Daybreak Launches Content Creator Program

And you know this, how? Do enlighten us.

The new UI launch is an easy giveaway.

No, it isn't. Opinion isn't fact. Share a fact. How do you know?

We all get that you are upset that a game isn't working as most of us would like it too. But it is a game. A leisure time activity. I get upset over important things and tend to let the trivial slide. And in the grand scheme of things, this is trivia. I just don't get as worked up over little things. Better for my blood pressure that way.

Anyway, have a nice day.

You seem very worked up over it.

Not especially. Just a bit intrigued by all the folks who are soooo angry about a game. And can you answer the question? Do you have any evidence to support your contention/rave about the developers not playing the game? I do in fact know the answer, but you seem to think they don't play the game.

Yeah, the evidence in the new UI. I stand by that statement. Maybe, a couple of them play but definitely not the major decision makers on the team.

Go look at the bug forum and tell me that our devs are able to play a game with that many bugs when they are the ones responsible for fixing them (or not causing them in the first place).

• We have lvl 100+ mobs wandering around starting areas.
• We have bugged quests just released.
• We have bugged gear that drops from 25th Anniversary just released.
• We have bugged achievements that aren't being rewarded.
• We have bugged mobs in LS that can't be hit due to 'stuff'.
• We have freebie anniversary items that are tagged no-destroy.

All of these above were taken just from the first page on that forum and ALL are confirmed or in QA and were introduced as part of this new expansion (3 months old).

Around this time. we've also had:

• DX11 issues that have been marked as 'fixed' but still are an issue for many players.
• Massive areas of the map not loading correctly / staying grey.
• Mercs that lost their buffs whenever you zoned.
• Personas that broke your character when you switched from one to the other.
• Raids that were completed on the same day they were released by many guilds.
• Raid loot discrepancies where certain items weren't dropping / poor drop rate.

We've also had an AMA with the majority of the answers being either 'no' or 'not in any future plans'. Don't even get me started on 'We do want to encourage grind' - literally, in a game where everything is a grind...

I suspect Kushella is correct. In fact, I PRAY he is correct. Because if he isn't then we have some very blinkered game developers who play a game where

a) not only do they not really understand how vast numbers of this community play the game.
b) they are happy to play alongside some fairly major bugs that are inhibiting the game being played in any meaningful way.

For me, I only post the negative stuff because of how much I still love this game. I have wonderful memories of playing with RL friends that are no longer around, with my son who is now almost 30 years old and just spending long nights on my own wrapped in a fleece killing mobs, getting loot and progressing through the game.

If I didn't love this game as much as I do, I'd just walk away from it and never give it a second thought.

If, as you say, there is some information out there that is driving these recent decisions, the AMA was the perfect chance to enlighten us, yet I don't feel it achieved anything near that.

I'm sure others have said this but for me the AMA was a huge miss because the responses were so basic that they almost always were No, we don't have plans for that. Or No we won't be doing that. What the player base REALLY needed from an AMA was the explanation that should have come along with the No.

I received an answer to all my questions. But the answer was so vague I felt like I was ignored. I'm sure most people felt that way when they spent the time to ask a legit question. The most important one to me was why was a DPS race mission not included in LS and will you add it? I got a no, we don't want to add things to old content, we focus ahead.

Old content? It's the current content and it was clearly left off and that's not fair to the all the players that purchased the pack that were wanting a full expansion (or I should say what we come to expect from a full expansion) so a deeper answer as to WHY it was left off would have resolved the question much more than No, it's not current, go away now.

That's not a legit answer but at the same time it is. So, I laughed and went away. Personally, I looked at the AMA answers as a reflection of the forum and the majority of the users. Negative. I read all the Q&As and closed the tab and didn't come back for a week. It made me feel bad about spending the large amount of money on the LS prepurchase super 9000 tier that I opted for because I wanted to give back to the game I spend so much time on.

I have very low expectations for this program based on the studio's current record. But I love the game so I will push on and try to be a part of it. I'm starting to see a picture as I reread the post that it's not going to be for current content creators. I am picturing someone from 989 Sports contacting a random applicant and asking them to make a video about running some quest line or working on evolving an item while being monitored (and edited?) by the developers and not the creator. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I don't see them pursing a "Solo Necromancer playing the game wrong" type creator like me.

I'm still waiting to hear if international content creators will be permitted or if it, like so many other things, will be US only.

Also, in my opinion, based on my direct experience, the pandemic did very little to move the bar at all on Darkpaw's ability to hire/utilize remote work outside of their already existing business areas.

I feel like the explanation wasn't explicitly stated but could easily be picked up reading between the lines. The AMA, if anything, was a huge reality check and wake up call for current players. They said pretty much straight up that they can't support the new features that are being introduced. They are understaffed. They linked at one point to a designer job on their job board paying 50-60k per year which is not a particularly comfortable salary in Southern California with a median rent around 3k/mo, and not particularly competitive for the industry (for context, working full time at McDonalds in California pays just over 40k per year starting in April). Based on those answers, it seems clear that EQ is being run on a shoestring budget and that future development work needs to generate revenue to be considered for implementation. It's unfortunate, but it's also just the reality of the situation. To me this has nothing to do with the dev/design teams' ambitions or whether or not they play the game. It has everything to do with EQ today needing to show a profit, and the QoL features and asks from the community just not fitting into the budget, and a legacy of mismanagement of the IP being what led us to this point.

I think they're focusing on the wrong type of content creators. If, they focused more on community content creators in-game, and empower those that it would have a more significant impact than social media content creators.

i would certainly hope the first round of content creators would be the ones who have a years-long reputation of already doing so, be it maps, quest writeups, what have you. i mean, there's like easily a dozen or so? of these types of folks that spring to mind without even thinking about it - and its a nobrainer, in my unsolicited opinion, to start there.

Will this go the way of Everquest Landmark? Players make a bunch of content to be added just to watch is disappear like it did when EQ Next was cancelled?

More along the lines of a beefed up guide program. When you get an active game and communities outside raids or normal gameplay then the Twitch/Youtube content creation follows.

Looking at the latest 'puzzling event', it seems they're pushing towards the communities on the usual social media platforms rather than the forum community.

It's a brave choice and will be interested to see where it goes. I don't personally think there is a market of 15 - 30 year olds that hammer the Instagram, FB, Twitter etc. that are dying to play EQ.

This is the truest statement here. Content creator program, but the game just doesn't have the audience for huge content creators. Don't get me wrong I watch some EQ stuff, and seen Xellen etc which are great, but I don't think that putting resources potentially <As I don't know> from the game into social media is a great choice for a 25 year old MMO.

Maybe if this was EQ3 sure, but EQ1?

That sounds very out of touch for 2024. How are in-game content creators going to bring in significant revenue or grow the playerbase?

They should rename the game "Old School EverQuest". Whenever I talk to millennials and gen-z about EQ, Old School RuneScape is the first thing they bring up. Retro gaming is very popular. The issue is how to market.

It's not, that concept is what helped FF14 grow so tremendously. Players became content creators through in-game activities RP, night clubs, concerts, events, etc. MMOs have to embrace social content just as much as raids or quests.

Those people aren't necessarily good personalities for streaming. You got to farm the game out to the V-tubers and women that use Twitch like OF advertising.

content creation is not specifically streaming though, not strictly speaking. there's loads of content that has served the community VERY strongly over the years that isn't streaming, that has added enormous value to the EQ prosperity and continued survival.