A new EQ in the works??

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Darktide, Jun 8, 2021.

  1. Accipiter Old Timer


    A 32-bit client can access 4GB of memory. Not all of that is available to the application, of course. Generally around 3.5GB is considered usable. But, yes in the 64-bit world memory availability is a non-issue (for most apps).
    Gyurika Godofwar and Skuz like this.
  2. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Or why they dont make huge zones like west karana anymore.
    :)
    Jumbur likes this.
  3. Accipiter Old Timer


    They have made a few. Empires of Kunark outdoor zones are pretty damned big.
    Skuz likes this.
  4. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Veil of Alaris wants a word with you - that has some huge zones.
  5. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    But not as big as they wanted, the 3 Sepulcher-zones were supposed to be one big zone, afaik.
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  6. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I think that Resplendent Temple in terms of just sheer availabe area to explore is maybe the biggest zone I have seen in EQ to date, not only is it a big zone it has an absolutely huge multi level construction in it.
    Also I think the amount of runspeed available for most players in later expansions makes them feel a bit smaller than they remember the Karanas being, going there now at 115 with fast mounts they don't feel anywhere near as vast as they once did.
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  7. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    My top 3 of everquest zones is
    1. Convorteum
    2. Resplendent Temple
    3. Gnome Memorial Mountain
    They all have that in common. I hope a 64bit upgrade will let the devs go nuts with that kind of zones. :cool:
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  8. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    32-bit client can access up to 4GB on a 64-bit operating system. If OS is 32-bit, the limit drops to 2GB. Last I checked. DPG doesn't require a 64-bit operating system. So I opted to color in the worst case scenario. Not that it matters much. The difference in addressable memory in the best case scenario is somewhere around four billion times more.
  9. Strawberry Augur

    EQ1 is on its last legs, you have servers with less than 10 people in /general. Spending lots of money on EQ1 is throwing money down the drain.

    But the Everquest universe is still an powerful IP.

    The only reasonable thing to do is to create a new EQ game that leverages the EQ IP and excites players again.
  10. Strawberry Augur

    The average gamer hates EQ's gameplay. For the Everquest universe to be successful, it needs to be different. It can take elements of EQ, but you can't not just create EQ1 with new graphics, it is not going to fly.

    We had an EQ copy with up-to-date graphics, it was called Vanguard, and people didn't like the travel times and grind and the population tanked after a few weeks.

    Vanguard's silky venom forum had a 40 page thread complaining about travel times.

    It's a good idea to leverage the EQ IP for a new game, but if you just remake EQ1, no one will play it, just like no one wanted to play Vanguard.

    EQ players might think spending 20 minutes travelling and grinding for 8 hours is fun, the average gamer would quit the game after 5 minutes. A new EQ game would have to be WAY more accessible to be accepted in the current gaming landscape.
  11. Strawberry Augur

    They lack experience.

    You see this with many indie titles that try to make a big 3D world. It's always the same story.

    1) They run into problems they can't solve because they lack experience. It's almost always a 3D world problem, clipping, culling, pathing, collision detection issues or issues properly importing 3D assets and animation. They don't have anyone who is a math wizard who actually understands how the transformations and physics of the engine works. They will try to contact whoever made the engine, but they will not get a lot of help since they are just some indie studio. So those problems start snowballing and they have to constantly delay the game. They start to lose confidence in themselves and realise they are under qualified to take on a big 3D project, so now they don't even put a date on release anymore.

    2) They are now unable to attract new developers who do have the experience to solve those problems. Word spreads fast in the gaming community and no one wants to join a project going nowhere.

    3) Now they start running out of money, they take the remaining funds for themselves, make up some excuse why the game got cancelled, and disappear.
  12. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Oh please. Vanguard failed for 1 reason - buggy as hell crash crash crash.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  13. Strawberry Augur

    Not really.

    Vanguard did crash in the first few days, especially when hitting a new zone. But these crashes were literally solved after 2 days.

    The population was actually very healthy for the first few weeks, but tanked after that when the travel times and grind became too much.

    Silky Venom had hundreds of threads complaining about grind and travel times. Travel times were helped later on by portals, but by then it was too late, a lot of people had already left the game.

    The average gamer does-not-accept EQ's gameplay. And you need to have a rather large playerbase to justify the cost of an MMO in 2021, you can not build an MMO for a tiny niche of players.
  14. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Well EG7 has this far been acquiring studios that already have existing live products and a proven track record of looking after a loyal customer base,
    So I would not expect EG7 to acquire Visionary Realms right now but maybe once they launch and show they can run the game profitably they would.

    But I also wouldn't entirely rule out them taking a look at the company for a M&A either.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  15. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    This is nonsense.

    EverQuest has had people saying it's dying, or already dead for 22 years - every single one of them was wrong so far, I am confident you are too.

    EverQuest was up until september 2020 DayBreak's number one most profitable game at 30% of the company's EBITDA ahead of DCUO at 28%

    I'm not saying there are no servers with very low populations, Selo had the last remaining guild transfer off & right now has maybe between 1 & 20 people playing on it, that server being "dead" is entirely expected in that case.
    You can say "EQ1 is on its last legs" but when it had 67,000 active subs & 87,000 Monthly active users - a number it is at after several years of growth and not losses thanks to TLP servers I think you should be rightfully laughed out of town for it.

    I think SoE pumped a ton of EQ's money into making EQ2 because they did not truly understand GaaS at that point, the game making model back then was you make 1 hit then you use the money from that hit game to make your next hit game, and the plan was originally for EQ2 to completely replace EQ so EQ could be shut down.
    Well, we know how well that worked out, don't we?

    Revamping EQ is 100% the right decision because replacing it with another game has already been shown not to be the right decision, it will be costly, it will be time consuming and hard work - but arguably all that will be happening is the company putting back into EQ some of the time & money that really should have been going into it for the past 17 years - it has started re-investing as of this year in fact (6 new devs/coders to replace the 3 lost in 2020), and I expect to see more. Once upon a time EQ was given fairly frequent technical upgrades to it's engine that made it remain within stabbing distance of modern games, from it's launch in 1999 up until 2004 it had 3 full engine upgrades, but that effort stalled on the client side with only minor changes made since then. I think that will change in the near future.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Ozon like this.
  16. Strawberry Augur

    We know why people go to TLP. It's a nostalgia trip, usually one that is short-lived. It's short-lived due to the peculiar way people experience gaming where they remember the fun moments and managed to black out the issues with grind, finding groups, etc.

    As soon as these players remember those bad experiences that their memory had hidden from them, they call it quits and this results in the extremely high TLP player turnover. These players now remember why they quit all those years ago.

    A persistent universe like Everquest that needs funds to stay afloat, can not depend on sporadic and fleeting moments of nostalgia.

    The more TLP are launched to make up for the constant turnover of dead TLP servers, the less effective they become at generating revenue, nostalgia is nostalgia because the experience has been lost to the past, re-releasing TLP one after the other does the exact opposite, and starts to undermine the feelings of nostalgia.
  17. Strawberry Augur

    The cost of making, maintaining and upgrading a proprietary engine is a cost that is simply impossible to carry for most developers today.

    Even a large studio like Square Enix, abandoned their custom engine for their latest FF Remake game in favor of Unreal Engine.

    Small 2D game engines are easier to maintain, even for small indie developers (see Stardew Valley), but upgrading a custom 3D engine for a team like Daybreak seems like a bridge too far, you need a very large and dedicated team to do that, it is simply not worth doing.
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Well in that case we haven't hit peak TLP yet, Mischief/Thornblade were pretty dang successful - we don't have the numbers yet to confirm if it was the best TLP launch so far or not but I would not be surprised if it was.
    Miragul & Coirnav aside most TLP have beaten the populations of the prior TLP.
    I also think Nostalgic players had not lost any memories of the grind or how getting groups could suck - they wanted to play in spite of those things.
    I think there is for sure some rose-tinted glasses wearers but there are plenty who were under no illusion that TLP are declining in players at a fairly consistent rate post-launch.
  19. Strawberry Augur

    It's possible, but TLP are a fleeting moment in the history of Everquest. Both Daybreak and Blizzard underestimated how powerful nostalgia can be, but both know this is not something sustainable.

    People who chose to leave EQ years ago usually have a very specific explanation for this, it often involves grind/timesinks/burnout or the inability to progress in the game due to the difficulties of finding a group, they will be confronted with those issues once again. When they do, they leave a second time, and it is nigh impossible to get those players back to the game.

    The only way to get those players back would be to address the reason why they left to begin with, but this of course causes a culture clash with people who never left, who will argue the game does not have any issues and they have no qualms seeing the game lose players if it means they can maintain their play style.
  20. Atomos Augur

    People leave because playing the same game always and forever is kind of... well, it's a lot of things. Unhealthy, boring, and most importantly uncultured come to mind. There's a bajillion things to do besides Everquest, there's thousands of other video games to play, hundreds of other RPGs to play, and dozens of other MMOs to play. I feel sorry for people who never branch out and experience other things. I'm not saying I'm not going to play EQ until the day I die, because I am. But only in 4-6 month stints with possibly years in between. There are other games I will always cycle back around to too, both new and old, and even though I prefer the older school of gaming, I like to enjoy and appreciate both.

    Others have left because they are not satisfied with the direction the company/game went.

    However, acting like TLP is just nostalgia is completely naive. The grind and LFG you talk about literally starts at level 1 in EQ. But people aren't quitting at level 1. Or level 2. Or level 3. Of course some people don't make it, you can say that about any experience. But almost anyone who is looking to re-experience the EQ of olde is also looking for a social game that requires cooperation and helping one another out to accomplish goals. And that is what TLP provides, and is one of the very few experiences that does so.