Bring Back Live GM Events

Makes sense to start with the oldest servers first since they've gone the longest without an event right? This would schedule Mischief's for Sept 30 2023. Let's say from 7pm-8pm PST? Work for everyone?

Hmm, that's getting a little late for east coast folks, even if it is a Saturday. I think 9am est will work better. If the devs value their job, and truly love the game, they'll be up at 5am getting things ready on our schedule. Little Timmy can have someone else video the soccer game. /s

All kidding aside, I'm sure most people would like to have GM events back like they were 20 years ago, but that's not really feasible now.

Allworth, honestly, I think signing up for the guide program is the best way that you can enact the changes you would like to see happen. On the plus side, it would make many people happy as a result of your efforts.

This is the most reasonable reply my post has gotten so far. Responding with congeniality and thoughtfulness is something we need more on these forums.

Once we get past the financials and server populations numbers, I believe it's still a matter of a lack of will and passion exhibited by those in charge. For some reason, Project 1999 manages to have at least one major live event each year which is done on Halloween. The staff of P1999 are not paid, they are all volunteers who are holding down full time jobs. Yet somehow they manage to find the time and the enthusiasm to have events which lend a lot of variability and unpredictably which is important when you are striving for a living, breathing fantasy virtual world.

Bringing back live events might give more public visibility which could bring in old players and lure in new ones. I have a Google alert for EverQuest and I rarely if ever do I see any news or articles on EverQuest. To the outside world, EQ is essentially a dead horse and it doesn't have to be. For some reason most of the forum warriors are fine with this. I think they want to have EQ as their exclusive little sandbox toy that they don't want to share with other kids. Good for them, but not good for EG7's profitability or growth.

Comparing fan run servers with only a few to run events on with the official ones with 24 (25 if you count test) servers to run an event on? You really think they won't have even worse complaints about events if they can only run an event on a server at a time and it takes over a year to hit every server?

Sure it would be nice if they had enough GM's to run events on all servers but they don't. However they do have a guide program which is always looking for more members that does run events on almost all the servers. You could join that program to start running some events and encourage more people to join.

I agree. Nobody should be forced to do anything they don't want. Nobody is forced to work at Darkpaw either. There are thousands of developers would would love a chance to work on EverQuest and I believe many of those would love to perform live quests and events in their spare time. They would not balk at the thought, instead they would consider it a privilege and an honor to take an active role in making Norrath a truly living, breathing fantasy virtual world which was the dream of the founders.

Despite your righteous indignation, you seem to have conveniently forgotten to mention that in one of my posts I thought that Darkpaw should give all employees PAID TIME to participate in live dynamic events. Why did you fail to mention this in your reply?

I have high expectations of the EverQuest experience and the EQ devs. You apparently don't and that's your right.

This may come as a shock to you but working in the video game industry is not a 9 to 5 job. Developers have to work over-time and crunch time when required. It's all hands on deck. Servers crash on weekends and they need to be fixed. Many of the improvements to EQ over the years happened during lunch breaks and when developers added new features on their own time. The /useitem command was created by a dev on his free time.

Back in the day, devs were very competitive. Devs that worked hard, put in extra time, and distinguished themselves got promoted. It was an exciting time to be a live and see the birth of the MMORPG genre. People were super passionate back then and it was more than just a job.

As EverQuest has atrophied over 20 years, I think the people on these forums have forgotten what it was like back then. The importance of live events has been memory holed and the current static Groundhog Day version of EQ is now dominant.

Jeff Butler once remarked about live/dynamic events:

Most people forget that once upon a time, the story of Norrath was told not only by expansions but by live events. Live story arcs went on for a year sometimes. It was crazy, cool, unpredictable stuff that made the EverQuest experience unparalleled. Back then, SOE was run by serious people who were committed to seeing this vision realized. Today, not so much.

Waring_McMarrin makes a well established point.

If players want to see more GM/Guide style events then they actually need to be part of the solution by stepping up and becoming part of the Guide program.

The problem with that is critical mass.

How many players of EQ in 1999 were holding down full time careers, families, marriages, repsonsibilities?

The player base is so much smaller numerically, so much older in terms of age & so much busier in terms of In real life responsibilities that the Guide program has very few people actually applying to take part because of all of those issues.

Fast forward 10-20 years from now and the guide program could potentially have an over-abundance of applicants because of how many EQ player will have retired from working, whose kids have grown up and moved out and whose lives are now far more "empty" of distractions - unless they go on to become extremely active in the families of their own children's lives as child carers for their grand kids etc.

Then you have to consider how much of the population of EQ players plays on a fairly fixed schedule to allow them to fit EQ playing INTO their lives at all.

It's not as simple as it looks at first glance, you have to consider the bigger picture here.

This is a very valid point. It's important to strive for fairness and making sure that all servers are covered is a daunting task. Also, it's important to note that EQ servers have world-wide players from different zones. Back in the day, it was understood that not everyone could take part or witness GM events so most happened in prime time U.S. time.

I have a lot of experience writing invasions, quests, and events for MMOs and performing them live as well. I did so in the past for many years. However, passing out a few cookies is not something I am interesting in doing. However, I salute the dedication and passion of the volunteers that love doing that.

Great points! There are a lot of retirees such as myself that would love to volunteer and become guides. The problem is that guides today have no power or authority perform invasions and quests and have been turned into PEZ dispensers who hand out milk and cookies.

Daybreak should bring back the Quest Troupe and other guide organizations that existed to help advance Brad and Jeff's vision for a dynamic fantasy virtual world. Volunteerism is a big part of today's modern world. It's crazy that DGB is not leveraging this.

Since COVID, many companies and video game studios have accommodated staff working from home as part of the workforce. So there is no reason why DGB could not outsource their GM admins to work from home. The same level of trust could be extended to volunteer quest troupe performers. With a little bit of investment from Daybreak, this could really help improve the EQ experience for players.

You can't really compare a fan project with a commercial product. Yeah the guys on P99 do it for free in their spare time because as you alluded to, they have OTHER jobs and this is their hobby. The devs do this m-f 9-5 with bosses and shareholders and all the other corporate BS associated with any other business. I'm sure they enjoy their jobs, many people do, also not many people go to their job on their down time to work for free.

You are not owed free labor. The Devs that currently work on Everquest are not obligated or required to run events in their off time, nor should they be. And any insinuation that they should is some next level Karen behavior.

Oh, and those "thousands of developers" can apply to work at DPG of they are so dedicated to running events. Hell, so can you! You can even apply to join the guide program! Have you?

Because you have said multiple times that Devs should be doing this in their free time. You opened up this whole post, and in subsequent replies, with the implication that Devs should be doing this in their free time. That is the issue I take, the implicit demand the Devs sacrifice their free time to satisfy your desires. Even in your very reply to me you continue this line of thought by suggesting that Devs who don't give up their free time to placate your wants are somehow unsuited for the job.

Maybe you should retract your previous statements about Devs working in their off time if you want me to consider your hand wave of Paid Time to be a legitimate statement.

You have unreasonable expectations. I have reasonable ones. We are not the same.

I am well area of the demands put on Devs in the industry. Hence why I am so adamant that they be allowed to spend precious free time they get on their own hobbies and passions. You want to add to their workload and take away their free time out of your own selfish desire for content.
I care about their work/life balance. You only care about how much labor you can squeeze from them.

Have you applied to work for DPG? Have you applied to be a guide?

Brad is no longer with us, and Jeff's vision was completely discredited with Landmark and EQ Next. We're not going there again.

And with all due respect, you continually assume that your idea of an "improved EQ experience" is the same as everyone else's, and I strongly disagree with your assessment. The average EQ player wants more new content, in the form of meatier expansions than what has been put out for the last five years. We finally have a slightly increased dev team since the new owners took over, and from all appearances they are 98% budgeted on new expansion work and related content enhancements. This is as it should be, IMHO, and I believe also the view of the vast majority of the player base.

Mountains of lore are already in the game which virtually everyone has forgotten, since no one has run the quest lines in the last 10-20 years. You want a GM event? Gather a small group of friends or guildmates, look up something interesting in Zam, and then go do the quests. There are thousands to choose from. Maybe you'll even find a solution to a quest that was never finished. Maybe you'll find a quest that Zam doesn't even know about. The game isn't called EverQUEST for nothing.

Doubtful, since Prathun said a year or two before he left that there are no longer any working quests in the game that no one has discovered.

When was the last time you did a guide quest? The guide program rewards changed a few years ago to give better items.

The rewards you are looking at getting these day

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=48988

Guides don't hand you rewards anymore they click the wands and you get the item(s) on your curser, but they are limited on what they can give out as rewards for each quests.

Quests I have seen over the last few years. Stories, kill X mobs and bring back Y items
and Festivals where over the course of a couple of hours you compete with other players to win games and get rewarded with ornaments, stat food & drink and potions. The last festival I did I came away with 4 different ormaments, food and drink and a few illusion potions.

You really need to get over yourself, there are many more things that guides do besides pass out cookies. Please stop making yourself look ignorant with the constant claims that it all they do. There are plenty of other quests that they can run and the scale of it will depend on how many guides they can get to join them when they run it.

The year is 2021. I get that people play EQ for the nostalgia factor, but you're not going to replicate your experience from 20 years ago. Move on, enjoy the game for what it is, be happy that 20 years later this game is even available to still play.

You just make so many assumptions about what dbg can or can't do, or how 'passionate' the devs are. Sorry but I don't think you have any way to measure how passionate they are based on whether they randomly create live GM events anymore

Also, I'm sure many folks, myself included, could care less about live GM events. It's a novelty that wouldn't enhance my playing experience in the slightest.

If anyone hasn't checked out this former EQ dev's YouTube channel and is interested in learning EverQuest history from the people who made/make it, I highly recommend checking it out. It answers questions I haven't even thought to ask.

Fun fact, a number of the original devs started off in the guide program and graduated to associate dev before moving up from there.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q

Those comment were uncalled for. It's unproductive and inflammatory. You disagree with me? Good, that's your right. But how would you like it if I prefaced replies to your posts/replies with those very words?

We're all in this together, let's try to be more civil to each other.

I am confused why you keep making the same false claim that all guides do is hand out cookies. The guide program has the ability to run quests and give out different rewards and does that on a regular basis. This is not about agreeing or disagreeing but the fact that the repeated claims that guides just hand out cookies is flat out wrong.

I'm talking about the original vision for EverQuest not subsequent catastrophic failures like EQ Next.

Of course the EQ of today is far different and once you get past the cosmetics barely resembles the old version. That still does not negate the original vision.

I get the fact that forum's are dominated by people who seem to like the current incarnation of EQ. This game and the forums have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who like it stay and defend the status quo. Those who don't like what has happened to EQ over the years, left a long time ago, so they are not here to defend the EQ they once loved and still love. That's a war of attrition that people who love classic EQ like myself are going to lose. So anyone that tries to remind EQ players of what it was like is going to face an uphill battle and faced with hostility for rocking the boat. If you love EQ 2021, you are still here and you're going to defend it. That makes sense.

The improved EQ experience I want, is just a return to the live events and invasions that used to be part of the official vision for this MMORPG. This is not something revolutionary, new or untested, it's just classic EverQuest.

I agree with your assessment of how devs are allocated which is why most of our discussions here on these forums fall on deaf ears. It's all about the expansions baby. Expansions = money. Expansions = another notch on your dev resume. However, I find it regrettable that Darkpaw is not actively trying to attract new players with new player character graphics, updated user interface, QOL improvements, and a serious marketing campaign.

Compared to the cost that making an expansion will accrue, putting on live events is not going to cost DGB a lot of money. It's just a matter of Darkpaw finding the will and hiring the right devs who share that vision of virtual worlds.

No good deed goes unpunished. It seems even bringing up the idea of improving the EQ experience is met with resistance and suspicion if it doesn't exactly fit what the status quo (a handful of posters) on the forums wants. If live, dynamic RP events are a negative thing for a fantasy virtual world then I'm flabbergasted. It is clear that certain forum posters have completely forgotten the benefits that live events bring to a fantasy virtual world.

Let's be honest here, we really have no data on what the players want. I'd like to see Darkpaw poll players both here in the forums and in-game to see if they would like more events, invasions, etc. It would probably be better for an independent organization to conduct the polls and gather the data.

I stand with Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler's vision and all of the people that created the classic version of EQ for the first 4 expansions. It seems that vision is no longer welcome here. Let that sink in. Back then, I lived it, I played it. I know firsthand what it was like. I miss it. Shame on me for coming back to EQ, purchasing the All Access Pass and wanting to relive it.

SOE basically invented the modern day MMORPG industry with EverQuest, obviously the EQ of 1999-2002 with it's commitment to live dynamic storytelling and a living, breathing, fantasy world was doing something very right.

My understanding of the current guide program is that they are heavily restricted in what they can do. They do not have the authority to do invasions or any large scale quests. They do not have the authority to play deities or dragons or major EQ NPCs as the original GM admins did. They do not have the authority to change the sky color or other ambient visual effects. They do not have the authority to spawn minions that would assist in invasions. They do not have the authority to create items (outside of cookies, Valtron's Ale and other minor items) to give to players as rewards.

Instead the current guide program focuses on light role-playing events which are awesome in their own right but not something that interests me and it was not the point of my original post which is about massive, live events and high-level dyadic storytelling such as Bloody Kithicor event and others.

If I am wrong about this, please let me know and show me some official evidence that I'm wrong and I'll stand corrected. Thank you.