A Community Update from EG7’s CEO and Founder, Robin Flodin

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by dreamweaver, Apr 30, 2021.

  1. Gnothappening Augur

    To me the letter is a reason to be pessimistic. When people say listen to the community, what they usually mean is the squeaky wheels on the forums. Any company that makes decisions based on Twitter or message board feedback are in for a rude awakening.
  2. Nennius Curmudgeon

    You can't hear someone who doesn't speak. If more folks expressed their opinions a better consensus could be formed. And I wouldn't assume that the forums are the only way that Darkpaw gathers opinions.
  3. Yogi the Bear I have flea's

    H1Z! was so bad during alpha and beta did it ever improve? I remember running around forever just to find one person.
  4. Gnothappening Augur

    No matter what, there is a huge disparity between people who come to praise something and those that come to tear it down. It is just how human psychology works. Also, those that think it is fine how it is have zero reason to come to a message board, show up in discord, or tweet about why the game is fine as is. In the end I think listening to the community, without having everyone have to fill out a survey, means you end up with things like the recent enchanter nerf. A couple of people cry on the forums and every enchanter gets weaker.
  5. Bardy McFly Augur

    Not a topic for this thread, but I play on a 27" 1440P monitor and can play just fine. Things do scale, it's just not easy to do so. For the general public, it does need to be easier and not tweaking Windows settings and digging into ini files.
  6. Bardy McFly Augur

    And related to the thread, is EQ profitable right now? Yes. Can it coast and make profits right now with minimal investment? Yes. Will this work for a long time? Maybe. Is there the opportunity to inject some money and revive the game in the public eye? Probably, if done right.

    Getting Joe public [back] into the game would require a modern UI/UX update and some graphics modernization. UI/UX would be the biggest bang for the buck and modernization can happen over time like they've done with old-school models. Some people might be upset that "it's not classic", but honestly if we want the game to grow again then it can't stay in the past anymore. Maybe some people would rather the game *does* coast in that regard.

    Perhaps that's the direction they need to go, leave the current client look and feel as much as-is as possible, while providing a "remastered" client experience as well, with both being compatible with the same backend servers. People will start complaining if their potatoes won't play the game anymore.
    Skuz and I_Love_My_Bandwidth like this.
  7. AOLDragonRealms New Member

    Most common discussion seems to be about improvements to the client and servers for lag reduction and better frame-rate/performance.
    I am on board with both of those... however:
    serious modifications to the EverQuest graphics would turn me off. As a retro gamer I prefer the old style. I loathe the graphics being used for modern zones. This may be just my personal preference of course. Just saying, I'd love more classic everquest additions and character models. (Sticking to the old school style.)

    Personally, I feel server health to support players having a good time together should be top on the list. In my opinion the Agents of Change and more zone instance options to get rare spawns should be on every server.

    I also feel like the player base in EQ is far too spread out for how few of us are actively playing.
    (I understand we've have severe issues merging servers)
    However, I feel the player base is so small the standard servers should be combined into one server and FV server. With more instanced zone options and AOC's added to negate any fighting over rares.

    Otherwise streamlining grouping would be a very welcome addition. What I mean is - we all know EverQuest was meant to be a social experience. As it is - people are just multi-boxing and moloing to make up for the lack of groups. I don't like the idea of the insta pickup group fast runs but some way to get us together would be welcome. It would be great knowing you could click a button in EverQuest and get a group together. - And with more players less spread out on standard servers this should improve slightly.

    Anyways, here's hoping the off chance we get our player base less spread out and meet up in the game together for good times.
    Peace out.
  8. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I think there are people in both "camps" on this one but its not as simple as the model selection of your character when it comes to zone graphics.
    There's also the idea that if the existing game is ever going to attract new players that it needs to upgrade the graphics capabilities significantly - the fact is that the game had a fair few graphics updates prior to the DX9.0 client upgrade whereupon the movement forwards to stay at least current on graphics came to a shuddering halt. Had the momentum been maintained (by investing in the game rather than using EverQuest's profits to create a whole gamut of titles that never even saw the light of day) we may well have had a game with graphics that had stayed somewhat current instead of remaining circa 2004 for the past 17 years.

    There's a few ways to tackle this:

    1. leave all the existing zones as they are and only have new zones (2021 expansion onwards) use the new engine - in doing so you have the game remaining as a patchwork quilt of disjointed graphical looks for the sake of some "purist" or "preservationist" mindset that holds the Old game's looks should be maintained for reasons.
    It should be noted that this is basically what the Direct 9.0 upgrade did - though some zone revamps of old zones were made, aside from Freeport & the original DoDH launch version of Nektulos these revamps have generally been well-received.

    2. port every asset into the new engine then overhaul / revamp it so that the entire game from 1-120 looks cohesive and maintains the same graphical quality throughout.

    3. the most expensive option being a client that allows you to do both and maybe even lets you see the *new zones using the old textures" and also has the option of old style npc models to suit the zone "age" you chose.

    The thing with choice 3 is do the fans of the old look even get as far as PoP to begin with.

    I think you seriously under-estimate how many players EverQuest actually has, they simply would not all fit on one server.

    Including F2P players & TLP players EverQuest as of Sept 2019 had 82,000 monthly active users.

    At even 41,000 (if Holly saying around the same time that the populations of live vs TLP was about 50/50 is correct) that would be vastly more players than 1 server could hold.

    Some merges could definitely prove helpful, but certainly not as much compaction as you suggested, not sure what you have against a cross server group finder but it depends on how well they are done, EQ probably cant support that with its current tech anyway.
  9. ZoeEQ New Member

    When will we have a solid community manager again that is transparent with EQ1 ?
  10. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Currently EQ is the most transparent I can ever recall it being and that includes the community manager too so not sure what you mean.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  11. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    They don't actually have a community manager right now, although they have somebody doing some of the work, but as far as I know that person isn't taking that position permanently. We won't know anything until they announce it.
  12. Metanis Bad Company

    I remain amazed at the level of response to these TLP servers. Right now fully 75% of this message boards traffic relates to the upcoming "new" TLP servers.

    My suggestion would be they write a modern 64-bit client specifically for the base initial expansion of EQ and also specifically for a single TLP server that is also rewritten using the server-side equivalent of the new 64-bit code. They would also need to revamp the entire set of original EQ zones to some degree to work with the new engine and client. However, all this rewriting would initially only need to replicate the bare minimum for the limited subset of features that were offered in 1999.

    The new stuff would NOT be backwards compatible and the old existing client would not be compatible with the new stuff. They could then rework each expansion in turn for the new client but that would give them time to do the work and add features as they were originally released.

    Yes, they would need to make it so that both the legacy client and the new client could coexist on the same Windows machine.

    They would slowly work through all the expansions and release them on the new client. Some day far in the future they'd be able to retire the legacy stuff. All while continuing to earn revenue on the steady releases of new TLP servers while NOT screwing with the shrinking subscription base of end-game customers.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Not sure that they would do it that way going from past graphics upgrades but what you suggested is certainly one option they could potentially go with.

    I think they'd follow the past pattern though.
    Create a new client, roll it out being able to handle all of the existing assets or converting all the old assets to use the new client without making any perceptible visual changes (same texture maps etc).
    Build that year's expansion in the new client to showcase what the new client can do for the game & then work on re-building a full set past expansion assets (zone revamps) one expansion at a time.
    Waring_McMarrin likes this.
  14. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    I don't see this as something they would ever want to do just because it would mean they need to end up supporting two codebases and they have shown that they don't want to do this. As Skuz has said in his reply I would expect work to happen on a 64 bit server and end user client to happen at the same time as both need to be updated to fully support the changes. I would also expect a lot of this work to be done around an expansion as that is how it worked for past directx client upgrades and it makes a good selling point even if everyone gets it.

    As for what they need to replicate the TLP servers are using modern code as well so all functionality would need to be present otherwise the scope of the work would be many times more than a simple conversion of everything at once.
    Skuz likes this.
  15. Metanis Bad Company

    Actually that could be a feature rather than a bug. You start the new codebase with a young new team that's not required to be 70 years old to support the existing ancient stuff. And the existing ancient code monkeys don't have to be taught how to support the shiny new stuff. You arrange for them to die off about the same time you retire the old code. Win - Win - Win. Just ask HR...
  16. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh

    Interesting, ready for a new launcher?

    https://massivelyop.com/2021/05/25/...ybreak-mmos-are-headed-to-the-4game-platform/

    Skuz likes this.
  17. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    If they write a new 64bit engine from scratch, without the "archaic quirks" from the old days, in order to make it easier maintainable in the future.
    They could then code a sort of "compatibility abstraction layer", where they isolate the needed quirks, that "connects" the older expansions with the new engine, mostly to support older scripts.
    That could be a temporary solution, until they have the time to refactor the older expansions to support the new engine directly.

    That way they don't need 2 code-bases while they "swap" engines. I am assuming that assets can be converted without many challenges?

    Being an "armchair system analyser" sure is easy! Telling other devs how easy their job "should" be, is so easy I will do it for free! :p


    Edit:
    Plot-twist! The new 4Game launcher will require 64bit and DX12 to show a spinning logo...:p
  18. Jumbur Improved Familiar

  19. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Interesting development, not entirely certain this heralds 64bit EQ, only the launcher might need to be to work with the distribution platform, unless that actually gets replaced as part of the shift to that.

    Anti-Cheat built into the 4game platform? That will be heavily applauded by the anti-macaroni folks but it depends on how certain knowledge of macaroni use will be dealt with by DarkPaw, banning anyone using it right off the bat could cause the game to lose a lot of players.

    I liked reading this from the report though:

    MasterMagnus likes this.
  20. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    "The launcher needing 64bit" was just a joke. :D
    But afaik dropping WinXP-support, was because of a launcher update from planetside2(or some other game?), so it probably could happen again. I doubt it though...

    Looks like Lineage2 is using the launcher already? how is the cheating/hacking situation there? Does the anticheat software work well? Is there a performance-hit?