smaller, and the higher end guilds were locked to new apps due to no one quitting, these guilds could go on in a fugue state for years. In today's game, where people are always moving on from top guilds, where gear mudflates faster than ever, those guilds are just going to die fast once it happens. Sometimes guilds can recover, if their leadership has the fortitude to do something about it. Most of the time they don't, because they can't and the leadership is part of the problem. Look at Machin Shin, didn't they almost die a couple years ago? But they brought it back and in time for the next expansion at the time to be competitive. Township Rebellion had one of those too didn't they? Triton did too iirc? It happens. A guild leader stops logging on or quits, major raid leader does, there is some drama and people take sides, etc. It can happen to anyone, and the better structured guilds will survive and come back if they do what it takes. Sometimes the guilds don't. Having hard content doesn't kill guilds, it just exposes the dying guild and lays bare the stark choice the leaders and members need to make. Survive or die.
You're pointing to the era, where EQ lost the most subscribers and had its market share demolished. I wouldn't be using that as evidence of stability. The top end guilds got everything they wanted though, just look back at the Guild Summit and the following changes. I can tell you the low and middle end of the game dropped out to proportions that required server merges. Where are you expecting recruits to come from? I've seen countless people return the game, raid for 3-4 months then disappear. It's not a stable pipeline, if there is any on some server.
There is no way to prove I am right or wrong, just like there is no way to prove you are right or wrong. We have different opinions is all. The only people who could prove either way is DBG if they have actual subscription numbers and truthful surveys that honestly say that I, hardcore raider, quit because content is too easy. Or I am mid tier raider and I quit because Mearatas was too hard. You and I are never going to be privy to those facts, so we get to FQ our opinions in a *hopefully * healthy debate and discussion...
Several conversations in this thread. I haven’t raided since the start of Underfoot, but I always hated when a hard raid was up, and people would drop. I remember when we beat Queen Sendaii. I could never talk the guild leaders into going back. Backing away from content because it’s hard drains the fun from the game. Also, I don’t have any investment in the outcome, but I enjoy reading about the race each expansion. I follow the talk and challenges the guild members make, and I enjoy reading about how the victors made their raid work. Even without raiding myself, I enjoy that sense of victory from beating the raid and other guilds.
Okay lets be real tho, it wasn't *just* that GoD was a terribly tuned xpac that caused the flight. The double whammy of GoD misery holdover and WoW launching were what caused it. If WoW had launched a year later the flight may not have been as drastic. But it also may have been inevitable since WoW was way more accessible, and people who had never played an MMO before were jumping on WoW so suddenly you could join a guild with a bunch of real life friends.
Congratulations those who knocked out T3. Every expansion should have a hard raid. DPG should tune a raid to be as beatable as this one is, then just double the damage and HP of the mobs. Then reduce that damage bonus by 10% a month until it reverts to the baseline right before the next expansion. We see the real pecking order, guilds and raiders have a reason to tryhard and us forum trolls get some entertainment. Everyone wins!
You’re right, it wasn’t just GoD a lot of the blame falls on the Planes of Power expansion. It effectively killed off the lower and mid tier guilds and brought the game into a raid or nothing mentality. The fixes to PoP over the years largely make it forgotten how it frustrated every aspect of the game. FoH bailed and AL bailed are the notable disappearances but small guilds really just started to disappear. LDoN was between those and it gave something to do, but if you were going to gear in LDON equipment you were going to spend 5x the amount of time versus raiding for gear less than half the quality. GoD doesn’t really need to be explained for it’s mistakes, but it continued the raid or die philosophy. Which, leads into the 2004 Guild Summit that really only provided feedback from the main guilds and Woody from GU comics. The attendees note that for the first time EQ is not in a good position relative to competition. OoW drops and it’s still not good from a casual perspective. The zones are tough and there’s no real good places to level except RCoD and WoS and those places are packed. RSS was brutal on any tank with less than 10k hp. Even though OoW was a really good raid expansion, the numbers still tanked dramatically. WoW launches and EQ numbers never recover. TLDR: Higher end raid guilds don’t really matter that much in respect to total population.
Didn't you quit? Please stop bringing up this suggestion in every thread talking about modern raids. No one ... and I mean no one who raids current content wants MORE hitpoints in events. Almost every raid in CoV was tuned down (and in some cases way down) in hitpoints because all it did was make long events ridiculously long.(Tantor ... Sontalak ... Arbiter ...). The only thing mob damage increases do is make you carry more tanks ... and no one wants to go back to 4+ raid tank groups. And we're already pushing the limit on zonewide aes and what the game lets you heal for. Again, all this talk about "super ultra wicked mega" hard raids is silly. Because unless you keep raiders from events on Beta, the top guilds will just find a way to win. Because they have far more time to spend thinking about beating an event than the developers do to plan it. But no one has the balls to ask for a blind raid (except me I guess). Make a blind raid per expansion that doesn't have a mission tied to it. Hopefully it will get tuned right and work. If not, that's what patches and hotfixes are for.
