This account is fully paid and continuously has been so since July 1999.With the creation of Wood Elf Beastlords there was an unexplained exception. I petitioned and was told there was nothing that could be done to set the character's homeland to Kelethin.There was a thread expressing players' identical concerns.
For those that do not understand why some of us are mad about the store items I will explain: Every item added to the store requires some amount of time. That time, in most of the people's opinion that complain about these items, could be better spent fixing the game and providing a value for the 14.99 we are currently spending. Instead they are spending it on extracting more money from you. That is the filter I use for how eq development allocates their resource. Right now I think a large number of people agree it is a mismanagement of resources to do things like the PoK revamp, or add items to the marketplace at the time when the quests open up to get them. The Pok Revamp could have been really cool if they would consolidate the vendors into the areas where the TS combines happen, instead that didnt happen. I would rather see this team develop something real for content than do rushed or non-thought out butterfly fixes. And I know this Holly person has no idea who half of us are, the only advice I can give her is the Twitch stream was a huge mistake. The attitude and the tone of how she and the lead of the engineering address the things they are now going to look at pissed me off. The explanation from the big guy was so poorly thought out, it should have been cut from the rebroadcast. Honestly a game developer's problem with people playing 10 % of the content isn't that something is too easy; instead it is that 90% of it is either broken or not good.
I wouldn't say 90% of the content was broken or not good. All the content I have done on my alt recently has worked great! But then she has just finished TSS and just started on TBS. Other than raids in TDS I am refusing to play their way! I play MY way! I play my alts and have more fun with them than rerunning boring HAs and mind numbing TDS. Getting close to being ready to do my fav expansion House of Thule.
Well i'm outta here, this is too disturbing and not just when looking at the once mighty Everquest. But also from a social / human perspective. Keep your heads up Holly, (hard working) Devs & my fellow players. And try being relaxed.
I use maps to find my way to POK. They've been in the game since 2003. Ctrl+F "zone line" and Gate potions also do the job marvelously well. Can we please work on some of the priorities that have been communicated to the team by the community? Such as the lack of content for a full $40 expansion purchase, the unwarranted heroic adventure XP nerfs, XP being broken for levels 101+ in the previous 21 expansions, etc. I'm sitting on the sidelines waiting for another expansion release so I can begin to justify the purchase on my 3 gold accounts.
Can we expect Daybreak to break the GM system? No help for anything that they can avoid like they did in EQ2? We love you too!
The first character I made in EQ was a human starting in Freeport who happened to be lucky enough to enter the world just before night time. A few minutes of exploring turned into 15 minutes of running into walls before giving up at ever finding my way out of the city and deleting that character.
This may come as a shock to players, but game developers make money by people buying their product. If people don't buy their product then the game goes away. No amount of nostalgia on the part of players will make a company keep a product around when it creates a steady loss of revenue. In an ideal world is adding items to the SC store a good use of dev resources? No. In a realistic world is it a good idea for devs to spend time adding products that people will buy so said devs can continue to have a job, which they can then use to continue to make changes that their customers want? Absolutely. Micro transactions are a tremendous revenue generator for games. I've got no problem with the devs adding them. It doesn't look like they're removing content from the game so I have no problem with them adding things like gate potions. Casual players will gladly drop a few $ to buy something instead of spending their limited play time questing for it. What's funny about this whole thread is people simultaneously claim that adding items is so easy that it will only take 5 minutes (which is completely BS by the way--I'm a network engineer and I promise you that NOTHING ever takes 5 minutes in the IT world). Yet people turn around and immediately complain when the devs do add items that according to the players should "only take 5 minutes". If you're convinced that it doesn't take a lot of dev effort then why complain? From the posts that I read it looks like the EQ team has a good balance between adding features that will generate cash for Daybreak while also adding content fixes. It won't happen overnight and I'm OK with that. I'm just happy that they are continuing to add features and make enhancements. It's a good indicator that Daybreak plans to keep EQ around. EDIT: And by the way, not everybody is forking out $14.99 a month. I have 6 accounts and right now I'm only subbing one of them. I'm working on some epics and stuff that I wouldn't get exp for anyway so there's no point in subbing 5 accounts that don't need it. That's why micro transactions are so powerful. I might not sub accounts that don't currently need exp or prestige items, but I do occasionally buy items from the SC store. It creates an additional source of revenue. And no, I am not affiliated with SOE / Daybreak in any way. I'm just pragmatic. I've worked in IT long enough to know that for managers it's all about the bottom line. If we players want to see juice continuing to run to the EQ servers then we need to be realistic about what that entails.
Not to get into it too much, but I am an electrical engineer that works on a number of products with x number of US patents and blah blah blah. Great we have credentials out of the way (Send me a PM ill send you my linkedin) . There are a number of holes in the argument you made, first the stuff Daybreak bought from SoE hasnt been mentioned as a premier item in their shareholder reports for quite sometime: Translation it isn't making enough revenue to impact the business, where the PSN was. The concession of a 75 % exp pot leads to the need for micro-transactions, which means a declining revenue base: Translation people are leaving the game. People assuming it is quick and easy, did you listen to the twitch stream or are you reacting to your job outside of eq? The devs told us send your suggestions if it is quick and easy we will do it, which is why they are working on the UI (That was the lead in) and now we see a 75% exp pot, and a PoK item that i bet casts a spell that already exists. If you regularly read the beta and everquest forums when players ask for a proc or a change to something that is being used by the npc the response is often we have to make it an already existing ability. That understanding is brought on by the twitch stream. As a network engineer you understand an under utilized server isn't making anyone any money. Micro-transactions in a game like everquest is a butterfly patch to the declining player base. Being part of a guild that raids 54 with 5 or 6 in wait three times a week, most of us do not put any real money in the micro-transaction element of the game. Instead over a year of a reg sub you get everything you can want. It is one thing when a game is designed around the micro transaction (See Google anything), it is another when it was an after thought. Instead of adding the micro-transactions based content to extract money from people already playing, they should be trying to get the server utilization up (Ie more subscriptions), something the F2P tried to do but is capped soo badly it isnt worth running. The only way that is going to happen is to return the raids, and game content back to stuff from the past people have found to be fun and engaging. Yes i use to prepay on all 3 of my accounts now it is monthly because of TDS. Being an "average" player that cut his three box down to 1 (a necro), again Ctof was fool me once the way TDS Beta was handled i canclled the two boxes, I blew through the TDS Expansion in 35 or 36 days of what I would consider barely playing. Havent been back since, most people I know hate it and avoid the expansion hanging out in Ctof now that progression is done. Keep in mind the fact that some raiders are there a lot farming targets means their 20+ million plat in the bank continues to go up. I too made 2 or 3 million in the first month of the release, doesnt mean you like the content. It isnt like VoA or HoT, or RoF. I use to find people killing in zones they didnt care about in HoT because the pulling or x was fun, same with VoA. To say TDS is a good balance of content, do you hunt those zones? an average group can take 3 named easy which is a 1/4 of the camps in an average zone! Degmar has some major merc issues, Dino is fun but very very small and until you get your bird aug there are not many camps for you, Pathing issues make the zone after dino a real pita, and arx is okay but yawn. Brother is ... well really that is very small island, the cave is the underwater fun that people love or hate, and the intro zones provide so little exp they really arent worth doing. That expansion drove players away leading back to the under utilized server problem from before. Really instead of micro transactions for stuff people already can get easily (See the clickly staffs for buying expansions, orgin, potions, or quest; i should mention i raided a monk for 3 years prior to the necro switch) the team should focus on fixing content and making it fun to play again. People will return.
well I didn't know that about WE Bst. I do know that for all the old Class Race combos it did apply. And yes, that really bites. I love having my correct home towns, that is very sad, there are plenty of empty buildings in Kelethin in which to add a BST guild setup.
I don't want to be dogmatic either, and you do make some good points. I love EQ and this is a good discussion to have. I also think it's relevant to the thread. So hear goes As I said, you make a lot of good points, but I feel that many of them come from the perspective of a relatively hardcore player. I say that because of your statements about raiding with 54 people; I know that "hardcore" is relative, but someone who regularly raids with a full raid is hardcore compared to someone like me who USED to do that and now only plays, on average, a couple of hours a day. I'm one of those people who can see both sides of the coin since I've been on the hardcore and casual sides of the game for about 12 years, and my perspective is a bit different. I don't think anyone would expect Everquest to be a premier item for Daybreak or any other company. The game is what...16 years old now? It's true that people have been leaving the game, but that's also been true since WoW was released. Everquest hasn't been a premier product since then and it never will be again. The game is just too old. But it's equally true that Everquest still runs more servers than most other MMORPGs, and I'd say subjectively that the population is still quite a bit higher than many of them. Logged into RIFT lately? It's a great game that's much newer than EQ, and yet it's population is much lower. From a pure gameplay perspective I find it more enjoyable than EQ or WoW. GW2 and RIFT are my favorite games in terms of pure play style. Yet neither one of them hooked me long-term and that has everything to do with nostalgia. I play EQ for nostalgia just like many of you do. The point is, EQ is not a premier product anymore but the Norrath world in general has a tremendous base to build off of. It doesn't have to be an either / or thing--either you continue to develop EQ or you don't. You can continue to develop it while recognizing that it's not your main money maker, but contributes to a family of products that could be significant to future growth. I.e, Landmark, EQ Next, etc. The point wasn't that some stuff is not comparatively easy. My point was that the person I was replying to was complaining about dev hours being spent on "easy" stuff. If something does in fact take 5 minutes then why complain about it? That was the point. My comment about 5 minutes being "BS" is something I stand by. I know that people aren't being literal, but I'm sure you would agree that nothing is as easy as non-technical folks think it is. Anyone who's done any type of product development in IT can attest to that--whether it be programming, developing networks, engineering systems, etc. I can't even imagine how complex the EQ code must be by now. I doubt there's anything easy about it. But that's just speculation on my part. As a network engineer I work with routers, switches, firewalls, etc, not servers, but I understand the point you're making. And I completely disagree. Server utilization has nothing to do with revenue. Having people buy your product is what matters. What's better, to sell 333,333 subscriptions at $15 a month, to sell 5 licenses for a $1,000,000 piece of software a month, or to sell 1,000,000 micro transactions at $5 each? The answer is obvious. Utilization has nothing to do with anything. We network engineers have a very good feel for what companies have to do to create revenue. After all, we're the ones who have to design, develop, and implement the network changes to support future growth. The company that I work for is one of the three largest cloud providers in the world (I won't narrow it down more than that since I don't like to give out too much personal info). I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. I'm just another wheel in the cog. I only bring it up because it makes for a great analogy. You could say that our "hardcore" customers are the ones paying us millions a month. Those are the big fish. The DoD, large enterprises, etc. But we also handle over a billion independent customers a month from our other offerings. Most of those customers don't buy products directly from us. Instead we generate revenue through things like ads. And yes, those would be the casual customers. I admit there's some silliness to the analogy, but there's a good point to be made as well. We would be foolish to give up billions in ad revenue because we focused too much on one product line. By the same token, we would be foolish to give up billions in product revenue by ignoring the big fish. The only thing that makes sense is to dedicate resources to each group and continue to develop both revenue streams. To get back to games, the only thing that matters is people paying, and people are steadily abandoning games where they are forced to pay subscriptions. I was talking to an old friend the other day and asked him if he still played EQ. His answer was that he didn't because there were too many F2P games out there. He said that he would never play a game that required a subscription again. He and I used to hang out every Saturday and game all day long. Now he has a wife and 4 kids and that's not an option. He still games with a few RL friends on the weekends but it's limited to a couple of hours and they do it online instead of in person. Paying a sub just isn't worth it to him. More and more people feel that way. I'd wager that the main population in EQ isn't college students anymore. I'd guess it's young adults in their 20s-30s, many who now have families.That's the world that Daybreak is dealing with. I think a lot of hardcore players don't realize this, but casual players are still a huge revenue base for Daybreak. Take me for example. I sometimes go weeks without playing due to real life being so busy, but when I do play I run 6 characters. Would I pay $90 a month just to be able to play a game a few hours a week? Absolutely not. But would I pay that subscription every now and then when I know I'll be able to get some serious play time in, and subsidize that with F2P in those periods when I can't? Absolutely. And you're right--when I'm paying for a sub I very rarely use the SC store. But when I'm NOT paying for a sub I regularly use it. Maybe a I level a toon and decide I want a few AAs, but don't want to re-sub. I'll fork out $5 for an additional 250 AAs (or whatever it is now). The point is, $5 is better than $15 for me, and $5 is better than $0 for Daybreak. And even when I do have a sub I often buy exp potions so I can get the most out of the sub time (referring to AAs obviously; I can grind regular exp whenever). I'd be willing to wager that Daybreak makes a lot of cash from micro transactions, and they're wise to continue to build on that. Just because YOU don't do something doesn't mean that others don't. Path of Exile is an excellent example of what can be done with micro transactions alone. But the point of micro transactions is to extract SOME money from people who are already playing but not PAYING. From Daybreak's perspective I'm sure a sub is better than micro transactions, but if you're going to have any sort of F2P model then micro transactions MUST be a part of it. Period. I snipped this for the sake of brevity, but I agree with you that content is a problem. But that's a separate discussion. It doesn't have to be content OR micro transactions. It can be both. Daybreak needs to simultaneously focus on doing things that bring in revenue RIGHT NOW while focusing on developing content for the future. Subjectively I feel like the EQ Next hype has brought a lot of people back to Norrath and most of them are casual. Again, that's subjective, I have no idea what the numbers are. "Stuff people already get easily". And that, my friend, is the point. YOU can get it easily. You've been around for a long time. You raid. I'm sure your toons are twinked out the wazoo. You can probably log in your necro, supplement it with a merc if necessary, and run through most of the content in the game to get what you want. I can't do that. Most casual players can't do that. If you need help then you can probably get it from the friends that you raid with. But I can't do that because I don't play enough to establish those relationships. I have two RL friends who play casually and I can get their help if I absolutely need to, but for the most part I'm on my own. But you know what? That's not even the main problem. The main problem is time. EQ is time intensive. We all know that. I have a wizzy to port me around, but what if I was limited to playing a single character without gate? Would my 1-hour-a-day of play time be better spent by A) farming plat to buy potions in the bazaar, B) questing for a clicky gate item, or C) purchasing a clicky gate item for a few $ in the bazaar? The answer is entirely subjective of course, and that's the point. Some people will spend their single hour farming plat because they want to. Others will spend their single hour questing because they want to. But maybe others don't want to do any of that and they'll shell out a few $ so they can use their time doing something else, like working on an epic or just leveling. For too long SOE spent most of their time focusing on making their hardcore players happy. It's time for them to make the casual players happy too. I feel like that's what they're trying to do and I'm 100% supportive of it.
Just a radical thought here, maybe if SOE had put 1 cent into actually advertising EQ instead of siphoning every last cent out of it foe all their other projects they wouldn't have had to sell it. Maybe the new company might actually want EQ to be a success, and still be going strong in another 15 years, and will make some attempt to get new players into the game instead of driving existing players away.
Sad to say I'm afraid DBG doesn't give two sh*ts about EQ. They bought SOE for two reasons. 1. New games in the hopper on the off chance that they might be successful. 2. The old EQ (2) games are just enough of a cash cow to justify keeping them around without any future investment. If either No. 1 or No. 2 prove to be wrong, back on the auction block, or Good Night Irene!
Sorry but I have to call BS. Being an electrical engineer doesn't give you much expertise to comment on video game design, especially online microtransactions. I'd highly recommend googling free to play games and growth... what you will see is a massive growth in free to play transaction based games, especially in mobile which is a massively booming market, but still booming quite well in PC. http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/20/1...han-100m-in-microtransaction-sales-last-year/ A game like EQ needed and needs to embrace microtransactions or die slowly, simple as that... This is the way online games are succeeding in today's current game market and you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend it isn't, if your expertise were in fact online gaming you'd know this already. It would be like making CRT TVs in today's TV market competing against LCD, LCD LED, etc... Wouldn't make sense. Also actions speak louder than words, if micro transactions hasn't been making EQ money they would've stopped long ago. I'm sure there are many things they could do to improve their approach of course, but from what I've seen their offerings look pretty strong actually. I'm no expert however, I'm not an online game designer I just work with many of them (experts in micro-transaction based games), I'm just a software engineer with over a decade of experience in game development and game technologies (including client tech, game engine tech, server game tech and related systems including ones involved with microtransactions, gacha, etc)... blah blah... Though again I'm not a design expert just from what I've seen and heard from the experts that surround me, EQ has the right idea.
I met the person responsible for launching the FTP + microtransactions trend in MMORPGs. One of the MMOs at his company that was formerly subscription-based experienced a 5x growth in active accounts and 100% growth in revenue within 6 months of changing their model.
