End all Multi-questing

At one time, Everquest had almost 1 million subscribers. I would guess that there are maybe 20k subs now (and I feel like that's being generous). One might consider a game that has around 2% of its former population dead. We ALL know its on life support, to argue otherwise would be foolish.

April 1999 - 44,000 subscribers
June 2000 - 250,000 subscribers
Feb 2005 - 550,000 subscribers was the height of EQ
Dec 2013 - 95,000 subscribers was where it was near.
Present - Who knows, ball park 30,000 - 45,000

Source? Or just a guess?
Either way, doesn't change the fact that if one of the current servers population dipped as much as EQ as a whole has dipped, we would consider that server DEAD.

I really am curious about the subscriber numbers though, so a link to that info would be appreciated

http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

Thank you

That's seems very right on as my memory serves.
If you take out what really seems as statistical anomaly of the 2004-2005 peak where EQ picked up a freebie from the MMO boom and then crashed, its peak was in 2003 as everyone was finishing PoP . I really think EQs fate was out of it's own hands at that point as other games had more effect on EQs numbers than anything SoE could do.
Of course they did find ways to make things worse, would not of wanted to work there during those six months they lost over half of their revenue stream.

My guess for current subscribers is also around 20k at best. Maybe less right now, maybe more immediately after an expansion or TLP is released.

And I don't even want to think about how many of those accounts are boxed or paid for with old kronos (old kronos don't represent any new income for DBG).

While the best of companies can still lose out in fast-changing competitive markets like this since no one can predict the future. I wouldn't quite say their fate was out of their hands. They did make some big aggressive decisions which pretty much failed, like dumping all their new ideas and resources into EQ2. And continuing to charge both for subscriptions and lame expansions. (not to mention the expansion lameness itself). Had they played things differently, things would have turned out differently.

Though I would give them credit for good ideas that worked previously, when they took over the market in the earlier years. They faced real competition from microsoft and best them with a better game and delivery.

I recall a discussion about the MMOData numbers way back when SOE was still around and had the occasional player event with tours of their SD Campus. Some of the people who got to go on the tour reported being shocked at seeing numbers up on some control room screens that were over 10 x what was being discussed on MMOData. That was a long time ago and modern numbers have nothing to do with it. But if the numbers were as low as some people think they'd not be able to keep a team and we certainly wouldn't be having a problem with RMT since there'd not be enough people to support that either

IF I had to make any claim on what "made" EQ it would be the 3D engine and willingness to commit to a vision along with the support of Sony. No magic mostly just good timing as I cant really say the game was any better than UO outside of that engine. Damn sure wasn't the sadistic grinding...

Yes the numbers are that low, devs apparently come cheap... just kidding guys.

heh for all we know the Devs have to all sign an NDA about an AI that does all the real coding...

JChan is literally a robot? That would explain so much...

The game was pretty addictive for its time. But that may be a matter of taste. Otherwise, yeah grinding was just a way to slow the defeat of the limited content.

But don't forget about asheron's call. They took a chunk of the market and were 3d also. EQ just delivered better and beat them off.

Yeah AC and so many others that as far as the gaming itself is concerned were as good or even better than EQ, certainly the games in development at the same time as EQ, AO, SWG for example were better in all regards just without that Sony support and they lagged EQ by just a few weeks or months in some cases. From here those turned out to be some very important months.