...they want you to get frustrated and buy Plane of Fear and return to the standard game, then completely siphon off any resources from the prog servers and let them die out. It seems to me most of the prog servers since the inception of the idea have been mostly a marketing scheme to suck people back into the game right before releasing a new expansion. Every time I've played on one, the majority of people I knew who started quitting after a while didn't do so because of boredom. They did it because of disappointment with the mechanics of the system going astray from the original vision. In SOE's many years of building online communities, I'd bet a fair bit that they are not too dumb to create an immensely successful and LASTING formula for progression server rule set, especially with what they've learned from the past few failures. Sad, but that is the nature of enterprise. Just my 2c.
What exactly would a progression server have to do to be constituted a "success?" If the second set of Progression servers was anything like the first then Sony saw some of the biggest and most successful months of Everquest subscriptions in many years. Overall I would say both set of progression servers were a success because at the end of the day its not what you want out of a progression server, its whether Sony made money or not. Lastly, for those who actually played on them for however long they wanted and are either still playing or quit because they were able to relive whatever content they wanted too, then overall I would still say it was a success.
Yes, success is a subjective term. I do think that the prog servers were successful in some ways, besides the fact that they didn't thrive for very long at all. Some people ultimately stuck around for many months but the long-standing population wasn't much to sing about. Personally I think the concept has much more potential than what it has shown. But I am probably in a nostalgia induced delusion.
My theory is that we're in the zone just before an expansion launch (Rain of Fear) and that updates have broken something that they don't have time to fix right now. Even Piestro is busy with EQ and the Vanguard City of Brass update, plus whatever else Brasse has him working on. SOE's stated purpose is to drive people to subscribe to their F2P games, and if you're on Fippy Darkpaw, you're a subscriber. (Which means I think they ought to take a bit better care of people on the server.) For me, the Progression servers this round served their nostalgia purpose. I was quite happy starting fresh and just having classic zones and being able to find groups. It was a very good time and I am happy I got in on the Fippy Darkpaw on day one. But after Kunark nostalgia wears thin for me. I like to hear about what is going on, but the expansions do not have much meaning to me. And for all its flaws, there really hasn't been anything like the progression servers in other games, has there?
There's been emulations of other successful games and private servers that give a niche gaming experience to those who happen to stumble across them. But I think you're right. If I had to guess (just a guess based solely on personal experience and nebulous feeling) I'd say they've made more money on their progression servers than all of those private servers from other games could scrounge up. Plus residual revenue from those they bright back into the eq fold. (Me) I'd bet progression servers even bring just as much fan faire then new expansions have in the past; and will continue to do so as long as they make their usual weak attempt to market it a smidgen.
I don't know if I subscribe to the theory. I see some merit in it that it brought in *some* more subs, but it largely deflated populations of other servers from existing players coming to play on the TLPs. (Those other servers really hate us for that btw). Additionally the amount of CS the TLPs caused could very well have negated any kind of profit they did make from the server. We couldn't get along, and more CS was hired or moved from their other duties to help with the nightmare. In fact, I would estimate SOE may have actually lost money on the TLPs.
Maybe. For some reason I feel like if that were true, they'd have the decency to give the community a heads up rather than be completely silent on the issue. There has been quite a bit of turmoil about the CS latency related to prog servers lately and they have done virtually nothing to acknowledge it or promise more resources post RoFear release. I agree that the progression servers, in and of themselves, are probably very difficult to make profitable (just a hunch since I have no idea exactly what the finance requirements are behind it all). There are no economies of scale. Whereas with the live game, any resources they put into it can be scaled for thousands of subs across many servers. Which is why I think the prog servers are a ploy to bolster revenue streams in other parts of the business. As much as I'd like to believe SOE puts up with progression server demands because they just love us so much, I highly doubt that's the case. As with any corporate office, there is some finance gatekeeper beheading any unprofitable ideas the second they knock on the door. SOE is running a business and nothing else. As they should be.
Dark Age of Camelot did a Progression server a few years ago, after EQ did the first round. After Sleeper and Combine launched a developer posted on the forums that the first few expansions of those servers were the most profitable months Everquest had had in many years. Vulak/Fippy populations seemed very similar to Sleeper/Combine so I would imagine the same was true this time around. While of course the "huge" profits didn't last forever, the servers were all ultimately a very profitable thing for Sony as the devs had said. Do you think they would have done a second round if the first wasn't a good ROI for them?
Quite possibly. I'm thinking long-term, though. What happened when the population petered out yet they had to keep the server running? There had to be some give and take. And who knows if they were factoring in all the upfront costs it took to plan, develop, and roll out the servers. I have no doubt that they had the most active subscriptions during those months. No. Absolutely not. But the money they make from people who came and played on the prog servers, and then quit, is surely not the only ROI factor they considered. The prog servers have always launched a few months before the marketing cycle started for the latest expansion. I think they've been very strategic about that timing, and the fact that they start to let the prog servers die out the second the new expansion becomes a hot topic.
Considering the rate of EQ expansion release, I'm not sure any TLP release time would be more than a few months from an EQ expansion. I'd assume that they open the TLP at the best time for profit...which probably (amongst other factors) means waiting for the low in their other developing cycles, like EQ expansions. TLPs have been a huge success from my perspective as a player. I can only assume that they are making money off them; if they aren't I would attribute it to their business model and not the quality of the TLP. Bottom line for me, both TLPs made me come back to a game that I thought I was done playing YEARS ago...and come back hard. From my point, which is totally annecdotal, my experience is not unique but fairly typical of many players I've met on the TLPs. I'm sure SOE has a more sophisticated way of gauging interest, but I would be terrible surprised if a progression server opened tomorrow and it wasn't full of players willing to pay sub fees. This round of progession was far better than the first...the next will have even more bumps ironed out.
Many people I play with came back to EQ because of TLP. Alot of us quit playing back when the 2003-04 releases of WoW and EQ2 decimated the server pops. Like me, the people I refer to came back to: 1) relive the old experience; and 2) experience, in sequence, each of the many expansions they never played. I am not disappointed with Fippy at all, it's been great and we still have half a dozen raiding guilds on the server. How does that compare with Live servers? Have heard there are just one or two raid guilds on each of those.
