I predict that Loral's ego will grow so big that his big head will simply and finally explode.

Everquest's Two Year Outlook

by Loral on December 03, 2006

With the release of the Serpent's Spine behind us, now is the perfect time to step back and consider the possible future of Everquest. This article will attempt to predict what changes we will see in Everquest over the next two years.

Let us start with the easy ones. SOE will likely release four expansions between now and December 2008. These will likely include both large expansions with lots of open content and smaller expansions with more focused instanced content. The release schedule will likely continue every six months.

Expansion releases will continue as long as SOE sees a profit from their development and release. Because the associated costs for distribution are so low, expect to see SOE continue to release expansions for download only. Retail boxes will likely focus exclusively on compilation packs and be released in early spring.

The fall 2008 expansion will likely include another level increase to level 80 including all of the associated spells and AAs. Expect to see a continuation of the spell system found in TSS in the future.

It would appear, based on this last year's release schedules, that SOE plans to push EQ2 to new players with retail boxes released during the holidays. EQ releases will focus on keeping existing players interested in continuing their subscriptions.

The Serpent's Spine was SOE's attempt to bring in new players into the game but, without a retail package, it is unlikely to have accomplished this goal. I would not expect to see another low-level expansion within the next two years.

Everquest's population will continue to fall. Without bringing in new players, old players, however much SOE attempts to either keep them or bing them back, will still leave and some will leave for good. The attrition will not happen in great numbers all at once. The fall will be slight and steady over a trend of bumps and dives as expansions are released.

Another server migration may occur later within the next two year period depending on how far the population dips.

Everquest will not end over the next two years. This is easily predicted as we watch SOE's support for Everquest Online Adventures - a game with a far smaller population. Throughout its life, SOE has never attempted to migrate EQOA players to another game, nor have they shut the game down. With a very small population of players, SOE continues to keep EQOA alive.

EQOA is our canary in the cave. We can watch it and see how long SOE is willing to keep a low population game alive. As long as it survives, EQ is more than safe.

Do not expect Everquest to make any radical changes to characters, combat, or any other aspect of the actual game outside of what we already understand. SOE learned what can happen when it makes radical changes to a game's core system with the combat changes in Star Wars Galaxies. There will be no class mergers, no removal of classes, no migrations of classes, and no huge change to combat.

SOE will not attempt to merge EQ with EQ2. This rumor seems to keep popping up but when one really considers what it would take, one understand that it just won't happen. There is no way to migrate EQ characters into EQ2. They are too far different and nothing would be gained in the process.

With Blizzard's recent announcement that it plans to focus raids at a maximum of 25 players and with Everquest 2 continuing to focus at no more than 26 players, Everquest clearly has the market cornered on large-scale 54 person raids. Expect SOE to continue to cultivate these large raid encounters over the next two years and likely indefinitely.

With EQ2 and WOW also including a lot of solo content, expect Everquest to continue focusing content around six-person groups. While more solo options may become available in small amounts, do not expect a drastic leap in solo content such as great improvements in solo ability or in solo instances. Solo content will likely focus around single-person quests.

I do not expect SOE to return to the days of heavily flagged content such as that found in Planes of Power or Gates of Discord. End-zones will continue to require some sort of quest, task, or series of raids to enter, but SOE understands how it segments their market to flag entire sets of zones as they did in the past. I do not expect them to make that mistake again.

Over the past two years, SOE has included some radical changes in Everquest's features. Monster missions and spirit shrouds were two of these features. I do not expect to see SOE stepping out that far again in the next two years. With a clear focus on keeping existing players and bringing back retired players, EQ will focus its content and features around those that made it successful over the past seven years.

Now for some wild predictions:

Sometime over the next two years, SOE will release a rebuild of Plane of Knowledge. They will finally accept that this is the most popular city in Norrath and will always continue to be so no matter how many rebuilds of Freeport or new cities of Crescent Reach they create. SOE will attempt to bring the culture of old cities to the neighborhoods of Knowledge.

SOE will look for ways to make it easier for low and mid-level players to reach the raiding game. This may include things such as new reward systems for pickup-raid friendly content or ways to increase player power more quickly than traditional hunting and grinding. With a clear focus on and market advantage of high-end raid content, SOE will look for ways to open up this strength to more players.

SOE will not attempt to reduce downtime any further than they have. With WOW cornering the market on short-term MMO gaming, EQ will continue to focus on gaming in two to four hour sessions.

SOE is unlikely to close the equipment gap between raiders and non-raiders although hopefully they will attempt to reduce this gap and make it easier to tune high-end content for both sets of players. More likely, however, SOE will try to show non-raiders the advantages of raiding and make it easier for them to join in.

And now my final prediction: SOE will return to Kunark! With the old popularity of this expansion, SOE will release a "Ruins of Kunark 2" expansion that takes us back into the world of the Iksar and the Ring of Scale. Whether this is a LDON-style expansion or a larger TSS style expansion, I couldn't say. Perhaps SOE will combine two sequals into one and create Lost Dugeons of Norrath 2: The Dungeons of Kunark.

So there are my predictions for the next two years. However it turns out, I look forward to seeing the future unfold.

Loral Ciriclight
2 December 2006
loral@loralciriclight.com

Post a new message.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on December 4, 2006 06:39 AM

I think that "more of the same" is probably a safe bet, & continued expansion of the game using an already existing zone but "revamped" to include access points to new zones, possibly using existing lore as a starting point.

I would love to see another "LDoN style" expansion & this might be what is needed in order for them to revisit the existing LDoN content, review it, revamp it, & have this & the newer expansion mesh in terms of updated points, task & experience systems.

I also hope to see more of the "hot zone" style revamps whereby they add new features, mobs, mechanics & itemisation to existing zones.

Itemisation in general needs a review, hugely time consuming so i wont hold my breath on that one.

Comment Posted by: Corwyhn on December 4, 2006 09:19 AM

Hmmmm.... the outlook on an influx of new players to EQ seems grim. New players have been a rich source of recruits for family style guilds. Some stay in the family guilds others learn the ropes of eq and move on to raiding guilds.
SOE trying to get us all raiding is well and good but without a radical change to raiding I am not sure how that will happen. I would think that a lot of those who want to raid have taken that road by now. If you have played for several years and havent been interested in heavy raiding before what will change that now?

Comment Posted by: Corwyhn on December 4, 2006 09:50 AM

Hmmm... I see another problem here. The game with the shrinking playerbase is the one staking out the raids with the largest player requirements. Seems to me if you are the game whose player base is shrinking you may not want to invest your future in LARGE raids.

Some might thing the answer is consolidation of guilds. This has been happening over and over. Why wont it continue. Part of the problem is that EQ is a social game too. In the old days guilds disolved because of poor leadership or lack of commitment to running a guild etc... these days it is just because their player base has faded away. They eventually break up and join another guild but each time that happens it tears up the social side of the game.

I think one of the problems EQ faces is that the devs or those that call the shots are not able to picture all of the factors that make EQ what it is.

They dont seem interested in closing the raid/group gear gap partly becasue raiders feel they should have better gear. Now if that is because they think only those that did the work should get the gear thats one thing. If they like to feel superior because they have better gear and that is why they raid then what happens when all that is left in the game is raiders? Who are they going to be better then?

If SOE can't manage EQ what will give them the ability to manage EQ2?

Not crazy about warcraft, If Sigils game is successful I have no doubt the deal with soe to provide servers and customer support will change to full ownership. That leaves me out there looking. And I am coming to realize its not so much looking for a game as for the way the game will be managed by whatever company runs it.

If SOE is smart they will finally realize that for eq to continue to be a cash cow far into the future they need to keep a super healty group game as well as support their large raiding. And large raiding needs something there for players who know their stuff BUT are just not interested in the type of raiding playstyle currently required. Give us some easier just for fun raids that we can do to bring us closer to raid gear. I really think we need three or four tiers concentrated on. Solo game, Group game, easy raid game, dedicated raid game.

The easy raid game will be great for open raids and large family guild raids AND provide a transition to the dedicated raid game to some extent. The easy raid game will also hopefully draw in a lot more group gamers which will help close the gear gap between the various groups. That will let group content be better tuned to everyone.

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on December 4, 2006 05:04 PM

I am still waiting for a revamp of "The Hole" and the plane of underfoot expansion.

Comment Posted by: Bonzz on December 4, 2006 05:24 PM

You aren't serious, are you?

I cannot understand why SOE spent one cent redoing the old zones. It certainly isn't a visual improvement and no one goes there in any case ... zero players and I mean ZERO.

The one exception is Nek Forest (which was done not once, but twice and looks a little better) and even then, why did they bother? It's an unused newbie zone with all the mystery & danger of good vs evil now gone from the game.

Let's have them spend the money on content. NO ONE PLAYS A GAME BECAUSE IT LOOKS GOOD if the content is boring or non existant.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on December 5, 2006 02:20 AM

I do think the traditional step after a level cap increase is an Item point-system / instanced expansion. Hopefully that takes a step towards closing the gear gap a bit further, and the spell distribution system is continued in its happily open format.

Personally, long term I'd like to see a continued focus on introducing more 30 minute options into EQ. Finding a way to actually work PvP into the regular game would be a fun new wrinkle as well. EQ definitely has the instancing technology to handle this, its just a question of cutting through the hodgepoge of PvP code that's been cobbled together over the years.

One other thing to remember, if SOE isn't focused on drawing new players to EQ1, then they'll have to accept the fact that their current players will start to age, and have fewer long blocks of playtime available. If the goal is to keep the current subscribers entertained, then that will be a shift that needs to occur. Downtime isn't so much the issue, its going to be much more about how long various encounters are designed to last.

Comment Posted by: Glormane on December 5, 2006 04:10 AM

It was already mooted before the last expansion, that quests would be introduced that rewarded the player with some basic AA’s (run 3, defensive etc), I think we will see that appear, a further attempt by SoE, so they will claim to get new players in, but without a box sale version it will be half hearted, unless they push a compilation box set out the following spring.

Loral mentioned that SoE will try to get non raiders to jump to raiding. I disagree, as TSS even the ‘smaller’ encounters seem to be geared to 30, and the reward is one drop. I don’t think this is the way to go. A mob dropping one loot, should be geared more to 2-3 groups. Just the time taken to move 30-40 people, have all in place, the lost rezzed, buffed, the LD, waited for, just doesn’t make it worth it.

Comment Posted by: SomeoneThat AbsorHates on December 5, 2006 04:17 AM

I think the outlook is pretty on par. Basically "don't expect anything really new" sums it up.

And that's as it should be. EQ at this point is a legacy product in the same vein as Ultima Online, or Diablo 2.

Comment Posted by: Corwyhn on December 5, 2006 07:56 AM

As far as zone revamps go to some extent I agreet that they do not really do much for players AT LEAST AS THEY HAVE BEEN DONE IN THE PAST. The way soe does zone revamps needs to change. Zone revamps in general should re-level zones for a higher range including reitemization. For city zones to be used again we need more high level zones close by.

Right now a lot of the old expansion zones are just dead leaves and branches on the EQ tree. Some say leave them there they arent hurting anything. But as they become more and more of the tree they are pulling it down. Cut away some of the dead wood and let something new grow in its place. Revamp zones but dont just revamp the graphics. Give us storyline changes, higher level mobs and reitemization.

We need more zones at the higher end as the EQ population becomes older and more and more of us have a preponderane of very high level toons. This in no way hurts any new players we might get because we have far more low level zones then needed. It could also be argued that with the tutorial available the real starting level is whatever the tutorial maxes out at. Or we could just say level 10. In effect level 10 becomes the new level 1.

SOE has to look at the reality of the situation. If they are not going to market aggressively for new players then zone revamps have to be more then making the zone pretty. In essence they have to become new zones. But the whole idea of using the revamps to advance storylines is so cool.

Comment Posted by: Corwyhn on December 5, 2006 08:00 AM

Another bone I would like to throw out there for people to chew on a bit is player marketing of EQ. If SOE doesn't seem to be marketing the game in such a way as to garner new players is there anything that we as players can do to get new people into the game? Assuming we want that I guess. For me, one thing new players bring to the game is that Christmas morning feeling. Christmas isnt the same unless you have some little ones getting all excited about their presents. Those of us that have been around a while do end up becoming a bit jaded. Its nice to experience that awe and wonder even if its done vicariously through newbies.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on December 5, 2006 08:16 AM

I don't think that TSS was targetted at the right audience, it really did seem that a huge amount of work went into TSS & a lot of the background changes that accompnied it were all "groundwork" for a future push for "new" players.

TSS was aimed at former players.

I hope they now focus on getting new players, TSS did indeed bring some former players back...& in a large part caused some older players to just quit over its flagging system, I don't think it was as big a sucess as hoped for.

Next few expansions, & the direction of the company should try & focus on garnering a fresh audience, allowing them to progress up to a point, by themselves, then encouraging transition into the raiding game, by way of better designed group content, & having more "casual friendly" raiding scenarios, pitched somewhere between the hardest group content & raid content from a year or so ago, the time-gap between raid level gear & group/casual raiding gear, is something that will need tweaking of course, if they with to retain the usefulness of older raiding content, then lowering the difficulty/time required/amount of flags needed in order for casual raiders to access it should be considered.

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on December 5, 2006 02:15 PM

skuz check this out: this is the time of ps3,360,Wii,wow, vanguard....etc....and you are a young potential gamer. so you do some reasearch on games. you get to eq. you check on some sites. you go to some chatrooms for more info. and ask some current eq players about eq. potential noobie to mayhap be pwned by skuz one days asks" so why should i come to eq?" skuz replies " cause it has the most roxXorz end game raiding."potential says" well how do i get to the end game raiding so i can be 733t?" skuz says" well you will need level 75 and about 1000 aa atleast.you will need to find people to backflag you up to current content.your best bet is to get PL up with the level and aa and then guild hop for the back flagging.then apply to us and we may take you or we may not." potential" hmmm that sounds like alot of bs.i was just really wanting to play a video game and be entertained." skuz" roflz......you have no idea...errr i mean come on,its fun.i promise." so the potential new customer things to himself" hmmmmm on the one hand i can give up my life and try to get on this 733t old game eq! but on the other hand i can keep my life and just play some video games to have a little fun when i want to...." thats a tough decision. yeah eq will be back on the rise soon surely......

Comment Posted by: wilbur on December 5, 2006 04:01 PM

How to save EQ from itself? Simple ... harness the power of the Moss Snake. Yes the all powerful Moss Snake.

How can the Moss Snake accomplish this. Well the Moss Snake can do anything even save EQ. Just allow the Moss Snake access to all zones and dungeons (come on you know you want to).

Anytime a player kills a Moss Snake he will gain a level and a really nice piece of loot.
A gain in level occurs up to the starting level of the latest expansion. When that level is reached then its back to the counting sand grains with a toothpick routine.

However the Moss Snake is not done with you yet. Continue to kill the Moss Snake and now you will get 1 AA point (and you still get a really nice piece of loot to boot).

Now a newbie can come into the game. Become an expert Moss Snake hunter. In no time at all he will be geared and leveled enough to actually enjoy a majority of EQ's content.

You can even have specialized Moss Snakes. Like a Moss_Snake_Tailor. Everytime you kill one of them you get a skill point in tailoring.

Fear the Moss Snake or it will kick you. (didn't they fix that, morons, best part of the game).

Comment Posted by: Samanna on December 5, 2006 06:42 PM

I think Loral's assessment and prediction is spot on.

Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on December 7, 2006 12:17 AM

Comment Posted by: concerned1 on December 5, 2006 02:15 PM

........errr i mean come on,its fun.i promise." so the potential new customer things to himself" hmmmmm on the one hand i can give up my life and try to get on this 733t old game eq! but on the other hand i can keep my life and just play some video games to have a little fun when i want to...." thats a tough decision. yeah eq will be back on the rise soon surely......

Well, for sure your scenario will apply to people only interested in quick-fix instant gratification style videogames, but i'd happily lay odds there are a good deal of people looking for something more substantial, & of those there will be a majority that enjoy the game as a non-hardcore raider & a few that decide to challenge themselves further, max out their character & want to still progress beyond groups & casual raiding.

The beauty of eq is it has such a depth & variety & can accommodate a huge variety of playstyles, for those looking for 10 minutes of solo fun WoW pretty much fits the bill, for those looking for something with true breadth & depth there is eq, the only "weak point" of eq is the fact that due to it being an old game there are so few new players to meet, group up with, & there is not much of a solo game in eq to compensate for that.

Comment Posted by: Anon on December 7, 2006 03:25 PM

"& there is not much of a solo game in eq to compensate for that."

/gems - just kidding.

There is a lot of solo content in EQ. It is usually all about grinding, lots of grinding. To make grinding easier, some turn to writing their own macros to do the grinding for them. The number of people who use 3rd party software are easy to spot and often do not care who knows. Is that fair? - maybe or maybe not. In a world of maturing players that get better jobs, play more intelligently and begin starting families, the pressure is to either catch up or quit. People do turn to quick fixes and also take the time to learn how to play "with 3rd party" software.

SoE faces the issue that they have to choose between stopping 3rd party software that cuts out the time sinks or to allow it to continue to foster the continued growth of an even larger playerbase that "expects" to use 3rd party software in order to do the most mundane tasks.

It is a sad situation that divides the playerbase a group of cheaters, and the other into a group of players who cannot legitemately catch up to their peers.

Should SoE implement a full featured map?
Should SoE implement scripting?
Should SoE remove the mechanizms that permit one to /warp, /fade, etc. even if it permanently breaks the abilities of some classes?

Those are all some tough questions. Banning all the current users who play with 3rd party tools would break the bank, and most who do use them would not play if forced to go back to basic EQ.

SoE will make things more challenging, but will it be at a cost to creating an even greater gulf between two sets of players? - Only time will tell.

Comment Posted by: Valiantt on December 7, 2006 11:21 PM

I think we will see a continued decline of hard core 6 day a week raiding guilds, and the rise of "casual" part time raiding guilds that raid 3-4 days a week. RL is taking over and i have migrated to one of these part-time guilds.

Smart GL's will see this altenative as a means of holding folks that want to progress but don't want to be married to the game anymore. This will help extend the playing life of existing raiders. Heavy raiding will be limited to a guild or two on the server but most will contimue to decrease raiding scheduals to accomidate the addicted raider that just can't raid as much as they used too. Guilds like this will see thier fair share of "family" type players since these guilds cater to the more family non-har core raider. This pattern is already gaining steam.

Comment Posted by: brewall on December 8, 2006 12:37 PM

A prediction that VI realizes that expansions are not purchased because the majority of the player base is several expansions behind in content. The realization the pace must be sped up that brings excitement to the base of players:

#1 Opening up older end-zones by removing flag/key requirements. Seb/ST/VT/PoP/GoD.

#2 Areas where people WANT to congregate for a fast pickup group. EQ is too fragmented now and heyday had great zones with 70+ people in them. Where is that zone today?

#3 Increased drop rates on older content bosses. Many guilds at lower levels don't use DKP, have more part-time players, and do not raid 7 days a week. = It takes longer to gear up. More drops will help close multi-expansion gap and create some excitement.

#4 EQ excels at large raids and should take advantage of this. Next expansion featuring an enormous castle where pickup groups are outside and raid forces work to storm the keep. Include tunnels, dungeons, kitchens, etc. Could drive numbers like a constant GM event if done right.

#5 All new expansion zones will be targetted near old world content making everything more tight and minimizing travel & grouping time.

Brewall

#2 With large raid forces at VI's core strength

Comment Posted by: Troy on December 8, 2006 09:11 PM

Honestly, I wish they would work on a all new release of EQ. Call it EQ3 or EQ Heritage or EQ Legends. Whatever you do, make it a true sequel to EQ.

Launch the original game, with imporved graphics, character models and quest interface. Add in a few new zones and quest that never made it into the original.

Roll out the expansions like Kunark and Velious and PoP and correct the mistakes of the past.

That is what I would like.

Oh, and for those that switch over. A choice of loot based on your character on EQ1 when you reach max level.

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 9, 2006 08:42 AM

brewall said:

"A prediction that VI realizes that expansions are not purchased because the majority of the player base is several expansions behind in content."

I'm not sure that's true.

"#2 Areas where people WANT to congregate for a fast pickup group. EQ is too fragmented now and heyday had great zones with 70+ people in them. Where is that zone today?"

Knowledge is that place and that's one of the reasons I hope SOE rebuilds it.

"#3 Increased drop rates on older content bosses. Many guilds at lower levels don't use DKP, have more part-time players, and do not raid 7 days a week. = It takes longer to gear up. More drops will help close multi-expansion gap and create some excitement."

I think SOE would rather just make new content and offer rewards on the new stuff than rework old content.

"Next expansion featuring an enormous castle where pickup groups are outside and raid forces work to storm the keep. Include tunnels, dungeons, kitchens, etc."

This is an excellent excellent idea. An entire expansion built around a huge castle or keep and each zone is one part of the castle. I love it.

Troy said:

"Honestly, I wish they would work on a all new release of EQ. Call it EQ3 or EQ Heritage or EQ Legends. Whatever you do, make it a true sequel to EQ.

Oh, and for those that switch over. A choice of loot based on your character on EQ1 when you reach max level."

This last part is the problem. Game companies want you to go through all of their content, not just the high-end stuff. This is why they didn't do any transfers to EQ2 (one of the reasons). They want everyone to start over again instead of jumping into a brand new game at level 75.

I think SOE will make a new EQ MMO but I think its going to be a PS3 game. We'll see.

Comment Posted by: Troy on December 11, 2006 12:17 AM

EQ is dying a slow death because as you have pointed out, they no longer bring in new blood.

The thing EQ still has going for it is name recognition, that and a very large fan base that could still take comfort in roaming a land that many knew and loved, at one time or another.

However this resource is limited and to let it just wither away would be a shame. EQ2 was not a sequel. It only had only familiar names tossed in here and there.

Think how great it would be to roam an expanded Crushbone, same basic layout as now, but with new tunnels, and an expanded castle.

Stats that we all understand on our equipment, albit with some small improvements. Many quest that we are familiar with, but others that are new. I mean even the zone revamps could be used.

Also, I didnt expand on my thought earlier about equipment, or a bonus for original EQ participants. I was not suggesting that they should shut down EQ but rather they could issue something that is directly related to a character on you station account. So for instance, say I quit at lvl 65, maybe I get attributes, or an augment that I chose when rolling my character that would benefit me forever. Sooo...

For instance 1 point for every 10 lvls accrued on your highest lvl character on the account. No bonus for AA.

Then when rolling your character you can chose how to use them.

Maybe 7 points would buy you innate enduring breath, or mana regen. Or 1 point could raise your stat cap permenantly. It would allow a tiny bit of uniqueness and it would be a carrot to keep people playing.

I dont know why I even posting this. I think we all know it will never happen, but for me, I cant think of anything I would like more than a true sequel to EQ, and expansions I could really look forward to. It would be so great to see stats I was familiar with, basic map layouts that I know. Named mobs that bring back memories.

Trash the old quest interface and make it friendly for noobies and update character models and graphics and I really think a ton of people would return home to EQ, and certainly many new people would be introduced to the game that had more magic than anything released since.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on December 11, 2006 08:31 PM

Yeah, I've always been pretty disappointed that aside from mistmoore, they've pretty much left Fadwyer alone when it came to revamps. There are several potential zones left on the original cloth map that never got added (eg. the Wayunder lake, for a long overdue underwater zone), and a few tweaks to CB would be quite cool.

Somehow I'd wager that EQ2's product roadmap had something to do with that. Even though the two games have different timelines, SOE tries not to have the two games overlap with new content.

That's probably also why the Plane of Sky never got its badly needed revamp, an EQ2 expansion got in the way.

On the upside though, it could be surmised that EQ1 got its PvP revamp a few years ago because EQ2 wasn't able to get PvP finished up in time for launch.

It would just be nice if EQ1 didn't seem to be playing second fiddle. It still has many good things going for it. The most frustrating aspect of being a fan of the original game, is seeing how much attention gets showered publicly on other products. Its part of life, of course, but then again, so is disappointment. :)

Realistically, I don't doubt that SOE will have an EQ related title in the works for the PS3, though my hope is that it doesn't replace a potential sequel on the PC platform. EQOA was able to co-exist in its own little piece of the timeline, the same could be true of the PS3.

Comment Posted by: golfertwo on December 12, 2006 12:56 PM

EQ is dying because of the lack of a progression path on itemization improvement. Once a causal player has reached the bazaar "limit" on "no drop" equipment, he is essentially at a dead end.
To join a raiding guild and maybe get subsequent improvement in itemization, with considerable time commitment I might add, you can't be a casual player. The raiding guilds have evolved to a point where if you dont have at least 200- 300 AA's and be somewhere at or near the top level,forget even applying to the guild.
This structual development in EQ has evolved primarily because of the Sony no drop policy. There is a very large gap between bazaar items and no drop items resulting from large raids.
Any neebie starts out as a casual player. One look at what it would take to get to the high end of the game. i.e. having good equipment, spells and armour turns off any new entrants into the game. The avid dedicated player now inhabiting the high end of the game is an aging population. And any Iowa Curve (time life- depletion- "depreciation", depopulation also called population death) analysis will show that a population with no new entrants , depending soley on an alleged "core" will eventually shut down the game.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 12, 2006 02:58 PM

"EQ is dying because of the lack of a progression path on itemization improvement."

There is no lack of itemization improvement. Every single expansion has expanded and enhanced itemization in the game for raiders, non-raiders, and casual players.

"Once a causal player has reached the bazaar "limit" on "no drop" equipment, he is essentially at a dead end."

Bazaar purchasable gear is nice and all, but there is better gear out there that is one groupable and nodrop. Some of it is soloable, depending on your class.

"To join a raiding guild and maybe get subsequent improvement in itemization, with considerable time commitment I might add, you can't be a casual player. The raiding guilds have evolved to a point where if you dont have at least 200- 300 AA's and be somewhere at or near the top level,forget even applying to the guild."

Not all raiding guilds are the same or have the same requirements for entry, just as not all players are the same.

Our guild, which raids three nights a week, does not require any AAs to join. You do however have to be level 70, which I suppose is "near the top level." There are many other guilds similar to ours, that accept lower level members. There are also a lot of family guilds that raid. I was in one for years.

"This structual development in EQ has evolved primarily because of the Sony no drop policy. There is a very large gap between bazaar items and no drop items resulting from large raids."

Yes, this is true. However, I would like to point out the irony of your entire position. You claimed in the first statement that there was a lack of progression, but making everything tradable would eliminate progression all together. The only thing that would stop anyone from having the best gear in the game would be money.

You can't have it both ways. No drop items are tied to progression, for without them, there is no such thing.

If you got rid of no drop items, the same people who raid, those "with considerable time commitment," would have all the best items in the game, and you would be left complaining about how much everything costs and how unfair that is to causal players.

"Any neebie starts out as a casual player. One look at what it would take to get to the high end of the game. i.e. having good equipment, spells and armour turns off any new entrants into the game."

I think that this is an unfair depiction of all 'neebies.' Don't you think that there is anyone that will join the game in order to enjoy the increadible volume of content that is not found only in the last 2-3 zones in the game? There is so much to enjoy in the game without ever having the best gear or getting in a raiding guild that it is silly.

Keisa

"The avid dedicated player now inhabiting the high end of the game is an aging population. And any Iowa Curve (time life- depletion- "depreciation", depopulation also called population death) analysis will show that a population with no new entrants , depending soley on an alleged "core" will eventually shut down the game."

In everything you said in your post, this is the only thing I can agree with. The emphasis should be placed on the word "eventually." Eventually, the game will decline and shut down unless it gets new blood. I'll go a step further and say that eventually, the game will shut down regardless. It won't happen tomorrow, it probably won't happen next year. It might not even happen for another five years, but eventually, it will shut down. In the meantime, I plan on enjoying it.

Comment Posted by: carol on December 12, 2006 03:19 PM

Is there a way that you can have missions for two players it is very difficult to get players to do some missions because of time of east coast and west coast . and need to have some solo ones to would be helpful have been playing EQ for 7 yrs now. and it is still the best game online but would be nice for these changes to be in the game to. hank you

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 12, 2006 03:27 PM

"Is there a way that you can have missions for two players it is very difficult to get players to do some missions because of time of east coast and west coast . and need to have some solo ones to would be helpful have been playing EQ for 7 yrs now. and it is still the best game online but would be nice for these changes to be in the game to. hank you"

Unfortunately, you have to have three people to get most missions. A friend of mine groups with people that are afk in the guild hall and solos missions. If you can find a single player that is not busy for a while, you can do the same.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Naladini on December 12, 2006 03:29 PM

"Once a causal player has reached the bazaar "limit" on "no drop" equipment, he is essentially at a dead end."

Please keep in mind, I'm about as casual a player as you'll find, but I'd have to say this statement is entirely backwards.

Once a raider has reached near-peak gear, if something happens that would alter their playtime and force them into a solo / single group situation, they will see very few obtainable improvements for their gear for several years.

See the comments on Loral's previous post for additional info.

Comment Posted by: golfertwo on December 12, 2006 03:32 PM

"Eventually"-- You agree with my Iowa Curve conclusion!!! Do you know what an Iowa curve represents? If so, have you published or filed Iowa Curves Studies or positions in any jurisdictions. By jurisdictions ;I mean FCC, FERC, NRC, Judicial, State regulatory Commissions et all. I have filed em in most if not all above or have had my studies adopted in such. I can say to you "Eventually" is not a long term conclusion but one that may be in months but not more than 24-30 months.
A look at the present demographics and examples of MIA's in big guilds I have joined indicates the aging population is becoming more rapidly deminished. If I did a complete Iowa curve study and matched the empirical statistics I have observed with a corresponding Iowa Curve ( there are 24 Iowa curves) I think EQ is not gonna be around more than 24-30 months. My Iowa Curve agrument rebutts all your conclusions in disagreement with my posting but thanks. If I went as far to statistically correlate this declining population with Sony's greedy no drop policy I think I would find a strong correlation. In my opinion, Sony's greedy policy changes after taking over from Verant but is the reason EQ is going down the tubes. Sony knows this and is the reason they started up EQ2.Sony is just milking EQ till the very end.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 12, 2006 04:11 PM

golfertwo,

It has been over 30 years since I took my college lessons on population decay and statistics, and I have not used such awesome tools as the Iowa whatchumacallit, so I will humbly accede [[watch the sarcasm, lets focus on the topic -- Loral]] in the use such analysis tool in order to ascertain the demise of an aging game like Everquest. Surely under such obvious analytical prowess and statistical proof, we should all cede to your assertion that EQ is doomed.

I have but one question for you. If for some unexplained reason, the game were to say, manage to survive for longer than you think possible, can I quote you when some yoyo makes such a claim three years from now?

You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get to enjoying the game before it evaporates.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on December 12, 2006 04:23 PM

As with any idae like "no Drop" there are those who are for and those that are against.

Me, I love it. It means as a casual I can still find single group upgrade that I can attain myself. If all items were no drop I would have bought a whole heap of raid stuff and then then only upgrades for me wuold be really high end raid items that I maybe couldn't afford. But once I do that what's the incentive for me to keep playing the game, "I don't Raid". So what would happen is everyone would buy the best gear they could afford, be uber for 2 weeks, get bored and then leave.

Personally I would remove attunable gear from the game as well. I would like to see tradeskilled items being better instead. It is a shame TSS has wiped out the value on DON armor to a large extent. It would have been nice to find some way to extend it instead.

Comment Posted by: golfertwo on December 12, 2006 10:36 PM

Keisa,
Iowa curves where developed less than 30 years ago by two or three Professors at U of Iowa. Iowa curves were developed primarily to do depreciation studies on regulated state and federal electric, sewer & water and Telephony asset survival lives so that an accurate annual depreciation expense and "reserve" (i.e accumulated depreciation reserve) could be built into regulated rates and balance sheets. Iowa curve were and are prolly not taught as a university "Population decay" course, whatever that means, nor a rigourous statistical course that I know of but these professors periodically hold seminar "classes' two or three times a year in Kalamazo and Grand Rapids Michigan. Iowa curves can be fitted to any population that has "deaths" be it retired or salvaged equip or even people. A death in EQ would be somebody leaving the game, the curve could be found and fitted based on the life span survival of peeps in game and when their subsequent death occurs. So I doubt your college courses came even close to what Iowa curves represent. As an "expert witness" all the way thru courts such as the 8th Circuit , I made a statement in response to your agreement on the word you thought was safe-- that word being-- "eventually"--- well you fell, on your own accord, into that mistake, - the ole adage dont agree with something you know nothing about or ask a question you dont know the answer to , I believe, is the reason for your rather empty reply regarding my alleged "superior intellect". There is no need for name calling but an Iowa curve could be set up to determine the Life of EQ, I didnt do any alleged "analysis", believe me finding an accurate Iowa curve fit requires a lot of data over a time period of at least 5 years -- I just have observed the thinning out of the population over the last 7 years and based on my experience of doing a LOT of Iowa curve analysis on plotted and record kept data have deduced the reasons for , what I consider, a rather steep population decline combined with the lack of any new entrants to the game. One telling fact that is not a statistic. It is that Wal- Mart no longer carries any EQ software , at least where I live. If EQ lasts 3 years or more I will probably be a pleasently surprised "yoyo" but then you know the make of a yoyo much better than I.

Comment Posted by: Bonzz on December 13, 2006 12:12 AM

Would someone please explain why SOE bothered to redo and combine the Commons including the tunnel to Shady? IT'S AN EMPTY ZONE !!! NO ONE PLAYS THERE!! NO ONE TRAVELS THROUGH THERE and IT WAS FINE THE WAY IT WAS !!!

Couldn't their time be better spent working on something we can use?

Comment Posted by: cocerned1 on December 13, 2006 02:33 AM

anyone who has ever read my posts knows i dont like everquest. i predict eq will last another 4-5 years but what will happen is that soe will decided to end it, not the decline in players. i think there will be some mass exodus in the next few months. one thing some of you never seem to touch on is the operateing cost of eq. i see where some of you compare eq life with that of the game uo. i'd be willing to say i believe it costs more money to run eq then it does uo. soe dosent spend money on advertising eq, fixing many of the problems with eq that have been there for years, and now they are only offering eq as a digital download. seeing a eq package on a shelf in electronic stores and department stores was most likely the last real advertisement for eq and now it seems many places dont even stock eq any longer. is eq like a suffering old cow left out in the pasture just waiting for the devs/soe to put it out of misery?

Comment Posted by: RandomBard on December 13, 2006 04:04 AM

Ldon MkII would be awesome. Based in Kunark? Even better. Would give them the excuse to start the revamps that we're seeing spreading from the Freeport area.

Predictions
Following the pattern of ldon/dod missions and having a normal/harder/raid structure (no cursor loot), Ldon MkII will have many people enjoying the content whilst the boards moan that it wasn't the best expansion, Velious was, and why can't we have that again even though SoS /was/ Velious MkII, just without the opposing factions (that was the whole reason Velious felt so big and interesting).
One of the expansions before LDoN MkII, electric bugaloo, will be the LoY/Pirates of Norrath expansion that'll be the link between Antonica and Kunark.
Server mergers will occur and x-server instancing/grouping will be implemented at the same time.
Bards will start to be broken every patch like they used to be as Bard code is changed.

Comment Posted by: SomeoneNolrogIsGonnaFlame on December 13, 2006 05:52 AM

Just my quick thoughts on some of the things said so far on this thread;

1) Prior to the "graphical updates", most all zone lines in the game where visually consistant. Not all, but most. That is to say, if you where standing at the zone line, and took a step and zoned, the graphics blended well enough that other than the loading please wait, visually you appeared to have taken just one step.

Now, however, the zone lines mesh poorly going from revamped zone to revamped zone. Simple as that. The result is even less of a sense of immersion than before, with absolutely no excuse for it. They just did the graphics for Freeport, there's no reason that zoning to the commonlands should be so visually jarring.

2) Time vs. reward vs. quality product. Generally speaking I think we can all agree the SOE are for the most part fairly imaginative. The last 7 expansions have seen one new bright boy idea after another. Only we seem to see that they never liked any of the bright boy ideas enough to carry them forward. Actually one could say EQ has become a proving ground for bright boy ideas with no attempt what so ever to have any kind of unified theme. That said, they appear to not have a clear idea as to what the "future" of the game is. Further they appear to lack any in house tool traking the status of all the work done up to date.

For example;
Anyone who has attempted to do all the quests in the "new" Freeport has come across examples of quests that are either incomplete, or otherwise broken.
This is work completed in the last 24 months on thier part. Thier track record is worse the older the content in question (any one remember the Shakey scarecrow issue?).

Simply put, it is easier for a poorly managed group of inventive people to churn out "new" stuff that mostly works. Than for that same group to try to figure out how fix what they apparently couldn't get right in the first place. Much less stuff that likely pre-dates most of the existing staff and certainly predates the current lead designer.

3) Market issues. The MMO market is no longer a niche market. It is mainstream. Added to that, the PC game market is not longer "just geeks", it too is mainstream.

The average consumer is willing to put up with a lot. They are however not willing to continue to poor money into things that just don't work. Not when equivallent working products are available.

Like it or not, new MMO's are being released with a far smaller number of user obvious screw ups, bugs, incomplete content and crud. These new MMO's present consistant immersive worlds with unified tools and themes. The content is by and large issue free from the point of view of the average user. The newer MMO's by and large have an active developer base that is doing thier best to make thier games error free, with no indication that they concider any content/issue too old to matter.

Now ask yourself. If you'd never played EQ before, and you where told you had a choice; Game A offerend the largest "potential" amount of content of any game ever made, however large portions of the content was broken, unused, and appeared abandoned by the game developers. Game A also was had multiple often conflicting game mechanics, was visually non-immersive, and had an online forum where some of the most rabid game fans had been given moderator ability to shut down any ability to make complaints.

Games B, C, and D, have one forth the content, where visually immersive, had active users in all areas of content, had forums that where moderated but not by rapid fans, and an active developer base who's work task was the live game, not 'yet another expansion at the expense of the past expansions...'

Lastly, don't for a minute think SOE isn't aware of these points. They know what thier target audience is; it's existing players, the more devoted the better, the more dependant, the better. The ideal SOE EQ player is a raider who raids as often as possible, and has years emotionally invested in his or her character(s). These are the staple for the remaining life span of EQ, as EQ itself is not a good product for new players. It's buggy, has 6+ years of content that is broken, so much so that the Dev's apparently do not know all that is broken or incomplete. SOE has made the choice to market to the one audience it knows it can keep. Those who are addicted to EQ.

The net result. Don't expect any radical changes. Don't expect anything like sweeping fixes of long outstanding bugs, broken quests, missing NPCs, etc.

You can however expect an ever growing level of gear mudflation, level increases, and new mechanics designed to give the upper 2% of the player base ever more power.

Comment Posted by: bobsyoursister on December 13, 2006 06:11 AM

Eventually, all the whiners and nay-sayers, especially the self-proclaimed on the Internet experts, will go away.

Eventually.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 13, 2006 10:30 AM

golfertwo,

I can agree with your conclusions (in whole or part) without doing analysis or knowing the specifics of how you arrived at those conclusions. Surely, you had to know that. You just wanted to pick a fight with someone, and I took your bait. My poking fun at your tool was a result of your blustering and trying to bulldoze me. It didn't work, and it won't work, so give over.

I'm sure your tool is very nice, and I want to assure you that it is not the tool I question. In my experience, I have learned that analysis is only as good as the data available and the biases and expertise of the people performing the analysis.

I am specifically questioning your data collection process, being as the only ones who have accurate data are SOE, and to my knowledge they aren't distributing that data to anyone. You claim to have a lot of data collected over five years. What does "a lot of data" mean? How did you collect that data? Where is the repository? How did you verify it's pedigree? Please, don't tell me you are extrapolating from the one website we all know and love.

What specific data, besides the fact that the game isn't sold by Wal-mart, did feed into your curve? You claim you observed the thinning out of the game over 7 years. I find that hard to believe, since EQ was growing for most of the 7 years. Where is the thinning? POK? Bazaar? Your guild? Crushbone?

You really don't have to answer all of these questions. I'm really not trying to attack you. I'm just saying I don't trust your data or your analysis and don't agree with all your conclusions. You are unlikely to convince me you are correct.

You think the game is dieing. I think it will be around for a few years. One of us is right and the other is wrong. Big whoop. You could have left it at that after your first post.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: golfertwo on December 13, 2006 12:01 PM

Deleted due to personal attacks.

- Loral

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 13, 2006 02:29 PM

So, what you actually said was...

You could have done this analysis, which you did not, and since the rest of us are too ignorant to comprehend the tools you might have used to prove your case, we should not dispute your claims. That's an amazing stance, proof by absence of evidence.

I believe I'm through debating this with you. It is going nowhere. I wish you the best in and out of the game.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: sunshadow on December 13, 2006 04:34 PM

Let me throw something into the works here. Everyone is assuming the EQ is digital Download only from now on. This may not be the case. I recently went to my local Sydney comp store and saw a nice new box compilation of Star wars Galaxies which I thought had died. None of the expansion for it have been avaliable for years in Australia. It may be the SOE does a similar release with EQ, The last box we saw down here was GoD.

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 13, 2006 07:56 PM

I think they may still come out with boxed compilation packs every year or so but I think new expansions will likely be download only from now on.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on December 13, 2006 11:00 PM

To anyone trying to predict when EQ finally ends, the problem with making any real prediction is that you have to do so based on guesses about the future, and about the actions of a company you cannot really predict. If, for example, SoE makes a sudden media compaign to draw new players into EQ, it might extend the lifespan quite a bit.

Also, if you look at MMO's older than EQ(UO for example) shows a potential for a very long lifespan. We can suspect, based on UO, that the slow loss of players will peter out, and that EQ will at some point reach a somehwat level population. If that population is high enough to be profitable, EQ could last for a very long time.

Simply put, there is too much we do not know to make any realistic predictions about how long EQ will be around. If I had to guess, I would guess that we will soon hit a point where the population is pretty stable, and that EQ will be around for quite some time...but that is all it is, a guess.

Comment Posted by: Bonzz on December 14, 2006 01:23 AM

More STUFF that makes no sense:

I explored Stone Hive .. a new, low level TSS zone tonight. It's very beautiful. Interesting looking bumble bee mobs and plants. Clever HIVE with nooks, cranies, a spiral staircase and an elevator. Lots of encounters that would be terrific fun for a small group.

AND completly empty.

It's easy to get to from the Draakin city, but guess what. Almost all the drops are lore/quest/no drop. And since there are no merchants (unlike say LOIO which had a place to sell even if limited), ya gotta run back to the city every time your bags are full (think half an hour minimum here).

It's pitiful that SOE will put such care and creativity into a new zone and then make it so unattactive (from a loot/exp point) that no one will play there. There are some quests but I guess they are not enough to entice anyone.

GO FIGURE.

Comment Posted by: Philomath on December 14, 2006 09:50 AM

Just a FYI there is at lease one merchant in Stone Hive, the Enchanter spell merchant is in one of the mazes.

Comment Posted by: Bonzz on December 19, 2006 01:53 AM

This is only an FYI .. SOE wake up !!

I had an opportunity to chat with a REAL newbie. EQ is his first on line game. He said he was always curious and had wanted to try EQ for a long time. Luckily for him, someone who was quiting gave him some nice gear to sell, so he had decent equipment.

He said he liked EQ, but no matter what class he tried (and so far cleric, monk and ranger), he couldn't get a group and didn't want to play alone all the time. He was in a guild, but they were all too high to group with him. (He was level 30 something)

So .... if a true newbie can't find a group (and I hear this complaint at almost every level) then there should be interesting options for play while LFG.

If anyone was paying attention, almost everyone (except prolly the uber raiders) was having great fun doing the halloween quests and even the lame Holiday quests. EQ is a game, and some fun diversions keep up playing .. away from the boredom of raids and LFG to grind.

Comment Posted by: xsi on December 19, 2006 01:48 PM

My predictions:

SOE will continue to pump out unfinished expansions whose release dates have nothing to do with polish and everything to do with the bean counters' dates.

EQ will continue to get new producers every year or so, as each producer realizes their hands are literally tied in regards to what they can accomplish, and that consistently failing due to the fact that upper mgmt cares far more about short term revenue than they do the health of the game. This steady progression of new producers will finally end when they find a producer with no ties to EQ, who is content to kick back and focus purely on the money, as Smed is already doing.

The highly vocal minority will continue to clamor for new expansions, even as their own numbers shrink. Those who complain publicly on the forums will continue to be shot down by those who remain happy with EQ, as if their concerns are inconsequential.

EQ's population will continue to deteriorate. Fewer people will buy new expansions, both as a result of a smaller population, and as a result of people getting increasingly fed up with unfinished expansions. (WTF? Devs are already saying they are too busy working on content for the next expansion, despite itemization in TSS being a total joke and spells that were, per Prathun, going to be re-examined in the weeks following TSS' launch, going completely untouched...?)

SOE's upper mgmt is hastening the downfall of EQ with their focus on short term revenue over long term health, in spite of the efforts and intentions of the developers. It's one of the reasons there is sucha high turnover on the EQ dev team; it gets disheartening watching your best efforts to improve the game continually be hampered as a result of an accountant's timetable.

Comment Posted by: xsi on December 19, 2006 01:52 PM

"EQ will continue to get new producers every year or so, as each producer realizes their hands are literally tied in regards to what they can accomplish, and that consistently failing due to the fact that upper mgmt cares far more about short term revenue than they do the health of the game."

... should read:

EQ will continue to get new producers every year or so, as each producer realizes their hands are literally tied in regards to what they can accomplish, and that they will consistently fail to revitalize the game, due to the fact that upper mgmt cares far more about short term revenue than they do the health of EQ.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 19, 2006 03:09 PM

So many people talk about the vocal minority and like to think of themselves as being in the majority, even though they have no proof either way. I have heard people on both sides of an argument describe those that oppose them as the vocal minority. How interesting.

Keisa

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on December 19, 2006 06:04 PM

A couple comments from xsi struck me as amusing.

"This steady progression of new producers will finally end when they find a producer with no ties to EQ, who is content to kick back and focus purely on the money, as Smed is already doing."

Just a hint guy, but EQ is a product that is there to make money. Being focused on making money is the most important thing an EQ producer can do, and is the only thing that will ensure EQ remains around.

"The highly vocal minority will continue to clamor for new expansions, even as their own numbers shrink. Those who complain publicly on the forums will continue to be shot down by those who remain happy with EQ, as if their concerns are inconsequential. "--Said 'minority' is probably not a minority. Without new things to do, EQ is doomed.

"EQ's population will continue to deteriorate. Fewer people will buy new expansions, both as a result of a smaller population, and as a result of people getting increasingly fed up with unfinished expansions. "--You have some evidence of all those people getting fed up with unfinished expansions? The only ones I hear are the same old people, who have been saying the same stuff as long as I have been playing.
TSS was pretty well finished, it's problems(and they are numerous...2 back to back incredibly poor expansions has left me some what dispirited, just not for the reasons you enumerate) had nothing to do with being unfinished.

Comment Posted by: xsi on December 19, 2006 07:00 PM

"'This steady progression of new producers will finally end when they find a producer with no ties to EQ, who is content to kick back and focus purely on the money, as Smed is already doing.'

Thanks for the hint. Really... much appreciated. However, if you looked at the rest of my post, you'd see what I was lamenting was the focus on SHORT TERM revenue. I believe that EQ would make more money if they focused on making the experience more polished and user-friendly, (note: not 'easy' which people seem to think is one and the same), over expansion X. SOE appears to disagree with this idea, such that, even when their developers try to address what they feel are long-standing issues with the game, (OOC regen, invis, etc.), they are not given the time to do it properly and have to sandwich it into a poorly run beta for the next expansion.

"Said 'minority' is probably not a minority. Without new things to do, EQ is doomed."

First, let me respond to Keisa. As you say, there are no figures as to who represents the minority v. majority. Ceratinly, it is a fact that a lot more people play EQ than post on the official forums, but it's impossible to know for sure what that silent 'other group' espouses. However, even within the microcosm of the official forums themselves, it seems to me that the # of proponents of new expansions is shrinking. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not... it's my impression from reading the forums, much the same as my anecdotal evidence from in-game supports at least the fact that the people I have contact with are growing increasingly disheartened about EQ.

As for Redhenna's comment above... I agree that there need to be new things to do in EQ. However, I also think that SOE trying to develop quickly enough to stay in synch with the top few guilds per server does a disservice to the rest of the game, which would benefit from more complete and strenuously tested expansions AND the extra time for developers to address game-wide issues as development tasks in and of themselves. Prathun's recent post about being unable to review spell lines as a result of having to work on content for the next expansion is just one of many examples.

"You have some evidence of all those people getting fed up with unfinished expansions? The only ones I hear are the same old people, who have been saying the same stuff as long as I have been playing."

The same anecdotal evidence I discussed before. The fact that the people my wife and I have been playing with in the last year+ (since most of our guild left for WoW or EQ2) are letting their EQ accounts lapse over issues like TSS itemization or the absurdly scaling power-levels of single group mobs in recent expansions. The fact that, for all the low and mid-level focus in TSS, there are very very few groups playing in them. The fact that most of the pickup raids on my servers have fallen apart due to lack of interest. Is that definitive? Of course not. The only thing even close to definitive would be statistics from SOE, which they stopped giving years ago.

"TSS was pretty well finished, it's problems(and they are numerous...2 back to back incredibly poor expansions has left me some what dispirited, just not for the reasons you enumerate) had nothing to do with being unfinished."

I disagree completely. Spells yanked from beta a week before beta was complete for no real reason other than running out of time to tweak them, (along with statements that Prathun would be revisiting these removed spells post-launch). Significant animation and modelling issues with the drakkin when TSS first launched. Quests broken left and right. Huge lag in several zones that remains an issue. Chunks of the invis 2.0 code still in the game and causing problems. An aa revamp rolled out with the expansion that was horribly untested. Weapon itemization that is laughable for non-raiders.

TSS would have benefited substantially from even another month of testing. (I'd also like to see their beta process overhauled completely, along with an actual testing/feedback period for itemization, but that's another rant)

Comment Posted by: xsi on December 19, 2006 07:06 PM

I'd also like to note that hyperbole, while a valid element of rhetoric, is certainly a bugaboo of many posters, including myself. I'm not sure that condescension is a much more appealing "technique", however.

Comment Posted by: BeingDryHumpedByAbsorForFiveYearsAndCounting on December 20, 2006 05:26 AM

Just a thought. How many of you played AD&D as kids, or still play it?

Ever met an enthusiastic, but basically inept DM that had "a cool idea", but no idea how to make an immersive game world or a linear time line of events?

The game session would go like this....

*******************************************

DM: 'Okay, your just turned level 16, your part finds itself at the mouth of a dark evil cave, the terrain around you is bleak and empty."

Player 1: 'Um, last week we where at a taven in Greendale when we left.'

DM: 'Well you traveled here in your sleep.'

Player 2: 'I cast teleport and take the party back to the inn.'

DM: 'Your teleport fails, you hear the sounds of approaching ancient red dragons from the forest behind you, what do you do?'

*******************************************

Now before you snork coke out your nose. Yeah, I actually lived that experience, the DM even boasted of having a level 17 cleric that was "chaotic-bad".

Anyway, my point is this. Cool ideas, and the drive to see people play in those cool ideas in role-playing games is all fine and grand. But as a role-player, you look for immersion, continuity, and a certain deapth to the game world. If those items are lacking, you end up with montyhall hack and slash stupidity.

Now don't get me wrong, I know there's a certain player base that loves montyhall gaming. However when Brad and crew decided to evolve the MUD into a 3D experience, they said they wanted to bring the paper and pencil and MUD arena to a 3D immersive and persistant realm.

What we have how ever is a constant change in the guard at SOE, instead the Vision(tm), they have "We didn't Promise(tm)".

Instead of delivering 110% of what was advertised in an expansion, they deliver 70%, promptly nerf 10% of what was released, deny 20 of what wasn't released as being "Promised(tm)", and then push 10% of what wasn't released into the next expansion and call it new.

In everyway the SOE Dev's, and the SOE management remind me of that DM back oh so many years ago. They seem so focused on getting us to play in what ever "new cool idea" is floating in the office, they forget completely about everything they've already told us they will fix, everything they've already said they'd get included, litterally everything.

So you ask what can we expect in the comming years.

We can expect even more wildly Montyhall attempts at gaming, with ever more "ancient red dragons" hearding us into what ever "cool idea" they came up with this week.

Comment Posted by: Keisa on December 20, 2006 12:08 PM

Xsi,

I thought it would be a good idea to cover the anomalies you mentioned about the release:

Spells yanked from beta - This has been discussed over and over on boards. Beta is to test things for the relase. Not all things on beta will make release. SOE specifically limited the release spells by class. They developed and tested more spell than that. Ergo, all spells tested were never going to be on the release. You are deluding yourself if you expected otherwise (regardless of what a dev said).

Significant animation and modelling issues with the drakkin - I heard about these. Yep, should never have been released.

Quests broken left and right - I agree with you. Sometimes you wonder if anyone ever tried some things out, when the breaks are so obvious and unavoidable.

Huge lag in several zones that remains an issue - Oh, Icefall, my... favorite zo... ne to play i... n.

Chunks of the invis 2.0 code still in - I'm not sure what you mean, never had an issue with this. I'll take your word for it.

An aa revamp rolled out with the expansion that was horribly untested - A system wide change like this cannot be tested thoroughly, no matter how much time and money you spend on it. It is impossible to predict all the side affects and issues that will arise, and tuning after release will almost certainly be required. Get over it.

Weapon itemization that is laughable for non-raiders - unfortunately, this is a design decision by the developers. These weapons are tuned exactly like they want them to be. Merloc has made his position clear. The fact that he is so out of tune with the players wishes that it is the one issue in the game that casual players and raiders can agree on is a major concern.

I personally feel that SOE does need to apply more resources to fixing stuff. I disagree that they should stop production until all bugs are fixed. In my experience stopping production to go off and fix bugs has little affect on large scale programs. It just adds scedule delays for little visible benefit. They need to apply more reasources to fixing things and an active program for scoping, prioritizing, analyzing, fixing, and testing bugs.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on December 21, 2006 11:40 AM

"In my experience stopping production to go off and fix bugs has little affect on large scale programs."

There is one notable exception: you'll recall that Microsoft a while back stopped all development to spend several months fixing security holes (bugs). And it helped. I'm no Microsoft fan, but I have to admit that Windows XP SP2, kept fully patched, is a huge improvement over earlier versions. There's a reason you haven't had any huge worm outbreaks in the news recently.

But I'd say it's the exception that proves the rule, or at least shows how hard it is to break. Windows security flaws were costing Microsoft's customers billions of dollars (include a good chunk of my time in that total, and I don't officially do PC support). They were especially hurting Microsoft's strategy of promoting Windows as a server platform. In short, they were hurting Microsoft's bottom line--I have no doubt that this was purely a business decision.

Sadly, I don't think there's much evidence that bugs and unfinished content do much to hurt an MMORPG's bottom line. People complain, but they don't quit. At least that seems to be SOE's conclusion. Besides, why spend time fixing laggy zones and buggy quests when you can just as easily create new zones and new quests to replace them, and make money selling the expansion they come in?

Of course the new zones and quests will probably be buggy too. I don't know if it's a case of SOE management continually saying "well, we'll do better this time" without really changing anything or if they've consciously made the business decision to tolerate this kind of thing. The relentless six-month development cycle is another major factor, but again it's all about money. The more money you spend on testing, the fewer bugs you have. Maybe you can't get to zero, but you can do a whole lot better than SOE does.

On a side note: Blizzard just released a huge WoW patch--basically the expansion code minus the new content, which will be released in January. And it's buggy too (though I'd have to say better than most EQ patches of this magnitude). This isn't about incompetent management, though it may be a factor. It's rational behavior driven by the reality that people don't quit over bugs.

Comment Posted by: ElemeyeLapka on December 22, 2006 10:17 AM

I am a recovering EQ-holic! Played Everquest, this addictive game for 7 years where had very good times for the first 5 years playing Enchanter, then for 1 year not having so much fun as had to resort to playing my alt Rogue as a Main after all the nerfs.

Then there were few months when I've played Everquest every now and then until everything (bad content, non-stop nerfs, poor Class balancing, not being able to get in to good Groups or make them to play the game as it use to be - for fun and adventures), made me being able to quit EQ for good!

At some point I've made a post on the Rogue Class board thanking Everquest Developers for making it so easy for me to quit the addiction to EQ.

It was just like a 12 Steps Program for the recovering alcoholics! Everything they did has made EQ less appealing, forcing me out of the bad Life Style!

Everytime the cravings for EQ would get almost unbearable I am glad being able to visit a wonderful Mobhunter Web Site or a terrible Sony Official Everquest Forums Site and read up!
Every time it reinforces my ability to stay away from the troubled EQ and its issues!

Comment Posted by: ElemeyeLapka on December 22, 2006 10:24 AM

I wanted to take this opportunity to say Hi to Moorgard who I had a chance to meet and talk to IRL and Coray who I respect deeply as a wonderful and knowledgable player and Raid Leader who could make Enchanter feel important, exosted and happy from being busy in the Group and Raid content of the pre-OOW Era.

Comment Posted by: Bonzz on December 22, 2006 03:23 PM

I sure agree with Elem ...

The past week, helping some friends, I had a chance to revisit some of the older zones. I'm still amazed at the ingenious and creative content there vs the ho hum same old same old we have seen since GOD came out. It took some strategy and planning, and there were always risks, but it was FUN to play there, especially in small groups.

Even the MM's, which were each different and fun for a quick half hour and some exp when no time for longer projects, have all been nerfed to the point that only one remains in use .... what a waste.

Comment Posted by: wormy on December 25, 2006 05:59 AM

The game is dead - yes, I know, it's dead since 1999 *g*

At the actual state of the game, you either do hardcore raiding, that's 6 days a week, or you leave.

Family type guilds no longer exist, lower end raiding guilds no longer exist.
Pick-up groups are impossible to find (not that it had been easy in the past).

The continued removal of well established spell lines killed several classes.
The hard-core raiders don't care, as long as their guild keeps raiding. Those missing spells made it impossible to play on the lower ends of the game (family guilds, group of friends). But since all raider are happy, SOE doesn't care about the "minority" that's leaving.

I played since Beta4. But with TSS and their (SOE) attitude against "normal" players, it was really easy to leave.

And to tell you the truth, compared to EQ, even WoW is looking like a good thought out game *g*.

EQ will still run for some years, but with no new players coming in, they will consolidate the servers again and again, down to the point where there is no more ROI.

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 25, 2006 09:32 PM

"At the actual state of the game, you either do hardcore raiding, that's 6 days a week, or you leave."

There are quite a few who would argue against this. I'm having a great time in my three-raid-a-week Anguish-level guild.

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 25, 2006 09:38 PM

"Just a thought. How many of you played AD&D as kids, or still play it?"

I run a D&D 3.5 game once a month and I've recently spent a LOT of time working on various campaigns and D&D miniature adventures. I'm into the minis in a big way, my wife got me a Solar and an Ice Devil for Christmas. She was horrified when I opened the Solar and said "COOL! A Fallen Solar!" and she said "NOOOOooo!"

Anyway, D&D is my chance to become a game designer and I love it. I spend a LOT more time building adventures and campaigns than I actually do playing, but it's a hobby.

R.A. Salvatore, the author of the Drizzt books and the new creative director for Green Monster Games, had an excellent podcast that talked about the fine line a DM, or a MMO game designer, must walk to give players enough story to move them forward but not so much as to steal the story away from their own.

Here's the link, it's an excellent listen:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pod/20061215a

Sorry for the lack of an article this week. I've been on vacation.

Loral

Comment Posted by: Armarant on December 25, 2006 11:00 PM

Loral wrote: R.A. Salvatore, the author of the Drizzt books and the new creative director for Green Monster Games, had an excellent podcast that talked about the fine line a DM, or a MMO game designer, must walk to give players enough story to move them forward but not so much as to steal the story away from their own.

this brings up a good point when it comes to EQ and its cloak of many dropped story lines.. there are many storylines they have dropped and never taken a second look at while with many other games the storyline seems rather consistent from expansion to expansion. but the broken shard storylines that never progress past the expansion they were put in is getting annoying.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on December 26, 2006 12:23 PM

Didn't the Mayong storyline extend a bit into 2 expansions?

Storylines in MMO's are hard, since you're supposed to be providing a scenario where all your players are contributing to the story.

In D&D, you can at least allow your party to be the heroes. In a MMO, there are how many other parties trying to be the hero as well?

EQ has done a pretty good job injecting some fun stories in existing zones as of late (really since the MM's started coming out).

If players want better intrigue beyond that, then the concept of team PvP, siege warfare, and zone capture would be a nice step forward for the genre. Allowing captures to impact NPC behavior, and allow cities on different servers to be flagged under different control would be a very positive change, that allows the players to write a much more interactive story.

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 26, 2006 04:04 PM

"In D&D, you can at least allow your party to be the heroes. In a MMO, there are how many other parties trying to be the hero as well?"

One of the least interesting story types, to me anyway, is the hero story. The "farmer grows up and saves the world" fantasy story arc is so soured for me now that I stop reading any book where it begins to lead in that direction. The pig-farmer is "The One" arc is just plain boring and, frankly, so unrealistic as to ruin even a good fantasy story.

This is why I don't like the Wheel of Time books but I love the George R.R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin's books are full of real people in real and often nasty situations. They have history, they have faults, they make mistakes. It's also the reason Han Solo and Indiana Jones are so much better as characters than Luke Skywalker.

My point is, even in my D&D adventures, I don't like the party to get too big a head. Even at level 15, there are a bunch of other powerful people who think the party is insignificant and prove it occationally. The party are six people in a world of six hundred million (or whatever).

It's far more interesting to see heroes become the heroes of their own lives - not the heroes of the whole rest of the world too.

This is one of the reasons I picked a cleric as my EQ class - I didn't want to be a hero except in my own life and my own story.

MMOs are perfect beds for this. People can be heroes in Everquest all the time. A few weeks ago I saw our enchanter (/wave Ceridin) keep six nasty mobs mezzed even though she died and was resurrected in the middle of mezzing them. She played better naked than most enchanters play fully geared. Years ago I saw a monk dive off of the top level of Aviak village in order to train all the nasty mobs away so we could run to Lake Raithe. He died hard from the fall and the resulting train, but he saved the other five of us. He was a hero.

Back when I was in Healers United we used to have three of us rescue new adventurers from the well in befallen. They'd fall in and lose all their gear. We would dive down the well, kill all the ghouls, resurrect the poor victim, and teleport him out to West Commons. We didn't save the world but we saved one guy and that guy thought we were heroes.

That's what Everquest is about.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on December 26, 2006 06:30 PM

Oh I agree, the little saving moments like those are both memorable and enjoyable. (I'll leave your not-so-thinly-veiled shot at zelda alone for now) :) What's interesting though is that your comments are similar to mine in that you seem to see value in folks creating their own destiny, their own heroic tales (of whatever scale). That's where I see expanded, non-gank PvP as a possibility to really add new avenues to the game.

That being said though, different people play for different reasons. In a game where a single piece of gear improves every statistical aspect of your character by +30 or more, I'd suggest that someone is trying to encourage worldbeating heroism.

Comment Posted by: uhhuh on January 1, 2007 01:05 PM

In 2 years, eq will be down to 3 servers... 1 PVP, 1 Regular, 1 'progression' servers.

Comment Posted by: avid reader on January 1, 2007 05:45 PM

Is it too much to ask for a new article? Its going on a month since the last article.

Thanks!

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 2, 2007 07:54 AM

Not too much to ask, but more than I'm able to deliver right now. I'll have one up by next week at the latest.

Comment Posted by: wormy on January 2, 2007 02:16 PM

Comment Posted by: Loral on December 25, 2006 09:32 PM

"At the actual state of the game, you either do hardcore raiding, that's 6 days a week, or you leave."

There are quite a few who would argue against this. I'm having a great time in my three-raid-a-week Anguish-level guild.

-----------

Then you are playing during the prime time of this game: during US time!

Those server mergers back then didn't do anything good for non-US customers. SOE cared about the US time zones only.

Now with several games targetting the european customers in their local languages, EQ lost the majority of those. The players remaining in the game (EQ) had lesser opportunities to find group/guilds during their time online, so they left too.

So, you're right, YOU do have a great game - and I'm right, I don't have any options other than hardcore raid or leave. It depends on the time zone one's living in.

Comment Posted by: Aethn on January 3, 2007 07:02 AM

[Keep out the personal attacks - Loral]

Comment Posted by: Iaelail on January 4, 2007 09:55 AM

Regarding the Comments about US time zones, I play on a US time zone server and don`t really have any problems finding a group in the evening when I`m on. However I am located in the UK, though I do work shifts so on a late shift, I can use EQ as a wind down for a few hours or so. I`m not a high end player either, lvl 55 with 6AAs

Comment Posted by: bob on January 4, 2007 08:35 PM

There is a factor which could accelerate the player attrition in EverQuest..that is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

NDa was lifted today on VG, so I may now state that I have been a beta tester of VG for quite some time now, and as an orginal EQ players I can honestly say that Vanguard is the REAL EQ 2. (as far as who I am, I am Amphitryon of Prexus, and I play the same character name in Vanguard)

EQ players will feel totally at home in Vanguard right from the get go

I say VG is a factor because of Sigil/Brad McQuaid. VG is the game invented by the exact same people who invented EQ and are the ones reposible for EQ's longevity and intial success.

Also I fail to see how SOE publishing 3 fantasy-genre PC platform MMOs at the same time is good for its business. VG will tug at the player base of EQ & EQ 2 quite strongly.

Comment Posted by: Loral on January 4, 2007 09:22 PM

Vanguard won't take nearly as many players away from EQ as Burning Crusade will. That's going to be a monstrous release.

My next article is going to cover a lot of the MMO landscape in 2007 including Vanguard, Burning Crusade, and some others including a little bit of a tangent into console gaming.

Comment Posted by: Narci on January 5, 2007 12:23 AM

If you don't wanna raid constantly and don't have a few good friends to group with regularly

There is no reason to play EQ any more

Most of the zones are empty = no pick up groups

All of the MMs have been nerfed

It's not possible to log on for an hour or so of fun no matter what you time zone is

Even with a good group, without all the flags, the higher end zones are locked

too bad, it used to be a grand adventure and great fun

bye bye EQ I guess thats what SOE is hoping for

Comment Posted by: wiggles on January 5, 2007 07:34 AM

Narci is exactly right. Except for the locked zones. TSS pretty much obsoleted all other expansions especially for non-raiders whatever your leve. This expansion has more things to do in it, camping gear, doing quests and faction and enough diverse zones and hunting areas to keep anyone occupied for months.

So you missed out being able to enter Plane of Fire or VT or Qvic. Those days are gone, the items are bank fodder and the exp is nothing compared to TSS. You can forget about everything else and play in TSS and have fun, make enough pp to buy what you need.

But, it is best done and enjoyed with other people. I do agree it is harder these days to find a group, in part due to the level spread and the number of zones. Also in part people's attitudes and expecatations. I don't think this is EQ's fault more than the inevitable progression and experience of MMORPG's.

When I quit EQ last year, my close game friends had either sever moved or went to WoW. The guild I was in was stagnated (which caused these people to leave) and I really wasn't having fun. I came back when TSS launched and am having a gand ol time. Mostly because I found a few new friends who share my same drive to do things.

Post a new message.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.