Everquest 2 the worst thing to happen to Eq 1?

GoD wasn't the real problem, most people who left the game then were already fed up with getting PoTime and what felt more like a mini raid + trash zone than anything else, after the unbelievable stupid encounter that Rathe was.
PoP sent Raiders thru so many hoops, there was just no patience left for any broken events etc.
Which is too bad, as imo GoD had a great atmosphere and was the most challenging expansion EQ had.
I'd take that any time now, over stuff where the races are over on release day..

This is why I left the first time. The hoops were ridiculous. It was an uphill battle trying to get people flagged, while members of the raid force trickled out.

I don't think it helped them any to be forcing out two expansions a year from '03 - '07. It was ambitious and greedy.

In an interview John Smedley once said GoD was the biggest mistake SOE made in its first 5 years. While that's just one man's opinion, he'd be in a position to know.

http://www.mobhunter.com/mobhunter_archive/001330.html
"John Smedley stated first that Gates of Discord's release was SOE's worst mistake in five years. He personally apologized."

"...Brenlo confirmed that SOE designed Gates of Discord with level 70 in mind."

There's this myth going around that "challenging" content that's highly exclusive attracts customers. Iirc, Elidroth said 3 or 4 months ago that content like that negatively affects a game's bottom line.

Further it's been commented that SC has been critical in providing cash flow needed to keep EQ afloat. While more money is always nice, when you have 5M+ subscribers, because your game is highly accessible vs. maybe 125,000 because it's grindy, almost requires boxing, and has overly exclusive content, you are not compelled to rely on a cash shop.

The biggest thing hurting EQ for me - and the reason I very rarely play now - was lack of pick-up groups and a perceived bias in favour of the raiding community.

The same issue (falling populations over time) affects the MMO which I now play regularly, WoW. They solved it in part by having cross-realm instances whereby you play with complete strangers whom you'll probably never see again. They then extended it by adding 3-man instances which give you currency (as in LDoN, DoN and HoT) and a crate which contains gold and sometimes a group-level item. There's also an extremely small chance of getting an low-end raid-level item.

They also had the problem EQ does with more casual folks not being able to see the content in raids. EQ "solved" it by shovelling raid mechanics onto the group missions, whereas WoW expanded their pick-up group system to cater for raids as well. If you queue for "Looking for Raid" you get into a 25-man group drawn from across the servers, with lower-tuned versions of the raids to play through. The gear is better than you get from grouping but still below regular raid level.The next patch will see an additional scaling raid system, whereby you have anywhere from 11 to 24 people and the raid mechanics will scale accordingly (and the gear will be between Looking for Raid and 10-man Normal mode in terms of level).

One thing that's common between the EQ and WoW is that some of the high-end raiding folks are quite noisy when it comes to more casual players getting things. WoW's philosophy is that everybody can get raid gear and, by the end of an expansion, groupers will be in what was raid-level gear at the beginning of the expansion. Raiders, meanwhile, will be in even better gear as the "item level" goes up as new raids are released. And, of course, the whole lot gets reset in a new expansion. In other words, WoW devs don't pay that much heed to such moans, instead saying that if you don't want casual players to catch up - go and do the newest raids!

EQ, meanwhile, doesn't really have a smooth group -> raid progression and thus can't gradually increase the levels of items during the course of an expansion. Part of that is due to overpowered effects (fixed percentages such as Improved Dodge, or things like shield AC) and part of it seems to be a reluctance to allow groupers to nibble at the heels of raiders, perhaps because until recently expansions were generally released all in one go.

I don't see that as substantially different from EQ gear resets with a fair portion of the raiding community greeted by better drops in new group content than what they are currently using.

According to my sons who played WoW quite a bit the game went into decline when it started catering to the extremely casual player. You didn't have to make (and maintain) social connections (a key in their opinion for long term player retention). You could solo, join a lfg queue, and even join a lfr !!!!!!!! queue.

Well there's this spectrum ranging from too hard by half (GoD, level 70 content we took on as level 65's) to accessible with RvR to hit the pinata with a stick hun. Wow has become hit the pinata with the stick hun.

There simply aren't enough new players willing to play an old game to replace longtime players leaving a game that has changed.

I quit EQ1 shortly after the Dragons of Norrath expansion. I thought GoD was a good expansion, it was extremely hard, but doable by good groups, it took the most teamwork of any expansion. I don't think the expansion itself was a mistake, but how it was handled is. An MMO could and I think should have an expansion that unforgiving as long as they make the playerbase aware that it is designed to be that way. I'd keep this for a content update this day and age, not a full expansion, but I would definitely like to see stuff like this in MMOs in the future.

The reason I quit was primarily to concentrate more on real life. I did pick up WoW and EQ2 and played them a bit, but EQ1 really has ruined me for all other MMOs. I just can't get excited much for them to where they keep my attention anymore. I prefer to do things alone or small groups and I really don't care to progress to raids or any of the end game stuff. Most people say MMOs are all about the end game, but after EQ1 it has been the total opposite.

EQ1 started and it was all about the discovery of the world and small groups doing something. It rapidly changed to be about raiding and gear. All MMOs are now like that, and the most fun I ever had personally in an MMO and EQ1 is that discovery phase. I still log onto EQ1 sometimes and just wander around checking old and new places, that's fun to me, and I love the world of Norrath. I'll play some other MMOs and do similar things, wander around, explore, play casual overall. EQ1 is my favorite game of all time, I love it, I rarely play it. Why isn't it popular anymore, why did it have a lot of players leave? I think it has to do with it becoming such a hardcore raiding experience game.

I used to be one of those guys, but you know that isn't how most people play games, they never did, that is a very small and hardcore group of people. These people are loyal for sure because they've invested so much into the characters they play. I think MMOs can be different and better if they focus more on group content and discovering awesome places and people (both real and NPC). The problem with this is that the content is devoured too quick that the developers can't keep up for such a game. It's easy to create an uber item and put it on some boss that takes 50+ people to kill, respawns weekly and has a 10% chance to drop said item to get people to sit and play the game than it is to create true content. So what do we do?

Hopefully whatever EQNext is doing, user created content, user created stories, user created quests. I also really feel that this type of game requires a persistent world, no instances, to be successful. It is infinitely more awesome to for example find some hidden away valley then find a neighborhood/village of some player houses and know that they made their plot here, they live here than it is to go into a menu and choose island003_instance595_server22 then plop right down in a player created city.

I also think the game needs PvP, and this coming from a person that really hates MMO PvP. PvP if done correctly, and by correctly I mean as a danger when exploring, not as a tournament bracket, deathmatch style side game, I think it can really add to the game. Real loss, real reward should be able to be gotten for PvP. You should be able to raid towns, steal resources, kill someone that is alone exploring and steal their gear, partial gear, whatever, and other things like this. To make it seem like this isn't a total loss there should be honorable mentions for raided cities with their history, their accomplishments, etc.

The final thing I think the game needs is more interactive combat, this will help the PvP aspect since current MMOs are just gear based and even when equal gear are either class based or luck based. Reticles and minor twitch based accuracy based and non gear essential combat should be possible.

This is my hope for EQNext, or whatever MMO comes out that is like that. My "dream" MMO has changed over the years. It used to be I hoped for challenging, time consuming, unfair gameplay to keep me immersed (read: busy), so I wouldn't be bored. Now, I still want to experience challenge, but along with stories, discover locations, and to play a game that is fun to actually play with well executed combat mechanics. MMOs hold a lot of potential to tell a story through the world and the people in it, and I would like to see that. I used to want the loot hunt and the stat maximizing. Now, I really don't care about loot and am not entirely convinced that it is necessary to an MMO today. It does some bad things to the people playing the game. It makes them only focus on those upgrades, only focus on the reward they get of anything they're doing instead of the actual act of what they're experiencing which can be reward enough. If the game is truly fun to play, fun to experience, you shouldn't need these things to entice you to chase that carrot. As an example, Planetside 2 is fun, but it has little to do with the new abilities you can earn or new items you can gain. The gameplay is fun and the experiences are memorable, an EQ MMO can take this to the next level with its rich world and story potential.

This is what did it for the people I came in with and a bunch of the people I met along the way. I'm the only fool that returns once in a while. I had a couple of months of fun before I was reminded of what little there is for me to do when I'm capped and not interested in raiding.

Oh no i disagree there, don't mix any PvP in.
It's just totally stupid in PvE games like EQ always has been, here people like going afk when they want.
They like picking and building their class based on playing with each other, not against.

I don't think some people even realize how much PvP destroys such a world.
Take a look at Aion, how many players left there simply because they got ganked multiple times a day by overpowered classes/gear.

Weak zones, no dungeons, copied raids from group instances...that's what i don't like these days.
But it's all still acceptable compared to PvP, which i just totally hate and i would quit the second where someone ganks me in EQ. Honestly.

I disagree strongly with about everything you posted except this. IMO the next genre definer is going to be a lot like Second Life with a high fantasy setting. A virtual world more than a game with a scoreboard displaying your levels and your gear. An activity where joining adventures or performing in a night club (the publisher distributing your music to ticket holders) are equally valid. Something you can if you choose participate in 20 hours a day or 20 hours a year. On a desktop machine, game console, or tablet.

That's not EQ Next and I'll be trying real hard to judge EQ Next on what it is rather than what it is not. Given what little I know it could be a feudal world where you have adventures, acquire land, and manage it. I can see some potential in a game like that, therefore I understand my take on what the best game might be and their may differ and they still might come up with something that's lot of fun. So I'll suspend judgement until I see what it is and how well they've done it.

The main reason I said PvP is because the way I envision it would be that guilds would control various areas due to the building of city/stronghold mechanics which means you can build walls or other structures that would warn you in enough time to react so that you could do your leveling, resource gathering, or questing in mostly peace. Guilds would extend influence over time. It wouldn't so much be this wild west gank fest of other MMOs.

1. How many times are they supposed to update character models? Well since they've only done it once, I'm not sure. They're still poor. It isn't as if they've done it multiple times.

2. There is value in updating models if you want to encourage people to play such an old poor looking game. New players get choices between looking like a giant warrior with bulging muscles or a beautiful curvy elven princess and a small Godzilla looking iksar or a troll that looks like it was made by the creators of Gumby. They can still make a ton of money.

3. You can continue to give an old game support and upgrade it if you continue to look for ways to bring in new players, which they haven't done for a decade or more until F2P and then they stopped again.

4. People rag on SoE because they hold on to games and at some point really just stop trying. They hold on to titles and continue to take their new money and use it for other games while taking away most of the support for old games. They do this to themselves so it's ridiculous to pretend that they are some victim.

5. NCSoft at least is smart enough to understand when they could use their funds and talent to focus on things more people would enjoy and not hold onto something just because they're some kind of MMO hoarder.

6. There certainly is no point in saying anyone should be "Happy that it gets any support" as they gold subscribers are still paying top MMO prices for a game that doesn't hold up.

Clearly, there are more things at play than just the name of the game...but...EQ2 is not a sequel to EQ. Calling it EQ2 makes people think that it replaced EQ, when it was a totally different game in reality.

There is a reason why the next installment of EQ will not be called EQ3. They learned this lesson already. Of course, I could be totally wrong (we have to wait for August 1).

1,2: Have you done any 3D modelling work yourself? Perhaps you'd like to take a stab at updating all the races and their gear. I don't think you fully understand what's involved and why very few games ever update their models. Going from current models to something like EQ2's set would be a massive undertaking.

3,4,5: They keep what support is needed. As long as people have an interest in a game, they'll keep supporting it as best they can. Obviously, if no one enjoyed either game, they would shut things down. Each game does have several healthy servers. If SOE really did hoard MMOs, they wouldn't have dropped the publishing on that Pirates of the Burning Sea flop.

6. Top MMO prices? You mean the price that hasn't changed much in 13 years? It's one of the best deals out there. It's obviously holding up for enough people.

Whether or not I have done any 3D modeling (I have by the way although little) that doesn't remove the fact that with such an old game with such outdated graphics you aren't going to attract or retain a great deal of the gaming community especially when EQ is still so clunky and time intensive. And they were set to add new models, but a majority of players didn't like the human model and they scrapped it so it was something they had planned to do again years ago.

People would have more interest in the game if they continued to work to attract people which they absolutely do not do. Removing one game does not really help your argument. They keep the support that is needed, but they need so little because of their own actions.

Yes that price that has been in place for years which other MMOs charge too, but with those other MMOs you get much better support, graphics that are so superior to EQ that it's actually a joke in the community, in game events and good in game support, etc. It's not that EQ has nothing left to offer, they just stopped even trying.

Not trying and not being able to justify a massive overhaul (which would cost lots of dev time and incur an extra cost from players) are two different things. If it were still one of the few MMOs around like back in the day, they might be able to justify it, but it would still be easier to simply make a new game.

At the time of EQ2, there was some really bad whining going on, about the way EQ should be.

And thats what EQ2 became: The whiners wet dream.

The people that left for EQ2 will be missed, but they were not the ones that loved the game...

worst thing to happen to eq was they havent stopped yet..

Everquest II is a very different game for a very different audience. It was not bad, just not as appealing to some...It was however a total marketing disaster...The game was just way to different to share the same name... Anyone new to MMO's will look at EQ2 as if it is just simply a newer version of everquest...and that is not the case...

And the worst thing to ever happen to EQ was defiant armor...even more so than mercenaries...lol

Defiant armor wasn't as damaging as at least 100 other things.

Defiant armor immediately made obsolete most drops in the game...IMO no one thing has had near that big of impact...