I like round numbers. Something about it seems completion-ish, if you will. My character is lvl 100. We are in expansion #20. The game is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary in a few months. To me, this seems like the perfect time to finalize the game. It is painfully obvious to those of us who have been playing EQ for many years that content has steadily decreased over the years. Our developer staff has been reduced, being asked by SOE to work on other projects. Resources and time allocated to EQ has diminished, and we are seeing less and less. With the next content release of zero new zones in a few weeks, in addition to no new AA, players are getting frustrated with the lack of content. Now is the time to make this the last expansion for the game, and put a nice ribbon on it. I would be perfectly happy and comfortable with the remaining EQ developers to take their time, as much as they need, to release one final content. The third, and final part, of Call of the Forsaken. Where players are given an enormous amount of content- ten zones, 18 raids. Where content may take four months to finish for the upper end. Where when you finish that release, you as a player feel satisfied. And then you can leave EQ on a happy high note. I would be fine with this. Take as much time as you need guys, give us one content release that we can be happy with. And let's end the game with a blast so we can move onto the next phase of our gaming lives.
I'm feeling that with the state of the content being released in a few days.. this may bet he last expansion anyway, regardless of plans. No spells, no aa, no real content just Heroic Adventures.. gear that should have been in the first release. I've honestly contemplated cancelling my accounts until the final release of the expansion just to have something to do on my main.
expansions will continue to come out, the game will continue to stay online.. it's merely a matter of how little content we get. I am pretty confident the game will stay "alive" it just is going to have significantly less *active* players than it used to and it will continue to decrease at a much steadier pace than it has been in past expansions.
Would be happy if they'd just re-roll EQ from the start, which was my hopes for EQ Next, but looks like it's going to be nothing along the EQ line, just a brand new game.
I would rather keep on playing rather than have it stop for irrational reasons. I enjoy this game immensely and will-keep-on-keeping-on for as long as it will have me.
EQ is just a shadow of its past brilliance. It's dying on its own, no need to put a shiv in it. Sadly
If my options are "continue playing a game with the friends I've made over the years" or " end it because of pretty numbers".... Oh wait..serious question?
I hope OP is kidding. I've got EQ on the ropes now. It's teetering. I've almost won! Such small hands. I've got hands like a Dwarf... [Battleaxe takes a terrible beating] You didn't get me down, SOE. You hear me? You didn't get me down!
i echo this sentiment. "i like this game, and having more of it to play. however, there is more 'more' right now and it makes me so angry i'll stop playing" sounds like rather idiotic logic to me.
EQ makes SOE money. They want to keep their customers because they give them money. They are going to make content, even if its small, because it will give them money. I don't see your dream becoming reality. Ending it because it's a nice even number is preposterous. This is like if I plan on killing myself when I turn 50 because it's a nice number to end on.
I imagine that even of there is a 'last' expansion eq will stay online. There are enough long term fans that I suspect it will bring enough money to warrant a few consolidated servers with a skeleton crew of support. Overhead would evaporate once development stopped. Many games have done this. I would prefer less frequent, higher quality expansions. -This game was my first. -Regardless of how much it has changed for the worse, it will likely always be my favorite. -I still sometimes go sit in kelethin and rivervale just to listen to the music If all else fails, there are servers out there which would still be available. I don't want norrath to just evaporate. What I WOULD like is a p99 type server - locked permanently at kunark (maybe velious) but run by SoE with all the old zones and old graphics. No shared banks. No modern conveniences. No mercs. Hell levels ... moss covered twigs ... a carbon copy of old Kunark circa the turn of the century. I'd pay double the current subscription cost to have that and that alone.
I wonder if the OP is some sort of agent provocateur from SOE. Trial balloon/floating "closure" ahead of EQN.
Heh, if EQ ended I would like to be able to play it, with the same client, on my computer, and some how invite groups of friends to play through my computer, or on steam. Even if there were no new expansions (would rather wait a year for good, challenging (not broken, like UF) content, than these mini releases), I would still like access to my toons that I have poured a lot (we all know we have spent crazy amounts of hours on these toons) of time into.
Seeing that the OP still wants 10 zones and 18 Raids, this sounds more like "I want my cookie right now, I don't care that I will not be getting anything for the rest of the day" (oh, but you will care). A somewhat childish way of challenging the devs for the lack of content in update 2 of CotF.
Unless they start giving their customers more value for money, I couldn't care if this was the last expansion or not. So far for the price of the expansion and the content in it I feel I have been right royally shafted. Why do they not release about 10 new augs for us raiders to try to farm, they don't have to be massive upgrades, they could probably be put in the game in a day and would give people things to do. Whoever is deciding on the amount of content to be released sucks. YEAH YOU SUCK!
I wouldn't mind seeing a shift from full expansions (or whatever you call what is happening these days) to more of a focus on seasonal events, a few large quest arcs for augs and chase items, several new raids each year, and a whole lot more fixes to bugs and player experience such as reducing some spawn timers, ability to filter out a lot more spam text, UI changes...That's worth some good dough to a lot of us.
This dude is to blame, and his buddies Abe, Grant, Ben and Jackson since they just don't stop by as often as they used to and seldom hang around for as long as they did: And his keeper, somewhat like Wormtongue whispering subversive plots to the King, this guy seems to think he knows whats best for George and his friends.....as long as what is best for George is even better for him: As for the round number thing...people give math way too much credit.
Honestly, I never even considered EQ2, and I have no intent on playing Minecraft for EQ, er, EQN either. Why? Simple. There is no more new for me in MMORPGs. I had tried DAOC back in the day, I had tried LOTRO when Sony was hacked. They each had strong points and weak points, but the knowledge I had gained in EQ watered down a lot of the newness, and worse, made the clickfests which were their combat schemes silly by comparison. Even Fiesta, which has very similar combat to LOTRO, though much more stylized graphics has the same feel to it, despite having a totally different world. More pixels in graphics does not equal a better game. Plus all the new games out there have a very common feel to them, a feel that leads me to a feeling of sameness. The bigger reason, is that all games I have seen have servers to limit population impacts on the game hardware. This means that no matter the game I move to, some current friends will go missing, and past friends that log on have only a limited chance to pick the server I am on. The social aspect of EQ is one of it's greatest values. I have met many people I play EQ with in real life, and the experience has given me incentive to keep playing EQ. Yes, I could play a new game and find new friends, but only at the cost of leaving many of the friends I have now. In my limited experience with other games, they seem to be mostly populated by younger people with no desire for anything other than immediate satisfaction. Being older myself, I prefer an older game with a more established player base, where reputation still has some value and purpose. In short, when EQ goes, so goes my funding to SOE. I suspect I am in the majority of opinion on this, I know I am for my own guild, having talked to many about this topic. There are still what, 16 servers going? That is a LOT of income for SOE, and I suspect we have not seen the end of EQ, just another pause in it, while resources are siphoned off for another game. Once EQN is out, and isn't the WOW-killer it was projected to be, there will be a smaller resurgence of interest in EQ by SOE, as they realize their cash cow still needs a little bit of care and feeding.
