Reality check for DPG howler monkeys....

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Tanacious, May 27, 2020.

  1. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    Hey there,

    So I wanted to drop a message here real quick and wonder when all the howler monkeys that run these hamster powered servers are going to get a clue, stop drinking their half calf twist blend skinny macchiato every day and actually DO something about this mess, instead of standing around "discussing" it and then making arbitrary or unnecessary changes to other things that really aren't even a priority over the dragon in the room.

    Wake up call number 1: Listen to your player base, we are after all what pays your paycheck, not some rich pampered howler monkey in a suit. We're telling you flat out: THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. The lag, the downtime, the messes, the overseer changes, and you are ignoring ALL of it.
    How long do you really think it's going to be until people just walk away and go play some indie game on steam for 5 bucks that's far better than the hot mess you are offering? Less of a game sure, but less of a mess, less of a price, getting what you pay for.

    Wake up call number 2: The disorganization and unprofessional display of your product is blatantly obvious, even if you were blind. Whatever is going on in the howler monkey cage needs to stop. If we wanted to go to the zoo to relax, we would go. Instead we are looking to get onto a product or service that believe it or not people still pay for at this point, enjoy some time, and not have to wait 45 seconds in between chatting like it was Yahoo forums in the early 90's.

    Wake up call number 4: This is to make sure you are still paying attention, there was no number 3.

    Wake up call number 5: If that fancy howler monkey in the suit is trying to sail the boat over the edge of the world, jump ship. Don't try and mess with the rigging and prolong the sailing along the edge, ASAP. Seriously. Let it go over, and as an added bonus, set it on fire as it goes on your way to jump off the ship. It would at least be a resolution. I would hate to see EQ go as well, but what has been done since the beginning of this year, none of you deserve the privilege of being the caretakers of the worlds first massively successful MMORPG. Sure it's like caring for the elderly in terms of technology, but it's still got some life in it. But what you are doing is akin to putting the pillow over it's head and just before it dies, you pull it off real quick and put an oxygen mask on it.

    For the love of God, MAKE A DECISION. This in between limbo is more torturous than anything else. Torment of Velious was a very APT name for the recent expansion.... we are going to Torment our player base because we will constantly have issues after we release this expansion.

    Final wake up call: (Can you guess what number this is? Are you still awake?) I am not saying that everyone there at DPG doesn't try their best... (But if you aren't trying your best, then Lucy... you got some 'splaining to do...) but there comes a point where you have to realize that maybe your best isn't going to cut it.

    This game was created with some extraordinary people behind the wheel that are either not there any longer, or no longer with us too. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill. The only thing that's worse than realizing that you aren't anything exceptional, it realizing it and then still trying to fake it. The damage you are doing to this game and community are irreparable. Maybe it's time to plot a different course, one that doesn't end in you sailing off the end of the world.

    That's not to say the howler monkeys' attempts at running this aren't noteworthy or appreciated in certain respects, but I am talking big picture here. You have a plethora of useful experienced clients such as: coders, gamers, business people, lawyers, doctors, movie stars, radio stars, tacticians, former and active military, RPG developers, and so many more, and that list is just what I could recall off the top of my head.

    When we make these posts in forum during down time or because the mess monster lurking in your servers respawns, it's not to hate. (Well at least mine aren't to hate) It's because some of us want to offer a helping hand, and give feedback on changes that haven't been discussed in great detail that seem to be quick and not thought out. Many other things that have been done previously by SoE in the exact same manner is the EXACT reason why DBG even had the opportunity to purchase EQ/EQ2. Yet here you are doing the EXACT same things they did.

    Really puts the reinforcement behind the quote:

    "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

    But as history has shown, I keep making these posts, as well as other people, and nothing ever changes, no one at DPG ever says, hey you may have a good point or two, maybe we can do something diffrently.

    Yes, there are a LOT of posts out there with hair-brained ideas, even I myself are responsible for a couple of them here and there. Not saying we have to change the game in it's entirety, but making adjustments is definitely needed. Obviously internally, the howler monkeys don't quite have their poo together because they keep flinging it everywhere, and now we have a mess they are working diligently and tiredly to fix.

    Just saying, maybe it's time to approach it differently? What you are doing is NOT working, NOT filling your patrons with any confidence, NOT what they want, (save for those 200/300 weirdos that come in packs of 20-50 that seem to share an intense love for taking on nearly impossible large group tasks) and NOT going to pay for it much longer.

    SoE sold off this game not because it was profitable and DBG made them a great offer, but because they saw the writing on the wall and realized that creating new content over time for only a certain set of player type was not enough to keep the game going. Why they didn't realize there were much larger portions they could of created stuff for is beyond me, but hey, to each their own.

    EQ's player population loyalty looks like your standard bell curve. You have a few hundred players that aren't really loyal at all, or new to it, or whatever... will be more likely to not hang around.

    The main population density at the apex of the Bell curve being the coming and going type, 50/50 like to play it, but sometimes RL gets in the way, but they are around here and there, maybe some casual raiding too, but mostly grouping/boxing/moloing all the time.

    On that extreme end you have your few hundred hard core raiders that don't need to look up the answers to any of Veshan's questions at Anniversary Event time, that maybe like to have people think they have military precision in doing raids and new content, and ridicule each other on Reddit/Discord if they are 2 minutes late to a raid event. They could have DPG come to their house, devs could defecate on their head, rob them of all their stuff and PC, and post selfies of themselves being robbed with a title of something akin to: "DPG people's needed my stuff to test their new expansion they are going to put out!!! SWEEET!!!". Ya..... Fanatics.

    What you have been doing slowly but surely over the last 6-9 months is you have been taking that bulk of the population and shifting it towards the less loyal direction. It all adds up. Little things that needle over time are just as bad, if not worse than major things. But DPG's has shown they appreciate "completionism", and we are being needled over time with small things and irrational changes, as well as big messes with lag and server down time also. Grats on the achievement.

    So hopefully this was a big enough wake up call for you guys. Get it together, or consider making changes that will actually be effective. I promise you the player base can help. I've seen a LOT of evidence over the years on the forums to support that. I have talked in game with people that could be of assistance more than likely, and not just cheap talk either. I just don't get what the problem with doing that is? Ego? Liability? Compensation? But whatever it is, DPG is out of options. I think the player base isn't going to take much more of these howler monkey shenanigans.

    "You had one job...... effin embarrassing!" *Kicks Garbage can*

    Seriously. Stop making a bloody mess of your heads and faces by humorously attempting to beat a brick wall into submission with them, while simultaneously draining people's wallets.

    Come up with a viable solution, use the resources you have available, plot an effective course of action. I offer these business directions at no charge, normally people pay a great deal for my consulting services. I have probably posted a fortune's worth of serious suggestions on here over the last year. (And probably a Pyrite's mine worth of non serious stuff too...LOL)

    Hopefully this reaches someone, but likely it will go where other posts go... to the bottom of the forum lists.
    AWM89, Hsmith07, lockjaws and 2 others like this.
  2. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    Is your full character name "Tanacious Textwall"?
    Goburs, Soulblaze, Coagagin and 8 others like this.
  3. Deux Corpse Connoisseur

    Way too long did not read sorry bruh
  4. haaaalp Augur

    You realize they don't read these kinds of posts, right? RIP 20 minutes of your day.

    I read one sentence (nice run-on btw), rolled my eyes, and didn't read any more.
  5. InsidiousBeing New Member

    the TL;DR which says exactly the same thing as that epic rant was buried within it:
    *somehow* people keep letting their hopes and dreams keep them from seeing the large amount of data that's already been supplied by Darkpaw - you're on a hamster wheel - Nothing is getting better, nothing changes for the better... if anything, everything they *try* to do ends up degrading everything else exponentially.

    But that doesn't really matter to them, because they don't come out with new TLPs because they care about you, the game, or the player community. They come out with new TLPs when they see a dip in micro-transactions, that's the only metric that matters. It's quite obvious with the subscription money they are making on top of the micro-transactions that, if they *wanted to*, they could have this game running with 99.99% uptime with 8 times the amount of players - quite easily. They aren't putting money back into the game. Complaining here won't change that.

    I mean, think about it.. they just hyped the out of these two new servers.. yet threw them into the same virtual cluster as everything else. Overloaded login queues brought down everything. This isn't their first TLP attempt, or second, or 3rd. If they cared about the user experience, there would have been lessons learned from previous mistakes, which were made each and every time - right? What does the current unexplained downtime tell you?

    Take it for what it is - a 20 year old relic, that you're paying current game pricing to play, that brings back a small amount of the nostalgia and feels from when it was in it's prime.. complete with crashes, downtime, and support... just like in the good old days...

    You'll be happier if you take it for what it is. Or go play something where the developers actually care about their product and their community if you need that. But don't confuse the two options or think you can find both here, because then you'll find yourself writing a novel to developers that will never read your post or care about it's content.. because you don't matter here.
    Marton and Lumenace like this.
  6. Sine_of_the_Times New Member



    Truth. Reposting before Reichminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Dreamweaver comes in and starts censoring everybody.
    BadPallyGuildLeader and lockjaws like this.
  7. Lumenace Journeyman

    While I agree with what you say and in a perfect world you would be 100% correct, I am afraid that the reality of the situation is perhaps closer to what Insidious said than anything and believe me when I tell you that I wish it were not true.

    You realize that the whole reason for the server merges was to make room for these two new TLP's without having the need to bring new servers online,don't you?

    If that doesn't tell you what you need to know, I don't see what will.

    Sorry,mate......it's gone.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  8. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    Nope. It's Tanacious Montoya Allegra Stan I can type 170 wpm which makes me an elite keyboard warrior better than you Serverslayer....

    Good guess though, maybe I will use that for an abbreviation. :D
  9. belagious New Member

    21 years and some players still haven't changed
    minimind likes this.
  10. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    [IMG]
    Jeraldo Rivera likes this.
  11. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    The dark paw apologists force is strong here. They will even threaten to silence you on the forums if you dissent.
  12. lockjaws Augur

    In before lock.

    Also wondering when Jchan will make an appearance, and possibly explain why things have been worse-than-ever since DPG was established. Did Holly take the Cat6 network cables with her?
    Goburs and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  13. Natal Augur

    What happened to wake up call #3? Don't be so critical of the devs when you yourself mess up! ;)
  14. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    I concur. There is something that smells to high heaven inside DPG/DBG, etc. and yes, I too know that my words are probably wasted. But here's the thing. They are there. So when they claim ignorance down the road of "we don't know why it failed" or if some other entity is looking to buy/acquire them, they can have a look at the total mess they are buying. These are public forums after all.

    I am also perfectly happy where I am at. (You wouldn't like me when I am angry....) It's just like it is for a lot of players that we're stuck wondering why the howler monkeys seem to be oblivious to what is right in front of them. We're all happy, but it's like you look at your friend being a numbskull at a party and you just say: "Seriously?!?"

    I also don't know where you are getting your money metric numbers. What does a TLP have to do with anything regarding micro transactions? (Sorry have never played on one, seems.... wasteful?)
    They can't possibly be making money, (Unless people are REAAAALY that dumb and wasteful with their DB cash) and everything they keep introducing starts out good, then they shoot themselves in the foot, almost like they are keeping it to minimum profitable level, like this section is a tax write off or something for the other venues.

    Regarding actual numbers I would love to see them, but I promise you, I could easily double them in a quarter's time if not more, because I know for a fact that a lot people don't actually pay for this game at all.... they just buy Krono's with plat, and farm cycle through stuff, or spend 10 bucks for 100 million plat on some Chinese site. A little digging off site of these forums and you can find a whole world of "ooooh... so that's how".

    Plus, I make my living off of improving system efficiencies, consulting on how to use additional (or re-purposing) technology to make maximum profit with it for their businesses. And I am also quite good at what I do being that I have been doing it for 20+ years, and if what I consult to change doesn't increase your profit, I refund all consulting fees. To date, I have never had to. Sorry a bit of tooting my own horn, but I know I am seeing something that can be improved when I hear certain things. Yes it is all about money, and even if they aren't putting anything back into the game, which would be SERIOUSLY odd, that right there is the first thing you improve to improve your revenue.

    I know with TLP's that the draw is there mostly because of other enthusiasts creations with like Project 1999, recreation of the Mac server, and basically "Fixed" versions of EQ. But seems weird that you would want to waste even more time playing on something you already played through once, and not just do live, especially if it's broke to all hell. /shrug I dunno, like I said I have never seen the draw to it, I have played project 1999, and it was fun but it got old because it was old world pre nerf Kunark/Velious. I did NOT miss hours of running around because wizards and druids were overpriced taxis.

    So anyway some people are saying I type too much on here, so I will end this now, but ya it is a fascinating point, and as I said at the end, it will probably end up at the bottom of the forum. But to accept that it will be and never do it means that there is a ZERO percent chance of it being otherwise instead of .00000001%. Kinda like the Master Brewer spawn in old Blackburrow... ROFLMAO.
  15. Tanacious Lorekeeper


    I know right? It's amazing to me they still put up with these sorts of things, and fling mud humor at anyone who makes a post otherwise, humorous or serious.
  16. lockjaws Augur

    You didn't actually read it, did you? He explained no #3.
  17. feeltheburn Augur

    they do not care enough what anyone thinks of them or the game, long as they can keep it all down, mess it up and still laugh their way to the bank. This company is like a weather man....right or wrong...they still get paid and keep their job.
  18. Tanacious Lorekeeper


    LOLOLOL. Wake up call number 3 was.... "edited" in the preview... it was just too much for the filters... so it was easier to just delete it.
  19. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    BTW, I will also throw a small note in here, I love all of you guys, you are all part of my community that makes EQ so great.

    I will not be offended by any response you put on here, so as the song goes... "Let it go" and let loose. That's what this thread is for, and it will eventually be mucked to the bottom.

    *fist bump* to you all, or whatever it is the kids do now a days....
  20. Tanacious Lorekeeper



    In some respects to this, you are 100% correct too. But my goal is to wake them up enough to see that someday, they won't be able to laugh to the bank, because there won't be any point to go. Of course everyone needs to stand together behind a single unified message.... but I think we will have consumer based light speed solar system vacation cruises before that ever happens.
    feeltheburn likes this.