Is EQ small potatoes and not worth developing?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Vizier, Nov 30, 2021.

  1. Brontus EQ Player Activist


    Some good points!

    SOE was purchased in 2015 by Columbus Nova. The name of the studio was promptly changed from SOE to Daybreak Games. Both Jason Epstein and Ji Ham have been running Daybreak for 7 years now. I may be wrong but I have not seen any evidence that they care in the slightest about investing in the future of the EverQuest franchise. Yet in all of their investor presentations they never fail to leverage the history and street cred of EverQuest.

    They even created Darkpaw as a way to consolidate the EverQuest part of Daybreak but to this day it seems very little has changed. Most of the devs have left for greener pastures up the road in Irvine. Layoffs are commonplace.

    As it stands now, the EverQuest franchise doesn't have an evangelist to spread the word about EQ or to even reassure the existing players. We have no discernable product roadmap for EQ. Players are kept in the dark about the future of EverQuest. All we get is an annual token Producer's Letter and we don't even have a proper producer at that.

    Given the scandals at other MMO studios and player fatigue with blockbuster MMOs, there is zero outreach from Darkpaw to new players who might be a perfect fit for EverQuest. With no new players coming in, how can we expect them to replace those that leave? It's like they don't even care about churn. This franchise seems to be slouching towards oblivion.

    Meaningful and thoughtful communication from Darkpaw to the existing players is pretty much non-existent. The vocal EQ community is seen as an annoyance rather than valued stakeholders in the franchise.

    The American Revolutions got started based on the slogan:

    No taxation without representation

    In a way, that scenario explains the predicament of loyal EQ subscribers. The money we pay to play EQ each month is subsidizing the other games that Daybreak is responsible for. It's not fair that money that we are paying is not being properly reinvested back into the franchise.

    Sure, the 64 bit client update is good news but Darkpaw has not fully explained the benefits that will accrue because of this. It's possible that they are doing this to make EQ compatible with the EG7 Games Launcher that is coming.

    I'm not sure what the answer is. But sitting back, doing nothing and watching this franchise atrophy and ultimately die from neglect is not something I want to be a part of.

    MMOs are not like most products. It's a continued investment of time and money on the part of the players. It's an unspoken contract between the players and the studio. But they seem to have forgotten that. Look, we need some hope here. We need some reassurance from Daybreak and Darkpaw that they are going to stop treading water and stop giving us measly scraps like cookie cutter expansions and TLP servers.

    Lots of people make the excuse that that we are dealing with a MMO that is 22 years old. But that's not our fault. There hasn't been a new version of EQ released since 2004 with EverQuest 2. That's unheard of for any industry that once had total market dominance as SOE did with EQ from 1999-2004.

    Imagine if Apple stopped releasing products 5 years after the release of the Apple II? Imagine any other company sat on its laurels and did nothing with their signature IP. It's inconceivable.

    We are tired of hearing the same excuses over and over again. The problem isn't the players. We are the good guys here. We've been keeping this franchise going. It's the people that own the franchise. A fish rots from the head on down. Until the EverQuest franchise gets new owners, I fear nothing will change.
    Coagagin likes this.
  2. Benito EQ player since 2001.


    "Some goods points!" Then proceeds to devote several paragraphs of questionable assumptions/connections to bad mouth a game he/she seems to derive pleasure from evident by his/her continued presence.

    I'm not sure if you just read some Jack Kerouac and in a mood, or if you are a Blizzard fan (after a cursory review of your post history) projecting insecurities on the wrong game.


    Blizzard paid $18 million to settle a lawsuit with the US government. They were represented....by attorneys.

    As some wise EQ players have said in days of yore: The forum is not an airport. Departures need not be announced.


    (Subtitles required for dialogue).
  3. Deckerd Smeckerd Augur

    Well, just to throw out wild ideas…

    If they took all the zones and conformed them to the structure or multiple structures of a high rise building rather than something like a pyramid, not to say that is what the zone layout is. I would need a piece of paper and a pencil to figure that. Let me clarify what I mean…

    Imagine you have 20 floors in a building and 5 zones per floor. Each floor is aimed at a level range. If the floors contain more zones, the players will spread out. If there are fewer zones per floor, the players will be brought closer together. Back in 1999, the building was tall and narrow. These days, with a world so large, the game would work better if it was an inverted pyramid. However, that is very basic. In Norrath, there are many continents and new player starting locations. Consider Kunark. It was the second expansion and introduced the Iksar. What happened was the introduction of a new building that was more vertical than wide. In Norrath today, the building is very tall and wide, as a whole, and the zones on each floor can be separated by a great deal of geography.

    What if there were a way to make the game more replayable but still make progress on your higher level character at the same time? The problem is that people are often invested in their high level character so much that any other character is a distraction.

    What if each character race has a season? Or perhaps 2 races are in season at a time. What if, when you create a character of a race that is in season, it somehow earns double Xp but the extra Xp is in the form of a currency which can be traded to another of their own characters, on the condition that the recipient is the same or higher level? For many people, that would be their main. Suppose, that they have this ability to earn xp currency for 120 levels as long as it was created during the season. Therefore, a player may end up in possession of many characters that earn xp currency.

    This accomplishes making a seasonal character advantageous to the main character. It brings players together. It populates the lower levels. A faster seasonal rotation might be preferable. Perhaps a new season can begin every two weeks.

    It is a reverse power level. You replay the game to get xp for your own higher level characters.
  4. Iven Antonius Bayle

    On the gaming market EQ is a rather small potatoe. The 32bit computer system seems to be a bottleneck. And it is a lot cheaper to change to 64bit than developing a new game. Not to develop a successor would be a bad mistake but the investors of EQ sure have way to much money already than to care about it. The EQ project was never about logic and long time success. They just do milk the old cow as long as it does give milk and they will die with the cow when the cow does die.

    It goes to where it always goes to. In the global commercial system there is only one direction. An interesting part of it is that the recipients at the end of the lines who dominate the global ponzi (pyramid) scheme system are always well hidden.
  5. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    This made me laugh and I needed it. Thank you.
  6. Jumbur Improved Familiar


    You know, there are multiple ways to vote with you vallet, one of them involves cancelling your subscription, until they take the game into the direction you want. That is not an effective way...

    The other way is to buy enough stocks in EG7, for you to be invited to investor meetings and demand they take the game in the correct direction(profits be damned!)...I don't think anyone is hardcore enough for that approach, but it might work...:p

    Become the leadership!
    Shindius, Qelil, Iven and 1 other person like this.
  7. HeatherPurrs Augur

    Furor PlaneDefiler a complete jerk and fraud got references from EQ Management for taking over WoW.
    If you never knew who Furor was, he cheated his way and his guild cheated their way through 5 years of EQ content. He even funded the hack progs people still use to this day.

    That moron they put in charge of WoW and he killed it with Bill Cosby rooms and ... Literal and he got references from Sony Online Management.
    Benito likes this.
  8. Laronk Augur

    If EQ is small potatoes I would love to be given some small potatoes.
    Coagagin, Shindius and Nennius like this.
  9. Laronk Augur

    Honestly though EQ / daybreak changed hands relatively recently and luclin would of been far in development at that point. Now that a different investment firm is in charge you have to wait another cycle to see if things are improving.
    Wdor, Niskin, Coagagin and 1 other person like this.
  10. Vumad Cape Wearer


    How cool would it be if we could go to Hollywood Studios and visit Norrath? Do you think it would be one city like Starwars is? Or do you think it would be a bunch of zones like Epcot. It would be cool, but comparing the EverQuest Franchise to the StarWars franchise is a pretty big stretch. I have a hard time believing that anything the EQ franchise could have done would have lead to it being acquired by Disney. WoW doesn't even have any theme park franchising, well, at least not anything approved by Blizzard.
  11. Vizier Augur



    They could just cut and paste some of their older systems and folks would be happier than they are with the normal cut n paste garbage of the last 4 years. A new LDoN / DoN system, bigger better, infinite. Maybe even procedural. Sounds great right? Never going to happen.
    Laronk likes this.
  12. Nolrog Augur

    They have also invested a lot of time and money addressing the tech debt. JChan talked about that a while back. You see that with the 64 bit and can see how one of the coders was working on new tool to help make things easier and faster (read the most recent get to know a dev). These are things that we do not see, it is not zones or raids or quests, but it helps keep the game moving forward.
    IblisTheMage, Wdor, Skuz and 2 others like this.
  13. Vizier Augur

    I raised that point in the beta forum and I was screamed at by multiple "informed" sources that the 64-bit project has nothing to do with normal EQ development. I get that it might be a 1 time investment, but I am convinced this 64-bit is a huge reason for the lack of development for 4 years. If nothing else it occupies the minds of the idiots who make the decisions about what gets worked on. These idiots barely have enough mental bandwith to cover their own bonuses and they dont give a rats about the people who pay their salaries.
    Coagagin likes this.
  14. HeatherPurrs Augur

    The only thing a move to 64bit does is allow the system to use more memory. That's it.
    Dre. likes this.
  15. limpin_jezus New Member

    Not true. Floating Point precision is greater, for example, with 64bit applications than 32bit. EQ pathing likely could do a great deal with higher floating point precision and greater number of path traces, not to mention faster calculations.

    Also, maps could be exponentially larger, not just by pure memory capacity, but by floating point calculations required to account for a larger map that a 32bit app would be limited by the math.
    Wdor, Shindius and Skuz like this.
  16. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Retooling is the most expensive part of modernization. That's precisely what's happening with EverQuest. People asking where the money goes .. that's a fair question. It's also fair to speculate that much of the money recently has gone into precisely what Nolrog is referring to.
    Wdor and Skuz like this.
  17. Coagagin Guild house cat

    And doubles the internal data path for one, allowing far more variety to the number of graphics, icons, internal processing, speed and a host of other problems we have seen in the past become essentially non-issues. Otherwise Operating Systems, clients like Windows 10/11, O365 and every other important piece of software your likely to use would STILL BE 32 bit!

    Gosh! I could only wonder why everyone didn't stick with 32 bit now that you bring it up.
  18. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    That’s great but you have to have the development resources to utilize it. Swapping to 64 bit doesn’t really mean much, if they don’t make use of it. It’s all pie in the sky thinking of all the possibilities.
  19. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I get the impression they do plan to use the extra memory, by bumping up the graphic detail.
    IblisTheMage, Wdor and Skuz like this.
  20. Fian Augur

    It is not surprising that EQ is a cash cow and they are funding other projects with EQ money. Let's say they did what you wanted and spend twice as much money on EQ. As a result, let's say we get twice the number of zones and quests. Will that increase subscriptions? Let's say they focused on marketing more. It might help get some returning players (not sure how they are going to track them down 20 years later), however for new players, starting in EQ is a daunting prospect:

    1. On live servers, 90% of the player base is probably max level. So a new player is going to have an extremely hard time finding a group for a game that is tuned to be very hard to solo.
    2. EQ is a very complex game. Learning how to play a class well is very intimidating. We don't have a single burn button, we have in some cases a dozen abilities that need to be used at certain times during a burn for max effectiveness. Effective players are creating macros, setting keybinds, etc. They could simplify the game, but to be honest, I don't think current players would like that. Good players in EQ may not have great reflexes, but they have great knowledge of the game, plus have spent time doing obscure quests building up their characters. Making the game simpler would shift the advantage to the young with reflexes, while the current players are mostly old.

    So, from a business perspective, spending twice as much money on EQ just isn't going to give much opportunity to get a solid return from the investment. Putting that money into releasing a new game has the prospect of multiplying that money 10 fold. As a result, it isn't surprising they are taking EQ money and putting it towards new projects.
    ExecutionDbl9 likes this.