Bring Back Live GM Events

There are more types of quests besides invasions and I am not sure what you mean by large scale quests. But they can most certainly do more things then light roleplaying and the types of rewards they can give out has been increasing recently.

There is more to be had then invasion type events where deities come to interact with the players. In realty you can't expect a small dev team that is very busy to provide events for every server.

Probably because they have run the numbers and realized it would not be cost efficient.

Let's not kid ourselves, Everquest is not a great MMORPG. It was clunky, unbalanced, and had massive roadblocks to casual play. While it was revolutionary for it's time, the style of game play is too outdated for the modern MMORPG audience. Players want to be able to solo. Players want their characters to feel powerful. Players want to interact with the world, not just sit in a dungeon corner for four hours pulling the same generic stock creatures over and over and over again.
Hence why WoW absolutely destroyed EQs subscriptions numbers when it was released. The MMO market as a whole, from a American/Euro perspective, is a dying breed as well. The Online Gaming market is dominated by Battle Royal shooters, MOBA's, online sports games, and online versions of single player titles like GTAV or Red Dead 2.
So we have an old game in an old gaming style. The amount of brand new players drawn to Everquest is likely incredibly low. The game keeps it's lights on because of players like us. We either like the style of game play because we grew up with it, love the nostalgia we feel when we play, or play out of spite of the more modern MMORPGs. It's fun to dream about a resurgence in this old game, but this game has been dying a slow death for years. And no amount of GM events are going to magically revitalize this game. The time needed to overhaul this game and make it competitive in the modern online market, or even just the MMORPG market, would be better spent creating a brand new game entirely.

Personally I'd take more content over live quests run for an hour or 2. Limited content that not everyone can join is a waste of resources. We all have lives outside EQ these days and even back in the day the live events were always happening when I was sleeping.

I much prefer the guides doing their smaller quests every week, at least with them there is a good chance of catching when they are happening. Just wish they would add guides to Mischief.

I love my Creepy doll, All purpose weapon and Wildflower boquet ornaments I gained on live, just wish I could get them on Mischief.

While this statement is literally true it's problematic. The eq dev team probably doesn't have the time to randomly decide to host big live events. If they did and if they found it valuable, they'd do it. While it doesn't literally cost as much time to host an event, it does in terms of time value: the time the dev team spends working on some random invasion/live event thing you describe is time taken away from building a new expansion or whatever other work the company has identified as producing ROI for the company.

Most likely, doing some kind of live GM event takes a lot of work and planning. It doesn't seem like it'd be something that you'd just randomly do with no preparation.

How exactly do you know what authority guides do or don't have? This is a very specific list of things you seem to know they can't do. Do you have a source?

You seem to be taking quite a bit of liberty with what other people do in their spare time. There might be A LOT of things stopping them from running these events in their spare time. Have you ever put off a personal project because life got busy and you didn't have time to get around to doing it? Maybe it would take someone 5 hours of planning and prep to create some kinda live GM event, and then maybe 2-3 hours to actually execute it. You're looking at up to 8 hours of dedicated time, in their spare time, just to do this. What if the devs have families and other obligations outside work. What if they just don't have the headspace to be creatively engaged to think of a cool/fun concept, let alone specifically plan it out?

Let's also not forget that... maybe there are physical things in the game that prevent them from doing this. Hell -- the reason we don't have character account to account transfers anymore is because the 1 guy who knew how to do it left the company and there wasn't a knowledge transfer. What if there just isn't anyone on the team who is comfortable enough creating things like this on the fly in game? You actually have 0 idea, nor do any of us, what actual work went into creating these types of events. Given the state of EverQuest's code, I'm pretty sure it wasn't like flipping some magic switch. Perhaps the knowledge base required to execute these events no longer exists or is lost in tens of millions of lines of code?

There you go again just assuming what EQ Devs can easily do. How exactly do you know what EQ Devs can easily do or not?

NOTHING? How do you know this? It's pretty laughable. Darkpaw couldn't even hire actual GM's on the Aradune server for more than 6 months, and those guys were barely active and may or may not have even existed at all, and yet you think they can just hire more GM's to actually run unique interactive events?

How do you know how much profit Daybreak makes from EQ? What does "handsomely" mean? The only thing we know even closely is how much revenue EQ brought in. You have know idea what their costs are. Also, profit and revenue are two different things, but you seem to be using them interchangeably here.

Typically - for-profit businesses do things that make them money, in order to further the business. I'm sure people at Daybreak know or knew that these types of events existed in the past. I'd expect, barring technical restrictions that would prevent them from doing these types of events, the reason they don't happen is because: a) nobody at the company wants to take the lead in organizing them; b) a management-level decision was made to not continue them because... they don't provide tangible value or ROI to the company.

You're honestly misguided if you think this is the reason why country music stars have fan days. I mean, sure they like the fans and appreciate their loyalty... but also these events help make them money, even if they are not directly paid to do it. They're selling merch, music, and other things in conjunction with these events. Ever been to a book signing? The author is selling books at the signing. Sure, they may not be paid to be there, but they're getting money from the sale of the book. It's also good for their brand.

I'm sure more than a "it would be super cool and exciting and nostalgic if they brought back live GM events," if you could present an actual business case it'd make more sense. Brand plays are great, but companies don't do things like that altruistically. There would need to be a business case for why they should do these events, and then they would have to weigh the trade-off of doing these events vs. whatever else the DPG team could be doing with their time instead.

Again, I just think it's pretty obtuse of you to make blanket assumptions about the DPG dev team. How do you know what would or wouldn't kill them to do? How do you know it would even take 1 hour of their time? As previously stated, I highly doubt that these big live GM events were run of the mill random things where some Dev had an idea and said "lemme just POP INTO EQ AND DO THIS THING." These types of events probably take significant amounts of planning and effort of multiple people to pull off. Maybe it was easier back when EQ had 100,000 players and the dev team was like 200 people (I have no idea how many people used to work in EQ); it also may have been much more feasible in the super early days when EQ was mostly just some kinda small startup game and the original dev team literally ate, slept, and drank EQ 24/7. Some of the early events were probably done more to see what was possible with their game engine than anything else. So it was like a capacity test (again: there was a tangible benefit to doing it, not just some random fun thing to do on off hours).

Like, I love my job. I work in the esports industry. I used to play video games competitively. I talk about gaming all day at work. Most of the time, when I'm not working, I'd rather talk about basketball or movies or just about anything else. It would be false to say I'm not 'passionate' about what I do because I don't want to engage in my work 24/7. Work-life balance is extremely critical to maintaining good mental health. Maybe the EQ dev team is so small and the work is so demanding that these people don't have the mental energy to work on EQ outside of their work time. Have you considered that?

See my above comment. This comment is actually insanely insensitive and insulting. You're just a armchair commentator at this point. I'd doubt that you have more passion for EQ than... some of the devs that have been working at DPG for a decade. I'd imagine that their salary and pay scale is less than other major game dev shops. EQ is a labor of love, regardless of what you think. And to think that because they don't decide to host these random unscripted live GM events means they're in the wrong business or aren't passionate enough, is frankly wrong.

Ya I doubt it. DPG is a super small team, and I'm guessing part of it is due to whatever their budgets are, but a part of it is also probably because there aren't lines around the block of game devs itching for a chance to work on EverQuest. It's 2021 not 1999. EverQuest is not a big game anymore.

Comparing the original dev team of EQ in its formative years to now is stupid. It's apples to oranges, not even remotely relevant. Like I said -- it's very possible that a lot of the reason for the live events they did back then was because they were testing the technical possibilities of the world they were actively creating at the time. That's like saying... Bill Gates used to sit in his garage writing Microsoft code personally! Like, ok, that was because the company was just starting and he was a passionate kid at the time, had nothing else to do, and many other factors. Things changed. His life changed. He hadn't shipped a line of code himself since the year 2000? Point is, there's a huge difference betweena small scrappy startup where the founding dev team is literally living EQ 24/7, and the dev team of today. There's also a big difference because presumably, the original EQ dev team were owners, at least partially, of the company. Today's EQ dev team aren't (maybe they have random stock options but let's not kid ourselves, just because I have Tesla shares doesn't make me an owner of the company, nobody would think that a realistic claim).

The circumstances in which live GM events occurred in the early years of EQ are just not comparable to today.


Now, would it be cool if live GM events existed? Sure. I don't think anyone is really saying "I don't want this in my game."

Would it be great if DPG reinvested more of their profit (or revenue???) into the game? Sure.

Would it be ideal if DPG hired devs who were 100% focused on the world of Norrath with every waking breath in their body? Sure.

Would it be cool to invent a time machine and turn the clock back to 2001 and experience the magic of my time as a 14 year old playing EQ with my two best friends? Exploring Great Divide on my lvl 35 warrior with a lamentation and fbss? Yea those memories were great.

However: I don't delude myself in thinking that any of these things are realistic. It's a waste of my mental energy to do so. I'm happy playing the game today. I'm glad it's still playable. I'm supporting the company because they're providing me something of value (entertainment). I think there's a fine line between, playing the game to get a lil kick of nostalgia and being consumed by my desire to recreate past experiences. Being so consumed, in fact, that you've made a ton of random baseless, unsupported, and sometimes insulting claims about the company who owns the game, and the dev team working on the game.

Let's correct a few major factual errors, shall we?

The vision of the original EQ didn't belong to either McQuaid or Butler, it was John Smedley. Smed was the one who sold the concept to Verant and secured the funding, plus he served as lead designer. Butler wasn't even part of the team back then. He was hired shortly after launch as a CS rep, and a year later joined the production staff. He is credited as having co-produced the Velious and Luclin expansions, and having worked on Kunark, but he wasn't the lead on any of them. Shortly after Luclin's launch, he left SOE to begin work on Vanguard, which Smedley had declined to undertake in-house. Five years later, SOE bought Vanguard, and Butler became an SOE employee once again.

If you're going to claim telepathic knowledge of Butler's vision for modern MMORPG design, you should be talking about Vanguard, not EQ. If you're going to claim supernatural knowledge of the late McQuaid's vision for modern MMORPG design, you should be talking about Pantheon.

SOE did not invent the MMORPG industry with EQ. Ultima Online and several other titles preceded it. NCSoft's Lineage (1998) preceded EQ in Korea, and is still in service there today.

Everything you post presents what I would consider to be a wildly romanticized recollection of what the original EQ was like. Other players whose forum posts you criticize did in fact play themselves back in that era, they just remember things differently. The TLPs we have today can never recreate what it is you want to relive because the player base is so much smaller. That isn't going to change. There are other MMOs on the market which are far more focused on storytelling than EQ is or ever was; you might want to check those out as alternatives.

Jeff Butler was an overpaid art critic (hint, everybody's a critic). He came from owning a comic book store. He had, and from the sounds of it, still has, no game industry knowledge.

He slept under his desk while play testing the game built by other's vision.

Take a look at anything he put his stamp of 'vision' on and tell me what you see.

Factual errors? Not really. Differences of opinion? Yes.

I am well aware of the history of EverQuest especially Brad and Jeff's role in the early years up to them leaving to form Sigil.

I never claimed telepathic knowledge of Butler's vision or have communed with Brad after his passing. (I wish people would stop mispresenting what I say and beating their fantasy strawman as it's a common tactic on these forums). There's voluminous amounts of evidence of Brad and Jeff's vision for EverQuest and MMOs in general on the internet. Yes, of course Jeff wasn't there from day one but he was in specially in charge of live events as a vehicle for the story of Norrath to be promulgated as well as being responsible for producing Luclin.

Sure, EQ happened because of Smedley's determination and leadership. But, after EQ was released, he was not a good spokesperson or evangelist for the genre. That role was handed off to Brad who had the gift of the gab and was a super salesman. Both Brad and Jeff who I've met and had long conversions with, were deep thinkers and exhibited far more passion than Smedley was capable of.

Butler had a fully developed idea for where EQ was going to go and was very articulate about it. He did everything he could to implement it with major plot tines, paid actors in many of the live events. In many ways, he was far more passionate, industrious, and intelligent than Brad.

I figured someone might be nitpicky about this. Nickels and dimes aside, for all practical purposes EverQuest invented and popularized the 3D MMORPG industry. Blizzard did not decide to make WoW because of Ultima Online or Lineage, they did it because of the immense popularity of EQ. You know it and I know it. The rest is history.

Wildly? C'mon Captain, that's a bit hyperbolic even for you. Asking for some occasional live events that break up the monotony of Groundhog Day is not asking for much.

I was there, I lived it. I saw it with my own eyes. My experience is my own and I stand by it 100%. I played EQ 16 hours a day for 4 years back then. It almost cost me my marriage. Perhaps the others who are adamantly opposed to live events just got unlucky or perhaps they were envious of those of us who did. To be honest, I think most of the opposition is contrarian in nature. Who really knows.

I agree 100%. You are right. Little if anything ever changes here. It's foolish to have thought otherwise. These forums have become like a dusty old age home or a dive bar were all the regulars sit in the same bar stools every night, ordering the same drinks, and telling the same old war stories. I suppose people feel a sense of worth playing the roles of guardians of the status quo and vanquishing imaginary interlopers just as they do virtually in Norrath. I suspect there's some deep psychological stuff at play here on the forums that is above my pay grade.

If the bolded/red part is true then why do so many of my alts and boxes have guide event weapon and shield ornaments? I'm not even getting to play as much as I like but I check the guide event forums from time to time and if something is happening on a server I've got characters on I'll go to the event.

If you want stuff then I suggest that you can support the events that they are running and stop whining about them being "pez dispensers"

Despite your righteous indignation, you've made a lot of uncharitable and baseless assumptions about me in the process. I emphatically resent your exaggerated, unfounded accusations. Your white knighting is frankly embarrassing. As as paying customer who's invested thousands of dollars and much of my leisure time over the past 22 years, I have high expectations of EverQuest and the developers and I have every right to come here and articulate them politely with the aim of constructive dialog with both players and devs in order to help improve the player experience.

The EQ devs and GMs that I personally knew loved running live live events from 1999-2003. EverQuest was a life changing experience and most everyone that was involved felt privileged to be a part of it. Despite the revisionist history that a few are peddling on this thread, the players I know LOVED live events. Many of the SOE devs did so on their spare time as well as on company time which also I've advocated for but you have conveniently forgotten that.

Here's hoping this thread doesn't get locked before I hear about the "major plot lines" alluded to earlier.

Dude......

That is not a good thing nor does it make your more credible. In fact, it frames your arguments in a new, rather sad, light. You were, and maybe still are, addicted to a video game and you want to keep chasing that high. No wonder you have repeatedly suggested Devs work in their offtime. You expect them to be as absorbed in this game as you were (are).

Oh the irony...

Get off your high horse. Almost everyone posting in this forum played during the first 5 years of Everquest's existence. We were all there. You do not have some unique perspective to bring to the table as the only person who played during those periods.

The events you are talking about, while cool, were a tiny drop in the bucket of the overall vision.

There you go again with your outlandish theories and barstool analysis. I don't need your validation or approval. I tell the truth as I see it. EverQuest can be a dangerous addiction. At least I've got the honesty to talk about it. You on the other hand are using my frank admission about MMORPG addiction as way to denigrate me. Shaming someone for admitting they were once addicted to EQ is not a good look and contrary to the rules and the spirit of these forums. No wonder more people don't come out of the shadows to get help when people like you attack those for sharing their experiences about addiction. No good deed goes unpunished around here.

For some reason, you have an unhealthy fixation on me. I'm living rent free in your head. I offered you olive branches in the past but you rebuffed me and instead continue to chide me whenever I make a post on these forums. No matter what I say, you never give me the benefit of the doubt and continue to see the glass half empty and always find something to complain about. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I'm done replying to you in perpetuity.

Have a nice day and the best of luck to you in your travels.

Thanks for the bump.

Why would this thread be locked? It's providing a lot of education to the current player base and to the current devs about the true history of EverQuest from someone who was actually there and who has talked at length with Brad and Jeff. Those that fail to learn the lesson of history are doomed to repeat them.

Search engines are your friend my dear Captain. Your homework assignment is the following:

Go look up the major server wide live events that showcased Bloody Kithicor and the Frogloks taking over the Troll homeland of Grobb.

Nothing to do with live events. Grobb was flipped from a Troll city to a Froglok city as part of the LoY expansion; all of the lore about those battles was part of the expansion, when Frogloks became a playable race (not a coincidence). The lore about battles which re-flipped Grobb back to a Troll city was part of the DoDH expansion. There were a few staged and scripted battles patched in prior to the expansion launch as one-time events, but they were player-triggered and not being run live by a GM. Outcomes were pre-determined.

Bloody Kithicor is part of SoD progression, and is looooong past the era you've been talking about. No live events there either.

Try again.

These were part of the prelaunch events for expansions, something the devs no longer do as current devs don't think it is a good use of their time (see one of the devs Q&As, I think it was the one just after Covid made them all work from home).

It has been requested that these prelaunch events go active before the expansion goes active, but alas that is something they cannot do with 1 server.

+1

Yes you do. Otherwise you wouldn't make these posts. Anything you post in a public forum invites response, positive or negative. You want the approval of those on these boards, including myself.
Own it.

Not shaming, just addressing how your addiction shades your demands. It's like a guy fighting for the legalization of Meth revealing he used to be addicted to Meth. Makes you wonder what his real motives are.
Also, if you had a problematic Everquest addiction, you shouldn't be playing Everquest. If you have an addiction, you need to stay away from the source of the addiction. Instead of getting into fights with people online over your demands for more content (i.e. More addiction stimulation), have you thought of other activities? Painting is an easy to pick up activity that can help focus the mind and calm the addictive urges.

The classic "I'm taking my ball and going home!" response. It is commonly used by those who have lost arguments. I thank you for conceding victory to me. Maybe next time you will use deeper levels of critical thinking before you make demands of the overworked Dev team.

Any overworked critical thinkers in chat?