Why don't people care anymore?

Dasein wrote:

It cracks me up that people think the game should run like some great commune. No one should be able to have what someone else doesn't. Shouldn't that also apply to raiding? I work, I earn money. How is it any less right that I be allowed to spend the money I earn in any manner I choose. I could say that others should not be allowed to spend countless hours raiding to get things they want because I actually have real world obligations and they do not. This person makes a really good point. Why is their time ok and my money is not? Them spending ridiculous amounts of time getting junk that I don't care about is no different, and does nothing to affect my game any more than me buying what they consider junk that they don't care about and does nothing to affect their game.

Dasein wrote:

You're missing the point; it doesn't matter if it is fluff or not to some people - how about people that raid for appearance items - and all they have to do is plunk down some cash. People want to know why OTHER people are loosing intrest, well this is a HUGE factor.
"You are vastly overstating the impact SC has on the game and on its players."
Actually I'm rather understating it. When Smed first came out with the marketplace I was playing EQ1, the EQ1 admins deleted the thread entirely, however in 18 hours that thread recieved some 2,000 posts of people saying they've canceled their accounts due to the Marketplace being shoved down their throats. 4 months later, they had to do a server merge in which 5 months beforehand there was no mention or thought of a server merge.
You have to remember SOE is the referee in this game, and If I have unlimited resources and can constantly buy +5 yards to win the game against you, there is no sport in that and regardless what you may think it is a competative game.
Dasein wrote:

Case and point, what good is that fluff now that you can buy better fluff for a few bucks? All those people that went around collecting fluff has had their connection to their characters severed by the marketplace. You can sit here and deny this all day long but it is fact - and many of the f2p models out there more than show this in their statistics as being the games with the highest player turn-around rates.
Most of these issues are more seeded in the fact players aren't really able to compete. See when you play any game it is human nature to be compeatitive. You play fps's why? To experience the content? How many games can you count that you would just play it over and over again after beating it? How many of those are MMO's? When you add SC to the mix in a competitive game, there are "edges" given to one player or the other which drives the desire to be competative down. Is this saying that players on football teams that pay ref's loose their desire to play? Competatively? Yes. Financially? No. Overall people loose intrest for that reason as well. However being this game did not start as a f2p or on a micro-transaction RMT system people have quit for relative disassociation from their characters and that attatchment to their characters.

d1anaw wrote:

Have to completely disagree with this one. Being able to buy raid gear, as you are insinuating, should never ever be an option. Raid gear and high end gear is for those who can play long and hard enough to deserve it. I completely understand your point, I work a lot of hours also, and I definitely sympathize with you. But really the prime motivator for most players, besides the social aspect, is the loot and that ties in very heavily with the social aspect, hey look guys what I earned last night.
It's not like you call up the softball league and tell them you are working too much this year, but you would like to by the championship trophy. Some of us look at MMO's as our "sport" where we get together with "teammates" and attempt to win "trophies", if we could buy the victories it would make them completely and utterly meaningless.
Now SC for fluff is a different thing, I kind of don't care too much. It keeps the game going with money infusion, and makes many people happy. It's quite OBVIOUS that SOE is making money from SC, that means that a lot of people are purchasing it, a point that eludes many on the forums. If selling raid gear made SOE money and most people wanted it, you can bet your bottom dollar SOE would gladly sell raid gear on SC. Is it right? IMO absolutely not for the reasons I stated above, but it still wouldn't stop SOE from doing it. Case in point on what people want is how full and popular the free servers are.
But I've said it before, I readily admit I'm a dying breed of dinosaur, an old school gamer who believes you should earn your raid gear. In all honesty though I have a full set of raid gear and I only raid 2-3 nights a week and don't play otherwise, so other than getting my toon to 90 I really only invest 6-9 hours a week of raiding, it's really not anywhere near as bad as it used to be.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

It is hard to measure churn rates in an entirely F2P model because there is no subscription to cancel, so you need to look at different metrics like average and peak concurrent users, and in that regards, the big F2P games destroy any subscription based game easily, boasting millions of people online at once.
Again, I tihnk you are overstating the impact SC has on the game. I have never bought a single thing off the marketplace, yet I don't feel I am behind the curve. If other people want to buy stuff, that's their perogative. I've not spent much time in the BGs, yet there's people who have racked up tens of thousands of kills there. I've tried decorating my house a few times, but I doubt I'd win any recognition for it. The game offers many different things for players to do, SC being one of them, but players can and do find meaning in all sorts of different activities. People are not nearly as fragile as you make them seem - we can adapt to new environments and carve out our own identities in all sorts of circumstances.

let see. the only thing on SC that effects adventuring are of course the superpowered xp potions. oh and the Freebloods...considering they are now the only race with a racial proc now.
but pure crafters...yes, they have been throughly pissed and are leaving over SC. I can't make armor that's as good looking as what you can buy on Sc. carpenters can't make furniture as good looking as what's on Sc. weaponsmiths can't makes as nice looking weapons as you find on sc. how about those unique mounts? nothing in game that looks that good. in fact that prowler model probably SHOULD have been the model for the 'Highland Stalker'. go figure people complained about the looks on our first cat mount, so they vastly improve on it, and sell it on the Marketplace.
People complain about some of the 'ugly' pet models...so now there are Petamorph wands. you can find them in SoL...5 charges, they last 2 hours. you can become a wisp, a spirit lion, and a fairy....or, you can plunk down some SC and turn your pet into a dragonling, or a Djinn with limitless charges/duration.

Rainmare@Oasis wrote:

Armor and weaponsmiths never made appearence-only items to begin with, and if carpenters have anything to complain about, it is the number of house items available through special events or craftable by anyone, not the few items available via SC. The decorators that I know are far more concerned about stocking up during the city festivals and grotto days than they are with buying stuff on SC, since the items available through those special events are key components in many house designs.

Dasein wrote:

Either you're attempting to downplay and overlook very critical things I'm saying your you're being very obtuse. Turn-around rates in a f2p setup is very easy to guage even without a subscription in fact are no diffrent really than a subscription based game.
Rappelz and a few other pure FP2 MMO models spoke with MMO Informer last year (Dec 8th 2010) about the F2P model. What was funny is across all the games the average "account life" was 5 weeks. In comparison to a subscription based game, [ "the big F2P games destroy any subscription based game easily" ] you couldn't be more wrong, subscriptions blow them out of the water.
I don't know if it was intentional or not that you over looked what "turn-around" ment or if you confused the word turn-around with "amount of players", or if you're simply brainwashed but I would appreciate it if you paid attention to my posts a bit more carefully and stop getting so defensive [ second time you've done it now ] when I post facts about SC - One would think either your an employee of SOE or a child thats in danger of loosing his/her favorite toy.
The facts are, SC alone cut the population of EQ1 by 40% [ I'd dare say even 50-60%) ] - I'm not sure of the impact of this game, but there was hardly nothing in EQ1 that was considered fluff before SC - this should state the severity of it. People care more-so how their character "appears" in EQ2 so I know this has to be a game-changer here.
Dasein wrote:

You're completely missing the point. It doesn't matter if they made appearance-only items to begin with or not, its the fact SC appearance-only items look better. If you're going to put a RMT system in a game that didn't start RMT the last thing you want to do is put things in that system that cannot be already found in game. After that it is downright disrespectful to any community to place items in that system that look better, perform better, etc - as the company has just made a very psychological statement to all of us, "we're so dumb as a community, we'll pay them for a half-arsed game, and then we'll even pay them even more for pieces of that puzzle".
When SC first came out, I was actually extraordinarily confident that society or the community wasn't that dumb to buy into something like that -- Today I couldn't have been more wrong because the community (in EQ1) that didn't want to buy into it either became a minority from those that didn't leave and then left later on or left the game all tother.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

First, if you are going to make claims about EQ/EQ2 population numbers, be prepared to back them up with hard evidence. Many people like to speculate about population decline, but SOE is notoriously thigh-lipped about any hard figures. Thus, for any such claims to be taken at all seriously, there needs to be clear, hard evidence to support them. So, what are your sources for this claim that SC caused a 40% drop in EQ subscribers? How can we verify this? How are you determining that it was SC and not some other factor that caused the cancellation?I suspect, however, that you simply made up that number to suit your argument.
Second, F2P games like Maple Story have tens of millions of players and ACUs well over the total subscriber base of many subscription-based MMOs. Most North American MMOs do not have more than a few hundred thousand subscribers at most - 200,000 - 500,000 seems to be the range that EQ2, WoW, LoTRO, DDO, AoC and the rest have hit. WoW, of course, is the exception, with about 10 million world-wide. Plenty of F2P games are in the tens of millions of player range, although ACU/PCU (that is average and peak concurrent users0 is the real measure to look at, and in that regard, you'll see many in the hundreds of thousands range, which is on par with the total subscriber base of your big North American MMOs. I do not think you really grasp how big some of the F2P games are, especially once you get outside North America.
Third, with regards to crafters, most items appearences cannot be crafted, or are available as recipes anyone can learn, so this argument that SC cuts into the work of crafters loses it's impact in the face of the many items crafters cannot make, but are obtainable through other means like quests or drops. For example, as a weaponsmith, I have nothing that compares to the look of a mythical weapon, or to a number of other dropped/quests weapons, so why should I be particularly concerned about SC as opposed to other sources of non-craftable weapons? You have failed to explain why SC is somehow exceptional and desrving of criticism with regards to crafted and non-crafted items.

Dasein wrote:

Funniest typo ever!

Dasein wrote:

Easy enough, [eq1] Shall I sart with the guild lobby only having 1/5th of the players it use to have, POK having at max 10 players, or should I just use SOE's own numbers for example to prove this too you?
SOE doesn't give out their staticstics any more? Oh but they do, you just have to be clever in interpreting these numbers. When raids origionally designed for 16-24 groups of players in EQ1 start focusing for 4-8 groups and when the designers implement hirable NPC's in game in which join the group in order to fill in for a class that you can't find in the game are all very good "FACTUAL" indicators that the numbers are indeed very accurate. Can it be "proven"? No, just like if you're not the actual mechanic of your vehicle you can't prove the car is about to break down, all you can do is see that things aren't running like it was and all the red lights are lighting up. EQ1 & EQ2 are the same way, because SOE doesn't release their numbers any more, all we have are these indicators which I would say are a lot more accurate than what SOE would give us.
A little more clairity to this. 1) Secrets of Faydwyer (16+ group raids), 2) SC released, 3) Mercenaries added, 4) Historic Server merge (all servers), 5) Raids re-geared for 4-8 groups. You really can call this rose by any name you want, but when you get right down to it, its still a rose no matter what you want to call it.
Dasein wrote:

Are you intentionally missing this? My argument has NEVER been about how many accounts or subscribers there are, the arguement is, how many of those players/accounts are loyal and actually level a character to end-game. The answer is very low in comparision to sub based games.
Dasein wrote:

You are still missing the point! Again like a child with his favorite toy being targeting your clutching this issue like someone just talked about someone's mother -- very child-like and stumbling over very serious facts.
The point isn't about what can be crafted for "Appearance Only" the issue is that anything crafted has an appearance (and thus can be used as an appearance item) and anything you can buy from SC looks MUCH better.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

1. So really, you're guessing. While EQ's population may have declined, you do not know by how much, or what caused it, and even your evidence for such a drop is entirely cirumstantial. You have no evidence at all that shows the introduction of SC is responsible for most of this alleged decline.
2. Again, do you have demographic statistics to back this up? I am curious how you came to this conclusion. And even if it is true, so what? What if the MMO player is moving away from the MMO as second job and towards more casual consumption?
3. I really do not see what point you are trying to make at this point. Some SC items look nice, but so do plenty of dropped and quested items, or items purchased as a result of special events, factions and other non-SC means.

Dasein wrote:

So you're going to hold me to a double standard then? You get to guess that I'm guessing? That doesn't seem particularly fair, but the same mind set as those that guard the ideals of SC.
Yes again MMO Informer I even gave you the date of the article to look up.
What you're not getting is I'm indiffrent either way. I choose not to use SC, I do not care if others decide to use it; I'd much rather perfer a level playing field, but if someone thinks they must use cash to "out-shine" someone then that is their own convaluted opinions. What it boils down to is I posted a very impartial set of facts about SC in response to the OP of why there aren't as many people that "care" about this game any more. Those facts are irrefutable.
I haven't seen a SC appearance item yet (besides the gnome armor) that can be beaten appearance wise by another in-game lootable item. Please feel free to show me and I'll gladly digress.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

You haven't posted facts at all. You made an unfounded allegation that the population of EQ dropped 40%+ as a direct result of SC. When pressed, you offered some circumstantial observations, but nothing in the way of direct evidence, so to claim your facts are irrefutable is absurd.
Frankly, there is no way any of us can support any claims about population figures in EQ or EQ2. We do not have that data - it would take Smed or someone of similar level to directly reveal that information. Until that happens, any claims about the state of population in either game must be regarded as fiction.

Dasein wrote:

FACTS:
1) SOE Released RMT system in 2009.
2) EQ1 (4 months later) gained Mercenaries (npc's to hire as group-members)
3) 2010 EQ1 had its second historic merge
4) 2011 EQ1 raid focus went from 16-24 groups to less than 8.
5) Screenshots before SC release shows significantly more population in the guild lobby than after (during same periods of time [expansion releases])
6) Most solid fact of all (countless people saying "cancelled account") THIS FORUM POST.
These are all "circumstancial" facts, in fact until SOE releases the numbers we'll only have circumstancial facts the same as you and your arguement that I'm exaggurating the SC impact. But again when you add everything up, only an idiot will still look down this barrel and say its not a gun.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

Anyone can claim they cancelled their account. And accounts can be reactivated. That is probably the weakest of all your evidence.
Now, there may very well be a decline in population, but is it a 40% decline and is it due to the introduction of SC? None of your evidence allows us to determine any of this, nor is population decline the only explanation for any of your evidence. Thus, it is difficult to draw the conclusion you seems to desire based on the evidence presented when other plausible explanations exist for the same observed phenomena.

Dasein wrote:

Oh now thats funny... You don't know how the EQ1 forums work... When someone cancels their EQ1 subscription their forum rank changes to "General" - THAT INDEED is the STRONGEST of all my "FACTS" whotf said this was a trial? Obviously you're taking a "game" way too serious. Make sure you pay specail attention to the those ranks in the next week when the 15 free days runs out and everyone's accounts close again on the forums, because as of last week there were 4 posters total in that thread besides devs that weren't "General". Now that there are the 15 free days, yeah of course, the forums sees the accounts as active. But again, that is my strongest evidence and anyone thats posted in the EQ1 forums knows this.

Spinal@Unrest wrote:

Verant was never really ever totally separate from SOE. It was a part of 989 that spun off just in case the MMO stuff didn't take off. That way it wouldn't really reflect badly on 989 or Sony. Verant was reassimilated back into the collective when EQ was obviously going to do well.
In short, Verant was always a Sony company.

Zaldor wrote:

Yeah but they were two totally diffrent entities and showed that as well.. Any old guides will attest to this, as the attitude while Varent had the reigns was "Hey we need help, here do what you need to do, just let us know everything you do." Now days SOE looks at the VGP as if they're a bunch of criminals ready to torch the game -- thats why I quit the EQ1 VGP at least. There is no more trust and likewise when SOE lost this trust in their players and volunteers they became very overworked, and now (not sure about EQ2) but EQ1 GM's don't even make themselves known in fact if they have to login now days to help a player, they even hide their green names and hide themselves from the /who all gm list.
In short EQ1 (SOE) GM's are like US Marshals, you don't see them unless you're in a metic arseton of trouble.

Lalen@Everfrost wrote:

So you said there were 2000 posts in this forum, and how many of those are discrete users who claimed to have cancelled? Does this total 40% of the population?

Forum Ranks
General was used for trial accounts at one time. I don't know if that is still true.