From the looks of things there's going to be a minimal amount of effort put into TLP and they're essentially opening up the equivlent of a supermax prison "gladiator school". Where any players stupid enough to think they're going to "savor the journey" are just meat for the machine.
You realize that at most progression players have never been more than 5-10% the population of live? We are a small cash grab, yes, but not much in the overall picture. The vast majority of their income will continue to come from live players. We aren't funding live, they are funding us.
Interesting, I would of thought with the minimal cost of start up, hordes of people that are going to pay to play and the market place it would be a considerable sum. Any idea how many played on Fippy/Vulac?
Adding 5-10% revenue that you don't have can be a big deal. Consider a person that is in a job that pays enough to increase his savings by about $150/month after expense. Say, $25,000/year which is $2,083/month, and with $1,900/month expenses (rent, car, etc), he's saving $183/month. Then he gets a job that is 15% higher salary, or $28,750. Now, is $3,750 a big number compared to $25,000? No, but his income going to savings is now $495 whereas it was $183. I used the word "savings", but other terms like "disposable income" could apply. Who knows what their situation is, but TLP could be the difference between the excess revenue/net income/profit/whatever, being a small (or negative) number vs being a better looking number (or making it positive). In today's world, making profit isn't enough, it's got to be a big enough profit. That's why gaming companies keep abandoning niche markets and casualizing their games in hope of striking the mother lode by making the next WoW/LoL/etc. (and it's probably at least partly why, with so many EQ1 players still playing EQ1, that EQN isn't truly targeting previous EQ players)
They've given numbers and they've quoted the TLP as a "rousing success" before - I highly doubt Machen's numbers are even close. Unless you're counting F2P accounts equally or some such.
You really don't get it. 5-10% in addition to live would be great which is what prior TLP's did, no harm no foul. Now live is going to be in a serious downfall when people see campaigns mean TDS split in 2. CoTF killed a lot of subs some came back for TDS based on what was said about getting a large expansion again. That never happened so most figured it meant the expansion after TDS as that actually gave them the time to deliver on what they promised. Now we find out it won't especially as the resources have been cut across the board. Live is their bread and butter and their going to let it die if they put out TDS split in 2. Every available resource they have and what they can pull temporarily from other stuff like was done to this game for a decade now should be going towards a LARGE expansion for live. Short of that and live is dead and in maintenance mode in a year. The TLP can be a raving success and still won't fix that, a giant expansion for live at the cost of everything else for now would. If you think differently you are fooling yourself.
People need to consider that Live could fall away because people are tired of the same exact game being extended further and further in levels. This is why Progression servers are popular - starting over in the exact same game can be a lot more fun than extending the game vertically ad infinitum. Edit: For me personally though, a Seasonal PoP server would be too fast and stops before the best content. I actually want to do the PoP through SoF content (or at least through PoR). It's just sad that gaming companies don't realize this when making new games; they feel that everything has to be 100% different (not to mention 10 times easier/faster than games that came before).
They wouldn't launch another progression server if they didn't already know it would be financially viable for the company to do so. Period.
You do realize that normally speaking the "big expansions" for development purposes (not art/assets/etc which is done year round and not needed for TLP or anything else) are generally done in 3-4 months time, right? If the next expansion is a big expansion and it's launching in October/November on the normal schedule development would be starting to work with the expansion in June at the absolute earliest. Isn't that convenient considering the TLP is planned to be live by then? It rather crystallizes why she picked that timeframe in fact, because I'm 110% sure that's when the assets for the next expansion (zones/art/etc) are scheduled to be done by the assets team - so that's when they have "real work" to do again for EQ1. Expansions don't take 12 months of full time development, they never have - the majority of the time is tied up in ASSETS, art and zonefiles take a while - those are being worked on almost year round. But developers don't do art. (Trust me, most of them draw worse than me - and I can't even draw a cartoon bunny) There's no "pulling stuff away temporarily" - this time of year they're generally idle. We'll have to see how the new "DLC" style of expanding content changes that, but for the last DECADE they haven't started ANY expansion development work (besides major additions like mercs, those were started early - April in the case of mercs that was the single largest thing I'm aware of for starting early though - but zero content was being worked on, just new mechanical stuff) this early. You're literally losing NOTHING. But please, keep ranting on about things you half know like some sort of Prisonplanet/Chemtrails fan.
How would it fix anything? It wont increase the number of people on live, if anything it would just retain the dying numbers it has now. It also doesnt adress the fact that it would have to be 3 expansions worth of content as that is the ease of which everything gets completed now. It also doesnt fix the fundamental problem that eq is a game that is targeted towards an audience that isnt the type of target audience you want now for a video game company.
Everything is a "rousing success" and his numbers would be about right. Just the members and their various accounts from the reporting raid guilds from across the Live Servers outnumber what the total population on the Progression server will be. All of those accounts paid for, station cash spending, and expansion "campaign" buying. You're also forgetting that the majority of the population on the Progression servers will be from those already playing on Live Servers. Do you think it is any surprise with the planned launch time? Everyone has been done with TDS for a couple of months now with nothing left to do. The new progression server will also end up pulling in some of the remaining people from Fippy/Vulak, again people already paying. What you will get is a small minority of people returning to the game who like whatever their definition of "classic" is and forgot why they left in the first place. In keeping with the past, nearly all of those will be gone within a year. Once they are gone and the new "campaign" launches the population on this Prog Server will plummet. So yes, a small bump for the summer, but the question will be at what cost. Allas, as the announcement about switching to "campaigns" is spreading on the live servers there is a lot of anger about lack of content. The Prog server is catching most of the blame. You guys would be sad at some of the general chat stuff about if there is going to be a prog server, what are the worst options to pick for the poll to make you guys suffer.
I'd honestly be happy if you get any updates to EQ live at all. If you're looking at it from a purely revenue vs. investment standpoint, the way to get the highest ratio would be to drop EQlive all together and focus completely on TLP. Creating content takes so much more time and manpower than TLP servers do. DBG could set up and run a few TLP servers with GM's and make a decent amount of revenue with very little expense. I'm not saying I hope this happens and it would definitely be a bad thing for EQ and the EQ employees at DBG, but it's the truth.
And due to Daybreak's inability to properly write/interpret polls, they'll succeed. Actually, if they REALLY want to make TLP players suffer, they'll create characters here and jump into the raid scene and contest the loot. There's already not enough for who was already going to play; they'll push it over the top. That said, this is the third iteration of progression servers. Why would they blame campaigns on TLP when it's obviously a result of the ownership change and workforce reduction?
I think the ironic truth is that while different in spectacular ways, EQ and WoW are similar enough that if both games could be end-of-lifed, it would open up a playerbase to financially support the design of a modern game that plays a lot closer to EQ than some of the stuff we've been seeing released/announced.
It would fix the bleeding out of core players that have kept this game running and profitable for this long. This game as it is will never attract new players at a rate that will allow for it to accept losses to its older core audience. The way they make money is to appease who they have and add extras that entice retired players back and new players to think about it as they can. As they can does not mean at the expense of like we have seen the last 2-3 years so its now do or die time. I've happily played this game for well over a decade and never once claimed the game was on its last legs despite disagreeing on many changes, decisions and paths taken. Over the past 2 years I have watched people exactly like me call it quits or go pure free to play not because the game was boring or mundane because it was basically the same thing over and over again. But because they grew tired of content being so cut that after a month or two they were completely done with everything and watched friends and relationships they had move on that felt the same way. People who have played this game for 5-10 years for the most part are not suddenly going to quit because they are annoyed they yet again have to work on a character they have played with friends for years with. They do leave however when they run out of stuff to do and don't want to make another alt, don't want to chase after the empty achievements or restart another toon just because someone else wants to and says it makes the game fun. This is a character advancement game and has always been so you don't turn it into Grand theft auto were you replay the world again over and over after a certain point. And fool yourself all you want but the TLP takes money and resources to make. It doesn't matter if its less or timed in a manner to have less impact. They could be using that time now to get the ball rolling and get whats needed done with it instead. Will see whose right in a year if campaigns due in fact turn into TDS cut in half. Most people loved and had zero issue with prior TLP efforts as live was still getting what it needed for the most part. Thats not the case any longer.
There's over 100 active raid guilds on the Live servers only counting Pay-to-Play members? I highly doubt that - I'm seeing 0-3 for most servers that are working on the most recent 2 expansions anything before that and F2P because a possibility while being a raider, in contrast the clearly visible number of L40+ players on Fippy/Vulak combined on month 3 was 4781. At $30-45 each at that point that's a non-insignificant amount of cash. False and false. I led and was part of recruitment on both TLP's - the "what experience do you have" questions always was part of the recruitment process - in over 142 apps still archived, two were Live players. And in addition those that I spoke to be never apped/never got archived/went elsewhere I can recall maybe another 2-3 out of hundreds. Additionally the time frames that the TLP took noticeable hits never coincided with expansion launches. The largest hits were in fact during the summer months, the completely opposite end of the year. [Not to mention even if my memory and our forum archives are poor - late Fall/early Winter is a timeframe when TONS of games come out, third week of November is often home to a dozen game releases alone - claiming all those late Fall/early Winter losses are from EQ1 expansions and not other games is laughable at best...] Well, that's your guys fault for having people that don't understand the development cycle - there literally is ZERO cost right now. Development side of EQ1 (again, not assets) sits around this time of year waiting for the assets for new content to be available to use towards making new content. Seriously, every single year development's timeframes barring oddball ones like SoD (because of mercs) looks something like: Jan -> Feb -- Small special events being designed for the year Feb -> Apr -- Backend improvements to the game in general (/advloot and "zone balancing" this year) Apr -> Jun -- Toy projects (i.e. Progression this year) [Some years this is skipped in preference to expanding the backend improvements] Jun -> Oct/Nov -- Expansion Design (often with Beta starting around Aug) Oct/Nov -> Dec -- Hammering out expansion post-launch issues. (and the times when there aren't many issues to fix - another pet project)
Live has been neglected long before Daybreak came along and before this round of TLP servers was announced. Them going the 2 Campaign(DLC) route would have happened regardless of whether they decided to implement another round of TLP. EQ2 was the first to announce this change back on Apr 1st (fooled us), so considering the same management runs both games now (Holly) you can't be surprised that EQ1 followed suit. This is likely the only way they can still implement some level of content for Live servers with their current staff level, in fact I expect to see more layoffs in the future if they believe they can get away with less people to churn out a couple campaigns a year. TLP servers require very little initial investment cost in terms of developing rulesets to increase their marketability and are just a $ pinata once they are setup and left to run their course. If you are looking for an MMO that is continually releasing new content for singular character progression it's probably time to look elsewhere. For many of us however, we would rather replay through the older content of EQ than any of the alternatives currently on the market.
If there was a better way for DBG to generate more income, they would be doing that, and not a TLP. Its a business, there is more money in the TLP model then any other idea they have thought of, or they would do something else.....the end.
Live hasnt gotten what it has needed since TSS, if you think it has it just shows how youre voicing your own opinion as the general population of everquests, instead of actually being intouch with what the game needs.
Live players already make the "real" TLP players suffer. Most of the racers that lock down content on TLPs are the same people who blow through new expansions on Live within a week or two. Then its only a few hours of raiding for the rest of the year. TLP gives them something else to do until it gets old/they get bored. Been that way with all the other iterations, will be the same with this one. Those guilds are already organizing and ready to go.
