A new PvP server ?

The expansions still make enough money for Daybreak that they continue to push them out. PVP on the other hand has proven that it isn't going to make the company any money and they have no reason to go out of their way to try something that is unlikely to make them much money over something that is proven to make them money.

If you said its not possible to balance PvP i might agree since yes you are right they can hardly balance PvE. my rebuttal would be PvP in the form of a TLP would be much easier to balance then PvE. Especially if they locked the TLP to Velious or Luclin as what made PvP unbalenceable originally had a lot to do with how differently mob scaled compared to players and it made the two systems really incompatible together.

You mean the same TLP that they can't balance? If it was that much easier to balance why do we see lots of complaints about how classes are not balanced and some are not worth playing?

Expansion for the last 5 years have proven the current course of action in that direction is not sustainable. They are able to deliver less and less. Especially if you consider dev time to money made. I believe the realized that and thus launched TLPs which was a big change and something that did not benefit any of their existing player base and took away dev time from making expansions but it brought in a ton of new players. TLPs takes way less dev time because they don't have to make content and make probably a majority of their income. PvP is the same much less time because PvP is the content and it would bring in people who are not currently playing the game.

If that was the case why are they still making them? The point about TLPs being designed to replay content and there is plenty of existing content out there still stands. If you want to play new content you should be playing on a live server instead.

There was 2 different Red Guilds on Selo. Which was like 20-30% of the servers PoP.

Its not balanced because they do not spend time balancing it....They spend it all making new raids and then bug fixing them and on creating new TLP rulesets.

If it was so easy to balance why are they not doing it? They don't spend all their time making new raids and they do release plenty of fixes to older content.

Lol you made me check because I thought I might be on the wrong thread but this is the tread about PvP TLP not new content. Honest mistake ill let you have it.

As for why they are still making new expansions. My thoery is (and this is just a thoery) its a for sure thing and they are afraid of the possible consequences of not releasing an expansion. But its just prolonging the inevitable eventually if they want to keep the lights on they are going to have to give up making full expansions every year because the time invested into money made just isen't cutting it. TLPs right now are probably subsidizing a lot of the cost of making new content.

If the expansions are still making money and keeping players around why would they stop making them? Of course they would be worried that they would lose a lot of players if a new expansion wasn't released. Heck they even make them now with reasons for TLP players to buy them.

Everything you two are dueling about is pure speculation.

• No one outside of DPG knows "why" DPG does anything. You may have noticed they don't talk much? When they do, they rarely share the "why" behind their decisions. Unless you're going to share some evidence, any posts made saying "DPG does XYZ because of ABC" is pure, unsubstantiated speculation.
• We have no hard facts about server population.
• We have no facts about costs and profitability. We don't know whether TLPs are themselves are profitable. Or if creating new expansions is profitable. Or even how they're calculating and measuring profitability.
• We have no evidence about whether PvP has "player support" or not. No metrics. Likewise, no evidence of player support for TLPs, Free Trade, Monks, or purple anteater mounts. Even if we did (which we don't), there's no way of knowing this "player support" factors into DPG decisions.
• We have no evidence that improving EQ PvP would result in more players returning to EQ and spending sufficient money to cover the related costs. Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe DPG doesn't care either way. Not every decision has a direct correlation to profit.
• We have no idea what it costs to keep churning out TLPs, or new expansions, or UI changes, or 64-bit, or anything.

The fact that they keep churning out new expansions and TLP servers suggests that they are indeed profitable enough to support them doing it.

I believe that is correct. However, we have zero metrics or hard evidence. Exactly -how- profitable? What's the associated revenue and costs? No one knows.

While I don't think it's the case here, sometimes businesses do unprofitable things, hoping for longer-term returns. Or they use the profits from venture A to pay for venture B.

But again, we're all just talking out of our rumps here.

You are correct that we don't know the exact numbers but trying to suggest that they would do something unprofitable year after year is just silly.

Yes, it is quite silly isn't it? It also happens all the time. Many famous companies/divisions have done unprofitable things, year after year. Because reasons.

• Microsoft's Xbox division.
• Tesla.
• Uber and Lyft
• Zillow
• WeWork
• Pinterest
• Peloton
• Snap
• Amazon in various market and segments throughout its history. Deliberately taking a loss, so they could capture the market, and then recover their losses later once they had control over it.

Again, not suggesting that is why DPG is doing.

My original point is that I feel these forums would be improved if everyone dialed down the pointless bickering, pandering, presenting assumptions and speculations as fact, hyperbole, and replying to every other thread.

Almost your whole list is showing companies on paper not showing as profitable, but you're leaving out lots of context deliberately. Many of these companies are taking their revenue and heavily investing into R&D. They arent deliberately making a product nobody wants, quite the contrary. Dont be so deceiving with your posts.

And xbox cleared about $20b. How is that not profitable?

Well my theories are not without evidence.
1. EQ is not bringing in new player and the population is declining
-Sure there is little in the way of hard evidence for that its a pretty safe assumption seeing as not only is the game super new player unfriendly but there is no evidence of new players on the servers or on the forums and there is stories of people quitting the game here and there
2. Where is EQ getting their money
-Again yes you are right there isent a nice spreadsheet but I have been a pretty active member on multiple servers and I talk to other players. TLP launches have a ton of people buying bags, mounts, potions, ect from the marketplace to jump start their new toons. From the people play with most of them are spending the same or more on TLP launch goodies as someone would buying the new expansion. Expansions are another major revenue source but are really only marketed towards live players.

Just because there isent absolute evidence doesn't mean we can't make good hypotheses and just because we are speculating doesn't mean it cant be true.

And Daybreak is not those companies, Everquest is currently one of the biggest profit makers for the company and they are unlikely going to be spending much time on doing things that lower that.

A few things.

1) PvP in EQ was/is horrible. It's so bad that they pretty much stopped developing it about the 2nd-3rd year of EQ being out.

2) the Early years of PvP in EQ was melee classes "jousting" each other with classes like monks win because of more swings = more hits = more damage. Classes like SK's had HT so badly nerfed in PvP to prevent an instant kill in 1 hit, to the point that even if you used it on let's say a monk you had to get them down to 1/3 life and pray it was enough to kill them, otherwise they would just mend through it. I also remember playing a few classes (again SK was one) when I would cast a spell, I would get a "this spell does not work on PC's" on most of the spells I had. Bards would just selo's and kite people, casters would debuff and run away. it was just stupid. Now at the current level its, who can get "charged up" and use all their discs to 1 shot the other person first.... again, just stupid (has to do with the fact they haven't done anything with PvP in decades.)

3) PvPers always come up with these posts, and to be fair they can't even be bothered to log into the 1 PvP server, which always has a low population. It was already mentioned once there was a whole thing about logging int the test server and turn int he books to show a sea of red. Free server so the players that weren't actively playing that wanted one could log in and show their support... and barely anyone showed up. The demand may or may not be there, what DPG goes off of is the data they get and talking about it without actually logging in tells them to not waste time on it.

4) I would be 100% behind a PvP server (even though I wouldn't play it) if there was actually a reason to have one. I don't want them to waste resources on one that no one is going to play (kind of like the last couple TLP's.) I would even consider playing one... if and only if they overhauled PvP.

Nobody plays on Zek. So, Just wipe Zek and start it as a new TLP. Put a little pop-up saying there’s no support available for player disputes.

Also, no need for any replies to my post as the idea is excellent and DPG stands to make tens of dollars.