A radical idea

Next TLP needs to be done like Fortnite. That's the key to a successful Everquest future. And Rogues should be able to wield guns

That's a fantastic summary. I never looked at it like that. All the expansions I dislike (or outright hate) are the February releases.

Guys we're gonna wipe if you don't build more ramps! Wait, why is the zone closing in on us?

Of course playing and watching give you two different feelings. But it doesn't prevent you from seeing how much content there is, which is what is in question here, not how I feel about said content.

You had to what.

Nice combative and arrogant post, we're twins I guess?

If I based what I play on Twitch viewer counts, why on earth would I be playing Everquest? But the fact that there are constantly many TLP streams to pick from and only Live streams during raid times says a lot about the ratio of players between the two versions.

Well not everything, but the side bars or whatever. I haven't played since TBC so the UI may be different now. I don't like using Alt-# or Control-# to assign to other hotbars. With Live EQ I have an entire hotbar mapped to one key. Aside from that though, the clicking part might not be much different between the two games, but the icon part is true. WoW feels like an iPhone, everything is too visual instead of having labels, and I hate iOS with a passion.

Maybe, could be you just bring out the worst in me. Though it's not just me that has expressed annoyance with your posts. Maybe that means nothing. You can take it as you will.

It says exactly zero about the ratio of players between the two versions. We have server population meters, they contradict your "Twitch stream counts feels accurate" metric. DPG has literally said it's 50/50 in the past.

TLP's have a level of excitement and freshness that is streamable. People stream new games when they come out, then it falls off. A TLP launch is no different. Live streams seem to involve mostly raiding, as was pointed out. Older people don't tend to get into streaming much, doing it or watching it. TLP's attract fresh blood, so they are likely to have more streamers among their populations.

I think a lot of it depends on why they are streaming in the first place, as I understand it those that stream get onto the TLP servers first when they launch so they can stream (no idea if that is true or not) there is nothing like that for Live, the expansion launches and everyone can log in as soon as the servers are back up.

I really don't see the big attraction of watching others play unless it is something with a lot of people. We used to have someone who would stream our raids (until he sadly passed away), now we have no one, doesn't mean we have all stopped playing.

Group content for TLPs and Live are pretty much the same kind of thing, pull mobs to a camp, rinse and repeat. Not something most people would want to watch. Unless it's been edited to only show named fights, then that isn't realy a stream. Mischief names are the only interesting thing at the moment, just to see what is droppping off what.

I'm pretty sure no one would have been interested in watching my group last night killing stuff in the dorf caves in GD, even when we did get the named. Though they may have been amused at our group chat, but knowing people these days they would more than likely have been offended.

Yes, the same few trolls that have been hounding the forums for years are the ones that have problems with what I have to say.

So no, that doesn't bother me at all.

Not every aspect of Twitch is FOTM.
Grand Theft Auto V: 8 years old
League of Legends: 12 years old
Minecraft: 10 years old
DOTA 2: 8 years old
are just a few of the top viewed games on Twitch that aren't new.

Hell even Fortnite is 4 years old.

Stop trying to make up excuses for why TLP has way more streamers than Live. The reason is the difference in human populations, period.

I know what Holly Longdale said a couple years ago about it being 50/50 and I also know what people think about the integrity of her words in general.

I'm also 99% positive that if she was even being honest, that she was referencing nothing more than the total account ratio, and we all know how much more prominent boxing larger amounts of accounts is on Live vs. TLP. I join groups of 6 human beings on a daily basis on TLP. Most boxers on TLP do not box more than 1 other account. My guild had a raid of ~30 players and only 2 of them were boxes.

TLP has more humans.
Live has more boxes.

Boxes don't watch Twitch.

I will admit that I have no idea why people watch GTAV at this point, maybe they just can't get enough depravity from playing it themselves? LoL and DOTA2, are you serious? Competitive games are what Twitch is mostly about. I've watched hours and hours of Rocket League on Twitch, because competition. Whereas I've watched maybe an hour of The Division and zero minutes of The Division 2. Meanwhile I've played hundreds of hours of RL and TD/TD2. Some things are fun to watch, some things are not. Even if more people were streaming Live EQ, not many would be watching, and that leads to streamers giving up.

Just so I don't skip anything, Minecraft is popular because of seeing other's creativity, and also the age-group. Younger people like to stream and watch streams, older people less so. That affects EQ, Live players tend to be older people who started in the first decade of the game and never left. There will be younger players among them, and maybe some will stream, but it will still be a lower ratio of players that stream.

And you can prove this how? I'm not saying I can prove the opposite is true, I can only go by what the company has said, which for whatever reason you don't seem to believe. But that's not my problem.

Does Live have more boxers than TLP? Probably, although Rizlona may help balance that out. Is that the reason TLP has more streamers? At best it is part of the reason. TLP's are more exciting and more relevant to what people want to watch on a stream. Launches are an event, new expansions are events. TLP's also have a higher density of players per server initially, which enables PUGing and other things that are worth streaming. That population doesn't stay, so while every TLP looks busy at launch, those populations are recycled on the new servers for the most part.

TLP's may have more humans, they may not. I can't prove it so I won't argue it. But I will say this, if you think the ratio of Twitch streamers has much to do with that, then you don't understand much about people.

Twitch has existed for a few years of my life, EQ has existed for nearly half of it. Old people are skeptical of new things, and this game is like a retirement community compared to Twitch. Nobody I know that is my age streams anything. Sometimes in Discord to their friends, but not on Twitch to the public. Can I say this is the reason for sure? No, just like you I'm making an educated guess. The difference is that I know the difference between knowing something is true and thinking something is true. That is why I'm qualifying my statements here.

Unless we get more info from DPG, we won't know the truth. But in the meantime it will still be funny to me that you think everybody is equally interested in streaming things, and that the number of people on one side of a line or the other is the thing that determines the number of people who stream a 22 year old game.

You are so in denial that you have come up with a new excuse: Live players are older, TLP players are younger.

Yesterday in my EXP group on Mischief everyone was talking about how they couldn't get their ~20 year old kids into EQ because they have grown up in an entirely different era of gaming that revolves around instant gratification. The oldest one had a 36 year old son.

Excuse after excuse after excuse. What will tomorrow's excuse be?

You have some amazing excuses yourself. Make a bunch of claims about some games not releasing new content and when shown that they are you claim that it isn't often enough to be considered new expansions.

After reading the whole thread I have some thoughts to add from my perspective.

To the OP, I think that some people tend to gloss over what TLP actually stands for. Time locked, a snap shot in time of how the game was back then for the most part. Adding new content to it goes against the very principle of why the servers were created in the first place. I can agree that most everyone would like new content to be added at all levels of game play, but to do so at the detriment of the live community doesn't sound like the best way to go about it to me.

And, Atomos... why so hostile? You have a lot of good points, but you can also go over the top at times. Maybe tone it back a notch or two?

TLP's bring in more new players than Live does. New players are more likely to stream something that is new to them. Old (how long they played, not their age per say) players are less likely to stream something they don't think will be exciting to others. You can look at it any way you want.

In either case, streaming is a new thing, and EQ is an old thing. TLP's are a newer thing, even if the content is older. You are assuming that interest in streaming content is equal across the population and then deriving the population levels from the disparity. That might be a potential way to look for an answer if we didn't have server population meters that we could look at. Live servers vary in population and how high they go during peak times. The newest TLP's are rarely low pop and often high pop, older TLP's fade into low/medium over time. There are more Live servers than TLP's, and TLP's merge into Live servers. The mechanics are there that make it possible to maintain a 50/50 type split. Is it 50/50 today? Nobody knows, not me, not you. We just know it was within the last few years.

We're also looking at streamer counts when the current expansion is old, and the newest TLP's just launched. So even if interest in streaming was equal across the player base, we aren't at a point in time when they would be directly comparable. Streaming the first raids of a new loot ruleset could be comparable to streaming the content of a new expansion on release week. After one month of classic we'll now see the Kunark stuff streamed. What will the second month of Velious or Luclin show us? The third month of OoW?

I can willingly admit that I don't know the answers to these things for sure, yet you seem absolutely convinced that every person out there in EQland has the same propensity for streaming things. Maybe you are right, but you don't know that for sure, any more than I know for sure that you are wrong.

Maybe some streamers will comment and give us a better idea from their perspective.

Haha, no. Not even close.

Except what I specifically said was games that add very little or no content. Please be honest.

Nothing that anyone brought up even remotely resembles an expansion.

I haven't been hostile, not even towards those who are hostile towards me.

Some people just think telling them the truth is an insult, or in your words, "being hostile."

No one is being forced to participate in nor read any of this, there is an ignore feature. There are thousands of people to talk to and play with, I'm not going to lose sleep over some people being dramatic over truthful forum posts.

These forums are a very hostile place, I've been reading them for many years. Every single person who's been hostile towards me are the exact same people I've watched be hostile to plenty of other people for years. So there's 0 surprise there. Feel free to say something to them as well!

Regardless, the thread is way off topic now, pretty much nothing but trolling going on here now.

Still it isn't up to you to decide what makes or doesn't make an expansion just because you don't think there is enough content. And besides trying to make new content for old expansions would just mean that they release even less content with an expansion.

Oh, right, cause it's up to you instead.

Me calling out the lack of content and putting quotes around "expansion" isn't preventing anyone else from purchasing, enjoying, or, best of all: calling it an expansion.

Nope, I am letting the developers of the games themselves determine what qualifies or not.

If that were the case, then you would've never acknowledged what I said about it in the first place.

I can't point out which games have released new expansions and new content according to the games themselves?