GoFundMe to help over-worked and underpaid devs

I would not be suprised to hear many players have tried to convince family & friends over the years to play but it didn't appeal to them.
My kid gave it a go, the UI, old graphics & clunky operation of a character put them off, they never get to enjoy the massive amount of content if they think the graphics are "crusty", that the UI "gives them eye cancer", he happily plays FFXIV though.

That sounds rather triangle shaped!

It’s a joke about pyramid schemes or MLMs here in the US. It’s a predatory business model that preys upon people’s desires to be their own boss and be rich. The model is for you to recruit more salespeople into the scheme, so they buy inventory to then sell to customers. Each subsequent person you recruit will lead to you making a portion of that sale. The more people you recruit, the more money you make without regards to actual customer sales.

I totally agree!

I'm work in game development. The EverQuest user interface that new players are confronted with is amateurish, archaic, disjointed, and confusing. For a modest 5 figure budget, it could be easily revamped to appeal to modern MMO players and provide more far better usability. Since I outsource most of my art work, I deal with primarily with Russian artists who are hands down far more talented and cost far less than the average over-priced American artists.

With a minimal investment in an updated UI and a general facelift for the player races, EG7 and Daybreak could easily recoup this with a new marketing campaign aimed at new and existing players who stopped playing EQ and bring in a lot more revenue.

Daybreak does have job openings.

https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers

None of those openings are related to EQ1 as far as I can tell.

This is such an incredibly naive statement to make that it makes me doubt that you worked in game dev in anything higher than a customer support/QA role.

This is not Unity/Unreal Engine or any other tool that has wide industry adoption. We're talking about EQ1, the game that was created at the dawn of internet... the amount of old tech, tech debt and just general spaghetti in their system that got accumulated over the years is most likely staggering.

While his statement maybe grandiose in his abilities, thinking that if the people at the current company can't accomplish it therefor no one can is also a silly statement.

I'm sure there is a talented DEV out there that could fix a ton of issues at DBG. Most likely DBG do not wish to pay that rate to get it done is more a reasonable statement.

Where there is a will there is a way, but eq is not something you just get a random game dev off the street and get them to contribute immediately.... the on-boarding learning curve has to be just massive

If they tried to teach it all, yes. More likely new developers get a small piece to work on while they ease them in.

I'm in the gaming industry (casinos, not entertainment) and our learning curve is pretty steep. We can usually get experienced developers up to speed in a couple of weeks, at least enough to work on small features or fixes.

I was about to type this. Then I didn't have to.

When did the standard jump up from 15% to insure proper service? It already seems too much at the rate I've always paid considering the 5 or so minutes of their time I use. I bet the servers have been giving me mean looks when I walk out haha.

Back on topic, every couple of weeks someone makes a thread like this. It's utter insanity to think that a crowd-sourced model will work on a corporation owned by an investment firm , which is also listed on the stock exchange... If these people want to form a crowd to fund them, then team up and buy stock like everyone else. No convoluted scheme or plan is required.

Here you go OP. Gather the masses and Gofund them with everything you've got! On the plus side, if everything goes well you will actually see a return on the investment. Win/Win!

http://www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/shares/microsite?Instrument=SSE168020

Starting your post off with a mean-spirited ad hominem attack that indulges in mockery, is unproductive and uncalled for. You know zero about me or my game dev experience.

Instead of seeing the glass half full, the glass is half empty so you can feel superior. Defeatists like yourself routinely scour the forums to look for people down who are offering suggestions to help make the player experience better and to help Darkpaw earn more revenue, then you try to tear them down. If more new and existing players came to EQ, then your little private gentlemen's club would be over. I suspect that's what this is really all about. You want EQ to remain old, tired, clunky, and all to yourself and your friends.

You're making a lot of unfounded assumptions about the state of code in EverQuest. Despite your overly gloomy analysis, somehow Darkpaw is still making new expansions and importing 3D models and assets made with modern tool into the EQ client. If they listened to Debby downers like you, all future work on EverQuest would probably cease and EQ would go into maintenance mode. Thankfully, the devs know better.

Have a nice day!

My main point, which Skuz also made quite well, is that the current antiquated EQ interface (introduced in the Shadows of Luclin time period) could easily be updated from both a usability and beautification standpoint. A UI expert along with a small outsourced art team could accomplish this quite easily. Yes, it would have to be focus tested as well. I have experience running video game focus tests for new users so I know how it all works. No, it doesn't take any extensive onboarding at video game studio. UI expertise is a portable skill that transfers from video game to video game. Obviously, the person that would spearhead this initiative would have to have a deep knowledge of EverQuest and work closely with the UI person and the outsource team of artists. Then UI would have to be imported into EQ and then tested.

A relatively small investment into the EverQuest user interface would reap big dividends and they could start actually marketing it again to new audiences who are tired of easy mode MMORPGS.

In a video conversation with Shawn Lord in August 2020, Darkpaw studio head Jen Chan even admitted that the current user interface for new players is too daunting and needs to be improved:



Shawn Lord: What are your thoughts on the current state of EQ for new players not trying to play TLP?

Jennifer Chan: That's kind of a big question. Let's see, current state, I would absolutely love to be able to make the UI easier.

Jennifer Chan: That's definitely a thing that i would love to be able to do, but I'm not a UI expert. So and that's kind of the key, that whoever is advising us on changing the UI needs to not only be a UI expert but also an EverQuest expert and that's really hard to find. So if there's a UI expert watching this stream that loves EverQuest you should definitely hit me up. You know ping me on the forums, hit me up on LinkedIn.

Jennifer Chan: But definitely for a new player that like completely new player never played EverQuest before, sure, played other MMOs that's fine but never played EverQuest before, that's the biggest thing. It's a really hard game to get into on the live servers. You have to know a lot. You have to you have to do your research before getting in. Certainly, I think that is probably one of the hardest things when you're first coming in. Like what does this do? I don't know what this is? Why is there another window for this? Or where do I go to run this command? Oh, it's down here in this tiny little box or oh, it's over here in this other window. So yeah that's definitely how I feel about that.

I wonder what would happen if instead of supporting EQ1 through the marketplace, players supported it by buying stocks in EG7.

If suddenly thousands of people bought stocks and stated it was to influence the resource-flow towards EQ1:

Message to EG7:

I have no clue how the stock-market works, or if there are laws about this.

Interesting idea

I don't think I would want to have control or influence on prioritizing anything for the devs. I don't have sufficient insight and I despise the Karen trope of "I pay your salary and thus...".

However, I've reached the point in my career where I'd be happy to pay a higher subscription fee to benefit the company. EQ's given me a lot. Like, A LOT. And I want to pay a fair price for what EQ has given me and I think the current subscription price is kinda low.

I'm just the opposite, I feel the price is too high for what is offered.

Not a personal jab. Just an observation. You have a great day, as well!