Why don't people like the game post POP?

Serious question I am curious.

Why do people quit during PoP?

Why do people ignore years and years of content that is great just waiting for the next TLP?

What is so bad about the more modern EQ?

Inquiring minds want to know.

You'll hear a lot of answers, but I think a few reasons are:

1. People play for the nostalgia of original EQ, and a lot of those people quit in GoD back in original EQ.
2. Those people don't like the complexity of raiding, etc, in more modern EQ. Raids begin requiring a lot more strategy than "dodge aoe".
3. Some people just jump TLPs to farm Kronos. New TLPs have a fresh economy that hasn't been tainted by dupes, botters, etc. So it is refreshing having a fresh start sometimes.

Me personally, I still play on mischief, and have been looking forward to later EQ. I find early EQ boring, but a lot of former guildies and friends I've made along the way bounce from TLP to TLP every year.

Some people do, but EQ hit its population peak in the early 2000s (probably 2003-2004.) Gates of Discord launched in a state that was very hard and unforgiving for a majority of the population, and then WoW came out and the population started a heavy decline.

Since the population of people who used to play EQ is far larger than the population that currently plays, there is a bigger population of nostalgia players--who will only have nostalgia for content they had previously done. Due to when EQ started its population decline, this means around PoP to GoD era is the limit of the nostalgia effect.

People who play a TLP past that point aren't going to be fueled by nostalgia, because they can't have nostalgia for content they haven't done. They instead have to be willing / interested in doing this later era EQ content as "new content, for the first time." And many just simply aren't interested--nostalgia players generally don't have an interest in going past their nostalgia.

It is why companies have started capitalizing on that specifically, see WoWC, Old School Runescape etc.

I'm not part of that group--I like modern EQ. But having said that one thing to consider is that PoP marks some pretty important turning points in the history of EQ. Expansions prior to PoP were very sandboxy--there wasn't really a "story" per se; there was a world to roam around in. It was very dynamic in the sense that people could befriend who they wanted and make their own stories, but it was also very static in the sense that nothing ever really changed in the world.

Starting from PoP, the main thrust of intended progression became a story-driven affair. We went from explorers in a world to participants in a story. I loved this change and thought the changes in the world as we progress through the "main story" of EQ have made the world felt more alive. There are people who disagree though, and I respect that viewpoint.

There are also other reasons--like all the people who are playing the content they remember purely for nostalgia and quit in the early 2000s to play WoW or go to college or whatever. And the abilities/play style have changed considerably over the years. But personally, I think this shift to story-driven content is the big change that splits people into two groups--those who prefer modern story-driven EQ and those that want to relive the days of a wide-open sandbox to explore.

There is also the ever increasing statflation that leads to casual pickup groups becoming harder and harder to realistically go through content. In classic the only thing you really NEED is a healer, the mobs can be tanked by pretty much anyone and there's also just less total content so the playerbase is all in the same area.

Each new expansion dilutes where people are just a little more and gets more and more top heavy to the point where new players have a very small pool of people to play with, in the first few months of a TLP you can find a group pretty easily no matter what class you are (even rogues sometimes!).

I like both. Early TLPs for the ease of playing, I don't have to worry about loading up boxes and following a formula to progress I just need to go find a group somewhere and smash attack for hours mindlessly. And I like some of the later content (HoT especially) because the progression gives me a tangible objective to go after rather than just "Grind xp, get 50".

I enjoyed your lore videos.

A lot harder to pet tank GOD+

LDON

If that was ever combined with PoP it would be a godsend for the GoD-TSS run IMO.

I have said for a long while now that LDON should launch along with PoP and LoY. 12 weeks is plenty of time to farm PoTime and the relevant LDON raids - with time left over to finish the LDON charm aug.

OoW-TSS is a slog. They should consider launching OoW and DoN at the same time for 12 weeks, and then launching DoDH and PoR at the same time for 8 weeks. This would reduce the time spent in the level 70 era from 9 months to 5 months, which is much more reasonable.

People don't like pressing buttons I guess

Dunno. Thornblade is coming into some of my favorite expansions, House of Thule, Veil of Alaris and Rain of Fear.

Honestly, pretty spot on.

For me, I play MMORPGs to get away from the real world for a little bit and relax in some mind numbing content.

I've found over the years that I just am not a big raider. I don't like having a set schedule for playing a game, having to know strats, needing to make sure I have the right level and AAs before doing a certain raid, and so on. I just want to login, kill some stuff, and watch progress bars go from left to right. If you toss in some checkboxes that I can check off while I am doing it, I'm in heaven.

EverQuest starts off that way really well, and it slowly moves towards the more serious gamer with every expansion.

Scars of Velious is the real first expansion that pushes you to actually try a little. Just the getting to the right zones to raid and keeping up with factions and what items you need to collect to finish the right gear quests. Shadows of Luclin takes it up a notch beyond that, and Planes of Power is the first real "you didn't get the right flags yet, so you can't play with us tonight" expansion.

I would argue that people really start falling off the bandwagon in late Velious and early Luclin. Those that stick around for Planes of Power are really just there for nostalgia and/or their buddies are there, so they stick it out just because they don't want to abandon them out right.

The only reason you see such a massive drop off in population AFTER Planes of Power is because even the diehards tend to not have any nostaglia for GoD, so it's a lot easier to justify calling it quits.

I do agree that House of Thule is one of the cooler expansions in the later era of modern EverQuest.

I think I would be more a long term EverQuest gamer if I was able to have 2 mercernaries out at the same time on a single account. That would get me back in to modern EQ. I say that because I suck at boxing, and as such, I don't enjoy boxing. I am ok with other's boxing, but I just personally hate doing it myself. Again, I want to relax playing EverQuest after a long day of work. I don't want to have to actually try to run two characters. I want to play 1 character and still be able to accomplish things in the game. And, that being said, I wouldn't mind if I never saw another raid zone ever again. I'd be perfectly happy soloing EQ with my two mercs and just doing group content.

It's about tank ability imo. GOD and OOW named faceroll pet tanks and undergeared tanks. People throw their hands up and join the next TLP or quit.

I think the game just gets to way clicky for many, especially if you are boxing. In early EQ is fine just to turn on auto attack and hit taunt once and a while, maybe cast a spell or two.

In latter expansions seems like you have to be constantly firing off Discs, hitting AA abilities, clicking Glyphs, keeping aura's up, making sure you have all your buffs running and always watching for emotes to react to in order to not wipe on the yard trash let alone any named you run into.

According to this study there are four kinds of players:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

Normally that could be applied to any expansion (and to some degree probably is.)

But after LDoN came Gatest of Discord followed by Omens of War, both in 2004. WoW came out in 2004 also. GoD wasn't too bad to play, slightly more challenging but also with slightly better loot. Omens was a big and IIRC nasty step up Many people weren't even Time geared before those expansions. The combination of much tougher content and better looking and easier to play WoW both had a negative effect on EQ. Though, I gave up WoW eventually because it was so easy to play that people never seemed to group up socially as much as in EQ: someone would invite you to a dungeon raid w/out a word, you'd go in, kill, loot, then they'd ungroup without a word.

Later expansions just went hog wild with hard to kill mobs, requirements for higher levels, better armor and weapons. This was coupled with a lack of players to play with. People seemed less likely to group as well, well, at least with under-geared players. So DP brought out Mercenaries. For me that was the final nail in the coffin: why play an MMO when all you could find to play with was a bot/mercenary, who was also undergeared and under experienced. Healing mercs couldn't keep under-geared people alive and tank mercs couldn't.

It's absurd: why have weapons that do 10k per hit (or more?) with creatures that have an absurd amount of hit points. It's just pointless. I keep waiting for them to run out of data structures big enough to hold all those hitpoints and damages

When I did come back to EQ it was the early TLPs. Ragefire was a dumpster fire, but the others that followed were ok, at least until the later expansions started to unlock.

I was on Agnarr from the start and finally got to see and loot Time. It's Truebox which is better than Mercs IMHO. And it has persisted and has the friendliest population simply because everyone is having fun there, w/out the need of chasing the next expansion. Though now that lots of people are Time geared there is an occasional wistfullness to unlock GoD. It's a passtime, not a competition. People help each other out. Those are the things I seed when playing MMOs.

Nailed it. The first sign of mildly difficult content and people who have been used to coasting through the previous expansions are hit with a dose of reality. I would guess that most of the people who quit in this era are either just TLP frequent flyers or they are not the type of person who appreciates a challenge. They want casual, easy content and once that stops being readily available, they move on.

A big part is PoP:LDoN is so long for many, and a new TLP server opens up around the same time.

Many flood the new server, determined that this time they will stay caught up with levels and AAs, make so much plat and krono, and be the best player ever that the server idolizes.

Then they eventually fall behind, realize that 75% of the server is better and richer than them, so they quit and join the next TLP….over and over.

Remind me again what the definition of insanity is? lol

Leveling is one thing grinding 100's of aa's takes too much time. GoD and OoW look real goofy

This is minimizing and/or revising how bad GoD was at launch. It was INCREDIBLY overturned. The final raids were impossible, not hard, impossible. The group content was so difficult that, unless you were the 1 guild in time on the server, you basically had to enchanter pet tank tipt.

Not to mentioned that during the GoD horrible launch, top guilds were poached by Blizzard to come test WoW. It wasn't a simple "they launched together".