Why isn’t Daybreak making Everquest more inclusive?

Imo leveling is most of what there is to do in original eq. People seem to constantly forget how little there is to do at kax level. You can easily be fully raid geared with less time invested then 1-50 takes barring like eye of veeshan bard quests. Maybe that is what some people view as the problem.

This makes sense and does not contradict itself. Back in 99 the average age of an EQ player was easily in the teens to early 20's. In 2018 the average age is late 30's early 40's. Back in 99 the average EQ player did NOT have a wife/husband and kids. In 2018, they do. In 99 the average hours worked at a job by an EQ player was < than the average hours worked at a job by an EQ player in 2018. And on and on and on.

DBG, if they want to do better business, should speed up the xp rate b/c they are catering to a DIFFERENT customer base than Verant was in 99. We have more money but less time. We all still love MMORPG's but our lives have changed drastically. Sure, there are some that are STILL living in their parents basement. There are some that NEVER got married or had kids. But if you honestly think there are as many highschoolers and college students playing EQ now as there was in 1999, I don't know what to tell you (except, you're wrong lol).

That is why his post makes perfect sense and if DBG wanted to make more money they would learn how to "sink the addiction hook" into 40 year olds which, by the way, is different than how you "sink the addiction hook" into an 18 year old. Personally, right now I find more pleasure typing on a free gaming forum, combating the terrible logic of a handful of people that are stuck in the past than I do playing the actual game (and paying $15/mo for that privilege or a krono which costs time or money). That small anecdote should tell you a lot. DBG is losing their EQ hook.

Look at companies like SuperCell and their insanely high grossing games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale etc. If you've followed their games from the beginning you would know they have made TONS and TONS of changes over the few years to keep people playing. And let me tell you, their balance sheets are a LOT healthier than DBG's.

Why the hell did I just spend 5 minutes typing this? lol. Back to being a parent

I don't agree that most original players were teens because the game required a monthly subscription that few parents were willing to pay for at that time. Internet connections were also less prevalent.

I don't think speeding experience up will help with burnout. What will happen, IMO, is that it'll take three weeks instead of six of the majority of the server to get to 50, and then they'll burn out as normal. If experience were fast enough that everyone got to 50 in a week, the population would boom for a week, shrink for a week and be dead forever after.

In my experience on playing on phinigel when it first launched, I think a large majority of my guild members were mostly 50 by the time Kunark hit. Then we got a small experience boost to the server and getting to 60 wasn't all that bad. Then you had Velious and Luclin to easily level alts and such if you had a max level character.

i did sleeper and vulak servers from classic,

I started late velious on LJ and other than not bonding with guildies as much i feel great about it.

I saw an ad on Facebook for Coirnav. I was REALLY surprised, feel like that's the first EQ ad I've seen in... like well over a decade.

People keep saying this, and it's simply not true. I was in my 20's then and nothing has changed from then to now. I work. Full time. I have a family. I can choose to spend my leisure time in EQ or elsewhere. Unless someone was 5 or under in 99, they didn't have unlimited time. If they were kids they had school, homework, chores, family commitments, maybe a paper route or part time job. I started when I was 11 delivering papers and worked through high school.

If there was someone that had nothing but time to play EQ it wasn't due to being a certain age.

You don't understand. From about age 19 to age 25, when I met my wife, I had unlimited time to play EQ. Yes, I had a job, 40 hours a week salaried, just like I do now. Otherwise, every waking moment that I wasn't at work, or driving to/from work, I could do what I wanted, for as long as I wanted, and nothing could interfere. And what I wanted was to play EQ, so I did.

Short of a power/internet outage, I was going to be playing. If I wanted to stay up way too late and call into work I could. Now, at 42, my 40 hour salaried job comes with a lot more responsibility. I'm likely to have to work late more often or go in on a weekend. I'm less likely to call in for any reason, let alone gaming.

Back then I'd skip my bowling league to play EQ, and eventually quit it because it took too much time away from EQ. That started the day I bought a Voodoo 3-3500 video card and had to decide between going home, installing it and seeing EQ on it, or bowling. Sorry team!

Back then I played EQ all evening, all weekend, and always later than I should have into any evening. Every single hour of that gaming was 100% commitment level. I could ignore everything else. Now I have kids and a wife, and anything they need has to come before the game. That means if I'm playing the game and they need something I have to be able to get up and deal with it.

It's not the job that is the problem, it's the rest of the time. Anybody with kids now, who didn't have kids then, is full of it if they think their life is the same now.

"Honey, you need to go pick up our son from the mall."
"Ok, no problem, the raid will be over in 3 hours."
"Ok, sounds good."

That wouldn't fly now, where as 20 years ago it wouldn't even be something that came up.

Ok, but that's an argument about leisure activities writ large. When I was self-employed and worked from home, I could run off to the mountains for a few days whenever I wanted. Now that I work in an office, I can't do that. When my SO needs something, I'm going to go take care of it whether I'm in Everquest or Counterstrike or DotA, or watching a movie or doing anything else.

Obsessive focus on any hobby, whether it's EQ or watching the NBA or making music, is impossible when you have children. That's not the fault of the hobby; it's just the tradeoff you make when you have kids.

This isn't really true, sensible people never had time for this game. In 1999 I graduated from college, and began my graduate degree. I was juggling school and my research duties (a lightweight job, really). I did not have the amount of time required to play this game, and I quit. I fired it back up again a few years later, out of school, unmarried, but still with a heavyweight job. I made it farther, actually levelled up to max and did a few PoP raids, only to quit when WoW came out and at the time promised almost the same thing, but in a reasonable format (only to jump the shark over PvP later on).

13 years later I am married with two kids and a serious job, I know I don't have time to play the EQ that used to be, and wouldn't have even resubscribed, except Agnarr alluded to an EQ I could play: fast experience so I could level up, instances/pickzones so I didn't have to stay up to 4am to battle the neckbeards. Agnarr was almost a good EQ experience, it had a few issue with "broken" epics for some classes, and the stupid raid zone key blockages. Of course Agnarr has the mind-bogglingly stupid choice of stopping at PoP, and was then further hammered by Coirnav jumping in.

The other EQ that people pine over, I will never have time for and won't even try. The only thing that time has changed is the variety and intensity of OTHER punishments I can opt to receive, usually for free, often they'll even pay me.

Im still laughing so hard at the people hyping up FV ruleset. I actually wish daybreak would do it just to read the tears of the people who asked for it flood the forums. FV server is not hype in anyway. Its actually one of the worst servers I have been on. You wanna make a new toon on FV? good luck literally lvl 5 defiant gear is thousands of plat. The raid atmosphere is a joke, its literally one giant family guild on that server and thats its. And even they hardly organize events for the guild. you think getting a camp on these servers is hard now? imagine if everything was tradeable lol.
RIP logic

The point is that when EQ launched, based on the age-range of it's players, most were at a time in their life where they could do what they wanted most of the time. Many of those players, those who remain or have come back, are no longer in that kind of situation. It's just an observation of reality.

I agree; I just don't think the hobby can accommodate itself to players who have children. Multiplayer games all have this problem to a greater or lesser extent.

Any game can appeal to a wide range of players, this one always has. I'm not going to say EQ could be made to accommodate a player with lots of small children, but any game that doesn't allow people AFK time or realistic interruptions is missing out on potential subs.

The key is balance. WoW decided it wanted to be a game that appealed to as many as possible, regardless of what kind of game they ended up with. EQ isn't like that, and it shouldn't be. It can provide challenging challenges, while still keeping the casuals entertained with less-challenging challenges. More money, more money, or something like that.

Most of the people I knew back in 99-02 had kids, they still played. It's still an argument that does not stand up. So YOU had more time back then. That wasn't the case for everyone. I have just as much time now as I had back then. You have as much as you want to dedicate to it, however you want to prioritize your life.
You don't ask a game to examine that and make decisions based off a thousands of people life styles.

Everybody I knew had more time. Very few were married, very few who were married had kids. The ones who had kids couldn't play like I could, which is the argument I've been making all along. It's just that now I'm the one with kids so I'm seeing it from the other side. I know literally one couple who had kids and played the way they wanted. They both played the game so there was some understanding there about what it took to play the game. That made it easier for whichever of them was online at the time to play the way they wanted. They didn't get a second PC until their kids were a little older, and by then they moved on to WoW.

We can play the anecdotal game all you want. The only married people I knew that could play as much as they wanted were couples who both played together. Any marriage where one person plays an MMO and the other doesn't will find it a much rockier road to travel. But it still doesn't change the fact that the people who are least likely to be married or have children are going to be 25 and under. Much of the original EQ launch population likely fits in that demographic.

So the game should change from what we all loved because we now have less time to play?? Thats a different game and if you want the game that caters to busy schedules play on a live server where exp rates are through the roof and aa are autogranted. There are plenty of people that have the playtime and/or understand that just because they changed the game shouldnt.

Live servers are even more unfriendly to people starting fresh than TLPs with slow experience. Even jumping in with a Heroic character puts someone just starting way, way behind the curve.

Not really, anyone with a time consuming hobby just needs to find a spouse who also has a time consuming hobby. My husband can spend hours airbrushing tiny models, and as a result he doesn't mind if I spend hours gaming. (he also games, but he doesn't play EQ.) Anyone who appreciates their personal time and marries someone who isn't just as independent is going to have a rough time. As someone stated earlier, this is just a general hobby thing, not a game specific thing.

I don't have as much time to ride my horse as I did when I was younger, nor do I have the same level of fitness I did back in high school. I don't expect the minimum commitment requirement of my hobby to change because I changed. My horse still requires a certain level of care and exercise. Since I can not commit the time I spend money for someone else to feed and exercise my horse on the days I can't. I don't accuse my trainer of trying to gouge me for money and demand that she make accommodations for the fact that I'm an adult with real life commitments.

In most hobbies, if you can't commit the time, there are options to pay money to make up for that lack. EQ is no different. If you can't keep up with EQ because you are casual you can buy EXP potions to help you along your way. Or buy krono to help you get gear. You commit either more time and less money, or more money and less time. I don't see a problem with that.