A suggestion list to DBG to generate long term excitement in their game

*disclaimer* These are my thoughts and ideas, and they may differ from yours. I am not saying yours are wrong and i am right.

1. TLP servers are a flash in the pan. Much excitement at the beginning, uptick in subscriptions and eventually this leads to some staying, some going back to original servers and a big chunk outright quitting again.

2. The expansion content for the past several years has been small and easily forgettable.

So what do you do about it? How can DBG get the ball rolling to get actual long term sustained interest in this game?
All it takes is to go back and analyze which expansions garnered the most revenue and sustained memberships.
For those that can't imagine, it is the big ones. The one to level cap expansions.
More bang for the buck, a chance to start something new on the home server and feel excited again.

But let's add something to the mix.

The best all inclusive expansions also saw the addition of new classes and races.
I think it safe to say that we really don't need anymore classes, unless they want to try to create the Channeller from eq2 to give it some lore basis.
But one item that would make an impact is new races.
I propose the Othmir, or better yet the Ratonga.

Back to classes, the easiest solution and one that would absolutely generate long term excitement is any race any class.

The fact is, it is an old game, but it still has a great fan base and that base could get bigger if the dev teams were allowed to think outside the box and come up with something new.

If you have ideas that you would like to see happen, please add to this. Maybe we can get something going.

Here I was thinking 20 years of EQ was pretty much the embodiment of "long term excitement".

Don't forget they have said in the past that they are unable to add any new races or classes due to code issues. They have also mentioned that not all player models support all armor types which could cause graphics issues not to mention the work of changing items and quests to be usable by the new race/class combinations.

New races or classes require a ton of work and developer time but add very limited game play potential especially on the race side of things unless said race had some unusual ability. Even then most would be hard pressed to drop their toons that they have played for years for the new flavor of the week so this does not exactly appeal to most veterans unless they are just rolling a new alt to take it for a test drive around the block. So lets look at some of the pros and cons of this as it see it.

Pro
-More variety in terms of class/races
-Potentially new lore and storyline

Con
-Less content due to developer time being spent on this project
-No actual new subs because adding yet another race/class is not going to bring people here
-Potential for less players not more when there is less content due to implementing this
-Makes balancing content even more difficult as developers would have to consider new class abilities and make them meaningful and wanted especially for raids and challenging group missions
-More developer time itemizing things to take said new class into consideration

Ultimately I don't think adding more races/classes to the game will have any positive results but rather could be more detrimental to the game if anything.

Ideas that might retain interest:
-More Quarm style servers that become standard following the HH events. Something to keep those who are done with current content and have nothing to do until the next expansion engaged and playing.
-Cross server grouping and raiding for player retention

-New content has missions with difficulty levels and the open zones scale appropriately or there are multiple versions of each open world area based on difficulty with rewards that match the difficulty level.

-Special new/returning player servers
- Level 1-65 server
- Level 65-85 server
- Level 85-100 server
-Once you reach the level cap on said server xp is turned off. You can transfer to the next server for free. Nobody higher than the level cap for the server can transfer onto the server.
-No bazaar, disable the ability to trade items, and make everything no drop.
- Allow for free transfers to and from servers as long as you meet the level requirements.

As for getting actual new players I think thats the more difficult part. Some have suggested an upgraded graphics engine but that would probably cost a ton of money without any guarantee of return. Maybe an EQ mobile game, FB game or something else to attract people to the brand via another outlet and hopefully they become actual EQ players once they are aware that EQ is even a game.

I think they are already playing with improvements to the graphics engine. The new Tutorial Zone, and some areas in other ones show way more detail than before. I think I may send a message to the Devs that I noticed it, and tell them just where I am talking about. Maybe more of us should do so. But on the other hand, for MANY EQ players, change sucks.

Screenshots of tutorial where you believe change has occurred? Looks the same to me.

Massive foliage where it didn't exist before.

All above totally unrealistic with present amount of devs.

Change your display settings in advanced then the pixels ones. Lots of nice flora, cool brick work and don't forget to look up!! Further in is cool too.

I get the feeling that people think that the game should throw in the towel and give up.
Not enough devs, not enough interest. Game too old. etc etc etc.

The only way to make money is to spend money. If DBG is interested in staying viable and keeping its brand name fresh in the minds of the playing public, they need to they must do everything in their power to make it happen.

I see 20 year old comments up there about models not having the right meshes blah blah blah whatever. That poor excuse has been used for 2 decades now on a variety of subjects.

When some talking head says code issues, that means that they are too lazy to fix the code and make it work.
It may sound harsh, but it is true. It's that laziness that saw the demise of everquest next.

Ya know what they should do? The DBG folks and the Standing Stone folks should merge and hire a bigger team and revamp the everquest and lotro games for the 21st century.

Those who stand on their laurels are doomed to watch their creations turn into dust and blow away, eventually.

btw, to the dude that said that people wouldn't come back for a new any race any class situation, well, you are wrong. Especially if dbg locked that stuff behind a paywall members only server.

Sorry for being crabby, but i speak for those of us who are sick of the status quo, and don't want to see this game and eq2 wither in stagnant lack of motivation and ideals.


Ok so here is another idea. To any who have ever played elder scrolls online, when they revamped quickly and made it that all content was on level to every single individual? That was brilliant.
Do that in eq1 and eq2.

Stop pandering to the hard core die hards ultra minority and open the entire game up to anyone and everyone and you might just see a resurgence.

Oh hell with it, just build a new everquest and take the good from both games and leave the trash out from both games and give us something new.

Thank you.

Would adding dwarf monks or ogre wizards really add that much excitement to the game?

Waring..

Honestly I'd only play an ogre wizard to see how badly they'd do.

I wonder how much enthusiasm there'd be if they removed Ogre frontal melee stun immunity from the game with all/all race/class?

From the long history of the requests for all/all it seems to be driven by a desire for that stun immunity no matter how really useless is truly is or people who want to do dumb things like gnome monks and dark elf rangers

Difficulty levels is literally the only way to sanely tune while providing a challenge for the top few guilds. Chopping how many players are allowed in doesn't work.

The devs seem addicted to combining multiple things that used to not happen at the same time lately. Timed adds plus percentage adds, hard-hitting boss plus hard-hitting adds. Brutal AEs plus brutal emote mechanics. Complex design plus all of the above. Those random examples used to not usually occur at the same time in the same event. Timed adds, % based adds, frequency/severity of AEs, how hard adds hit, etc. all those things I presume could be adjusted with scripted variables. Whether the developers have the resources I don't know, but it's literally the only solution to provide challenge to the top few guilds without outright killing most of the others. It would allow more people to participate in the group content too.

My favorite example of when the developer seemed to outright account for varying player strengths in the same raid is Zalikor back in RoF. There are three egg areas the raid needs to split up to for parts of the event for adds. One of the three areas has adds that are lower in level and not as deadly. It was the perfect place to put people who didn't know how to not fall into the lava, or had other performance issues. But it was still a job that needed to be done. They still contributed. I loved that and always appreciated that on that event. Then Enslaver of Souls for TBM has a brutal DPS requirement for the first phase, and the later phases get more complicated but the actual mechanical difficulty drops at the same time. I don't know if that was intentional, but I liked it.

It would also avoid problems like the Ash trial shenanigans. That said, I know it's not that easy. Maybe a hidden aug slot for hard mode won loot or something for a very small but notable increase in the rewarded items that min/maxers would drool over regardless.

EQ and EQ2 are proven money-making platforms. Why should they change it?

Turn to dust? EQ is THE oldest MMORPG still in active development. It's far surpassed even the best predictions of the games' creators. Dust...

You keep throwing statements like "hire team" and "revamped quickly...all content" without thinking things through. Spending money is sometimes required to make more money, however we don't know the goals DBG has set for EQ. At this point EQ may have the smallest dev team for any active game in the world.

It's obvious you love EQ. We all do. But the game literally needs to be protected from flights of fancy.

We all would love to see new races and classes and tons of other things to the game. However expectations and reality are completely on other sides of the world when it comes to business. I know people get excited when they come up with ideas that could help the game drasticly but those same people don't have the vision when it comes down to "how much will this cost? How many more developers would we have to hire on in order to do <insert idea> and still pump out an expansion the same size as the last". Those types of questions have to be answered. I seriously doubt DBG is going to hire on another team of developers to develop something that will have little return on the investment.

Sorry OP but nobody here is "throwing in the towel" or making excuses as you claim and the fact that people point out flaws with your idea has nothing to do with laziness on DBG part. New races/classes has been commented on by the reds multiple times with the very reasons I gave being behind the fact we wont see it. They have also commented on an EQ "remaster" idea stating it would cost tens of millions to realistically do a complete overhaul. It's a huge financial risk that could literally bankrupt the company if it fails. If you honestly think they don't sit around and brainstorm how to make this game more profitable I imagine you are wrong. The very fact that the reds have had responses to the requests tells me they have at least been discussed behind closed doors already and shot down due to the financial risks. Yes you have to spend money to make money but you also have to spend it wisely otherwise you end up broke. 20 years and still going doesn't exactly say lazy or a failure. I agree there needs to be more done to retain and recruit more players but i am not at all sold on your ideas for doing it.

A big NO to othmir. They hate me.

They could do like eq2 and turn the stun immunity into a limited clickable ability, where it is useable like once every 5 minutes or so.