I too would love to be able to play LoN again. I was sad to see when I returned to EQ that it wasn't just gone from the game but completely gone. Even if all I had access to was the cards I already had on my account, it would be fun to play some of the old campaign stuff again.
So you all must be the 4 players who understood how to play it. Most of us like the prize cards and are fine with getting those thru marketplace still. But few players understood how to play the game so it withered on the vine, then they let go the guys working on it and then they sold the server that handled it. Not much hope of it coming back. It was mass hysteria that last day with prizes being given away back and forth.
Lots of people played it. The problem was: 1) the in game version was poorly coded, lag was horrible, and would crash you 2) they had a separate code team in a separate state for it, so the only revenue coming in was people buying packs, it was never going to justify that cost There was no real revenue potential from it. If overseer was the same, separate dev team in another state, it would be shut down too.
Strange. Games like this, like Magic: The Gathering, I've always assumed were just money printing games. Because all they have to do is introduce new cards that are slightly better than previous ones, and everyone flocks to buy them. It's basically pay to win.
Even if they were only paying 4 people (it was more than that), 1 dev, 1 dev/manager, 2 art guys, or whatever, that's at least $300k a year in salary/benefits/insurance. Then a SMALL office space is another $120-200k a year in expenses. You think people buying $3 LoN packs was justifying that? They blew their wad on the hopes of turning it into hearthstone and getting people that didn't play eq to play and pay, and people didn't.
There is still costs involved in developing all the new cards/mechanics as well as keeping the code up to date with all needed security fixes. It is one thing when you are dealing with a game with a very large player base but EQ/EQ2 does not have that.
I keep thinking about LoN every time I see the cards' art in Overseer. It's very sad it was completely shut down. Not only it was a good and original game, but also an amazing single player and co-op experience too. Really miss the raids and scenarios. I wish those were back, in any form.
That server must have been expensive too because they took it down. Once the server was taken down then there is nothing to connect to the card game. Prizes were protected so long as you put them in claims which is what that last day was all about. Collecting, trading and getting them under the claim server. Guess they could not even use that server for the main EQ.
I found LoN the card game to be incredibly boring. The artwork, on the other hand, was incredible. I wish I could look at high-res versions of the Overseer artwork.
If they kept the card prizes with pay to win tier power, like the original set had, it would have probably continued Think a big problem of it was that it wasn't like a Hearthstone (a simplified Magic The Gathering) to build a massive audience that would then buy cards, but it was more complicated and harder to play then either main ones Never played the Elder Scrolls one, but it looked kinda in the vein of LoN, and it too was shut down after like a year or 2 or something
I loved the game. My brother and me did the 4 player coop-LON raids a lot with 2 friends who never played EQ and also liked the game. All the coop-raids been challenging and it took us a bit till we won. It was also fun to play Goblin Dojo, the 2 player raid while using all your cards instead of deckbuilding. Pure chaos, but extra challenge. I dont have a big clue about other card games. Hearthstone was fun for a while, but i missed the coop scenarios. (perhaps there any now, didnt play it for years).
I never played the game once but I bought lots of packs of the cards hoping for prize cards. I really enjoyed looking at the cards though. The artwork was great and I thought it kinda sucked that you could not see them again. Do they have a web page with the cards listed and pictures up?
I don't remember a lot about it other than it being fairly confusing. I played it just enough to get an item you could only get through LoN then never went back.