Dear Darkpaw

I understand you have not owned the rights to Everquest for that long of a period. But I am curious if you understand the potential behind the brand of Everquest.

Yes, you can do like your predecessors and copy and paste each expansion. Suck revenue out of the dwindling customer base. Hell, the game is so old now some of us are literally dying off. So the current strategy will only last for so long.

But behind each of these humans that actually still play, are gobs of people who used to play. People who still crave that Everquest Magic. That magic that Everquest lost. They want that feeling. They would come back to that. New players would as well. No MMO out there possesses that Magical feeling that Everquest once had.

The good news...the competition of the MMO market is so weak that even the elderly Everquest could muster the power to climb back on top. Not by copying what the competition is doing, but by doing what Everquest did great already.

My solution is simple. You have thousands of resources to pull from. The community in Everquest is like no other game. They want you to succeed. They will literally help you put Everquest on the track to year over year revenue growth. Proactively listen to your community. Bring them together to discuss your weaknesses and opportunities. There are so many ways to handle this. The combined years of experience from our community outweighs the combined years of experience at Darkpaw in multitudes. Let us save you, let us save Everquest. Hell...to put it bluntly, let us make you rich (maybe you hear that).

We are a free resource. Use it or eventually you will loose it.

Darkpaw is the same company that has always owned the game, they have just changed names a few times.

The past was alterable.
The past never had been altered.
Daybreak was the owner of EverQuest.
Daybreak had always been the owner of EverQuest.

the company that owns Darkpaw has changed over the years, but for the most part people working on EQ for Darkpaw is the same group of people who were working for them when Sony was the owner.

Yall are getting hung up on the wrong thing.
Hes sentiment great even if there is a "darkpaw" technacality

New players would come for a revamp of both the character models and the 1-60 gameplay. Add in level appropriate 1-60 AA/combat disciplines that mimic the functionality of the cookie cutter AA/disc/spell sets we have every 5 levels over 75 or 80. The 1-60 game is currently mind bogglingly dull with too few hot buttons to mash, sparsely populated, and will never see new players without any changes.

The problem with changing the early game is TLP and nostalgia. Any graphic change needs an opt-out for old players that won't do it another way. Any change to game mechanics will of course bother veterans who walked to school both ways in the snow, even if they will never touch anything below a heroic character as a buff bot for the rest of their lives.

So basically damned if they do and the same if they don't. Solution is of course EQ3. Then no one can complain... or maybe not.

Honestly if they could make one change, use the AA system from level 1. Make it actually interesting to level up in an environment that has multiple things working actively against you. There was never a good reason to start AA abilities at 51. That's just when you thought of them first.

Then how come the scale of expansion pack are shrinking and they are dumbing down the game like this ?
I wish they would just wake up and do it right like it’s 1999

Not quite. The studio currently called Darkpaw has been owned by Sony, Columbus Nova/DPG, and now EG7 (who bought who is not pertinent to this discussion). Darkpaw is an owned entity, not the owning entity.

Not only has the amount of resources they have to work with shrunk over the years decreased but the amount of work they have to do has increased. If there was a team that was fully dedicated to new expansions it would likely be easier for them to get more done. However the team that works on expansions also works on maintaining the game overall and that does take away time from creating new content in expansions.

I appreciate and somewhat agree with the sentiment of your post but like Waring said there are not enough resources for that and it is highly unlikely that there ever will be resources dedicated to that undertaking for EverQuest ever again.

If you want that feeling you have to either go play old content or go play another game. It just is what it is.

Oh, I think they understand. Recent proof would be the offering of Family and Friends edition, collectors bundles and now the P4P (Pay 4 Perks)

It might not be what some of the players want but the guys with degrees who have never played the game feel those and upcoming features will increase sales. If they haven't already. I know I dropped a bundle on the Collectors expansions bundles to get old items no longer available.

They've already tried to redo EQ twice. I think wasting more money on a third attempt is ludicrous. Put the money back into EQ1.

1. Create a new "expansion" on a completely new engine.

2. Keep the fundamentals the same

3. Characters from old EQ can only enter this new expansion/alternate reality naked (like terminator) keeping only stats, race, class, diety ect..... Everything else completely new

The EverQuest franchise could have been bigger than World of Warcraft. Instead, it was consistently mismanaged over the years with a series of failures due to trend chasing executives.

It's a tragedy that Darkpaw has not fully utilized the passion and experience of the EQ community that collectively dwarfs the experience of the tiny dev team. Many of us are bona fide game designers that could be of real assistance to the dev team, but our talents are not utilized, valued and appreciated, as its a closed shop run by a narrow-minded holding company.

The only real solution is for Enad Global 7 to sell the intellectual property rights for a new EverQuest MMORPG to a studio with the vison, talent, and resources to fully realize the franchise's potential.

Twice? By namesake, maybe. But EQNext was started and scrapped at least four times.

They could have done many thing to expand it but they are just too lazy or don’t give a
For example authorize and apply the game on GeForce now ?
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/eq-on-geforce-now.276829/page-4#post-4057258

You do realize that Steam takes a cut of all purchases made on their platform right? And considering how low the bar is to play EQ on a machine is there really much to gain from that service?

they could do alot of things to drum up actual new players .. ADVERTISE for one .. I mean they dont have to make TV commercials but they could advertise on outlets like Steam or youtube or something .. they could pay a high end streamer to play EQ for awhile and twitch/stream the playtime ? i dont know im just throwing some stuff out there..

they could upgrade the Heroic toon to 100 or 105 so NEW players can get a jump start .. for me I dont care about heroics being at 85 it doesnt take long to lvl toons .. but for a new player I can understand how lost one can feel and having a long uphill battle of trying to get to 105 before your an actual help to the soon to be lvl 120 peeps ..

they need to upgrade the Autogrant AA's to include up to lvl 110 once ToL comes out and all AA's up to including TBL .. that includes all the TS , forage AA's ..

Not only give them the 2 24slot bags and stat food/drink and 15k pp and some merc coins .. but give them a few more items like a couple of 25% xp pots duration 4hr's .. and maybe give them 2 28 slot bags in addition to the 24 slot ones and give them a TS bag and a Collect bag ..

charge a bit more for the Heroic say 50 bucks and include a fast mount .. maybe not the best mount from the most current expansion but maybe the 2nd or 3rd fastest best hp/mana/end mount .. also include the keyrings the illusion , mount, familiar and hero's forge .. all included ..

we gotta give a little bit .. i mean its just digital items .. doesnt cost DPG anything more to add those items ... and I think more people would be buying heroics if they were lvl 105 and included everything up top i wrote plus lvl appropriate gear as well as lvl appropriate augs or COIN that they can go buy the augs from the TBM vender ..

and who cares if steam takes a cut of the expansion cost .. so DPG raises the base, collection, premium expansion by a few bucks I mean really were already paying $35 basic , $89.99 collection and $139.99 for Premium .. whats a few more dollars . and now were gonna be paying $4.99 for " Perks " per month .. whats is the big deal on a few dollars more if it helps advertise for EQ and gets more NEW blood in here

What are you talking about ?
What does steam taking a cut of purchasing stuff has to do with GeForce now?
The game is free to play and people are free to buy all the stuff they want in game or on daybreak game website
GeForce now are just a cloud stream platform used for launching Everquest launchpad and none of those transaction has to go through steam


People just need to download eq via steam to use GeForce now that’s it

I seriously hope that daybreak games management are not ignorant as you

And for the 2nd point there are large amount of people using macOS / Linux and refuse to give in to using Microsoft Windows

Not to mention having GeForce now means endless possibilities for playing Everquest everywhere

STOP Finding lame excuses for the lazy publisher + developer !!!

The new official number is at least 7 times.

Jeff Butler (who worked there)