Why so few new players?

Ah, CoE. Yeah, I think the one before that (SF?) was the last time I bought an expansion. Just glad the CoE content is available now.

Uwk

Amen, absolutely (stupid is highly resistant to being fixed ;->); though I agree in that "Free to Play" was an unfortunate term. WoW was more accurate with their original offering in that line: "Trial Basis." If you wanted to get past a certain level, or a certain number of days/weeks, you became a subscriber (there may have been a character creation limit, too, so you wouldn't be running about with 50 level 19 characters, for instance, and never getting to level 20).

I will say, though, that the Silver accounts (free Bronze kicked up via a one-time $5 "unlock") enabled me to make a lot more characters just to visit houses with, so for the most part, I don't mind the lack of features...though if I ever win the lottery, I'll probably make all 4 of those accounts into Gold ones. ;->

And yes, the game has changed drastically since I got into it in 2006, even, and a lot of that was for the better (no idiotic sub-combines any more [gods, I hated those!]; anyone can Broker items from their house, not just one character per server [or was it per account?], and if you want someone to come to your house to avoid the fee, you don't have to be logged in and only in your house 24/7; travel between places on the planet is infinitely easier and faster (casual players don't like having to spend gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of time, let alone in-game money, hoping there's a Druid or Mage logged in that has the travel ability and is willing to accommodate you for less than everything you have), as is getting around in most zones, thanks to the travel amenities within each; Guild Halls; Prestige Houses; mailing items and Brokering from wherever, etc., etc., etc. We need more publicity here. ;->

Uwk
who has absolutely no issues whatsoever with true soloing; just because it's a MMO doesn't mean every player has to be interacted with constantly (kudos to all the 3rd party information sites!) :-/

Im new! game is beeing downloaded right now as i write this Or i lie a little bit, i played the game a little around 2008, but dont remember much as it was not on my own pc. A friend convinced me to try out WoW yesterday, so i finally did, played like 10 lvls. Then i thought: This reminds me of something... better... hmm... Asap today after work, i was getting the game from steam, and if i find it as exiting as i remember, i will buy the last expansion!

Gangerolf

Just have to make another reply before game loads, I remember only one place ingame, a cave outside starting city wich were full of gnolls, that i grinded for days before beeing able to clear it Black-something? is it still just as hard?
i do hope so!

Gangerolf

Yeah as someone who absolutely hated this game at launch, Ive really enjoyed the changes to the game every time I have come back over the years. Especially now with the addition of mercenaries. But none of these were advertised, most of the stuff I have learned about the game since coming back has been through trial-and-error, with a small amount of word-of-mouth. The wikis/ZAM are very helpful but really lacking on current mechanics/information, and overall I find it hard to find information about this game that is incredibly accessible with Wow through their own website and countless fansites, and other games such as FF14 (last mmo Ive played recently).

I think a game-guide for classes would be a great start for sony to put on their own website, but obviously that costs money.

tl;dr if I didn't like aspects of EQ2 enough to come back over the years and see the changes that were a great surprise; I doubt that I would have found out about them. New players don't stand much of a chance of finding out about itother than the F2P games section on steam imo.

Blackburrow? It is slightly easier than breathing at this point.

Depends on your character level. If everything in there is white->yellow to you, it'll be a challenge still. ;->

Uwk

See my initial really long post... :-/

Uwk
who wonders if SONY really wants to advertise this (heck, haven't even seen many ads for Landmark any more)...

The real reason, we don't get many new players, is that EQ2 is such a mature game that it requires a certain level of intelligence to play the game. If you have poor reading comprehension skills, this is a bad game to play.

Many of the EQ2 quests are torturous to understand and complete. I find I have to consult Wiki or ZAM for about 1/3 of the quests I do because of poor quest directions or no directions at all.

So, besides needing good reading comprehension skills, you also have to be a skilled researcher. Sometime directions on one site are sparse so you have to go to several sources to get a complete picture of how to complete a quest line.

We also have a society that expects instant gratification. Some quest lines go on and on for what seems to be forever before you finally get a decent reward. Many younger players don't have the delayed-gratification skills to deal with linked quests.

SOE has tried to make the game more youth oriented by adding video-game components that require a lot of hand-and-eye coordination. They've also added more quests that are no-brainers--even for great-grandmothers like me.

I suspect SOE has found a nice balance between adding new content and brining in an acceptable level of return on investment. I'm sure they love to have new players come into the game but don't depend on them for the majority of their income.

EQ2 has an addicted core of players that are willing to spend obscene amounts of money to play the game they love. I freely admit I'm one such player and have passed up many offers to play other, newer games, with friends who found EQ2 too taxing on the time, brain and/or wallet.

I am not one of the players who longs for the good ole days. I love all the amenities we have in EQ2. I love the fact that it is much easier to solo EQ2 now than ever before.

There are servers with raiding guilds, for those who want to raid. Antonia-Bayle probably has the best raiding guilds.

There are also servers more suited to solo players. Test is great for solo players who want to join laid-back guilds.

EQ2 has something for just about anyone who is interested in online gaming in a fantasy world. SOE has reached an equilibrium point, between cost and return-on-investment, so that they don't need to spend money advertising except through social media. As they say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

All of which are true; one reason I'm still here, despite my frequent criticism, is that this is still one of the very best games out there (not just MMOs, though that's the only online genre I've played [unless you count...Facebook games {hey, my husband's niece used to be an artist there...}]). City of Heroes was cool, but primarily for character creation; once you got in past the tutorial zone (for those who wonder what that looked like, check out the cityscape of The Incredibles' tangle with Syndrome and his Omnidroid. Lifted!), you had only THREE quests ("missions") you could have at a time, and they were either "fight bad guys on the street," "fight bad guys in a building," or "fight bad guys in an instance zone." Yawn. Got even worse once they introduced (and FORCED) PvP on everyone, and NCSoft spoilered the original creators by not giving/selling them back their game when it folded ("If we can't have it, neither can you. Nyahh."). :-/

WoW could be fun, had good combat (as might be expected, though I hated the "stunned from behind" than anyone could do against you), and I LIKED the artwork (no Appearance slots, though; waahh )! What I didn't like was primarily the in-game economy (which SUCKED, but, I think, was because they allotted 50 [ah...50...sigh] character slots for each player, max [10/server max], and they didn't expect such a huge initial turn-out) and the community, though I had good luck with my guildies. The "out-game economy" (their own "Marketplace") was incredible, though; well do I recall unlocking an incredibly cool mount for $25...that enabled any character I created to have an incredibly cool mount automatically. ;->

I even tried EQ1 initially, and did not like it much at all; two big sticking points for me were a) DYING of thirst and starvation, literally, before reaching 10th level if you ran out of food/drink (and the whole stack you were given only lasted a couple of hours RL time, tops, and you didn't have the option of turning off consumption; if each half hour- or hour-long food or drink represented 3-6 hours in Norrath and you had 5 of them each, why would you cease to die after 10th? not "realistic" by any means), and b) the major hate on soloers. So I bailed on that pretty quickly, even with having help from my friends, and went to WoW (I put up with WoW's failings until Cataclysm; the storyline was the only thing helping me put up with the community, and they didn't just change it, they destroyed it, imho [if they'd done a "WoW2" and left the original storyline alone, I might still be there as well as here]). My EQ1 buddies then talked me into trying EQ2 in 2006, and I've been here ever since, digging all the options available for all sorts of play styles...and yeah, for the most part, it's only gotten better over the years. ;->

Uwk

no one carries the expansion SoE does not sell boxes for eq2 anymore. you can only get it online through download.

I happen to be lucky my walmart still sells the cards last I looked.

What Almee said, what drives people away from this game is, that quests are too hard to understand and no good directions. I can hardly count all those times, where I had to do something without looking it up on several sites.

Also If the game were harder like eq1's cruel and hard world, where grouping is mandatory, people just multibox. And that's 50% of player base, becoz people don't like rude players or taking the time helping out newbs or for whatever reason.

I see why wow is so successful. It caters to a younger audience which has more time to invest. Just look at the graphics and the overall easyness to understand and get along in the game.
Also WoW's combat and controlling is very well done. You have a tactical combat in PvP where you can CC, counter an opponent and lot's of abilities. And the BG is kinda like an fps, which by the time and even now is something most are comfortable with. Counterstrike, Call of duty and Battlefield.

Also WoW is an Epic game which even Smedley admits once, that it's a fun game. The reason why it's fun is also the humor which draws parrellels to real life's western culture. Just the dancing of the character was something many thought was fun. The Michael Jackson night elvish dance for example.

Also finally everyone can run WoW, and the graphics artist made WoW a fine game to look at. Gothic Fantasy it is really called, but it is kinda like cartoonish, with the baby green and baby blue colors, which doensn't scare any youngster away from game, and even parents rest easy on this part.

Most Eq2 players are in 20-30's year old range. I read that somewhere, so we are and older audience generally speaking. Some come from EQ1, which is a game that rests forever in the hall of fame of mmorpgs! Others have played this game as their first MMO and have played it for years, but most have liked EQ2 for what it is, and even what it was(cooperative game that was hard in the beginning).

We just can't as a downside of eq2, steer out of the fact that EQ2 run's horrible in ULTRA details on almost 90% of omps out there. Many have quad core cpu's running around 2,5ghz, which is no where near in enough to run EQ2 in ultra. EQ2 as most know runs on a single core.

Also the soundtrack of eq2 is sometimes just not very memorable in a possitive way. I kinda dig the eq1 soundtrack way better. It was oldschool midi fantasy an it was very good. EQ2 borows something from eq1 and puts it into earsredding orchestration and mix it with WOW.

One of the best parts of EQ2 is that you have more classes, but for a long time, some of these classes were not wanted alot for raids, were other classes took the spot. You just didn't have this in WoW ever. All classes are viable in some way in WoW.

Imo eq1 is alot better game, if only there weren't all those multiboxers, which imho ruins the fun for me.

I am most certainly gonna try EQNext, but Im not really expected a WoW killer here, and don't try to spread the word it will be a wow killer, cause alot of games have claimed that - and shut down earlier than eq1 and 2.

WoW is currently driving players away because guess what? No flying at max level...no flying from 90 - 100.. Not sure how that dust is gonna settle, but right now it's a huge fight, the PvPers love it, of course.

Getting back to EQTWO, not ONE. I suspect that what is needed is some good advertising. Been trying to drop that in Bliz forums when peeps are upset there... funny the threads just keep getting deleted, hehe.

Oh and if ANYONE starts a BL around now and is able to tame a warder furing Frostfell, they should look into the quest that lets you tame a red nosed reindeer....it's a bovid so no rudolph if you have a pink meat beast :-(

I am a new player here at EQ2. Actually, still installing. I've played LOTRO for the past 3 years (which was my first MMO). I had always heard good things about EQ2 and have decided to check it out. Looking for a part time place to play when I don't feel like playing LOTRO but still want to be on an MMO.

You've come to a good place! The only difficulties might be in learning curves; it's not terribly intuitive, but the 3rd party sites (http://eq2.zam.com and/or http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/EverQuest_2, among others [check Feldon's signature on these forums; he has much to say on EQ2U!]) and the helpful folks on the chat channels understand there are no such things as "dumb" questions, except perhaps the unasked ones.

Uwk
who's still pretty much a noob ;->

Yeah; a lack of intuitiveness hurts at times. :-/

I for one got really, really tired of the hating on soloers in EQ1. For those of us who play at odd hours, insisting that we better group or else is not satisfying, nor is having to put up with rude players. There's one gal's signature on these forums that goes something along the lines of, "I don't group for the same reasons I don't go grocery shopping with small children." She may have been referring to PUGs, but I'm usually leery these days of grouping with anyone but guildies. :-/

Ironically, it does "[cater] to a younger audience which has more time to invest," even though it has more intuitive quests. ;-> The one other thing I've always admired about WoW is that back when I was struggling with EQ2 on dial-up on a Win98 machine, I had NO issues whatsoever with WoW, and it ran like a dream on my WinXP laptop, which gakked all over the place with EQ2. I think by now, one could probably run the full WoW game on a smart phone... ;-> And yeah, there were many things I prefer about WoW combat.

That being said, I loathe PvP with a flaming passion, and got really, really tired of the continual emphasis on it on even non-PvP servers. My Spousal Unit stuck with it longer than I did (once Cataclysm came along, they lost me; I was hanging on for the storyline and the ease of play with the hardware, but the storyline was a huge part of it for me. If they'd made a second game of it, like WoW2 or something, I would've stuck with the old one and been happier), but when the Battle Grounds became a matter of, "Oh, we need to have even numbers on both sides now!" it ceased to be fun; it boiled back down to "We don't like you, you suck, so you're not on our team. Go sit on the bench, loozer."

True. I think our art department scares away lots of customers with their insistence on "uber-realism" (seriously, folks, if you want a "realistic" medieval/Renaissance setting...ew, bleagh... Trust me, you actually don't); there was a debate not too long ago about whether or not only top-end equipment owners should be "allowed" to play the game. At an SOE business meeting ... fortunately, it was shot down by the bean-counters, who were looking at a loss of customer base ... yay, beanies!

There's nothing wrong with grouping as a play style, or PvP, or raiding. There's also nothing wrong with soloing or moloing, or focusing just on crafting or decorating. One thing I love about this game is the options we've had; I don't want that going away any time soon. :-/

And FYI, there's a ton of EQ2 players way older than 30s... [/raising_paw] ;->

The Powers chose...poorly, back then. :-/

Even so, you don't need to be in Ultra mode to enjoy the game, especially not if you're raiding. ;->

Hey, if EQ2 lasts as long as EQ1 has, I'll be happy!

Uwk

I agree with what many of you are saying about WoW vs EQ2. What hasn't been mentioned is how clean and consistent WoW is at all levels of the game. There are some really funky things about EQ2. All games have developers that come and go during their lifecycle, but few show it as much as EQ2. Its like reading a book with different authors and styles for every chapter.

This actually was a very long post, but I realized it was more about why people leave than why there aren't more new people. I'll try to stay on topic

Another reason could be those who left did the lethal word-of-mouth thing to their friends, and wound up convincing people not to even try it (which is sad; folks should be more adventurous if they wanna play adventurers). I tried it because my friends word-of-mouthed me into it, and I've liked it ever since.

Uwk