3 changes to win back my subscription

So in essence, everyone is playing a Free to play system used in other games, except here you pay a sub AND get to spend forever training things up unless you shell out the $$$s, the people that dream up these systems destroy MMOs, they should all be forced to suffer the systems they design.

Why thank them for something that won't happen? Why torture yourself like this? Give up dude. Its a 17 year old game. The dev team is a handful of people with a shoestring budget doing the best they can while having to answer to venture capitalists. There will be no more 3-4 entirely new overland zones per expansion with engaging quest lines, balanced classes, or interesting raid mechanics. They're using awful predatory game mechanics to milk what is left of the player base who seem quite happy to complain while dutifully handing over their dollars month after item, new shiny after new shiny instead of voting with their feet and wallet. I left at the end of PoP and I won't ever be back. What you're really asking for is a time machine, because unless your government decides to do something about "micro" transactions (can any industry figure use that term with a straight face anymore?) and p2w gaming as a whole is sliding deeper and deeper into the abyss. So you're gonna have to learn to enjoy Ascensions, Familiars, Mounts, and whatever else they come up with deliberately designed to squeeze your wallet instead of adding anything meaningful to the game. I have long resigned myself to the fact that MMOs as I knew them, and as you knew them are dead and they aren't coming back. They just don't make the big returns for the shareholders and investors.

Daybreak exists to milk old IP. Their last game with any success is H1Z1 released 6 years ago. There is nothing in the pipeline. Planetside Arena was a failure that shut down within months. Everquest Next and Landmark were a disaster. Let me repeat, there is nothing in the pipeline. At some point Daybreak itself will die and the IPs sold for pennies on the dollar to someone else who may or may not do something with them.

it's not bad if you are a casual player.

i pay a sub, but don't worry about the spell upgrades ect.

I wrote a long post 2-3 years ago about that.

I will probably never return simply because there is too much farming involved now :
- level your rune and armor
- level your mercenary
- level your mount
- level your familliar
- level your divinity point
- level ascension

When they introduced familliars i thought it was cute and the baby dragon from the valentine event is adorable ... but wait ! familliars can be trained and here is the money grab and the actual motivation.

I really miss the good old days, RoK and pre RoK time when you just had to run the instances. The 20 years old Eq1 one model was actually simple, and fun.

The introduction of currencies was the first nad move, but it was still ok and it remained fine till the post-AoM debacle with ascension, deity farming and then later mercenary farming, mount farming , familliar farming .... farminf farming or? use the station store.

The P2play model is good, solid and viable (and this true bothe for devellopers, customers and even the communication team) but it does not generate enough revenue for stock holders. P2win is to P2play what Trump is D. Eisenhower.


I just logged my level 45 on live and i almost laugh when the runic armor of a nearby level 600 ticked for 20 trillions, or may be it was zillions.

I think Revels post puts it perfectly, the game you loved is basically infested with predatory micro transactions with gambling mechanics now.


Originally Posted by Smed
I've been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that's just plain not true - I don't have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it's me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I'll happily reply.

We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren't going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

We aren't trying to put things in here that people "have to have". The idea was fun and convienence. Level up an alt quicker.. that kind of thing.
Is this a slippery slope? I don't think so but only because you the players will simply not let it ever be a slippery slope.

I could add to that for my tastes:

4. Upgrade the EQ2 servers. I'm not sure about the EQ1 servers, if they work more reliably, are even older and more clugey, got upgraded while OURS didn't, whatever. :-/

5. Advertise this game more, and you'd get more revenue, DBG. Or are you still allergic to making money? I guarantee, EG7 won't be. ;->

Uwk

She's probably still playing, just F2P I'm guessing.

Uwk

Drat; here I thought they'd be different than Nova...

Uwk

I remember shelves! I remember when we got a really neat toy surprise in a box; the li'l 25 mm scale figure of the armored bear mount/plushie. That was cool! Still have that...

But I don't miss access quests at all; always thought they were a major PitA. :-/

Also don't miss the triple up arrow heroic monsters in zones 5-10 levels below them, especially the ones that fly (and pounce), 'cause they're still around here and there, and I still have baby toons in the Horde. X-P

And yep, you still need harvesting requirements to get Rares (or have much of a prayer of getting anything from a node too high above you; you have a chance now, but that's it). The thing that bothers me about that is when you run across something like a fish node or a holiday special node but you might not have any idea of what level you have to be to really be Trivial for it, since it won't have any Rares to harvest, and without that, you have no clue. The nodes in Frostfell Village spring to mind, when they changed the harvest requirements from 32 Trivial to 90-92 Trivial. It was infuriating the first time I actually MISSED not getting a successful gather, and several more for quite awhile after that. No explanation for it, either; if we can Scribe those recipe books at level 2 Artisan, why change the harvesting so steeply? >:-/

Raising crafting skills is still useful, until you hit 100, at least. Even after that, for some crafts: Scholars of any stripe will be in fashion, I do believe (well, maybe not Jewelers? at least for actual jewelry), as will Provies, and Woodworkers for ammo. But Armorers and Weaponsmiths, yeah, forget it. And Carpenters are always sort of the "odd person out," in a way; we're wanted for Sales Crates, but once a hard-core raider who doesn't give a carp about decorating has all the Sales Crates they need, why should they care about us? :-/

I blame the "F2P Default/Subscription Optional" paradigm (making F2P a viable option would've been fine in my book); it seems that made SOE (if that's who came up with it?)/DBG a bit skittish about coming up with something new "EVERY YEAR!1!!1! omg omg omg omg omg!!! " and just cottoning to end-levels. On the other hand, I looked up RIFT; they went that FD/SO sort of thing long ago, and they still took two years per expansion to get each one right and bug-free-ish (and as far as I know, they're still around). /shrug

Uwk

I don't do any of that; if I want to "level" my armor, I'll wait on that until the next "Here we are, nicely providing you with gear way better than any peon mere crafter [/sneer, /sneer] could ever produce! " crate to come along at 120, when/if I ever get that expac. ;->

And I don't molo, though I unlocked it just for the chance to send Qho up against Lord Nagafen by himself or something. ;->

Is that why EQ1 is not only still a viable game, but apparently more popular than this one?

Heh! Touche!

I think that's still true, though I did think The Bazaar and Vox servers were brilliant ideas, at least initially, and I wish WoW had at least stolen that idea from us; would make for less nasty gold-predatory /whispers over there. At least what I will say is, thank goodness that kind of "pay-to-win" crudola is "only" on our in-house Marketplace. I grit my teeth, roll my eyes, and sigh heavily that it all exists in the first place, that they feel that kind of need in order to keep the lights on, and then I can't help but think:

"ADVERTISE THE GAME, YOU IDIOT POWERS THAT BE!!!!

Why wouldn't you? Every other game, even other F2P Default ones do! You'll be rolling in the dough, hopefully enough to the point where you can at least get the dust blown out of the servers! >:-/"

Uwk
who had to Exit yet again to break out of the game while trying to zone... X-P

It all boils down to the overwhelming corporate greed that is in every industry today. They all want maximum profits, for the absolute least investment possible.

Elon Musk said it best.
https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/news/elon-musk-wsj-ceo-council-summit/

TLDR:
Focus on making your product as good as it can possibly be and less time obsessing over the spreadsheets. Its seems that actually making a good product results in profits. Blizzard started World of Warcraft because they knew they could make a better game than what EQ was. It has many things people didn't like, they fulfilled a need. They created a product that did it better and people flocked to it

Make a good product and people will buy it, its a natural progression. The 2nd crap thing companies are doing these days is making a good product, let it sell and get popular then start cutting every corner and making it cheaper and cheaper to maximize profits. The greed just never ends.

At this point, if it doesn't start getting me in the door within 30 seconds or less, I pretty much know I'll have to hit the Exit button and start over to try to get my toon in the house or Guild Hall. If I'm lucky, the game thinks I am indeed in the house; if I'm not, I come back into game again staring at the front door of the place from the outside. X-P

Uwk
who had to do that Exit Thang TWICE today, while trying to Tour COMPLETELY EMPTY HOUSES, only to come back in and find the door slammed in my face...

P.S. So, for me, I guess my main request to think my "Life-Time Membership! " is worth it would be to do SOMETHING to make the servers work properly. >:-/ --U.

EDIT: Ah, how delightful; first time I've Exited while trying to enter into an alt's house and wound up outside, rather than inside. Which gives me only one option: trying to get in again! This will be SO MUCH FUN...

Ah! Fortunately, it worked this time, starting up the "actually getting onto the zone server process" within 30 seconds or less (didn't think to time it until it was already in motion. Good sign! ).

It is scary, I think it may of been me he was responding to in that post and I did email him and got into it with him there too about how it was bad for the gaming industry...

The Cult of the Shareholder isn't just destroying gaming, its been destroying America for quite awhile. Certain people that should've been in jail for decades never paid the price after the 2008 financial crisis. They didn't learn. Next time they might not be so lucky and find themselves at the mercy of millions of angry citizens. I can only hope so.

If you want to learn how to properly code so you can join the small dev team and contribute to putting more quests into the game, by all means please do so.

Yeah the small dev team is too busy working on a pvp server in a pve game to worry about quest's in a game called Everquest.

And if you don't like what people have to say about your precious devs, go to Discord. I hear they ban all the unhappy people there.

Like, for free? Lmao wtf kind of reply is this?

There's too many things to fix for those to even be a priority, sadly. At this rate, we need an Everquest III, Everquest II is too far gone for any improvements. All we can do now is just enjoy what we have and move on.

Either way though, for me, I'd love it if they fixed all the classes, it sucks seeing some of them left in the dust because they were nerfed too hard, like, for example, Bruiser. I agree with Karioki that it's sad watching EQ2 devolve into, practically, a pay-to-win mess. I would play in TLE, but I've heard a lot of it's players are toxic and rather just deal with a quiet, broken server than that. If Daybreak/Darkpaw Gaming has any hope of the EQ series seeing a successful future, at this point, they either need to scrap both EQ1 and EQ2 and start over, or make EQ3 absolutely amazing. With how unheard of the EQ series is now, no one's going to want to play an EQ3 because they'd be like "Wait, there's 2 other games?" and see how much of a mess EQ3's predecessors are, ultimately, killing any chances of EQ3 being successful.

(honestly, I wish I knew how to code, I'd love to help make EQ2 better because it would be nice to see my favourite MMO succeed)