How to lose the hard to lose players of EQ

This. Why does one route have to be to the detriment of another?

There have been many different ways to level throughout the past 25 years in EQ. Yet, as we stand now, there is only one way that respects your time and effort to do it.

I've not played on any of my accounts since January, except for Overseer. I am now level 125 on all of the characters I need. However, I now no longer log in because there's very little for me to do solo/molo. I have the levels I need, but the gear is still stuck behind the same progression wall I cant do.

I could buy the equipment, but then what's the point? I bought 3 x expansions and all I've done is play for 3 months offline and then potentially use my stored plat to buy the best gear I could expect to obtain.

Note to DBG: I didn't need to pay you anything for the past 3 months 'content'. So how's that working out for your bottom line?

Because the current group of devs have proven in recent years that they're bad at scaling content and just don't want to deal with the headache of making it work correctly. Much easier to just make a couple of missions that have set min/max levels.

Next expansion 1 group mission?

Don't give them any ideas !

What group missions?

Again, I think it's poor communication that they just don't come out and admit it if that is the case. Set our expectations so we as paying consumers (some of us) can then make an informed decision about whether we should invest more time and effort into a game that could potentially be limping along.

I constantly ask for things that used to be in the game but now are not and it seems trivial (to me) to put them back in and generate instant content for many players. However, that seems to not be on the horizon for this game.

I then look for different avenues in the game to keep myself busy - AAs, Heroic stats etc. but then I wonder if something is going to happen to that in the near future.

As it is now, I just log in to play Overseer, which is a shame. Everquest is a game that I want to play, I have money in my pocket waiting to spend on this game, but they're constantly making changes that make that decision harder and harder.

You are not alone. There's a whole demographic of people who would be happy to play the game we had for 25+ years...but that game is gone.

I would love to spend money on this game. Unfortunately the Dev's seem to be Money Adverse. As long as they keep their current point of view i will be keeping my money.

Pardon my pickiness, but the devs. don't control the purse strings. They have bosses who do that. And if you don't think the devs. would like to spend more on this game, you are very much mistaken. That would be like blaming a MLB manager for not paying his players more money. The GM and the owner(s) make those decisions. Darkpaw is no different. EG7 gives them a budget an ultimately controls the money.

But I’m still paying for it……5 accounts to be exact. At least I was until now, I’m cancelling all 5 and just playing free using my 6th account , which is a lifetime free. I will use its tank merc and the other 5 will be my free to play boxes. I’m also letting go of my new/returning recruitment guild, I’m over it.

Good point. I should have said the devs make poor decisions with the money they are given.

This has been common for the past 20 years of EverQuest. Our EQ money has gone to fund a dozen failed projects, and was not put back into the game.

Ensuring that every penny EQ makes actually goes back into EQ would solve a lot of their "we don't have time...we don't have the resources" BS excuses.

Every penny is nice but would never happen. I would just be happy if they put more into it then they currently do.

I remember them taking money for a dirty little secret called EQNext. Quick summary for anyone who missed it: EQ took a bunch of their most loyal customers and ccontent creators and sold them vaporware called EQNext.

They charged HUGE cash sums for in game "designer perks" which "allowed" their customers to build models and locations in their game for them, for hundreds of dollars an acre. This was all supposed to be a huge grand Everquest of the future mind you.

Yeah where is that game now? Gone. They took the money from their core players and ran. GG.

EQNext was neve released and never sold. The thing they did sell was called Landmark, a different product based on the same game engine they intended to use for EQNext. If memory serves, Landmark was shut down before Daybreak took over. In theory, EQNext was in development at the takeover, but it was Smed's project, none of the incoming Daybreak management had anything to do with it. They quickly figured out it was a disaster, Smed left the company, and DBG announced the project was cancelled. That was eight (8) years agio now.

if you're going to blame the current team for bad business decisions a decade ago, which they had nothing to do with, you might as well pack it in now, because you're never going to be happy going forward.

Ah no. Landmark was the alpha project they sold to the content creators and backers that would eventually become EQnext. They were told that they could pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars to buy acres of space to design in EQNext. It was a straight up rug pull, and they suckered the most loyal fans they had.

I have never seen a company survive after being this awful to its core players. EQNext is just one item on a long list of awful decisions they keep shoveling on to their customers. I firmly believe that they view us as sheep that they can fleece year after year after year... because EQ has some of the most loyal fans I have ever seen. Instead of rewarding their loyalty, they repeatedly make decisions that no one likes, and tells their base to go pound sand if they dont like it.

I am ashamed of my all-access tag, I have permanent accounts so it always shows. I DO NOT give these people money and I probably never will again.

They don't but their ideas are just as anti-money as the ones who do. "You don't want a free trade server." "We don't want to encourage grinding." "We don't want to clutter the market place." Limiting personas so much that virtually no one cares to use them, much less purchase them. The devs are very, very much out of touch with the playerbase, so much so that their ideas oft tend to be the complete inverse of the truth.

They don't control the budget, but many of their ideas/implementations have done nothing to encourage spending.

How many people do you think dropped their subs due to lack of LS content, forced linear "traintrack" progression tied to a majority of exp, Alternate Personas, Broken UI, DX11 implementation, plat dupes, exploits, etc? Those things certainly aren't attracting people.

I rather doubt that anywhere in their job descriptions is the line "encourage spending". That isn't their job and shouldn't be. You can as upset as you want, and you seem to be upset really often over a game, but your anger is somewhat misplaced. The "suits" control the money and make the big strategic decisions, as well they should. So, send letters to EG7. Buy stock in the company. Gain influence. All these things are ways to get more of what you seem to want.

I've no idea and you don't either. We can guess and we MIGHT be right at times, but I well remember angry posters such as yourself from the "good old days" of 2001 or so who frequently complained and often with out any access to facts. Now, you may be right that a LOT of folks have quit EQ over the issues you describe. It is also possible that you may have inflated sense of things. I don't know the absolute truth and neither do you.

Big point here. Why become so angry over a game? I play for fun. I don't care about BiS. I don't care about being first to do something in-game. I chat with friends and I tolerate imperfections in this game and in life. And I try not to let trivial things raise my blood pressure needlessly.