UFC 249 700,000 buys and how it relates to Progression servers.

So UFC 249 just cleared 46million dollars (59.99 standard 69.99 HD..so I am going on the low end) for their pay-per-view event. That was over 700,000 PPV buys (not all sales are in yet). If you know anything about the UFC this fight card was extremely weak in terms of title fights and named fighters that bring in the big money. There was only one title fight and it was for the least performing weight class in the UFC. People who weren't even UFC fans were buying it (my neighbor for example) just because they wanted to see some sports because they were losing their mind at home. Dana white basically just extended the life of the UFC by not having to make hard choices on cutting fights, employees, ect because he bucked the trend and put on a fight during the "state-at-home".

How this relates to EQ is simple. The system in place (permissions to make financial decision between DBG/DPG) or who ever is overall in charge of executed level decisions needs to be removed or re-positioned. If Aradune (and I am playing on Rizlona so no bias here) was released back in March the influx of money would of just been better. They are still going to make a profit by pushing up the date from Mid June to end of May but they have lost profit none the less. With June looking like the target date for the country to start to full open (just projections not firm) and people having to be concerned with holding onto their money because of fear of losing their jobs, paying for Everquest is not the forfront of everyone's mind. I have a friend who wants to play EQ and I am paying for their account because they worry about funds. Obviously if its between EQ and real bills, the choice for real bills is simple but the community here is strong and I am going to assume that I am not the only one paying for a friends account during this crisis to make sure they can play with their friends.

With that said, it's not the job of the person in charge who is suppose to be maximizing profits for EQ to care or worry about that. Their job is to make the game money. If at least one of the servers were released in March the amount of bags, exp pots, ect would be more then it is going to be now. On top of that DPG could of taken advantage of the Memorial Day weekend by having a sale what would of affected the two new servers (XP buff also means more xp pots for sale because people can speed through the experience). Dropping Rizlona right before memorial day weekend would of been a second wave of money. People who didn't like Aradune as much as they thought would rethink their process and start up on Rizlona instead, increasing the money they spend (maybe on both servers vice one). The server merge on the 20th is important but did not matter as much. Gm support could of been dealt with internally until people were hired and trained. For people who say that they needed to free up a server to make a new one, you are just wrong. DPG have not used "all" their available servers, they must keep some on hand due to possible critical hardware failures. They had enough to bring up 1 server.

I just think it's pretty clear that DPG/DBG need to address whoever is in charge of making Everquest as profitable as possible. There were dozens of signs that people were ready to spend all their money on EQ during the downtime. The fact that zero action was taken and to top it off making BOTH servers PoP locked at first but changing it later shows me that whoever is making the profit decisions for EQ is just in over their head or guessing.

We are all thankful for the servers but anyone with any type of business background knows that there were multiple failures in the decision making process for these servers. Releasing them at the same time (both servers are have been something people have been begging for...so splitting the community on them..is bad business), Pop lock, and releasing them so late. Three flawed business decisions that could of been avoided.

My suggestion is simple. Just be upfront next time. Tell us your plan, get real feedback, then make a decision. Your focus group actually gave you a ton of solid advice and you ignored most of it. Stop ignoring your players. You only pay attention to us when we spam the forums for days after a bad decision. I PROMISE you, people will put more money in your pocket if they think you are giving them everything they asked for.

No one during the quarantine is dying to play EQ that wasn't already wanting to play; especially not 700,000 people. Also leading in with someone needing to be fired or re-positioned because you disagree with a decision is lame.

This is why it's important to fund education, yanks. You've got your people in the street using the wrastlin channel as an example of how to do business.

I don’t know man. Car sales are down which doesn’t bode fell for DPG.

Not only that - the example makes no sense.

Discussing this from the standpoint of us caring about their profit is odd.

It is a bit puzzling why the servers took so long, and i'm also sad that they are coming right at the end of the shutdown.

The last paragraph is good, and they really need to take it to heart. This is the third server announcement in a row that seems to be completely divorced from what players want. The mangler fiasco first, then miragul, then Riz/ara pop lock.

Almost no one was asking for any of this. Except for Selo, selo was a great idea and I hope we do something like it again someday with a couple adjustments. But, of course, they thought selo was going to be the casual server at first, which is just a huge question mark.

One of their devs seems to think we care about weather we can merge into other servers later? It was like I entered the twilight zone reading that comment.

I don't fully understand what the problem is, but whatever individuals or groups are making TLP decisions seem out of touch.

I give full credit to them for listening after the fact, and fixing mangler and riz/ara. That is a start. The next step is to involve us early next time.

Even WoW realized this, they purposefully put a major feature of their upcoming expansion (the thorghast tower) on the alpha as early as possible, so they could test and gather feedback early. Last expansion they had several features that were added very late in beta and barely tested, and they all had huge flaws.

No one said 700k would play EQ. I was stating that because people are sitting at home that sales for online streaming was WAY up over a standard UFC match with a comparable card line up for a PPV. People are sitting at home looking for something to do. If you guys can't understand the comparison that's fine. I wasn't targeting "you" as the audience anyways. As for someone being fired or re-positioned, this isn't some nurse who has been with a hospital for 20 years that made a "bad" choice. I also never said FIRED. I said removed or reposition. There are plenty of companies that relocate people. EQ has been in a down-spin with decisions for a very long time, and it's almost always the same "type" of decisions. Take that how you want.

Removed implies no longer being an employee, not sure how you can think anyone would not assume that meaning, especially in the context of how critical you are being about their presumed actions.

Except there's no live sports to compete against, so your comparison falls apart.

So the multi-dozen post about how people are wanting a TLP early was just "noise". The same for sports fans just waiting for the sports to come back? No tie-in at all?

O Skuz, love these chats. Instant anger and just bashing, can never see both sides of things. Must be a joy to play with.

I thought the UFC 249 analogy would lead into a call for a TLP PvP server.

I am clearly disappointed.

These post were sad in March, when you already have a release date in a couple weeks it’s just desperate.

You probably could have made a Krono in the then you spent writing this up to better position yourself on the new server.

Trust me all the people sitting at home with nothing to do just dying to play EQ, will be at the TLP launch like they always where. That’s where they make their money to stay at home and play EQ!

(Also not that it matters but DPG doesn’t own servers, they don’t keep servers on hand. The rent space from a company and buy as much or as little as they want.)

I don't need krono or money. I don't farm krono. If you look at my history the only thing I care about is the longevity of the game. Just because we "got" what we wanted doesn't mean it wasn't tooth and nail to get it. When is it ok to bring up the fact that things are ran poorly? Miragul was dropped ..when it was a mirror image of Phinny. Phinny was at the same point as Miragul. It would of been better to give Phinny heroic characters instead of making a dead server that is now Miragul. How about overseer? How about Tier raids being released and botched multiple times? How about server instability? How about ignoring most of the focus group and making the two new servers pop lock? How about releasing two servers at once instead of one now..and one in 6 months from now (would of be much more profitable then releasing two servers at the same time without the player base to support it.

When will it be "ok" to call out mistake after mistake and demand change so it doesn't happen in the future? Is it really that hard to be transparent with the player base? They release server information and disappear for 6 weeks and then come out of left field with stuff no one asked for. Yeah it's fixed for now...but what about next time? Have they shown or done anything to prove next time will be different? Bank of America make a huge mistake and lost a lot of peoples trust. They spend the next year proving things would be different. That's progress. With DBG we are just waiting for the next "shocking" surprise.

Well I will admit that was how I saw it, so there's at least 2 people who thought you meant fired, maybe choose your words more carefully, and let's face it, you hardly have a shortage of them....

imagine stressing how you are going to afford to play a f2p game with a optional subscription

As an MMA fan a number of things were going on, no live audience to start but more importantly no sports bars. Lots of fans like to watch at sports bars and when you combine that with the fact that there was also a lack of parties where large groups of friends can get together so that drove PPV buys

UFC 249 was 64.99 PPV with 84.98 if you get the bundle that comes with ESPN+. Just saying, you're wrong in your first sentence; that is never a good sign.

Good point, hard to beat watching sports live or at a bar with a bunch of friends or other fans, totally different to watching at home by your sad self.