In case anybody forgot or some how missed it, almost three years ago on February 11, 2015, it was announced that Sony sold Sony Online Entertainment to Columbus Nova and renamed the development company as Daybreak Games. There were layoffs, and some of the greatest people to ever touch the Everquest franchise were part of that layoff including the amazing Linda "Brasse" Carlson. At the time, it was stated that a restructuring was necessary to realign the company so as to be better able to create new offerings as well as continue the growth of existing IPs going forward. My question is simple. Seeing as we are going on our 3rd year since the layoffs, what do we have to show for that realignment of the company? Are there new IPs being worked on? Is there a new iteration of current IPs being developed (aka EQ3)? I doubt we will get answers, or at least fully disclosed ones. That's not the point of this thread. The point is to let those in charge know that we as customers do remember, we care, and we expect a high level of return on OUR investments in to your company as customers. We lost a lot in the sale off of SoE from Sony. We lost our yearly convention, EQ Next, and one of the greatest community managers in the industry. I truly hope that we didn't lose all of that just to keep doing the same thing. Please tell me there are great things in the works, and that everything we lost was for a greater purpose and not just the casualties of a business acquisition. signed, Devoted Everquest customer of over 15 years, 3 time SoE convention attendee, community supporter, and lover of all things Everquest.
Of course nothing great is coming nothing our way. EQ got sold to the knackers. Objective of any *investment company* is to wring whatever remaining capital they can out of a dying product or company (in this case SOE), and then offload it to some sucker while it still seems viable at a decent price. Blowing smoke up everyone's asspirations (including staff) is part of the normal "marketing" schematic. -R
I see this claim a lot. Are we sure the overall player-base is decreasing, or is it just speculation?
Using gen chat to check on a weekly basis at about 8pm cst, it appears the server populations are on a steady decline some much worse than others. For example Vox and Bert are down about 100 in gen chat and FV is down about 50 and the progression server Phin is steady. I know gen chat is a terrible way to check but it's all we've got.
I don't normally join the cesspool called Gen chat. Pretty sure I'm not the only that does not join it either. Not a real accurate way to gauge population using chat channels to measure population.
It's not used to count the people, it's used to count the change over time. If you never join, then you not joining now doesn't affect that.
Then you still don't get an accurate picture of the change over time except for those that do join General Chat.
Server populations are clearly declining. Not too many "new" people play EQ. Not nearly enough to replace those that leave. General chat is just one of many indicators. -R
SOE was indeed dying - Sony Corp. was so bad off, it's stock earned "junk-bond" status. Dumping SOE was like pruning a dead branch off a tree. -R
Rumor is that they are developing a new game called Parabolic. http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/28/t...gests-daybreaks-new-game-is-called-parabolic/
This line is just too funny. I first started hearing back in 2003 when newer games were being developed. I submit that this 24th expansion has answered the question. To judge the success and growth of a company one need look no further than the bottom line. I assure you it's not the number of people in general chat. Profits alone determine the stability of EverQuest and the game has been saved not by increasing population. The game saver is the MARKETPLACE. This is the cash cow for EverQuest and so long as this develops, grows in imaginative additions, and keeps churning the cash flow from the customer base "Often at an increasing rate" we will have our beloved game Allive and well. To the thoughtful and sincere thread opening post by RISKO: Thank you greatly for your concern and history of the low times SOL faced and finally crashed and burned. When DBG first took over we were subject to Outsourcing for Customer Support. The people had no idea of game play nor any concern for the very people who were feeding their jobs ~~We the customers. That being said we should all recognize the 180% shift to the Present Customer Support being offered by DBG. They are now staffed by players vastly familiar with the game and striving at every point to provide top notch customer support. Is is possible to please all of the people all of the time? I believe Lincoln addressed and answered the question. There will always be those who choose to complain about every thing around them and blame it on whatever is handy. My experience, which is all I can speak of, is that DBG is doing a great job in Customer support! Yes this puts a target on my chest, I'm well aware of that. Game development and repairing issues inherit in EQ from the beginning are now being raised to a new level. Again I complement DBG for the development team. Who among us ever dreamed that TS items would stack to 1,000! Who among us thought that using tabs within your character we would finally be able to search our inventory, bank and shared back with one click. Even better we now can filter the search by placing the item name and searching ~ PRESTO!. Folks if this is improvement, concern for the game and done from a Player's perspective! Are they perfect? Have they addressed every bug built into EQ since 1999? Clearly this needs to be gauged on constant improvement. I submit to you that DBG has shown that they are working hard to develop the EQ so as to improve our game playing experience. THIS is where we are going in the 3 years DBG's since has had the reins. RISKO I too bemoan the loss of Linda Carlson. I too hate the huge looses in richly skilled staff members after Verant sold to Sony. We can't tie any of that to DBG's however. The early transition, as the outsourcing of customer support showed, DBG's was facing a huge challenge and a large group of angry customers. I say they are improving constantly and making the game play much more logical without loosing the flavor of EQ. Issues remain as will always be the case in the history of EQ and the history of Earth. State the issues clearly and suggest remedies. We now have a group of people who will listen. Strive to help us help them improve the game, work toward a positive future. Archery
eq is better than ever. When it was run by Sony, the eq team was VERY unproductive and used poor methods (you regularily saw patch messages on test stating they were updating it to be like live - because testing on test wasn't a thing then). People will say omgosh this or that, but its mostly related to: a. class balance issues b. bugs from the 7 day old expansion (which has happened EVERY expansion ever)
I agree with most of what you posted Risiko and Brasse is awesome. She works for Trion Worlds now and is still active on social media.
Not sure how you get to 180% shift on CS? While your opinion is rosy and there are positives for sure, on AB we've only just finished about a year of lag that was totallly unplayable at times with pretty close to zero communication on the issue. That was a perfect example of how not to handle a situation. Don't get caught up in any 2FA issues or you are in real problems. What is the average petition response time (to successful conclusion, not a stock reply) over the last 5 years? Curious. The AA merger has been pretty lousy if you actually play the first 85 levels - you know, the majority of the game... I'm glad it's running. I'm irked that the silver options aren't what they used to be. I play the older elements of the game primarily so the AA changes were a real PITA and very badly documented. As an IT manager with a long history of software development as a coder and team lead I'm concerned at some of the issues in the system - plenty of corners cut that will come back to bite you in the long run.
There are several ways to gauge the population of a server: Number of AFK toons in afk zones (Lobby & PoK) at a set time each week / month. Number of barters + traders in Bazaar at a set time. Number of players in /general at a set time. The time should be greater then 48 hours but not more then 1 week after a server has been up. Based of the above metric, The 4 servers I have toons on, I estimate the game population has declined about from about 30% from about 2 years ago. Given that, other then the novelty servers, the live servers have also had 2 major mergers where we now have 1 server that 10 years ago used to be 4 servers. Also consider this, VoA as an expansion had 4 group tiers, 4 raid tiers, 5 levels, 13 zones, while EoK only had 2 tiers of group gear, 1 tier of raid gear, and and 6 zones, and 0 level increase. Based on that, I can only conclude the game is dying. What can turn this trend around, marketing to draw in new players, better quality control, i.e. stuff like no death bugs and improved customer service.
