One Hobby Dev + EQ + Unreal Engine 5.2 =

You can dream all you want but at some point you need to accept reality as well. Given the fact that there would be a large cost to make the change and a large licensing cost of at least 5% of their revenue why would they switch to it? Unreal isn't a cheap graphics engine to use and no one has attempted to explain how 5%+ of revenue cost could be justified at this point in the games life.

They just have to make a better license contract deal that is not based on percents. 5% is a mafia price and ebay/paypal nearly ruined itself with a similar, even more expensive pricing model.

If the change brought in more than 10% additional revenue then DBG would still be better off.

However, I agree with you saying that at stage of the game's life, it probably isn't a gamble they'd want to take.

Basically Daybreak does need a spin-off or affiliated company that could buy an Unreal engine license much cheaper, even if the license cost is 5% revenue or higher, while having generally a much lower risk for all parties. There might be also cheaper alternative that would also work well enough.

Daybreak missed the chances to develop basic software on their own. Like an UI engine, an emul@tor, or even an OS that could be booted from within Windows 10/11. They could lower the development costs of such costly software by forming a unity with other gaming companies. I had not seen any creativeness regarding that, in all those years of EverQuest-Daybreak.

The gaming and computer market has become very complicated and corrupted and it is all about dominions, cartels and dependencies. Just developing and hosting a game does no longer work like in the past. Most companies made themselves very dependant on platforms like Steam, or OS versions from Mike Rosoft, which is a sickness.

That is what the license deal is, 5% of revenue on projects that make over 1 million and I don't see Daybreak having the leverage to get them to charge a lower amount.

While I would like to be hopeful, do you really see that changing the graphics engine would bring in that much more money?

Huh? If this was possible wouldn't the much larger game development companies be doing that to reduce their costs?

For anyone arguing with Waring, note that if DPG decided to upgrade to Unreal 5 and people came in here to say why that's a bad idea, he'd be making the inane Socratic arguments to support DPG's decision like, "Unreal 5 is the best engine of all time, why wouldn't they want it?" "Do you think you know more than DPG about their engine and maintenance costs and why it makes sense to use Unreal?"

He generally has no thoughts of his own and merely provides open-ended questions that support whatever DPG is choosing at a given time regardless of the circumstance.

Nope, that isn't true at all. I am simply pointing out that we don't need repeated threads showing how someone converted a single or multiple zones to use a version of Unreal. Everyone including the devs knows that it can be done and we don't need more posts showing that it can be done in the hopes that it will convince Daybreak to make the conversion.

The issue is there is a lot of difference in just converting the zone art over to Unreal and having a single player using it versus converting everything over and having many players and NPC models using it at the same time. These posts seem to ignore the fact that it would be a lot of work to convert it over and deal with any bugs that happen (Think the upgrade to DirectX 11) and added licensing costs.

Sure they are my own thoughts but no one seems to want to answer the question about how Daybreak could justify paying 5%+ of their Everquest revenue to license an Unreal engine. As that is calculated before profits that would have a major impact on the bottom line and could impact the decision to keep the game alive or not.

I know about a smaller gaming company that did something like that on their own. Maybe they just bought some software but it made them less dependant.

I think that he is also only here to win discussions and is often using dummy arguments like the strawman argument and other black rhetorics, to win. To bad that the LotR meme about Waring got deleted from the meme thread. It was like:

Legolas: "I will aid you with my bow !"
Aragorn: "You will have my sword !"
Waring as Gimli: "And I came here to discuss !"

There's always hope.

And how does that show that Daybreak would want to spend 5%+ of their revenue on licensing costs in addition to the costs to convert the game over?

If that is how you want to look at it, what is the point of yet another thread showing how someone moved a zone (or a couple of zones) to unreal and they could run around exploring it? There is a big difference between what they are showing and migrating the entire game and having it handle all the players and NPC's that gather in a singe zone.

No, I don't think you can say that about a 25+ year old game in regards to moving to a graphics engine that will cost 5%+ of the revenue in licensing fees. Why would they want to give up that much money?

If that is a one-time price, it will only be 0.5% over 10 years. Also 1/10 for the converting costs.

5% of revenue ... that's permanent (well, unless in 100 years it becomes free).

It's not a one-time price.

EQ1 graphics are just fine, kill this blobby thing in front of me and get loot.

Modern EQ and Modern zones look fine, mobs especially you can tell they put some time into.

The license fee isn't a one time thing and you have to pay it every year which adds up to a big cost over time for Everquest. And revenue is calculated before costs which means it has a larger impact on profits.

I've seen estimates that this could increase the EBITDA by 15%. Well, worth the effort.