I would guess because in part the "friends" people recruited where alt accounts to take advantage of the bonus.
RaF, Account to account transfer and lifetime subs, all great things that have been eclipsed. Also all things that would be massive cash grabs if re-instated.
I'd be more than happy to take advantage of another chance to get a tradable, copyable 4 hour double xp potion. Which is pretty much exactly what everyone did and why you cant do it anymore. But if you have one of those, we should talk.
And I think that is part of the problem, the goal of recruit a friend is to bring new players into the game not in order for an existing player to open up new account for some sort of benefit.
I agree with this person. Point is to make the game better not, let freeloaders or boxers get more freebees. 2024, I wanna see something done about LFG. It's in a sad state.
Seriously, who cares? Another paying account is another paying account. Too many "purity tests" around here.
Its to get the community, this game is turning into a $$$$ You didn't do what I wanted, I'm taking my 12 box with me. That means you get $$$$ less every month, and I paid that much for years, your loss $$$$. Community where is that? Roleplaying where is that? Video game, not so serious? Raids make them serious though. MMO aspect? $$$$ for boxes, really is that an MMO? RPG again roleplaying? Ultimately that drives people away too. When theres no one LFG, because boxes are comfy. He's like where is the group stuff at? Aka meta events, something where people come together for.
The company running the promotion certainly cares, they are trying to bring in new players to the game not give benefits to players who spend money on multiple accounts either short term for an item or long term for different bonuses. If the goal of a program is to bring in new players it isn't working if all it does is cause some existing players to purchase more accounts. In the long run if someone recruits another player and later quits they likely still have the income from the new player. However if instead they just got a second account when they quit the company loses money from both accounts.
And either way, the company gets more money at some point. Which is the goal of a company (or, ought to be).
I don't think the goal of recruit a friend was just to get more money on new subscriptions from existing players but to get new players subscribed to the game who also have the possibility of recruiting other new players.
Perhaps the majority of EQ players just ran out of friends. Hey, it could happen. My guess is that the accountants penciled it out and it came up short.
It is up to the players to use the lfg window. The reality is that most players do not want to group. For those that do want to group, they just have to use the lfg window or /lfg on. It could be advertised and better integrated to the default UI for being more present by the devs. Especially for new players. Maybe merged with the outdated friend window. PCs with the lfg tag should also automatically being announced in the general and newplayers channels every 10 minutes. To prevent unwanted spam a new chat filter for that would have to be added.
I would go out on a limb and say that the 'new friend' market is pretty much dead and buried for Everquest. There aren't too many MMORPG people out there who have never tried EQ and want to start playing it from scratch. Even if there were, there is no real catch-up mechanic to encourage them anyway. The tutorial is terrible and teaches you almost nothing of what lies ahead in the next 125 levels. I think DBG know they have a limited (and dwindling) player base and they are doing the absolute minimum they can to keep the status quo. I don't think the bean counters are harbouring any thoughts of a recruitment push for new players - they're working on just keeping the ones they have. It's part of the reason why I think the 'next' EQ game isn't going to be that big of a hit either as it will probably only attract the kinds of players who already play EQ (which may then end up sunsetting). Read what other people will say about the MMOs and the genre is currently on life support - it will either take a game coming out of left-field that somehow recaptures the magic for player-base or it will trickle on with 15/20+ year old games driving out poor content that is only acceptable because there is little competition.
And that's EXACTLY why they should bring back the refer-a-friend program. Make more $ to continue the game, from the current players who want to spool up a new account. Just change the name to pacify the purity-test people
Hm... to get new players... one could do something unthinkable... like.... gasp.... advertise the game.
I believe the LFG on/off is out of date and doubt any players use it at all. And no, we do not need more spam in general and newplayers chat by announcing it every 10 minutes. Then it would just be a constant stream of spam from the PL, Krono sales and LFG's and cross server "join my "girlie guild cause no one on my own server wants to play with me". A new filter would just circumvent the feature since everyone would turn it off. New players are not as stupid or lame as everyone is making out. They are perfectly capable and seem to have picked up on how to ask for a group in chats. I play on 2 servers and both have a lot of seasoned players jumping in to help out newbies and others who have been away from the game for a while.
