He Played EverQuest For 100 Hours - Should You?

Josh Strife Hayes posted a video of EverQuest. He committed to 100 hours of playtime to see if it's worth proceeding to invest time into.

His conclusion? It's not.

His main gripe? It's too difficult to find a group and systems in the game aren't conducive to promoting grouping.

Absolute truth.

He could have spent an hour on the forums and discovered that. I haven't watched the video but I suspect he didn't realise that a portion of the player-base want to keep it that way so they can continue to be the best at a 20+ year old game.

He's an idiot if it took him 100 hours to learn that. EQ is a bad game. The only people that play it do so because of nostalgia and/or sunk cost fallacy.

Few things to take away here:

1) Played 100 hours. Never even made it the point of getting AAs or where a group was necessary.
2) Claims no group, but runs around with a personalized tank in his party (AI or PC, help is help)
3) This would be no different than any other game that's 20 years old. No low level community.
4) Perks for trying different classes
5) TLP has groups for days. Should have given Oakwynd or Mischief or whatever other TLP a try before making his claims
6) Game is conductive of forming groups, you just have to play in the level range that other players are in. 1-30 is not that range.

He covered all that in the in the video and was actually a little too nice to the game.

People who think this is a good game are stuck due to time investment over the years.

This is not a good game in any way shape or form. Those of you left are just being milked until there are none of you left.

As much as the EQ lifers love the game, it really could do a lot better in terms of teaching new players and smoothing over some of the bad low level experiences.

For example, there is nothing about death/resurrection/corpses in the tutorial. New players don't know they can go to the guild lobby and summon a corpse for free. They don't know about Expedient Recovery. Everything is harder/worse for them. I don't know any experienced players who would go to South Karana if it were listed as a hotzone (total noob trap and a big waste of time).

We can turn our nose up and say EQ doesn't need to spend development time on the new player experience, but that someone can keep at it for 100 hours and not really have a good time isn't great. I think even a small amount of time spent trying to improve the early game would be beneficial.

And what is even more funny is people like you who dont even play hang around to and moan about it.

Every one does not like golf, I dont, but I dont sit on golf forums and say what an incredible waste of time it is. I will never understand it.

he played long enough that everyone was tired of hearing his crying about how wizards suck lol

Fair enough, couldn't be bothered to sit through an hour of watching someone else trying to learn how to play EQ heh. Have a hard time sitting through a whole football game.

But the question then arises: why make such an unfair/biased opinion on lack of actual gameplay? It's like judging the entire game based off of strictly the tutorial

I wouldn't say the game is bad. I'd definitely say it's aged though. Whether you equate aged with bad is another matter altogether though (personally I can't stand old/black and white movies. Too aged for my liking)

Not true. There's a corpse summoner in the tutorial. And when you get out of Gloomingdeep the tutorial doesn't end. You get kicked out by some other NPCs that carry on the tutorial which in turn brings you to the guild lobby and corpse summoners and the likes. As well as discussing AAs which will bring you through the tabs and you can come across the Expedient Recovery AA as well.

It's there. New players are directed to these things. It's the veterans who are used to playing and know a lot of the ins and outs that don't know what the new players have access too because we skip all of it

100 hours is a lot to sink into a game and if it can't keep a player after that it isn't a good sign.

Now we just need to find a brave soul to make a video "I spent 100 hours on the EverQuest Forums, should you?"

I think the video raised a lot of valid points, but also something present in other aging games as well. One thing I do think masks them that he does point out is the systems that helps bring players together. While things like group finders, party teleporters etc are controversial they do shorten distances in growing game worlds and bridge the gap for the social aspect in these types of games. So, very valid on that one, in my opinion.

A brand-new player is not the type of player that EQ should be trying to attract. There are too few of them to make any kind of dev effort financially viable. It would take a massive and costly development and marketing effort to get a significant influx of newbies to EQ. There's a marketing term called "cost of customer acquisition". I would guess that the cost of "newbie EQ customer" acquisition is much higher than the revenue that would come from that newbie. It would be like spending an average of $40 to attract a customer who will only spend $10.

What EQ should focus on is making it easier for vets and returning players to enjoy the game. It's disheartening as a returning player to have to solo slog through levels in deserted zones in order to get to the high level where grouping happens. At this point, I'm not sure what the point is to have leveling be so slow from 80+ on live servers. Make it so that the 80+ leveling is as enjoyable as leveling from 1 to 80 and returning players will stick around. It should be easier and cheaper to make the game more attractive to returning players. They already know how to play the game. Just make it so that they have fun while doing the solo slog to 110+ and they'll stick around to produce revenue in the long term.

Agreed. 100 hours us a lot of time, especially as someone brand new to the game.


BUT!

You'll run into this exact problem in any MMO that's been out for a handful of years or more (WoW and FFXIV are no different) .

There are 16 classes in this game. If someone wanted to experience the game and try to find a class they really enjoy to stick with, we could easily see that 100 hours being divided into 6.5 hour segments per class.

How far do you think someone can get in 6.5 hours whilst being new in a game that's designed around level 100+? Heck, even 25 hours (if we were to break down it down 4 classes for 1 tank, 1 melee, 1 ranged, and 1 healer). Especially if you're doing quests and all the down time involved with running back and forth? It's not really a fair assessment when you break the 100 hours up between multiple characters in empty zones where you do nothing more than auto-attack and cast the same 3-4 spells.

Now let's give that same 25-100 hours on a level 100 character where the population is higher. The game is a lot more interactive (the information overload with heroics is another discussion, and one I don't really have a viable solution for), or even on a TLP such as Mischief where they're half way through the expansions but I can start a new character right now and have multiple groups upon leaving the tutorial.

TLDR: he's pretty much playing an entirely different game and giving a review on that version of the game. But, who's to say his opinion would change in the 100-120 game either?

I can't speak for FFXIV but in WoW you don't run into issues if you can't find a group and when you need a group there are tools (and a lower level player base) to make it much easier to find a group.

In instanced content yes. But newer players tend to shy away from that. My point being, a new player running around trying to level will run into the same problem in WoW as they will in EQ. Empty desolate zones and an entirely solo experience until end game when/where grouping is required to progress

Edit: it would be awesome to have an LFG/LFD tool like WoW has for just group missions (leave raids to guilds). Merge servers together until we have 2-3 high pop, 2-3 mid pop, and 2-3 low pop servers and I think it would be a QoL that could potentially really help the game with the slog that starts about level 100

I currently play EQ actively. I still currently know EQ is a bad game. The reasons I play EQ are in spite of EQ instead of for it.

The difference is that you can progress at a relatively good pace while solo.

And your reason is?

A new player in WoW can level all the way to max level without ever needing a group but the same can't be said for Everquest.