It is a muppet show to keep the customers excited. I always had some good Bristlebane laughter when I watched the series. Small things get blown up to big pink balloons and then ....*bam*.
You are so right. Every class should have it's own discussion forum because each class has problems, issues and concerns that are unique. It would make less work for the devs who could simply go to each class forum to ascertain the state of the class and how the community feels about it. I can't think of one good reason each class does not have its own forums.
Your assessment is spot on. The CEO and the board of directors at EG7 don't really understand EverQuest and the gem they have. If they did, they would properly reinvest the millions they've made from EQ back into the franchise. This is business 101. All serous companies invest robustly into their own company. Warren Buffet one of the richest men in the world built up his first company by aggressively reinvesting back into his company. When's the last time anyone even saw a web ad for EverQuest? The EQ franchise is not being properly promoted and marketed which is more proof that they are taking advantage of the continued loyalty of existing players. Unfortunately, they see the EQ franchise as something to be milked with the least amount of maintenance barely keeping the servers up and running just to keep players playing as you said. EG7 is more of an investment company populated with investment bankers than a video game studio. Even Activision with all it's faults knows that you have to expend proper resources to hire employees and tech to continue to make profits. I had high hopes for former CEO Robert Flodin but he's going to be leaving in a few months. The best that EQ fans can hope for is that EG7 sells the EQ franchise to a studio, company, or sugar daddy billionaire who cares about MMOs like we all do.
Let me tell you one: Some classes stand in direct competition to each others so class balance is easier when the players can discuss it overlappingly. The forum categories around them are labeled tanks, melee, hybrid, priests, casters. Another reason might be that the subforums are just not getting used actively enough. I highly doubt that WB is one of the richest men in the world. Actually he is very poor compared to very old families that own about everything on earth and you never heard about them ever. Reinvestment is defnitely a good thing when it can create more revenue. An investment is only something that does generate more revenue and this does involve reinvestment. Putting money into something that will not generate more revenue is not an investment. It is deinvestment. So there is always a point where putting money into something does no longer make sense, from the view of an investor. This is the break even point. And there might be other and better investment opportunities. EG7 is an investment company. Just like Back Rock and Vanguard. The main investors are banking and insurance companies.
My suggestion for long term EQ goodness: 3 or 4 nice zones to take you to 110 and new levels of defiant gear. EQ is great from 1-85 then sucks until 115.
Warren Buffet has a net worth of $103.7 billion. Bill Gates has a new worth of $139 billion. Jeff Bezos has as net worth of $177 billion. I think it's safe to say Buffet is one of the richest men in the world. He got that way because he believed in aggressively reinvesting profits back into his company. I do not believe for a second that Daybreak or EG7 ever invested too much into the EverQuest Franchise and lost money. I doubt they have even tried. Investing is not always about realizing quick short term profits, it's about the long term. Clearly, EG7 has no idea what they are doing with the EverQuest franchise nor are they properly leveraging it's revenue potential. There is not one person on the EG7 board of directors with any substantive knowledge of the MMO industry. Not all investors are created equal. Not all investors have the passion of luminaries like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or a Steve Jobs. The problem with EG7 is that they have no vision for the EverQuest franchise. I believe this lack of vision has trickled down to the devs as well. How could it not? Corporate culture always comes from the top. Instead of visionaries, we have custodians.
ROFL ! 103-177 billions US-dollar are peanuts. It is just the worth of a big corporation and there are people who control hundreds of companies and corporations. Wake up and stop dreaming ! The reality is so much different. Absolutely true. The devs mostly only do what the custodians do tell them as there is not much room for visions in such a business system. And sometimes they also do what the customers and players do tell them. This is your best statement. The whole world is in the custodian state and does lack creativity. It is slave mentality.
I believe you are confused about what a "rich man" is. It is an individual, not a company. You keep comparing people to families and companies, it's not the same thing. It is a valid statement to say Warren Buffet is one of the richest MEN in the world.
21. Add a "Dislike" button/link beside the "Like" button/link to the forums. So not the richest one anymore, just one of them. You are confused yourself and are telling me that I am confused ? You wrote that you "believe" which does mean that you are a believer. Believe and knowledge are some very different things.
The Big Overseer Revamp 22. Make the Overseer window visible and partially useable for PCs below lvl 85. Only the claim reward buttons have to be locked as there is no harm by starting new overseer missions from a low level toon. When playing low level alts the players often do not know/remember when the Overseer quests are or will be finished. The need to change the PC by camping out and in twice just for being able to access Overseer is bad. If an account already has a level 85 or higher character there is no need to lock Overseer at all. 23. Do change the quest durations from 6, 12, 24 hours to 5, 10, 20 hours. This will give the players alot more possibilites to do the 10 and 20 hour quests and they could even go for the 5 hour quests twice a day without losing the 10 hour quests. 6, 12, 24 are unnatural and highly speculative timers that do not fit to a 24 hour day rhythm and neither individual (hu)man chrono rhythms in practice. 24. Add quest category icons to the quest names in the quest selection on the left side of the quests tab. 25. Add an agent package with all the former and current EQ devs. Absor, Prathun, McQuaid, Smed, Holly and Jay Bach Barbeau would be elite agents while the coffee runners, guides and practicants would be common agents. 26. Make agents tradeable. 27. Add agent mass conversion quests to speed up things. 28. Reduce the amount cap of active quests to 2 and 3 (from 3 and 5) to reduce the needed time players have to spend with Overseer. 29. Reduce the amount of quest agent slots by 2 to reduce the needed time players have to spend with Overseer. 30. Revamp the agent tab so that it is clearly visible which agents have not been collected (are missing). Also stack multiple agents of the same type. We do not need 10 slots for "agent x" and a nearly endless scrolling agent list. 31. Add a critical success rate percentage value to the stats tab. 32. Limit the amount of agents of the same type to 5 and let conversion, recruitment and critical quests reward only missing agents when the caps have been reached. 2022-05-05 33. Separate player character and mercenary experience rewards. Some players level up their PCs just with overseer experience so it would be even better to remove PC experience as a reward option. About all players like to receive mercenary experience but not all of them like to receive PC exerpience at the same time. 2023-01-19 57. Auto-sort missions by their duration and categories. 2023-02-25 58. Remove bonus agents from quests with a critical success. Because they do increase the agent pool uncontrollable fast which does cause much lag. Only recruitment quests should award new agents and the amount of them (rewarded agents per quest) should be doubled instead. The players would then be much more in control over the amount of their agents. 2023-08-29 66. All elite agents can be retired Currently the elite agents from seasonal events cannot be retired. As the events are yearly recurring there is no reason to lock them. Each agent does create server and client lag so we all have an interest in keeping their numbers low. 2023-08-29 67. Panini album UI for the agent tab (-> Discussion) Instead a long list of agents they should be organized like a Panini sticker album where it is clearly visible which agents got collected and which are missing. In a corner of the agent graphic would be a number (overlay) that does show the collected amount. Each agent package (Frostfell, Stone Cold Summer, Developers (25.), etc.) would have their own page inside the album.
34. Measurements for strenghtening the community I have come to the conclusion that boxing is irreversible with the current game concept. Boxing is the manifestation of a broken game concept that is no longer working like in the early years. There are many reasons why players no longer do form multiplayer groups and the probably most important reason is that the community is splitted and fragmented. That there is no community at all but instead thousands of communities. Splitted into free&silver accounts vs AllAccess accounts. Splitted into players that have bought the latest expansion and players that have not. Splitted into different play styles: Pros, newbies, questers, achievers, explorers, killers, socializers, players with very limited play time, etc. Fragmented over more than a thousand zones, guilds, content and a wide level range. It is a bad idea to allow nearly everyone to found and run its own guild; most guilds are just being run by one player including all its PCs. Another fact is that there are to many low populated servers. All that does lead to boxing.as it does prevent well populated zones and multiplayer groups. So what could be done to counter these mechanics from the technical side ? (The Solution) Add another account model that does close the large gap between Free/Silver and AllAccess (AllAccess light). Make the general chat channel accessible to all accounts/players. Unite the communities in chat and build/strenghten a community feeling. Also important for LFG calls. Slow down the level cap increase or stop it. Like +2 level instead of +5 or just +1 level but with every expansion. Restrict guild foundations to prevent (unsocial) one man guilds. Maybe like in the past about 10 players/accounts have to found a guild by writing a /petition including the PC and guild names. Slash the prices for new expansions to $9.89 for the standard edition. Grant AllAccess accounts a 20% discount ($7.91). Just fair for the small amount of recent content and more players will buy new expansions and AllAccess which does strenghten the community. Server merges.
What would a new account model do to remove the need for boxing and get people to group with others? This would just cause general chat to get spammed by various people selling different services, there is a reason that free accounts can't use various chat services. The level cap increases every other year which is not fast at all and there is plenty of time for people to catch up. Players making guilds is not the cause of players boxing and not grouping with others. If someone is multi boxing it makes it easier to reach that 10 player/account limit for a guild. A new expansion should be cheaper then a single months subscription? 34.99 is cheaper then most other games out there and perfectly reasonable. And honestly a cheaper expansion would just make it easier for boxers to buy more expansions for alts. Server merges may help on some servers but others have a healthy population already.
FTP and Silver accounts are another league than AllAccess accounts. The power gap does decrease the chance that players from both sides will build a successfull party. At same PC levels an AllAccess account player would PL the other ones or not play together with them at all. Of course expections do exist but my idea would increase the chance that players from different leagues would come together. The middle party (All Access light) could build teams with both sides easily and could be seen as a stepping stone to All Access. In neither case I had seen such spam in Newplayers or General. If it does exist why should it increase with a general channel for all ? It had summarized over 23 years and does continue. Currently 120 levels ! Plenty of things had been implemented to counter this but it had not helped much. Defiant gear, heroic characters, hotzones & hotzone quests, heroic adventures + LotD, experience boni everywhere, etc. It even made things worse like leveling much to fast below level 85 and missing most content and then there is that lvl 85 newbie problem. On the other side there are players that give up after a few weeks or months because they expect being able to team up with the top level players after this short time period which is not possible. It is obviously that DBG would like to get rid of old expansions for the live servers as the big money is only earned with expansions that are very close to the level cap with the current hamster wheel concept. The base concept from 1999 that was only planned ahead for 2-3 years had been repeated over and over since then. Even with all those multiple phat catchup boni around it does still take 1-2 years for new players to catch up if they stay around that long. The endless level limit has created a cul-de-sac which did increase the problem with each new level cap. To some point the current leveling and expansion concept is a self-destructing system that does prevent the game from increasing its active player pool significantly. Right but it does not further socializing which is an important success factor to an MMO game. A player that is alreadyy running its own one-man guild will not give up his own guild project easily to join another one. From the psychological aspect, people are unwillingly to give up things that they already possess. So it would be better to only have multiplayer guilds around or none at all. The expansion sales rate is going down I think. Maybe I am wrong with this observation. EQ is pretty dependant on expansion sales (not by profit, but to keep players attracted !) but there is also a strong nostalgic progression server player crowd that does not care much about new expansions. I would even allege that the prog servers are partially only that successfull because players are not willing to pay the current expansion prices. Regarding boxers they are not a problem, they are the manifestation (the visible result; an indicator) of an existing problem like a broken game concept. Just let the boxers buy more expansions as this would redeem slashed expansion prices ! There is no indication that this would increase boxing. Also do not forget that $9.89 is just my recommended price for the standard (basic) edition. There are at least two other more costly luxury editions with extra boni. Of course the current standard edition could be downsized to match a lower priced offer if this seems to be necessary. $34.99 is just a very high and bad entry price as you could buy a whole bunch of good older (offline) games for this price which can even offer more fun and playing time with much better sound and graphics. Not everyone is an EQ fanboy or fangirl, just think about new and younger players. Exactly
Gnome beastlord with Clockwork pets. Actually, I'd like to see the non-beastlord capable races get a 'spirit animal' assigned, so that when shared-beast-form is used they don't all turn into wolves.
While that might be true adding another subscription level won't cause people who box entire groups to suddenly invite others into the group. The cost of an EQ subscription isn't much and players can already go form groups on their own. I do remember a lot of spam in the past. There is still 23 years worth of content to go through and the level cap only increases every 2 years. At this point in the games history I don't think slowing down how often they increase the levels will do any good. You don't need a guild to socialize with other players in game and there are plenty of guilds to join. There is no reason to change the ability to create guilds as the people that really want those guilds can find ways to get around those limits. It matters in the fact that Daybreak needs to make a profit from the expansion in order to have incentive to keep working in it. The basic cost is $34.99 which breaks down to about $2.90 over the year which isn't bad
Silver was originally the bridge for the original large gap and it failed which is why they pulled it and no longer charge $5 for it. You would run into the same thing again if you tried to have tiered membership. They are making far more with the Perk solution. There is no large gap between Silver and All Access. Anything Silver does not have can be gained by additional purchases in the marketplace except the J5 merc (which might be changing soon) and prestige stuff (but you can get better). Again more revenue for the game. Only allowing All Access and Silver into general chat is a HUGE incentive for players to purchase All Access. Far more incentive than a gap account and much more revenue to the game. Instead why don't more players help out in NEWPLAYERS chat? You do know we can join that channel and help with questions etc. I always try to answer and help in that chat when I am online. Do you? This is one way of how we build the game stronger. No way should we restrict Guild Foundations to prevent "unsocial one man guilds". This is way out of line and more like a dictatorship ruling. We are not an HOA and I have NO WISH TO JOIN ANY. I have a one man (woman) guild and I would quit if I was forced to play in a guild as they exist in today's game. I do not want to play with you or abide by your guild's silly rules. I enjoy my time alone, am bothering no one and spend a butt load of money supporting my accounts and decorating/upgrading my guild and neighborhood. No slashing of prices is needed. Leave it alone be before they jack up the cost for subscriptions. The Perks are working well and will help the game Server merges will do nothing to get groups or encourage grouping - it will just overcrowd the server and result in more tickets that are whining about someone running bots or taking a camp or boxing or not playing to the reportee's way he thinks they should play Thank goodness the game is made up of all those different play styles and communities etc and that is the way it should be. One cannot push everything about this game into a mold and have a successful game.
When did silver got removed and why did it fail ? Perks are only an addon to AllAccess and not availalble to other accounts so they are not a solution or substitute. (Info) Prestige items alone do grant about 15% more HP + 15% more AC + 15% more heroic stats, + 15% more damage, etc. The majority of augmentations is only available as prestige items. This is summing up so that a prestige gear set (weapons+armor+augs) is up to 50% (1/2) more powerfull than a similar gear set without the prestige boni which is a huge difference in power. Tanking melee classes do receive the full prestige boni while it is effectively lower for casters and healers. So maybe your own experiences are based on healer and caster classes. Contrariwise to your statement the majority of AllAccess features is NOT unlockable by the marketplace. Prestige gear - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Access to 1000's of Alternate Advancement Abilities - Unlocking them by the marketplace is very expensive (~factor 5) Additional 6 character slots - Just temporary, NOT unlockable by the marketplace Full Access to all spell ranks - Tier III (raid) is NOT unlockable by the marketplace Maximum amount of Loyalty Rewards - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Full access to Mercenary Tiers - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Full access to in-game broker (bazaar auto-trader + offline-trader) - NOT unlockable by the marketplace All housing and guilds halls allowed - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Access to Progression Servers - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Unlimited Chat channel access - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Full Guild Functionality - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Increased cap of active Overseer Quests - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Access to EQ Perks: Merchant’s Perk, Challenger’s Perk, and Adventurer’s Perk - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Just check for Services>Unlockers in the marketplace and you will only find Tier II spells and AA cap. While I partially agree with you that the general chat could be an incentive for players to buy AllAccess, locking it to FTP players (new players) is causing more damage to the game than granting it to all players. General chat is an overstated feature as there are rarely valueable informations available so its main value is the socializing factor which currently is locking out new players from the community which is a big strategically mistake. New players do not know that the general chat channel does exist at all and they have a hard time to socialize as even Crescent Reach has become nearly a graveyard zone on the AB server. Often their EQ experience is a trail of loneliness and boredom. I do not get paid by DBG to help new players so it is not my job, but I do often help new players. I would even suggest that we boycot general chat and only use newplayers instead as everyone could do that. Everyone type: "/autojoin newplayers" ! It would and should not affect existing guilds. There is still the fellowship feature around which is like a mini guild without a guild hall. Basically only getting used by experienced multiboxers and guilds for the campfire port function. Player estates (not guild halls) are not linked to guilds anyway.
When did silver got removed and why did it fail ?? - When SOE All Access goes live, we will no longer sell Silver memberships in EQ or EQII - March 2014 - as to why? Look to the ownership changes back then and how they needed to books to look for those changes - just like now. Prestige gear- not that big of a deal if you look at snowbound, conflagrant and for the lower players Thulian etc. Plenty of non prestige augs too. Silver can get better than this. Access to 1000's of Alternate Advancement Abilities - sub one month and get em all Silver can do this - so you can achieve it Additional 6 character slots - Just temporary, NOT unlockable by the marketplace - Wrong - any account can purchase 3 more character slots thru loyalty and 3 more thru marketplace and are not temporary - again Silver can do this Maximum amount of Loyalty Rewards - Both All Access and Silver get max amount each week after the account is 1 year old. All housing and guilds halls allowed - Silver can. Unlimited Chat channel access - NOT unlockable by the marketplace Again - wrong Silver gets this Full Guild Functionality - Silver gets this Increased cap of active Overseer Quests Silver gets 5 So I find 5 items that are All Access only and Silver cannot get. J5 Merc, Perks, Rank III, Baz, TLP. Perhaps it been a while since one has looked at the differences and how much Silver really has now. Not much to differentiate for a lower cost. And a huge draw to pay full price. So what would you charge to have those additional features? $10/month? Shoot just pay a normal membership for a year and get the whole enchilada for $9/month. If a guild leader buys the neighborhood then the entire neighborhoods that are restricted to just that guild's members placing houses so not sure what is meant by player estates not linked to guilds. Bottom line. The current tier of membership with optional add ons is fine. Pay up buttercup
