Views from a Player not Leaving (mildly longwinded)

I am finding myself disgruntled, somewhat emotional, and having a sense of dread.

EQ has been my home for 15 years; it’s my escape from the real world. I had hoped that TBS would be a turning point from CotF’s staggered releases.

The reality of the situation is an understaffed group of developers, working on a dinosaur program, were given an impossible task, create a full expansion in a time window not possible.

So we the players are not buying the expansion, cancelling accounts, beating up the dev’s on the boards, etc. I have a personal interest to see EQ succeed. Someone asked should EQ never stop, and personally I would like EQ to be running for another 15 to 20 years. Is that a reality? Probably not, but again, I’m not reacting logically, but emotionally on this topic.

I did purchase 4 new expansions, and have my 4 gold accounts (might have 5 actually but I just can’t seem to get myself excited to play the warrior). So the crux of the situation is, its apparent that a fairly large group of players are not happy at the moment with a variety of things. Can it be fixed? I have seen more Dev involvement in the open boards in years, so I am thinking that our Devs are willing to invest themselves to make it work, can we the player base return to pragmatic review of what changes are necessary from our perspective?

From my standpoint, I’m going to work on being more rational, pull myself out of being negative and try to be a part of the solution, not the demise to the game I enjoy. Sure there are players that will say we gave them that chance before and Smed said it would be different etc, but the reality of the situation we didn’t even need hindsight to understand it wouldn’t have worked.

So I am going to give EQ some time to right the ship. Some of the best raids I have attended have been near wipes that we just didn’t give up and persevered . Instead of calling EQ a wipe, I’m going to dig my heals in and do what I can as a player to make this a better game. This isn’t to say that as a customer I think the actions, investment and past communications I agree with, frankly I think they are abysmal, however, I think there can be positive changes going forward if we are reasonable. The blame game is boring, isn’t going to accomplish much, what is important how do we fix what is wrong now, and were we go from here.



Ruven

I share your same concern about the longevity of EQ.
We always hear the complaints, threats, and hyperbole every time SOE does dumb stuff with this game. This time it's different:

I have 8 accounts of which only one has this expansion. I hope to buy the expansion for some of them but simply can't with the current state of the changes made with TDS. Many of the people I know in game are telling me that they too haven't bought any expacs for their alts yet. Threatening to do it before release was one thing. Seeing it actually happen is another. I fear this will indeed deprive EQ of revenues it was expecting. This could be a major problem going forward.

One thing I know for sure: Consumers are rational.
The vote with their wallets.

Great post, I like that you are still trying to support Everquest and be positive about it.

Only thing I would add it just my opinion, which I am sure is not like anyone else...

I don't want new expansions. I want less expansions and graphics that don't feel floaty. I was trying to kill the new crushbone orcs and the way the move and look is like they are in space or something. It's not the classic jerky quickness I grew to love.

I would be willing to pay even 50 bucks a month on one account if we saw some back to basics instead of silly expansions left and right.

AGAIN, just MY opinion. I realize I have a strong, different opinion and some people love the new spacey graphics and zones. /sigh.

There is nothing wrong with EverQuest. There is something wrong with us. Our expectations have changed. When, once, we were satisfied with simply connecting with other people via this incredible 3-D world filled with things to do with those people. It's almost Craven to think EQ should fit into some mold we've come to visualize for ourselves, our playstyle, our group makeup, the number of friends we have, or even the guild we are members of. During expansions we are most reminded that, truly, this is not our game.

I am reminded of a quote from a paper I wrote on existentialism and how the illusion of control impacts self-awareness. The quote is from (I believe) an early 20th century English philosopher: "We are symptoms of the kind of system in which we are living. And our presence in the system tells us about the system."

In other words our responses shape their responses which shape our responses. We can choose to reflect on our preconceptions in a fashion conducive to change, or react emotionally which often yields fewer long-term benefits.

If they hadn't recently crippled the game with unnecessary nerfs, I might be inclined to agree with you, and it's human nature to complain rather than be grateful; however

This time it's completely different. People are not whining and complaining to pass their boring days. There are serious issues that are causing dire consequences to the player bases' fun. Undo the recent nerfs, put the TeDiouS xp where it should be, and I guarantee that the complaints will drop exponentially overnight.

We don't like change, but I'm with you. Just bought it for my main, my 2 alts accounts will wait one or two weeks, but they will get it also.

Ruven, what is there to do?


I can promise you that 99% of the people whove left in the last 5 years want EQ to survive for years to come, but what else is there to do?

We've complained and begged for something to be done. Did you see what Smedley(sp) said earlier this year? Did you see what has happened since then?

They know we're pissed. They know good people have left. ( when I say good people I mean people who devoted alot of their spare time in the game, finding bugs, how to fix them, newer content, class balancing, etc.) They know we're upset with the direction they have taken.

Sooner or later people get wise and do the only thing left to do, that is stop giving their money to people who say one thing then do another.

I wish there was something that could be done on our end other than to quit. Is that going to help EverQuest? I dont think so. If the higher ups thought EQ had a future, people wouldnt be quitting because this game would be thriving. They dont think EQ has a future worth investing in, thats why its where it is.

Maybe those at SoE think that due to lower sales in PC's , high sales in tablets & the huge console market, that there is no future in a game like EverQuest. I really dont know what theyre thinking. I do know that its not in any way positive or advantageous to the future of EQ.

The only thing that I think that can help EverQuest is for it to bought by someone who has an interest in its future. Until that happens, there is nothing that can stop its demise.

If there is something I can do to change EQ's course, please clue me in so I can get busy doing it.

This is my frustration. Less income means less development means less income means... I don't want to contribute to that death spiral. I want to give Sony my money and I want to have fun playing this game with my friends. But my choices in that direction are limited: give them my money, or do not.

The only other aspects I can think of to assist with keeping the game afloat is providing feedback for the class I am knowledgeable in, and reporting bugs to the best of my ability. I admit that is a narrow scope and this is a big game, but we (hopefully) still have a lot of players who can cover the other directions.

In the meantime, it's awfully lonely sitting in PoK at max XP and max AA, watching the contents of my guild window and friend list working on progression in the new zones or grinding out new levels in CotF. My Alcohol Tolerance (in-game, thank you) is nearing its max. I guess we'll see how long Bind Wound takes...

I look at it as they had very little time between the final staggered release of CotF and TDS to make a gigantic 1 year expansion and they did the best they could in that short window.

Moving forward, they have an entire year now to start working on the next expansion and seeing what they did with TDS in such a small window, I am expecting the next expansion to be epic.

I do like the positive tone of this thread and think it would be great if we all did our best to help contribute for the future of EQ of what makes this game fun to play? For me it is because it is not the cookie cutter MMO that WoW has made so many of the others try to be. I used to enjoy the fact that so many older quests might not be discovered. I would like to see some achievements for the next expansion have ??? on them. Not hidden ones for progression but hidden ones with cool rewards. While the secret of a tearstained letter and piecing together history was a nice puzzle and lore, a simple checkmark was kind of bleh.

Yeah, don't expect that do anything to lessen your frustration with the game or its direction.

I completely agree with the developer time issue. After SOE switched to staggered release, there was no way that they could switch back to a regular 'release it all at once' annual expansion without either a) getting a significant (if temporary) infusion of development support, or b) releasing an expansion with relatively limited content. And the likelihood of SOE selecting option a) was rather low.

So we get limited content; I'm OK with that. Well, not 'ok,' but I understand reality. I'm OK rolling with that for a situation like this. Understand that those folks who generally blow through all content during the course of a year may not be OK with it, but I would guess that most others would at least tolerate it for a year.

The recent nerfs on top of a limited expansion, however - particularly the arguments being used to justify the nerfs (assuming they represent the developers' actual thinking) . . . if this is what "right looks like" to the developers . . . it just doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the direction of the team. I was hoping the repeated swinging of the nerf bat over the last nine months was an anomaly, but now I am kind of wondering if that is the new 'vision.'

I'd like to think that they next expansion will be 'epic.' They should have the time to come up with something the size of COTF or VOA, which if not 'epic,' were still ok. (I wasn't fond of the Alaran language deal, but other than that I pretty much enjoyed VOA.) While I am a lot more optimistic about the size of the next expansion, I just wonder what other major changes they will make to the game.

Ruven - I'm in same boat you are, other than that I haven't purchased the expansion yet. I've logged on my bazaar toons and that's about it.

In terms of "being more rational" - since you have already bought the expansions, go flip HAs to grind out 105 before SOE nerfs those too. You'll need them anyway, and depending on what SOE does mob exp there might take a major cut soon

Personally, I'm having more fun in this expansion than I have since PoP, not including some of the side runs at PoWar (which were also just as fun).

All of the "easy god mode" buttons are gone, and I actually feel accomplishment at the end of a game session for working hard to earn that 20% of a level...and no, that's not sarcasm.

Holding aggro over a raid zerker and an overly aggressive boxed wizard is keeping me on my toes, instead of the "hit 3 aggro discs and walk away" tanking I've been doing for the last 6 months. Sitting on the edge of my seat wondering if that next nuke is gonna yank the mob from my grasp...should I roar? shout? insult? nope..whew, we're good.

Exploring is a little scary...not terribly so, but kind of like trying to run to Chardok and hoping you don't lose invis or get spotted by one of those skellies.

HA's (the harder ones obviously) are a challenge again--I actually had to leave and get rebuffed after dying to a stupid mistake during one of the cooper missions the other day, because red to 103 means yep, it's actually RED in capital letters, instead of "watered down to almost rose colored" red.

Spotted a named tonight in the middle of Tempest Temple, and my group actually sat there and thought about the best approach to clearing the trash before going for it because of at least a touch of respect for the zone difficulty..turns out we could have roflstomped it just like most other named we've run in to in the last year+, but hey, we had to at least give it some planning this time, just in case.

In the last several years EQ has seemed to attract, and/or grow players that can only have fun when completely dominating the game--just look at all the posts about re-balancing being called "nerfs", and "I'm gonna /ragequit cause I can't fight 5 mobs at the same time anymore!"...the fun in EQ has always been the difficulty to me, and in overcoming challenges--not racing to max power so I could watch TV while grinding Gribble all day.

I have been under the impression for a while now that the devs have been entirely removed from the decision-making loop regarding EverQuest. I refuse to believe the crap being shoved out recently, along with some changes, is precisely what the front line developers want to give you.

Don't get your hopes up. This game will not get any better. So the question that you need to be asking yourself, is that is this the rock bottom? Can EverQuest get any worse? Because if anything, that is where the game is headed.

So you have two choices:
1) Talk with your wallet and retire like a lot are doing.
2) Shut up and continue paying and playing and putting up with it. You know what is coming expansion to expansion now. So don't act surprised the next time that this game shoves out another poor expansion release because you know its coming.

If TDS is a bridge to the "next big epic expansion", then its most likely going to be too little too late. So many people are retiring and giving up on this game. TDS was truly the last straw for a lot of folks. Can you blame them for retiring? Retiring looks like the smart thing to do right now honestly. TDS was finally that "easy out" a lot of people were looking for and they took it. Some big name people within their class communities are hanging it up. People who have helped mold certain classes via parses and whatnot. TDS needed to be a slam dunk for EQs immediate future success and fact is, it wasn't. TDS is a disaster and that is putting it lightly. The damage is already done and its irreversible. The already tiny player base got even tinier. So a "big epic expansion" will feel mighty empty if in fact, this game even gets another "big epic expansion".

Ive been preaching it over and over again. This game wont get any better. I don't know WHY folks keep getting their hopes up. Do some of you really believe that EQ might get another epic highly in depth Planes of Power, or something similar in scope? Not happening. What you got in TDS and COTF is what you're getting going forward. You just better hope that this isn't the rock bottom for this game. In fact, that is a question that Smedley and the devs need to be asked. Is THIS the rock bottom? Or can and will it get worse? Because if it does get worse, and all signs point toward that it might, then TDS and COTF might seem like "big epic expansions" compared to what is coming in the future.

I am also predicting that server merge discussions will crop up around here by the time next summer rolls around. Only this time, the server merge discussions will finally be very warranted. Honestly, its about that time for another set of merges anyway if you look at the past merge timelines.

The EQ community nerd-rages when each expansion for the last few years have all been crap. Why? You knew what was coming, so why act surprised for? Lower your expectations. Be realistic. Stop hanging on to the past. This game is old and ugly. It'll never be the same again. Get over it or retire.

If they do some rotating zone revamps and more manned events I would bet my account you would see more retention and more returning players. People want fun, they don't want a stagnant game that only seems to nerf for longevity instead of buffing for fun.

There are soooo many zones in this game, why are they not using them.

I certainly don't blame anyone for deciding to retire. I haven't bought the expac myself yet - first time I haven't bought one as soon as it came out except for those years when I've been deployed - and while not retiring yet, I am a lot closer to that "last straw."

I also don't expect anything 'epic' - something like VOA or COTF is more representative of what they could put out with a one year expansion, IMO. I guess I didn't phrase it well, but while I would like to think the next expansion will be epic, I don't expect it to be.

And, truth be told, I am ok with something the size of COTF or VOA if we aren't getting a level increase every year. I'm not a bleeding edge player; I have limited playtime compared to many and plenty of content still left to explore. Setting exp issues aside for a. I think I could handle the lack of hunting grounds in TDS - as long as the next expansion didn't raise the level cap, or if it did was at least VOA size. (Else we really do start running out of places to hunt.) Though I do understand that for those guilds/players who are bleeding edge, who typically beat all content within a few months of release, the size of TDS is unacceptably small.

For me it's really the direction the game seems to be taking in terms of the constant, repeated nerfs. Changing mechanics that have been ok for years (if not over a decade), with little warning, little explanation, and seemingly even less reasoning behind it. Putting out stuff with easily exploitable holes, or stuff that makes me go /boggle at how they thought it was worth developer time. (I'd be curious to see the stats on what Marsha has sold on each server. Then this experience nerf, which hits directly at the type of play that I like to engage in (not the HA's, but after leveling working off things on my bucket list in older content), and does squat to achieve the stated goal. And the new zones - did they forget to put the ZEM in? Or is this their 'vision'?

So for me it's not so much the size of the expansions (though bigger would be better, and I can see how that is a huge issue for a portion of the player base), but rather the way the developers seem to be heck-bent on radically changing the style of play - and not for the better.

I agree with you - the player base has already taken a hit from this, and the bleeding is going to just keep growing if they stay with the current direction. If actions over the next few months indicate that this is the 'vision,' then I'll be joining that exodus.

I don't agree with you here.

They moved to 1 year expansion cycles to offer players more content (quote), which has not been the case for quite a few expansions now.

So even with a skeleton crew of devs, they could have come up with something better. 70% of the expansion is cookie cutter (spells, AA, discs, itemization, monster models) , so what did they do for 6-8 months. And then they had the shortest beta (6 weeks) which makes me assume they had hardly anything done besides the zones before that time, if you stepped into beta and did anything, you would have noticed how poorly it was put together, they were doing progression tasks 2 weeks before launch! No idea what management is doing, or what the devs have been doing, which is the big issue, cause some people need to be let go or a lot of new people need to be hired. The last expansion that was somewhat decent in my mind was VoA, even though it had some cookie cutter stuff as well, atleast they didn't cookie cutter the zones that expansion. You'd have to go back all the way to back Underfoot to think of a expansion that didn't have something regurgitated out the same way.

This time around I guess a lot of people noticed and weren't willing to accept it. Only if we could see their fiscal earnings. I'm sure they came out in the positive, but upper management is going to start noticing at some point.

i for one am just waiting for my subscription to run out. if the nerfs are not fixed by then, then I will not re-up my account and let over 15 years of play go away. I have not purchased the expansion nor will I. there is nothing in there that interests me. the whole thing was designed for the top end players. read the parses that people are posting. my sk with t2 forsaken gear (that I had to buy with marks from the HA's) is not even close to those outputs.

when the game was started I can remember sitting in the over there staring at my spell book regaining mana until I hit 35. and at that time the zone was packed. the walls between frontier and skyfire would be packed with groups all trying to pull a mob before another group saw it.

doing a corpse run when you died was interesting. you had to cross a few zones, get on a boat, dodge the goons and get your corpse. let alone that when the game first started there was no xp recovery when rezzed.

I have seen this game go from being something for everyone. you could solo. you could group. and having to schedule a raid for a non-instant zones on the forums so that guilds did not get in each others way. now it is only designed for the high end player. if you are not raid geared, good luck. if you are not living in the game 24/7 good luck. I have complained for years that there has not been any real content that a lone player could go out have fun with while waiting for their regular group mates to log in.

my normal group(s) used to be able to field 2 full groups and we would work together and swap toons in out of groups as the need may arise. now it has dwindled down to my guild leader and me. CotF expansion was the biggest reason for 7 of them.

only one of the regulars I grouped with liked to raid, so we do not get top end gear, but we were always able to get to the high end group gear with a lot of work and a few trial and errors. this changed with Forsaken, no matter how hard we tried with the combinations of our group, there were several named that we could not bring down. so our numbers started dwindling. we are now 2 that will become none. my guild leader has finally said she has had enough of this and is going to wait to see what is going to happen in the next few months then probably cancel her account like I am.

if the content returns to group or solo content I will stay and I am sure she will also. but the developers do not listen to the mid level players just the high end players so I do not expect to be here in a few months.

To the part I bolded, they don't listen to a lot of the higher end players either. I'm not sure what direction they're trying to go with all the changes. I know that a lot of people seem to be upset with what we're seeing as players.

Maybe it'll all make sense in the long run. I just worry that there may not be a lot of people still playing by then.