Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

There are many misunderstandings here...
first of all Eq1 doesn't need much money, it needs smart decisions and one person in control who understands what the game was all about and who tells management "if we make it interesting again, revenue will increase cause people come back".

It's not a dead game for 1 simple reason, there are no other similar games out there.
The mmorpg industry is in a big slump, peoples who value mature gameplay simply have no other options. Most of those wouldn't be annoyed by older graphics and codes.

But you need reasonable content!
You need dungeons, you need choices, real long quest chains and what you absolutely not need is copying those quest hubs, instances and all the crap other games use.

New players might also still check out Eq1 if it would still be good, but hey it isn't.
Why do people love talk about "your favorite Eq zones, stories, etc etc..." they like it because of good old memories. If you manage to create up to date good stuff again, most of all the negative talk would just go away.

But this cannot be reached with heroic toons, lame heroic adventures and running from hail npc 1 to npc 2 to npc3. And the worst part is, a change for good wouldn't cost much money like i said above.
All it costs is decent management, and sorry but that's where they failed and that's why we have this situation now.

Daybreak needs a kick up the butt!

SOE made some very unpopular decisions, Daybreak needs to reverse some of these decisions. Wake up and smell the roses, your player base ain't happy!

Sadly I don't see any changes coming from the takeover and EQ will just simply decline more and more due to the decisions those at Daybreak make, nothing to do with the new company owning it.

I just hope one of the new owners plays EQ and doesn't like these changes and force Daybreak to make changes.

Its really hard to recapture that initial magic of a game later on during a games shelf-life after its jumped the shark so to speak. Sometimes, when the damage it already done there is no turning back.

No future with EQ he says... So reading through the usual doom and gloom nature of these silly pessimists... There is so much untapped earning potential in both game content and experience for EQ.

Let's try to keep a half a cup of optimism for the future of our beloved game. I know we've been hurt in the past by the leadership / (seeming lack of) direction of past expansions, but I find it ignorant to say our Evercrack experience is without an optimistic future. Substantiated hope for a better tomorrow, my goodness ;P

Wow is cheap ugly and childish imo, ugly orcs with crappy guady armor, dumbed down and over streamlined, a shadow of its former self. Anything decent in the game gets made fun of it or taken away. Horrible community. Ugly design. I twinked BC when I tried to play it to aviod new content and a little of wrath. I have little intrests in end game. I love lore. Eq is the last and best of its kind. I like true Rpg, I like fantasy. I care. I like to think. I will greatfully spend my money on EQ. As for Wow....it died after cata in my opinion...it just dose not have the decency to lie down.

I thoroughly enjoyed early WoW and disagree with a majority of your post. However, I agree with half of this last statement. WoW certainly went downhill for me after WotLK. However, it still has more subs than any other MMORPG, so I think you're in the minority. As for having the decency to lie down: umm, would you "lie down" if you were still grossing hundreds of millions of dollars? If so, I question your business acumen.

That said, I'm still playing EQ after 15 years. So the game is obviously doing something right for me. Even if we do get Lanys down to 2% at the end of every recent expansion, for some reason. I'm neither a lore expect nor do I even care about the "story," but my goodness, can we please kill Lanys and move on to something else?

Wow used to be a defrent game, it had a true rp aspect. Its something else alltogether now, and apeals to another type of audence. It makes money but it wont last, look closly at what is happening with it except at peak points...and comparing it to eq is like comparing appels to oranges its not even the same sort of thing really. When I said its (wow) is dead, I was speaking in another sense. What would work for a game like wow would not work for eq. It can make money in another way.

FYI John Smedley was a co-founder of Verant and has been involved in EQ ever since. He was president of SOE and is president of Daybreak so you have your wish. One person in control who understands the game and IS management.

In Expansion 22, Lanys returns again again again again to cause some really really real trouble this time. I think. She might just end up Moaning and feigning death.

The next expansion we kill Mayong again lol. Btw EQ Lore has been hashed out all the way to expansion 25 or so already.

Here is my take on this.
I have been playing this game since shortly after release in March 1999. I own 4 accounts.

The pricing structure to me is a bit ridiculous, but hey, my choice to pay what I pay.

Having said that, if you want to attract new clients you need to consider lowering the monthly subscription so the younger generation in this sad economy can justify playing.

Previous posts in this thread indicate you do not have to have super ultra realistic graphics, but content and game play is far more important. EQII is proof of that. The increased graphics did not draw the crowd and supplant EQI at all.

People in many cases cannot afford to completely revamp their systems just to play high end graphics, and memory intensive games, or just have no desire to spend the money for a game when there are REAL life things that demand their cash.

Suggestion. Reduce the costs per month, You have a lot of F2P people, who like the play but cannot afford the $120, to $215/year depending on how they buy. For me it is x 4 or ($719.00/year) as with many, many players. If you lose 1,000 people like me, you lose 4,000 paying subscriptions.

I personally would like to see the game move more toward how it used to be back in 2000, where classes were more specialized, and you "needed" the teams to accomplish anything. Now since everyone has pretty much been balanced out there isn't the same need for the specialists.

For me I am teetering on just giving up EQ totally. This past expansion (TDS) has been a massive disappointment, I have ZERO interest in EQII or EQ Next, and would most likely just take up a new hobby. $719 can get me well into Radio controlled airplanes, or 3-D printing stuff, or buy me some really nice accessories for my other hobbies.

Oh by the way. Nothing is going to change. Same **** different toilet.

Edit: not including the logo from SoE --> Daybreak
or anything else related to re-branding.

you guys failed to understand something smelly was the president to soe and has been there from the beginning and the reason he went and got investors was so he could do what he needed to do to make the game fun again, Sony was blocking him and the game you love. you watch i expect great things from daybreak, and smelly, you watch now that he has the right backing and the right investors and total control watch what happens and hang on to your seats this game is about to become super fun with lots of stuff you watch and see, EQ FOR LIFE BABY GO DAYBREAK MAKE THIS GAME ROCK ONCE AGAIN WE ARE WITH YOU DON'T LET US DOWN

I don't know EQ as well as many others. I don't have a bunch of "toons", I don't "box", and I have not invested either a good number of years nor a significant amount of money aside from all the expansions I bought off store shelves years ago that I never really played. What I do know is business. Unfortunately this has all the earmarks of a liquidation, not a new beginning.

The sad part is, there is a never-ending resource to tap found in Everquest, and that is the lore and classic art of the game - The intellectual property of Everquest. The function/structure of the way the game is built doesn't count for squat. Build a thousand other games the way EQ is currently and use crap lore and art and it's worth nothing. Copy WoW and all you have is a copy of WoW - Good luck trying to market that against the original WoW. What are you going to advertise - "We do WoW differently!"?. That's why Everquest Next is shaping up to be a huge failure as an investment. Yeah, you're making game-play *better* in some ways. But who's going to care? You can't stay on top of the innovation heap long term, and innovation by itself doesn't sell a game (see the numerous examples of the gaming world's innovative disasters). Any initial interest will be a blip on the radar for countless hours of work and millions of dollars of investment and what you're going to get is some short term attention that *will* disappear because the gaming community has been there and seen that. And yeah, you're going to get positive feedback from the crowd that cheers for anything that resembles radical change, putting wrong-headed value on change itself as if there was inherent value to all change. And there will be others who like the new (actually old and done elsewhere) artwork and will praise the game for it's new direction in that vein. Just see if relying on them is going to keep the game afloat.

The lore of the game isn't shaping up to be just *changed*. It's shaping up to be shallow and reminiscent of everything else, and that's going to kill off the core market for EQ. EQ's selling point isn't it's level of innovation or it's ability to copy other art styles. The value is in it's intellectual (artistic core) property. Regardless of its claim to fame for being "the first" of its kind - regardless of the actual validity of that claim - it certainly wasn't the only one of its kind for very long. It didn't see long term success simply because of distribution, advertising, and having pretty much the highest price tag. It was never a big seller to little kids. It retained its appeal because of it's Lore and art - Those things are original and unique to EQ. Lose them and you lose everything that makes EQ valuable.

EQ has a core of intellectual property worthy of books, movies, and spinoff games. That it hasn't seen more success in those veins is telling to how poorly it has been managed. You can buy upgraded software. You can buy think tanks who'll come up with a new gimmick to make a game feel or play differently. You can tweak the difficulty and learning curves until the end of time. Yet, no matter what you do with the technology and structure of the game, you can't buy the appeal of that core EQ world envisioned and created by whatever group of inspired individuals first put it together. You can't buy a replacement of the inspirational art associated with the game. You can't buy the community that gravitated to and supplies the foundation for the EQ game's community because of the lore and art. These things have value that technology and money can't change or buy - It's the *magic* of EQ. And anyone who is truly going to "invest" in EQ needs to recognize *that* is where the investment lies. Because if the intellectual property goes, the community goes with it.

That said, I think the best hope for anyone who loves EQ is to wait it out until someone comes along and buys up the intellectual property as liquidation proceeds. Continued fan interest and work done by fans of the game to create fan-based EQ content is probably the only way to keep EQ alive until some future relaunch. The value of the EQ intellectual property will never disappear, so there will always be the potential to see EQ rise again. It's just all a matter of "who?" will make it happen and "when?" it will happen.

Hey Daybreak, Here is the simplest most effective way to make some money.

1.) Create a new Progression server starting with classic EQ.

2.) Create an EQ that has the same core pillars of design as the original EQ.

PROFIT.

YOUR FANS WILL NOT REST UNTIL THIS HAPPENS.

Sadly, this will not happen.

CN has bought SOE as a dice roll on its new games that are on the horizon. EQ is simply a series of monthly cash flows to justify it's investment. CN will only invest the bare minimum in keeping EQ alive until it's income streams no longer justify doing so. That said, don't expect much development money being directed at the old games in the future. You can expect minimum content etc. from now until the new games start to come online. Most of the money generated by ongoing operations will go to the new games and into the pocket of the investors. How long EQ stays alive is unpredictable at this point. Too many variables.

for some reason i cant log in as my main however..for now why the doom and gloom,you can still log in and play...i started my main in 2005 and quite frankly if we get no more expansions im not bothered as long as the game keeps going, after 12 hours at work in management i look forward to going in eq if only to stand on a mountain and watch the clouds roll by....and you dont need a high end pc to do it i can come home and loose myself for a few hours from the crap called real life with a player base that is willing/knows the game inside out and helps out with any questions this is eqs legacy great people....we moan a lot yes but i love the simple graphics and gameplay and i dont develop a headache like i do playing modern high graphics games.
at nearly 50 year old this games pace suits me perfectly so im happy to pay for 2 accounts even though i get very little realtime playing nowerdays.
quake 3 arena and unreal is still going strong so i pray eq will too for a few years to come at least, i would hate to have to start again on an emulated server as the game has matured to the point when new players wont be scared off by having to run through 6 zones naked to get their bodies back but i do agree with earlier posts we do need interesting new zones/dungeons that are not rehashes of previous but harder......thats why im still lev 95 because the newer stuff is a bit samey and bland.
newblood the iksar

How is there a future in a game that does not attract new players at this late stage of its shelf life? The only players EQ1 truly attracts are old retirees who quit the game already once before.

So maybe its why no money is being put into EQ1 worth note. It has a stagnated player base with no fresh blood coming in. The designers and suits know that the loyals who still play the game will eat up what they shovel out at us no matter what it is. The smart ones are retiring honestly. EQ1 is a dead end game.

I for one am extremely excited about this new history making venture and can not wait to see what's in store!!!!

Extremely excited? LOL