What is Darkpaw doing to Bring New Players to EverQuest?

I believe you're wrong on this. I think many veterans would welcome a new player, even mentor them, if the prevailing attitude of these new players were one of honor. Some of the new players (let's be honest, they're mostly returning players) I've grouped with were great. Some were meh. Some were only there for a PL and loot and plat, and even just sat there until it was time to loot.

I'll admit I have high expectations of anyone I group with - perhaps I expect too much. But the worst of the players I have grouped with, and the limited time I have to play (further dwindling with each passing year), I have zero interest in mentoring yet another unappreciative player riding my coattails.

For me, it may be time to hang up my shield. I am jaded. I am impatient. And I am tired of bending the knee to a company who responds far too slowly to the changing needs of its players.

I have been playing EverQuest since May 2000. Maybe its time I take a break.

One thing DP could do to help newbies is make buffs have a bigger level range that they can affect. Back when the max level was 115, I could pick up lots of MGBs in PoK/GL at level 75 or so. This greatly helped me level up right at the point when the levels start to get pretty tough. Now that the level is 120, the MBGs of those players don't land at as low of a level anymore. No doubt it can be considered overpowering to have level 120 buffs land on a level 75 player, but at this point, does it really matter? The level 75 is trying to slog through the levels on their own in deserted zones. Having level 120 buffs land on them would make the experience fun rather than drudgery.

Do not expect anything from DBG and other players as this DOES lead to dissapointments. Every player does want something else and most of them have an unrealistic greed for power to compensate their poor RL so it is hard for the devs to make the right decisions. Take your time and cyu soon !

You are 100% correct. My expectations are mine and any disappointment stemming from these expectations shouldn't reflect poorly on Darkpaw or EverQuest.

However, after 22 years of playing I think I can speak to the veracity of my claim that Darkpaw is slow to react to changes in general player tastes and the dwindling playerbase. They haven't done enough to shore up their tech debt and invest in the game. Whether this is the fault of Darkpaw, Daybreak, or someone else is not my concern.

Anyway, thanks for the sanity check. I appreciate it!

There isn't really a base for 'new players' in the 'oldschool style hardcore mmorpg' crowd. There's just a few diehard communities scattered across a few games: EQ, EQ2, DAoC, AC2, etc. Poaching players from their favorite nostalgia to yours is... difficult at best.

We all know and love EQ, but I honestly thought the 16 of us who still play the game were just too poor to back pantheon with enough money for alpha access. The game is a cash cow on life support, we all know it. It's sad but true, you can't attract gen Z to a game without flashy neon tig ol biddy hentai girls. Pantheon will be another niche game, but pull in enough people from dying games and flightless australian bird servers to hopefully give us a chance.

EQNext wasn't projected to have enough players to replace EQ1 or 2, so it got scrapped. The only way we attract new players to Norrath is if EQ3 comes out and the launch is set to coincide with intentional sunset of EQ1 and EQ2. Even then, it's a gamble. This market is niche, big moves can capsize the ship.

New people flow into TLPs and P99 all the time, have you ever actually talked to any randoms? Also, you left OSRS.

“Old School Runescape had 157,445 concurrent players at the weekend, breaking its record”

https://www.pcgamer.com/old-school-runescape-player-numbers/

And not navigating away from rocky shores can sink her outright...inaction is not a viable strategy. Building upon the strengths of your ship only makes her stronger.

I guess pulling numbers from November 2020 is relevant in March 2022...

They display the player count on their home page. As of now 3/26/2022 23:56 EST, 62,811.

https://oldschool.runescape.com/#ja_sid=8df564a5-4089-4b12-ba45-87eadb373304

Here’s historical data.

https://www.misplaceditems.com/rs_tools/graph/

Anyone who reads this thread understands you "fail to see" how it would be popular consdidering you just made the same point five times on one page. (That has to be some sort of new record)

Thing is, it's just your opinion, and there's actualy more reason to believe it would be popular than otherwise. Why have you taken the time to trash my idea so repeatedly?

I wonder if we'll get #6? Or next do we get a semantics argument about what constitutes "popular"? (hard pass on the latter)

Ask not what your game can do for you, ask what you can do for your game

I got my daughter into EQ in the last 18 months or so, who in turn got several of her friends into it.

Problem is that there is not much enjoyable content in current expansion except raids.
Getting to the point to raid is a huge time investment.
I don’t see why someone would start this journey today.

There is many thing DP could do to improve the player experience.
Improve the clunky interface.
Update the graphics.
Add solo content.
Add group content.
Remove the excessive repetitiveness of the game.
Streamline the leveling process with quest hub and guides.

They started it with the hero journey, but it should be more guided and updated to higher level content.

You have failed to explain why a returning player would want to start on a new server that is level capped at 70 versus a server where they have existing characters and friends and are likely above level 70 anyway. It isn't just my opinion as you can just look at the history of new live servers to see that they do not go very well. Top that off with the fact that when any new/returning player asks for suggestions on which server they should start on the response is almost always FV/Xegony do to the population levels you would see people tend to get suggested high population servers and not low population ones.

I think you're missing the point that it's more about environment (space) than pure population which is always going to end up top-heavy.

See Skuz's comment about Agnarr. Do you think a 70 or 75 capped server would be more or less popular than Agnarr?

And I think you are missing the point that very few people would want a live server that is capped at level 70 and they would want a TLP or normal live server instead.

An EQ Live expansion = handful of new zones (possibly copies of old ones), 4 missions with long replay timers, 4 carbon copy raids of those missions, no unique/spells or abilities, copy/paste progression system.

A WoW/FFXIV xpac has more content than an EQ expansion just on release. Let alone the additional free content that's released in patches over the next few years.

TLPs are way better value. At least you don't need to spend hundreds of $ on extra accounts just to play.

You clearly have no idea of what you are talking about. Move along to your TLP and quit bothering the big kids

Why would one want to spend money on a server that only allows one account per computer at the most? Yeah you would have to pay for any extra accounts on the TLP.

Meanwhile I have numerous accounts on live servers that cost me nothing. Its called F2P. If I want to buy the latest expansion I can for about $30 base once a year. That is what the TLP players spend every other month.

I'm really impressed that as much as you are trying to troll, you can't even get your counts (close to) correct. Your troll would be much better if you could count.

Totally different objective outside the scope of this thread.