Adjusting the game to the actual market situation

In other news you'all remember when in Diablo 2 you could blow up an entire room of mobs with an ability called "corpse explosion."

I think we need that in EQ right before the last person dies in a wipe....just to make all the bodies blow up and maybe...just maybe....kill the named. Wouldn't that make EQ ? I'd pay 25$ a month for that on 72 hr cooldown.

Another cool thing about these quests is they have no time limit. You can do them while keeping an eye on general. Even on my mid 80's to mid 90's characters finding groups in zones like FM isn't that hard. Sometimes takes a few hours, sometimes it takes a few minutes. But what you can do is work those quests while looking for a group. Those quests provide decent xp bonus, but if you can get a HA in CoTF, or even better a fast killing higher level group in FM, you will gain much better xp. So work those quests, but jump out when something better comes along, then come back.

nice long posts bro's, but the dev's ain't listenin, good "luck"

I couldn’t get past the first use of alot. I’m shallow like that.

Lol, maybe YOU want EQ on mobile. I certainly don't. And if DayBreak takes a look at the reception Blizzard got last week when they announced their new Diablo mobile game (436k dislikes and counting), they will rightly avoid spending any resources on a mobile EQ.

lol, they don't give one crap about current population, it's all about that juicy mobile market and the tons of new people it will bring.

Legends server was like 40 a month

I guess $9.95 is right for the year 1999 but it went up to $12.95 only a year or two later. Sorry, I was wrong with $25/month because this was about the price in the old currency of my country before the Euro was enforced to us in 2002. EQ did cost $12.95/month in 2002 (Source) and it changed to $14.99/month in 2012 because of the dollar inflation (Source).

$12.95 in 2002 is like $18.17 in 2018 so the subscription costs have been lowered alot over the years but many players do now buy extra stuff from the marketplace and pay for multiple accounts sometimes so maybe I am wrong that players today pay much less money for EQ than in the past.

Actually, originally it was $9.89; not that $0.04 is that big a deal, lol.

Actual subscription price history for EQ:

• EQ subscription cost in 1999 = $9.89/month (a reference to the fact that 989 Studios is was the division which EQ was originally developed before the studio started focusing on PS games and EQ was spun off into Red Eye which became Verant Interative). https://web.archive.org/web/19991022021902/http://everquest.station.sony.com:80/s_billing.html
• In 2002, the price did go up to $12.95/month; but that was after 3 years not 1 or 2. Also, the was due to FF11 launching (in Japan) and having this as its subscription rate. https://web.archive.org/web/20020611093408/http://eqlive.station.sony.com:80/rates/rate_faq.jsp
• In 2003, SOE introduced their All Access subscription (was later rebranded Station Access) which granted access to Multiple MMORPGs for just one subscription; it launched at $21.99/month. https://web.archive.org/web/20030519224617/http://www.station.sony.com:80/allaccess/
• In 2005, the next and final subscription increase for the Everquest specific subscription occurred; and that was the increase to $14.99/month; 3 years after the previous one. https://web.archive.org/web/20050524104048/http://eqlive.station.sony.com:80/rates/rate_faq.jsp
• In 2006, the Station Access subscription was increased from $21.99/month to $24.99/month. Due to the number of games. https://web.archive.org/web/20060612194855/http://www.station.sony.com:80/stationaccess/
• In 2007, the Station Access subscription was increased again, this time to $29.99/month; for the same reasons as in 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20071022025744/http://station-access.station.sony.com:80/faq.vm
• In 2011, SOE rebranded the Station Access subscription back to SOE All Access and at the same time dropped the price to $19.99/month. https://www.everquest.com/news/imported-eq-enus-52294
• In 2012, EQ went F2P, the Gold Access Subscription price remained at $14.99/month and the All Access account similarly remained at $19.99/month. https://www.everquest.com/news/imported-eq-enus-524220
• In 2014, SOE did away with the single game Gold Access subscriptions replacing them with a new SOE All Access Subscription which was now set at the $14.99/month rate that the Gold subscriptions had previously been. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/the-new-soe-all-access-plan-faq.206993/

Also, you don't determine if they raised or lowered a subscription rate by looking at it's inflation adjusted amounts.

-other threads have discussed the need for an option to fast-level 85-100 ("heroic Gloomingdeep", marketplace level juice that boosts you 15 levels, madly increase the XP of the Feerrott heroic questline, etc.).

-numerous threads over the years have suggested allowing 51/50 character creation as an option on live (still roll as level 1 if you want). It already exists in coding. Maybe they do a future Quarm event that justifies a level 65 template, etc. Hotzone XP as the baseline XP in TSS zones could make sense too (then you can fast-route it if you want, or easily avoid it if you don't want to).

-bloat remains an issue. Again, one of the more-discussed options is continue burying the stat-sheet bloat behind Heroic stats and AA. Ability/skill/spell pruning should continue.

-instancing is a two-edged sword as it makes the game feel empty. I like big-crawl dungeons with instancing pockets off of them. I support the idea that any zone "evolves" to let people see the content. So maybe in era it is only a "hard" raid zone, next expac a "normal" group level version opens, expac after that the "solo" questing/tourist version. In old content it is usually just a mechanic or two, or lockouts that don't allow single players to zone in that are the issue.

this thread is a laugh. this was suggested years ago and got shot down hard. comes up yearly and gets shot down. go play WoW, go play ESO....

i still think a TLP with solo to endgame adjustments could be a first step. maybe if more people discovered the depth of this game it would spark an increase of players.... raids and group content can still be just that, but the days of sitting with a wall group trying to level a cleric or warrior up to raiding level has come and gone for most.

we are acting like this company (or any) gives us an option to request this massive change to style. most long term players find even suggesting this diminishes the game.

stay tuned for the 20th anniversary.

I think this should be a focus personally. There either needs to be a higher level heroic or a heroic toons tutorial type thing that takes you to 105. Hell maybe even just an innate double xp bonus from lvl 1 to 100 or something.

Getting folks a quicker path to end game content should be a priority, because it would drive more sales of new expacs since all the new expac zones are for max level chars. I also think it would keep more people around instead of bogging down on levels where it's hard to find people your level to group with and ultimately quitting.

This is just an opinion though, and you know what they say about those...

This guy totally trolled everyone right? or is this real?

They should make an over powered merc that can't be in a group with anyone other than that one person. So boxers play as usual. Truly solo people get a super strong merc to PL them. People need a fast way to 100. But this is too late now anyway. Game is almost dead and they needed to do these important things 10 years ago when the game still had a chance of retaining some people. It is too late for that now.

When I read a post and follow up like this thread, all I can think of is:

1) Why should I go to med school if I want to be a doctor? Just give me my MD and let me open a practice that is paid for by other people!

2) Why can't I be a professor at 13 with no schooling? Just let me teach PhD candidates!

3) Why do I need to work to make money? Just give me money and a house right now!

4) Why should I have to group with anyone in EQ? Let me be the all powerful grandiose superstar that I know I can be with no help from anyone ever!

5) Why can't EQ become the game that I want instead of EQ being the game that it is currently?

6) [Past] If you make these new heroic toons (level 85) it will ruin the game as people will not want to work hard to achieve anything....[Now] Why can't I be level 100 without doing any work at all?

Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one! EQ is EQ and I know with a limited budget and time the current team does their best (my opinion) to still bring satisfaction to many of us. With all the bugs and all the headaches the general population flames the boards with, they still put out a product that I like and will keep playing for as long as I enjoy it. And since the thread was about the "market situation", in a free market you can just walk away if you do not like the product. No one is forced to buy EQ nor play EQ, it is a choice.

Most of my comments above are just for comedic purposes as this is how I think when I read posts like these, but I do appreciate the OP's goal of trying to be constructive, though it was way off base. It appears this person is lacking lots of information and making comments based on some brief overview of EQ or maybe not even playing EQ, but reading some paper regarding gaming.

Be well

>Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one!

It's kind of pointless to say this if you leave out the punch line.

Everyone has a mouth too. And a nose. And a chin. There's a reason it uses "a**holes".

The inflation rate was respected in my previous posts but I had not mentioned it specifically. You did a nice pricing history research (You have become better at Research) and I took your sources to create a calculation that includes the official inflation rate of the US-dollar. The official inflation rate tho does not reflect the true inflation which is always much higher for many products of the daily use like food and clothes. As you can see the actual subscription rates are very close to the pricing level of 1999 and the 1-month rate is even identical (!). But when being based on the pricing level of 2002 the actual rates have become much cheaper (18-29%).

This person lives in a shell, underground or is so simply out of touch with the rest of the player base... anyhow.

In the nearly 20 years of game activity. I no longer consider EQ a traditional game. Games have an endpoint and EQ was never designed to endpoint on purpose rather a new catagory of gaming activity, where players are part of a much more active community. Blame tools like discord, mumble, even GINA to some extent for the wider range of communication activities surrounding the activity we call EQ.

I have played with people, those people's children and at least one, maybe two grandchildren on the same server. Welcomed people's babies to both the real world and in Norrath. Respectfully asked to attend a funeral of an in "game" friend and countless other touchstones of life. It happens.

Today I know of several people who spend more than 6-14 hours a day in "game" and still lead complex social and work lives without EQ or anything else ruining thier lives. Again, being a bit dismissive to many of these posts but suspect there is a great deal of self projecting coming through as well.

Is either DBG or EQ specifically well managed? Probably not in the classically accepted business sense but rather in the succeeded in spite of itself way, yes.

Arm chair quarterbacks are cheap on Sunday's as well.

A LOT is two words.