New EverQuest Perks

A "for profit" company proposes something, that is admittedly poorly thought out, to try and raise more income and now the sky is falling? Come on folks, we don't have to be doom and gloom people all of the time.

Dunno about EQ, but in some other game studios sometimes it is some of the Devs who propose more ways to make money instead of higher ups that gets accepted

If I remember correctly, back when they introduced the marketplace they promised they would never sell player power for money.

I hope they will remember that promise too.

You can be confident that decisions of this nature come from upper management and not the development team although they may be tasked with providing some creative input on how to go about it. Most everyone I ever knew in my development career was interested in making the best software we humanly could within whatever constraints management imposed on us and usually we were not happy with said constraints.

One thing you certainly don't do in any company is publicly post criticism of upper management if you wish to remain employed. With that in mind, the most dedicated developers cannot do anything for EverQuest if they are terminated.

The man who made those promises is long gone and with him any accountability for them for all intents and purposes.

It’s probably tied to a KPI.

Really does not sit well having to pay for 2 more bag slots, per month, after I dished out lifetime payment for 2 accounts... now you want me back as a monthly subscription on top of that? comon man... seriously. We all suffer from bank space, why force us now to pay a monthly fee...very sad... but I did update the UI's to show this new "feature".

Seriously, the lack of real effort into resolving *MULTIPLE issues in game is pitiful and unsettling; considering you want to *Sell perks to players? Seriously resolve on going issues in game, like mitigation, server stability, downtime and bot team issues and you'd see an overflow of retuning players which would RESOLVE the lack of income flowing into EverQuest. REAL players don't want easy, we want effort, we want FUN, we want excitement and we will PAY FOR THAT!!!

Stop taking shortcuts, work harder (seems to be lacking here in the states lately) and get us some resolutions to the game we love and you'll find that returning and new players will come here and then you can hire new employees to help bare the burden!

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For years, I have been posting on these forums about DBG catering to a small player base that runs bot teams and has a lot of extra cash rather than a larger player base with less disposable income. This is just another move to get more from those players with cash, and the rest of us can pound sand. They just don't care.

Here is the real problem with this: every time the game adds an element to make leveling easier, that becomes the expected norm for new expansions. The perks will now be taken into consideration, so this is, in fact, a big fat nerf for the casual players moving forward. We can already expect to see the response of, "You should budget better for those experience pots and perks; what's the problem?" to any future complaint about low experience from mobs or out of wack tasks.

This should have been expected when Daybreak Games was purchased by EG7. All of those lifetime accounts made Daybreak some cash, but EG7 doesn't make a penny, so they needed to find a way to get money from those players. Instead of offering more, they will give us all less and make us pay for the status quo. Get used to it because EG7 has to recoup $300 million just to break even, and this is just the beginning.

But don't worry.... we'll get a re-hash of an old, played out expansion as "new content" instead of ACTUAL new content because dev time goes to projects like this instead of coming up with new stuff. If anything, I'm tempted to blame TLPs on this... if everyone wasn't flocking to relive their old glory days we might actually see new stuff on live. Instead, the people making decisions about the future of EQ see there revenue steam originating from old content, not new content.

Is this money being used towards development of a new EQ/Norrathian lore based game or EQ remake?

If not hard pass on this. There are better ways to support the company than rewarding them for a pay 2 win model.

Idk about doom and gloom. I'd have to agree with "it was upper management decision" rather then the devs, however, it really should have been polled or something. Did the community resource team get wind of this?

They're selling power, despite how small it might be. We have additional cash grabs in the form of the marketplace, why add additional subs?

Rented inventory slots, what happens when you laps on the sub? Are the bags in said slots lost? Did we forget that Dragon's Hoard was made in an effort to relieve server resources and yet 2 more slots that will house 44 slot bags and take more resources then before DH was released.

This was a terrible move. I have absolutely no positive thoughts about "Perks".

What the devs want and what the money people want are rarely the same thing. Profit above all.

I would hope (yup there's a twinge of hope in me still) that server stability would take a high ranking in there. I know this is a business and their game is the money making kind. However, even a game as wonderful as EQ has been over the decades will drive away its player base as performance takes a backseat to profits. Just the thoughts of another player wishing the game a long and happy life.

Having read a developer post elsewhere that mentioned running into the 32 bit memory limit "hard" it seems to me that moving to 64 bits before it becomes an emergency ought to be a priority now as with some other things folks have previously pointed out here. I am not talking about a future operating system change forcing this. That's still a long way off in all likelihood. I am talking about the reported fact that memory management is becoming a challenge now because the game needs to move to 64 bit.

Considering what ought to be priorities, it's hard to welcome a money extraction scheme that wastes development time, pisses off some number of users as seen here and is ultimately proving to be a technical problem that's delayed its release. It is important to note also that for every vocal minority individual (myself included) posting their displeasure on a forum such as this, there are more people who do not bother with this but are just as offended or worse. There is actual risk of lost subscriptions here. I mean, what other MMO charges a subscription on top of a subscription to get some largely trivial perks? I cannot think of any other example of this. I can easily understand why though as can everyone else who is unhappy with it.

I'm sorry folks who are white knighting this but it's absolutely outrageous. There is no viable way to defend it either. There just isn't. Yeah, you can defend some of the perks as having some value but why the hell aren't they going into an expansion to add value to it instead? You can say it's good for the economic health of the game but we know the very, very long history of bleeding off profits from EQ for other projects. The economic and long term viability of this old game depends on keeping the player base happy and this ain't doing it. Fixing and improving the game is what would do that. It's also what might bring back some players if the road to where people are commonly playing together was made far easier than it is now. Confronted with levels 85 to 120 for a heroic character and no good way to get there on your own in a world where the vast majority are playing at or near level cap is a recipe for returning players to become overwhelmed and leave. It amazes me that more work has been done in EverQuest II with catchup than has been done here where the money is. They just gave every paid account a free level 120 boost which I believe is their current level cap as an example. I know they have solo missions which reward a lot of xp and nice gear too but I forget how far up those go. They can afford to do that with EQ2 but they cannot afford to do it here? That seems a little short sighted to me.

I am doubtful but I want to believe that the pause put on the perks ends with scrapping them indefinitely. If memory management is the problem they might have to. It's telling when we are informed that there is a problem there and we'll be updated if and when there is news, emphasis on if. I know I mentioned that earlier but it bears repeating. Between the technical issues whatever they are wasting development time right before a release (crunch time) and the negative feedback here I think removing this would be wise and incorporating it with paid accounts at a later time would be wiser still. Paid accounts are supposed to get all the perks. I like it when a business keeps their word. After all, some people purchased lifetime subscriptions with the understanding that an All Access account includes "all the perks" and likewise, annual and multiple month subs do the same. That's how marketing still promotes All Access subscriptions unless in the past week they changed it.

There is no whitewashing what a bad move this was. There just isn't. I can understand why there is no response from the company here. What is there to say after attempting to milk customers loyal to this game for over 2 decades now? I do not envy the role of the community manager when it comes to stuff like this. They are wise to be in read only mode. I suspect they are too which is why this thread has been allowed to continue and not been locked despite the abundant negativity. I appreciate that actually and I hope they are taking note of this feedback even though they are not acknowledging it. Trying to sell us who are not happy here on this would be like throwing salt into a gaping wound and not unlike the effect of posts attempting to justify it.

As we often say in game, need before greed. This game needs work. It needs monetary investment. It does not need to bleed even a single user over trying to milk it to death instead of capitalize on its greatness and fix it along with improving it.

Moving to 64 bits now would be smart and hopefully they already are working on it. The limitations of 32 bit are becoming problematic and somewhere down the road will become a show stopper. This is far, far more important right now than boosting profits further. As the old business saying goes, you have to spend money to make money. I hope all this feedback is making its way up to management. I really do. I don't need replies from the company. I just want to see change.

I joked elsewhere I think that I had moved through the stages of grief with this and had arrived at acceptance. I was wrong but such is the way with the stages of grief. Everyone experiences them in their own way and moves around between them before true acceptance comes. I can say that I will not accept a subscription on top of a subscription x 3 annual sub accounts. That's roughly 180 bucks annually on top of subscriptions and other related spending that supports this already profitable game. Don't mind me but I want better value for my money please. You cannot ride on the coattails of past greatness and player investment in their characters forever. There is more than enough evidence to prove that established fact in the decline of virtually every MMO ever made over time. You still need to deliver the goods that brought your players in the first place. I hope somebody from the company is reading these posts and reporting back. I really do. I hope it makes a difference.

Have you considered that the amount of work to develop and deploy these new perks and generate new revenue is trivial compared to the amount of work needed to upgrade the game to 64 bit that may or may not generate new revenue? Sure it would be great to move to 64 bit bit I really don't think it was a choice between these new perks and making the game 64 bit.

I mentioned moving to 64 bits as a highly important development priority which it is. I didn't mention it in the context of revenue generation but simply as a very important development priority and referenced other very important development priorities others have mentioned here also. These things should take priority over new code for more profit.

Have you considered that maybe adding perks wasn't a trivial development task when they have to postpone it indefinitely with a "we'll let you know if and when we have more news" post about it? I don't mean that in a snarky way but honestly, it's hard to think of anything that involves changing code as trivial. The potential for unintended consequences is always present every single time you touch anything in an existing code base pretty much. Honestly, there's nothing trivial about it. Sure enough, it ain't working, cannot be launched on time and meantime they are up to their eyeballs in work trying to get an expansion out the door in as stable a state as possible. Adding perks at this point in their development cycle was a bad idea of its own accord.

At any rate, the issue of misplaced priorities is not the only problematic thing about this as I and others have mentioned. It is a significant one though.

Have you considered that they may have encountered something unexpected? And besides I only said trivial compared to upgrading the client to 64 bit.

I think you missed his point and focused too much on the perks. He is right at least to an extent. They need to be working on the transition to a 64 bit client and also working on server stability instead of wasting dev time and resources on perks or anything else like that. Otherwise eventually there won't be much of a player base to milk when the game won't run on current (at the time) software/hardware.