How to lose the hard to lose players of EQ

I don't disagree that the devs. seem to be a bit out of touch with the playerbase and have said so in the past. But the anti-money remark is ludicrous. They are employees who should follow the lead of their employer. If they don't follow that lead they ought to find other employment. And clearly their employer has set a budget they have to stick with.

Having said all of that, and to repeat myself, I don't see why we can't have more experience from "grinding" and from quests. It would certainly make me happier that way. But, I also don't plan to get all pissed off if I don't get my way.

Their job isn't to create a game to attract players and increase revenue? Really? It doesn't have to be explicit, but that's a heavily implied part of their job. Create enjoyable content, features, etc that encourage people to play/spend money. Don't be so obtuse. I highly doubt the big wigs told devs to remove grind exp or release forgettable quests/content comprised of a bunch of hails, turn-ins, and running around like a courier which are not worth doing more than once. The devs specifically developed that content and made the decision of what the quests/tasks/raid mechanics were.

I stopped reading the rest of what you wrote. It's normally not worth reading.

Edited due to player request. Feelings still stand. Be safe and peace out.

Again, this is largely incorrect. Smed did indeed launch the EQNext project with a solicitation to outside content creators, and there was for a brief period of time a closed development environment for that activity which SOE called "EQNext Landmark". This was in 2014, before Daybreak entered the picture. However, this was never sold to the public. The Landmark title was split away from EQNext, and there was a publicly-sold product called Landmark with its own servers. Many potential content creators only used the public Landmark servers, and paid no more than a simple monthly sub or an All-Access sub for the access rights. If you paid the kind of money you claim, you were in a very very small minority, and your business relationship with SOE was as a contractor, not as a player. Please do not attribute your personal bad business decision to the EQ player base, as they are two very different things.

Smed is an epic fail, and everything he has toucned since the original EQ launch has failed. Daybreak cut all ties with him almost immediately after they took over. None of us should be trying to judge the current team on the basis of old shoulder chips from the SOE days. While I am sympathetic to the complaints about not enough content, and the ongoing struggles with the UI and DX11 projects, I cut them more slack than most because the team and their budget are so small, and that's not within their own control.

Niente's remarks about grind do stick in my craw a little.

Can you edit this, so it doesn't get the thread locked?

Done and thank you.

I can find no rational thought in these statements pertaining to said topic or responses. Budgets are set for spending; no one in their right mind is capping earnings.

This is patently false as all they have to do to make more money is turn the experience back on for grinding. They don't want people grinding so they are purposely, consiously and stupidly throwing that money away. Therefore they are capping earnings.

I NEVER said it was sold to the public. I said they duped the content creators and a whole bunch of the most active and loyal EQ big shots at the time. The slapped a big ole NDA on them and proceeded to wring every dime they could from them.

These were their biggest supporters and fans at the time!! Just stop and think about that. I have no problem with a company being profitable. I want the devs of the games i like to make money and in turn make me happy when I play their game.

The company / team in charge of EQ has no intentions of making their player base happy. They will continue to just take the money year after year for less and less content. New TLPs and cut n paste expansions.

I caught on about 4 years ago and stopped giving them money altogether. There are tons of amazing games out there in 2024. ESO for example.

What i find funny is they wanna make a new eq game with only 30m lol goodluck with that!

EQNext had potential, but there could have been a better version of EQ3 if they had not gone with that kind of game. As I have stated before, EQNext looked like a cartoonish caricature of Everquest, and many fans wanted a more realistic upgrade.

Seeing what is being done with EQ1 and EQ2 does not give me hope that Darkpaw has the vision to make a new age Everquest game in the future. Since they don't understand what the problems are with the products they already sell, it is doubtful they would be able to resolve those problems with any EQ3 game. It is more likely that Darkpaw would double down on all of the mistakes they have made, and that would make EQ3 a stillborn product.

7 zones... 8 raids... 2 missions... 3 merc tasks/3 partisan tasks per zone. Probably still cost more than 30m but might come close!

Well EQ is still good for 1-2 months in December when the new expansion comes out then you quit playing for the next 10 months until the next expansion comes out. I am not currently playing I quit because I got bored with nothing to do. I was hoping I could get more old school raids done solo or boxing but at a certain point they become too scripted to 6 man box without using hacks so outside of 1-2 months when an expansion and new quest / hunter / missions come out there is nothing to do.

Clearly, I am still posting here and keeping an eye on things in hope of change but not likely to happen.