Raiding is far too easy and too predictable.

I've just become a big fan of Strawberry. The stodgy forum elites don't like Strawberry's posts because he challenges the conventional wisdom about raids. Hearing the truth about a MMO you've invested much of your is hurtful to fragile people who are intolerant of other people's views.

Raids are predictable and boring. SOE and Darkpaw have been churning out cookie cutter raids for 24 years with little deviation from the rinse and repeat formula.

Most fantasy virtual worlds have never gone beyond the raiding formula and that's a bad thing. This is precisely why most gamers today have not even heard of EverQuest. The developers failed to evolve the design of the game. They don't take risks. They don't think outside the box. They don't even involve the community or bother to interact with them. They've had 24 years to innovate and we still have the same mediocre uninspiring content that old-timers gleefully lap up on the forums.

Players have a right to hold Darkpaw developers accountable and express their opinions politely and constructively. This is what the forums are for. If the forums exist only to praise the devs and enforce groupthink, then they are useless and should be shut down.

When forum members pile on and brigade other members, they are not doing Darkpaw or EverQuest any favors. By doing this they are unwittingly perpetuating the status quo and assuring that more mediocre, half-baked, untested, unimaginative content will be forthcoming. Wake up.

Telling someone to "quit if you don't like it" is a specious argument and is an example of the false dilemma logical fallacy. To prevent future embarrassment, please just stop using this tactic.

Or tacit wisdom cautions against dev and design overreach because some of us have seen this before.

I cannot think of a single forum poster or EQ player who genuinely speaks against reasonable creative vision. Advocating for wholesale change 'just because' is not only foolish but dangerous to the well-being of the game and franchise.

The landscape of creativity run amok is littered with the rotting husks of once-dreamed visions. I'd rather EQ make a run at staying afloat than go all in on something that it may not survive.

This is not a new behavior.
Raiders just log for raids once they are maxed.
They have been doing that for a very long time, the beginning presumably.

This just in- saying quit if you dislike the game so much is a fallacy.

Mmmk.

and "stodgy forum eletes" (Predispostion toward anyone who dares disagree with OP) isn't also a rhetorical device.

+1 for humor, this made me chuckle.

Devs gotta dev for dev employment's sake is the death knell for many games.

Why keep doing a activity designed for entertainment if you don't enjoy it? There are plenty of other games out there that they seem to reference as good games that they would likely enjoy playing.

QFT

exactly.

My post was directed at this -

Telling someone to "quit if you don't like it" is a specious argument and is an example of the false dilemma logical fallacy. To prevent future embarrassment, please just stop using this tactic.


No, telling someone to quit if they don't like it is a very logical conclusion and is not rhetoric. It is however a viable option. The alternative to it however, is lobbying for change.

They should be lobbying their guild for change to their scheduling, not trying changing how raids are that the majority of the community seem to be happy with.

Last I heard Strawberry was on a TLP server, so chance of change to the game there isn't going to happen. So the only way to change is going to have to come from the guild to do random raids that aren't on a schedule

This has nothing to do with the rest of your post. I am aggressively anti a lot of current Darkpaw choices/decisions. An idea being against the status quo does not automatically make it good. People don't like Strawberry's posts because they are awful suggestions. Removing the entire tradeskill system from the game? Making raids artificially RNG to mimic a DND campaign? Those are terrible ideas for Everquest (and most MMOs).

You can't even correctly identify issues.

There has been years of inventive and interesting raid content. It's far from "cookie cutter for 24 years". You havent even done most of the raids in the game so you are far from a knowledgeable person to speak on the matter.

Advloot is one of the best features, across the entire mmo genre. You are confusing the last 24 years with the last ~5.

Take a look outside of your bubble. There is uproar about many things. I agree that we shouldnt blindly praise the devs. That's not what's happening here. You are again grandstanding about some other issues in a thread not related to it.

Forum members are allowed to call bad ideas bad. We are not defending Darkpaw, we are saying a bad idea is bad.

A disclaimer that is apparently required by you, this is not a personal attack. This is identifying where you have posted wrong or mistaken information.

I agree, but I or Strawberry never advocated for wholesale change. I've been here long enough to know that most of the forum regulars don't want to see any kind of change in the design of EQ. The tall poppy syndrome is a perfect metaphor for these forums. Most suggestions from non-forum elites are immediately shot down out of some misguided sense loyalty to the developers which is never reciprocated. You know who you are.

The term "wholesale change" is a strawman argument. Nobody is advocating for getting rid of raids entirely. Strawberry made some great points about raiding that challenged a lot of people and rocked the boat. Good!

I'll take it one step further. Why do we need expansions every year? Why not a contraction? How about Darkpaw stops making expansions and polishes the content that they have already released?

Why not take the resources that Darkpaw spends for an expansion and future proof Norrath by polishing the original EQ geography (Odus, Antonica, and Faydwer) and bring it up to 2023 fantasy MMOPRG standards?

They could even call it: EverQuest Season of Discovery.

Of course we want EQ to be stable and functional. Again, nobody's demanding that they "go all in" and get rid of raids completely. All we are asking for is that Darkpaw stop making boring, predictable, unimaginative content and think outside the box occasionally.

Shakespeare said:

It is better to have loved and lost, than not loved at all.

Not every creative endeavor will succeed but at least you have to try. Darkpaw has not demonstrated that they are willing to embrace new ideas and at least try. There's an adage in business that says:

Fail fast to succeed sooner

If you are afraid to fail, then you'll never succeed.

Darkpaw Games is the creativity business. At least that's what they tell us on the EverQuest website. Creative people are supposed to take risks and try to push the envelope. Darkpaw is the opposite: they are risk adverse and focused more on monetization than they are making a MMOPRG that is designed to enhance the play experience of their players.

Every serious MMO studio worth their salt has a research and development department where new ideas, mechanics, and innovation are encouraged. As an example, Blizzard has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars on various projects that got cancelled. Imagine if Apple stopped taking risks and was still making Macintoshes instead of where they are right now?

It's hard to see how the EQ franchise at this point could be doing any worse than it is now. EQ is at it's lowest point in history as far as brand recognition. EverQuest is just a quaint footnote for Enad Global 7 to name drop at investor presentations.

Look at the graph below from Google Trends for the term "everquest" from 2004 -- 2023 and you'll see evidence of this.



Here's the same graphic comparing EveQuest (blue) to World of Warcraft (red):



The results are self-evident. The reasons why both of these MMOs have different results is very obvious to long time observers of both studios.

To be fair, the trajectory for MMORPGs in general follows the same path. MMO's are not cool anymore. Why is this? MMO studios stopped taking risks and stop aspiring to pushing the genre forward. To this day, every MMO in existence is still predicated on the tedious Groundhog Day formula and produces content that never changes.

We we promised living and breathing fantasy virtual worlds?

That promise was never kept. The sad thing is that they are not even trying to seek out the Holy Grail of virtual world design that was promulgated about 25 years ago.

Darkpaw, you need to do better.

Hmm new ideas
Mischief server
Vaniki server
Oakwynd server
Keyrings
Overseer
Tradeskill depot
Personas

Yeah, your right Darkpaw do not embrace new ideas and try.

That is an incredible wall of text to say absolutely nothing of value. Impressive.

One thing never talked about by being like Brontus or Strawberry or the other people that have tons of "innovative" ideas is the ability to Defend Your Argument.

If your idea cannot withstand criticism, it's not very good. The speed in which the "idea" people in this threat reverted to defensiveness in the face of criticism shows how little spine and merit the idea has.

I would suggest just not replying to threads like this because it serves no purpose.

There is no "winning" argument that they will accept.

That would definitely be the smarter move. Unfortunately, I am very stupid and cannot just let someone continue to act stupid without at least informing them.

Actually, I am 100% right.

Different server types are not substantive new ideas in the realm of design. Boost experience here, lower experience there creating new TLP ideas is are not concrete examples forward thinking MMORPG design philosophy. That's what called tinkering.

The Darkpaw devs have had 24 years to innovate on the design of EverQuest and push the genre foward. I wonder what would have happened if automobile manufacturers stopped innovating in 1999 and kept release the same models cars to the public?

Take a trip to Cuba and see what happens.

According to ChatGPT which now has access to various authorities websites to gather the most up to date data things are not going very well for EverQuest:

"As of 2023, the MMORPG landscape shows a significant difference in the market share and player engagement between EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

EverQuest, which has been a staple in the MMORPG community since its release, has a total subscriber count of approximately 1.2 million. However, its daily player count is considerably lower, with only around 414 players engaging with the game on a daily basis​​.

In stark contrast, World of Warcraft, another longstanding and hugely popular MMORPG, boasts a massive total player or subscriber count of approximately 132.34 million. Its daily player count is also significantly higher, with an estimated 2.51 million players engaging with the game each day​​.

This comparison highlights the vast difference in current player engagement and market share between these two iconic MMORPGs, with World of Warcraft maintaining a much larger and more active player base than EverQuest as of 2023."

These numbers are appalling. The facts speak for themselves and they don't care about your feelings or loyalties. Whoever is in charge of the EverQuest franchise needs to wake up, smell the coffee and get a reality check.

The people that come to the forums to share ideas on how to make EverQuest a better play experience and more profitable should be encouraged to continue to do so.

If you think EQ only has 400 daily players, there is no point speaking with you. ChatGPT nonsense.

Seriously man, where in the hell do you get that number from? Because people that actually play this game KNOW that number is completely wrong. That's so ridiculously wrong it throws your credibility out the window that you'd even post it, even if it came from some gaming website out there.

Edit: Oh... I missed that you got it from ChatGPT. ROFL... yup, that really does blow your credibility that you'd post this.

Yeah, I’d like to see a gm jump into an open world zone and tear stuff up like they used to do.

Most humans like routines. It gives them a sense of comfort knowing what is to be expected and how to complete whatever task is in front. Most don't like surprises- sure once in awhile is fine, but not every day.

Your job asks you to be there Monday through Friday, 9-5. That is pretty routine, but I don't hear many people wishing they could work Sunday night 9pm-2am, then Monday afternoon 12pm-7pm, etc. It is not only not good for you to just randomly do whatever whenever, but it also doesn't help your coworkers either- those who are counting on you to come together as a team and achieve success. Sounds like a raid guild, where 53 people rely on you to be there at a certain time so that everyone is successful.