They've tried to do development before assets were ready before - I was around for OoW beta when we were running around in half finished zones where you could fall through the geometry and half the mobs were "Dougs". As expansion launches go it was the rockiest I've seen besides SoL + GoD. (Which weren't really from poor development, more because of them trying to do backend improvements and expansions at the same time back then...)
I can already tell you that you are absolutely correct, no need to wait a year. Holly was the Director of EQ2 and is porting over that same concept of 'campaigns' to EQ1 as a plan to cope with the huge loss of development as best as they possibly can. They WILL be smaller than full fledged expansions, there is no doubt about it - and they are more expensive for the amount of content. Placing blame on the TLP for taking minimal development resources for 3 months is ridiculous. You will be force-fed these campaigns for the next few years whether you like it or not, even after you no longer have the TLP to point fingers at for your lack of content. Your general discontent with the future direction of the game and recent content is causing you to lash out at the TLP group. It's completely unwarranted.
Again false - but please continue to proselytize about something you clearly have no clue about. There were a FEW people that fell into that description, but you're literally talking fewer individuals than I have fingers. [Do note - I have fewer fingers than most people]
I'm not saying it isn't significant additional revenue (although I doubt it is anywhere near 5-10% since many tlp players were already subbed on live, and probably would have bought more SC stuff if they continued on live rather than switching to tlp.) I am just saying that progression is not singlehandedly supporting the EQ franchise as many seem to think. Also, we are MAYBE adding 5-10% revenue, but we are also adding to their expenses and taking resources that could be generating revenue elsewhere. Quite a lot of added expense in the case of Fippy/Vulak with customer service costs.
All this revenue talk and numbers being thrown around are all speculation and completely pointless. Only Daybreak knows how much money they made from both of the previous sets of progression servers. They deemed it in their best interest to make another one, period. End of story. Done.
Well, yeah. And I have to say, for all the people who defend certain design decisions or TLP decisions based on "they have to make money", for all we know, they're already making plenty of money (enough that if we knew, we wouldn't bother to say that) OR the decision has nothing to do with money, or is just plain wrong. For example, some folks claim you need a longer Classic through PoP period; but there is no actual proof of that. I'd love to see a poll ran to determine what the most nostalgic period is for the overall playerbase, an example of the votes could be between the following choices : Classic/Kunark Velious/Luclin PoP/LoY/LDoN GoD/OoW DoN/DoDH PoR-TBS Forget the past! I'd be torn between GoD/OoW and DoN/DoDH. I think due to the "contested content" issues, less people would vote for Classic through PoP than you think; although certainly players who have the mentality towards locking other players out of content would vote for that era. Poll could even spur them towards starting a TLP server that starts with GoD and starts players off with full PoP AA and appropriate gear.
Don't necessarily agree with the OP from the guy you are commenting. And I agree that TSS was a good expansion but you are wrong that most of the population thinks that TSS was the last expansion that gave us what we needed. Shaking things up now and then is good but no way we need more 1-75 content currently. Its a complete waste of time and effort unless we somehow have more money and devs thrown at EQ so that we can get a lot of current content in addition to that newbie path. There are countless paths to level 1-75 in from like 10 expansions already. There is crap left at high level even at a casual play rate after a few months if even that. Most of us just want way more high level current content for live again. We pretty much are begging for a return to something like UF, HoT, VoA or RoF even if its split in 2 to be manageable by the team thats left. We don't want TDS or CoTF as far as the size and scale of the content available and I don't want 20 heroic adventures claiming to be fulfilling.
TSS was the last expansion that had content for all levels, actual quest lines that arent kill X number of mobs and turn in Y, content that carries over from previous expansions and actual challenging content for everything from new characters just rolling to raid geared players (you had to kite around AG/FC mobs until they were slowed because they would 2round your tanks pre-nerf). Having no early level content is essentially saying you dont want any new playerbase for the expansion, meaning this is where they killed off trying to get new players and are just working on retention.
TSS was also the last expansion being worked on before the TLP's really got going (it was probably already well under way on the art side by the time TLP1.0 launched if I'm remembering my timelines correctly) - they've quoted the TLPs as a rousing success for getting people back to the game - sensibly the success of the TLPs is why they stopped doing low level zones in major expansions. Less work and they accomplish the same goal.
Am I actually hearing a suggestion that there might be more brand new players starting at level 1 because a new expansion has content starting at level 1? Progression servers and heroic characters are probably the only real ways to bring in new players, and in reality just bring back old players.
Back when around that era, when there was still the opportunity for it yes. But its been over half a decade since that ship has sailed, where all thats been produced is highend content for that long, there is no ability to get new players to come back to the game without knowing someone who plays it in the firstplace.
The only new players ive seen from either have been someones girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife who has already played eq. Most of the people from TLP's have already played EQ before, barely any people come to, muchless continue to play for a longtime that dont have some experience with eq already.
And how does new L1 zones encourage new players any more than the existing ones? For them even Qeynos is brand new. Giving them 50 options instead of 30 doesn't really make it any more appealing.
EQ needs a true successor, one with updated graphics, substantially similar mechanics, but tons of improvements and fixes.One that would appeal to the old EQ playerbase without alienating new players with hell levels and corpse runs. Kind of like how EQ became after Omens/DoDH era, but start that way from level one. That is what is needed to keep the existing playerbase/pursue retired EQers and also bring in, but because it wouldn't be the best chance for WoW/LoL big bucks, it will never happen.
