Leaving aside the rest of your post, which I mostly agree with - after all, it's pretty indisputable that none of the numbers we need are available - I want to touch on this. That emphasis is yours, and didn't exist in my post. You're reading more into it than you should, and by quoting with added emphasis you're spinning my remarks in a not-intended way. The guy I'm responding to is, idiotically, blaming changes on Progression servers when in actuality the vast majority of changes have been targeted at Live players - in fact, specifically Live players with his particular superiorist attitude. That, and not requests from TLP players, was why swarming through beams was changed; that, and not the needs of a population in Kunark for three months, was why pet mitigation and aggro generation has been tweaked constantly for more than a year. It was people complaining that pets could tank in Plane of War or that they couldn't tank in Plane of War or that this named in TDS or that one in whichever zone could be soloed by this class or that class but not the other. That's the simple truth of the matter. And if the most recent set of changes is aimed at the Progression population, then ok, fine. That's one set out of many. And if a change is made to satisfy the wants of the most populated server, with most unique paying players, then so be it, because ultimately any future Everquest releases that are complete and satisfactory products depend on growth in the playerbase that simply doesn't exist on the Live servers (admittedly, that's anecdotal and observational. Hard numbers don't exist that we know of, but on The Rathe at this time last year, General chat was full during peak hours, with another two or three hundred in General1. Over this weekend, I never saw General go over 300. On Phinny, General chat was almost always completely full.). Fewer players playing more boxes isn't a viable pathway back to full and polished expansions. Maybe bringing new players in and old players back through Progression servers is, especially if those servers can act as testing grounds for new ideas like the pick system. If there is an element of defensiveness, that's to be expected; Jesus, did you read the post I'm responding to?[/i]
I see the ire you're up against here, but let's be fair as far as the cost goes. That shouldn't be a point for either side as we just have no idea. I should have reason to be against progression servers because my old guild that I joined in Luclin or PoP was really ramping up to do well right when they hit, and they took that away from us. Suddenly we lost exactly enough people to go from succeeding in various raids to failing at them. We were getting through with learning Arx 2 and then suddenly we couldn't even do Arx 1 anymore. I'd be more within my rights to say that if the progression servers didn't hit, my guild would still be going than anyone would to say that one server pays for the other. I don't want to bash you if you love progression, but I hope you can see through these guys anger to the cause of it, and maybe forgive it. It can go into some dark places. Surprisingly if you play on a progression server, I hope that you have fun there. Whatever the case is though, you opened up an interesting topic for a few reasons. If we know how much things cost, and how much is put into it, maybe we can get some sort of a promise that this game won't be cash cowed out to make other games as that has historically been what's probably killed it. Imagine if all the money from eq that was used to design all these other games that eventually died had stayed in eq, and that it was more developed with better content more support more devs, etc.. etc.. I guess they'll never let us know on that one though if it's incriminating, which would be evidence that it is incriminating, heh. It would really be nice to know though.
I don't remember who said it, but I think the single most true thing I've ever read on any iteration of the Everquest forums was that there wasn't a WoW2 or a WoWOA or a WoW Handheld or a WoWNext (there was a LoWoW, which was pretty well designed and implemented and is now a gigantic cash machine); there was only WoW.
I disagree, I think there is a very easy to way to look at it and see if EQ and SoE would have re invested in the game where it would be right now.. I point you in the direction of WoW. For the most part Blizzard reinvested in WoW with maybe redirecting a bit of those funds to Star Craft. If SoE would have done the same, maybe there would be no WoW and EQ would be reigning dominant. We had the player base first, so it's a good assumption, but it really doesn't matter at this point either way, since that's not what happened.
So you disagree more in my favor. I'll take it. It's really scary to me that a game that has made so much money is at a point where people say it's "being paid for" by one side or the other. How much money is it making right now? I feel like whenever there is an issue, for some reason instead of asking for sane reliefs to issues, we just pit ourselves against each other like crabs in a bucket. Doing the math very generously, my old guild was around for 15 years, and had at least 52 active subs at any time, probably more like 75 to be generous (all my estimates I think in this are extremely generous against my favor.. near the end it was less, but in the earlier times it was much more). So 15 years * 12 months in a year * ~13 dollars a month * 75 players = $175,500. Again that's a very generous estimate. Then add in expansions. What 22 expansions at 30 bucks an expansion.. that's $660 a person, and $49,500 for 75 players. Then add in things bought from the store. My god LoN with some people was amazing. They had to have all the items. And it was at $225,000 without that. I'm not saying I don't expect a company to make a profit, but does a single server go through that much even since 1999? I guess the end point that might get somewhere is, can we stop saying that live is supported by progression, or progression is supported by live? We don't have the numbers, but to me it seems like these servers have all paid for themselves.
I payed more this year than any single player not playing on live servers too will pay for 2 years. 3 Expansions one of which cost 140 bucks plus 3 accounts subscribed every single month and most live raiders do this exact same thing. I am not sure why people on the progression servers think they are actually paying for the game and the live servers are not ? There are multiple guilds on almost every live server raiding , those players do not play for free many of which have picked up boxing in an effort to continue progressing just as fast as they always have. The other part about tlp maybe bringing back more players being a good thing I actually agree with but I believe people that think either or is paying for the game to continue is quite outrageous. Don't forget there are also literally thousands of kronos on the FV server being traded back and fourth for gear / plat / expansions since their release and this is happening on every single server.
Absolutely. And, before May of last year when Ragefire was opened, live servers were paid for by Fairy farts. Cause they poof gold dust, natch.
it doesnt even matter where all this money is coming from. whether its from people coming to the TLPs or live servers, from krono sales on TLPs or live servers. none of it matters since EQ1 isnt going to see but maybe 10% of the revenue that EQ1 is making. DBG will waste all of our money on new games like H1Z1 or landmark or (heaven help us) EQNext. we will continue to get broken expansions and nerfed til we quit cuz the powers that be dont care about EQ. not saying that the devs themselves dont care (sometimes i dont think they do either) but the ones that write the checks stopped caring about EQ long long ago
Well, don't look at me! If you go to the TLP forum, you will see that I am pretty vocally against just about all the changes that they keep crying for. So, just bend over real far and pucker up good, cause you are the one who doesn't know what they are talking about.
that's funny considering all the changes made to pets last year long before the TLP severs launched because they were tanking "to good" on live servers ... and the dozens of threads over the last few years complaining that one guild or another used pet tanking on raid boss's and that they are not "real" wins......
The pet mitigation nerf had nothing to do with pet walls, it had to do with how well a single pet mitigated relative to PC's. I have no idea why anyone would use pet walls on a group or named mob on live and have never seen it. In raids the vast majority of pet tanking issues were related to pets either ignoring mechanics (like mez/charm) or holding aggro through DA (which was nerfed, but still isn't a pet wall). I have not seen or heard of guilds using pet walls in live raids. If you think this change or the mitigation nerf was targeted at pet walls on live, I think you're really missing the boat.
Perhaps it is because people just don't know the terms they are kicking around? A single mob is tanked by a single pet for an extended duration of time? Nerf pets so that petwalling becomes impossible! *head@desk*
Then you guys are misunderstanding and leaping to conclusions too, most of the complaints of this latest round of nerfs have nothing to do with pet walls. The problem is now that a pet cannot hold agro over a player effectively in a one vs one fight... even with the agro AA turned on. When I can pull agro off my pet by simply sitting down.... outside of melee range.. something is wrong.
and besides, no one on TLP servers pet walls, that was a cheesy 2015 tactic only really used by the 30-40 man mage armies run by a single person. The real raid guilds never used such tactics .... but of course just like on live the accusations were always tossed out when raid guild A beat raid guild B to some target ... "you petwall!" .. "you zerg!" .. "you poopsock!" .. "you have no life!" .. etc etc ..
I live and die by my earth pet tanking. I'm not a couple times a week player but every day. A lot! Since that patch not only was his (pretty sure it's a him) aggro reduced to paltry but there was a mitigation adjustment as well. Named that were not a problem now seem to be dropping his hit points like a prom girls undies after the dance! Same group set up, same mob, same routine. The lack of pet aggro is minor compared to the damage mitigation that seems to have been changed. Go check it out in Combine Dredge if you are familiar with mage pet tanking those mobs. Go with a cleric merc and hit up Praetor Ledalus Thaddaeus and see if your turd takes a dirt nap a quarter of the way into the fight.
Pet aggro was changed so that pets could tank in groups with melee dps. It was sort of inevitable, really, once mercs came in the game and established a precedent for non-player group participants. Prior to the change, pets were automatically lower on the aggro list than any player in melee range. That was a change primarily driven by the needs of the Live population. And then people started complaining that pet aggro was too high, that it was too hard for players to get and hold aggro. So it was changed again. That may have been driven by the needs of the Progression players - the standard answer to the pet aggro problem was "well, you can't just auto-attack and taunt! You need to use all of your tools!". But those tools don't exist and won't exist on the Progression servers for some time. The change to suit Live broke Progression, not the other way around. And now we're in the state we're in, and everyone's going to blame everyone and polish their victim complex, because this is by far the most entitled player population I've ever seen in gaming.
Honest question: Are you trying to say that Fippy and Vulak were the two servers which kept EQ alive for the 4 years between the next round of TLPs? To say that TLP keeps live servers running is just a slight bit crazy. There wouldn't be TLP if EQ live servers weren't already up so already your assumption is thrown out the window.
This might be the dumbest thing I've read in awhile. Live servers broke progression. You've got to be kidding. DBG being totally incompetent is what has broken everything lately. I'd suggest staying at the children's table if this is what you bring to the adults table.
