EQ and New Player Population

[stormlord]

I originally attached this to another post, but thought I'd make a thread about it to see what others think about what caused EQ to crash. This could be a great troll thread, burning flames and spewing guts. Up to all of you.

-----------------------

This site estimates the rate if you look here:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

(this is an estimate, it could be wildly wrong or close to right, but it's all we got!)

You see that the rate in EQ declined at a slight pace until mid 2001, where it took a dive. I don't know how to explain the dive. I took a look at another chart, and I saw that Lineage gained over 500,000 subscriptions around that time period. Anarchy Online launched summer 2001. (I recall in late 2001, early 2002, near S Karana, someone asking me to join them in Anarchy Online.) Anyway, hard to know. EQ never recovered, for lots of reasons. It could be that sony wasn't advertising, but i think what was more important was that dozens of mmo's were firing up and stealing away potential new people before they ever got to even see it. Secondly, the game was growing older, attrition was eating away at the veterans, and the group-based play of EQ really hampered its survival in this kind of compromised environment. Sony has tried to reduce the ceiling a bit so new players could better accommodate their needs in a crippled world, but it's a losing game.

Imagine a new player coming into EQ after 2000-01. The world they would see would have less people. No, i'm not talking about Kunark or Velious. I mean places like Qeynos and Freeport and Greater Faydark. It would have been harder to find a group. By then, the population would have been very top heavy, and without advertising, new players are going to come up empty. There'd be lots of zones, and they wouldn't be sure where to start. And then, in the spirit of exploration, in late 2001, they log into DAOC and servers are crawling with people, by comparison. Back then, DAOC had a babies butt and was shiny new. Things aren't so brutal in DAOC. Given a choice, i think most new players would stay with DAOC, as just one small example. I don't see how EQ could have been saved, unless the whole package could be redone.

WOW is a phenomenon. Absolutely. It's not even listed on that chart because it would make them all look like ants in comparison. It bit bigger and bigger chunks like some kind of Goliath. It brought MMORPG to the world. It even got at one of my sisters (her poor dear soul). But, I'm wondering at what point people will start saying things like, "You know, WOW isn't what it used to be, " or things like, "WOW sucks now." You know, everything gets old. It gets harder and harder to update and manage old software. It gets harder and harder to keep old players with the same name without a do over. I'm wondering what will come after WOW? Will Blizzard make a sequel, or will someone else poke out their nose from behind a bush, and steal the world??

But WOW didn't kill EQ. EQ had been dying for a while. It's still spitting blood and crawling forward

[mitic]

its easy, soe killed eq starting with planes of power

[clacbec]

more like Plane of knowledge, That one was really Shit in Da Soup imo
G'

[calaxa]

I originally attached this to another post, but thought I'd make a thread about it to see what others think about what caused EQ to crash. This could be a great troll thread, burning flames and spewing guts. Up to all of you.

-----------------------

This site estimates the rate if you look here:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

(this is an estimate, it could be wildly wrong or close to right, but it's all we got!)

You see that the rate in EQ declined at a slight pace until mid 2001, where it took a dive. I don't know how to explain the dive. I took a look at another chart, and I saw that Lineage gained over 500,000 subscriptions around that time period. Anarchy Online launched summer 2001. (I recall in late 2001, early 2002, near S Karana, someone asking me to join them in Anarchy Online.) Anyway, hard to know. EQ never recovered, for lots of reasons. It could be that sony wasn't advertising, but i think what was more important was that dozens of mmo's were firing up and stealing away potential new people before they ever got to even see it. Secondly, the game was growing older, attrition was eating away at the veterans, and the group-based play of EQ really hampered its survival in this kind of compromised environment. Sony has tried to reduce the ceiling a bit so new players could better accommodate their needs in a crippled world, but it's a losing game.

Imagine a new player coming into EQ after 2000-01. The world they would see would have less people. No, i'm not talking about Kunark or Velious. I mean places like Qeynos and Freeport and Greater Faydark. It would have been harder to find a group. By then, the population would have been very top heavy, and without advertising, new players are going to come up empty. There'd be lots of zones, and they wouldn't be sure where to start. And then, in the spirit of exploration, in late 2001, they log into DAOC and servers are crawling with people, by comparison. Back then, DAOC had a babies butt and was shiny new. Things aren't so brutal in DAOC. Given a choice, i think most new players would stay with DAOC, as just one small example. I don't see how EQ could have been saved, unless the whole package could be redone.

WOW is a phenomenon. Absolutely. It's not even listed on that chart because it would make them all look like ants in comparison. It bit bigger and bigger chunks like some kind of Goliath. It brought MMORPG to the world. It even got at one of my sisters (her poor dear soul). But, I'm wondering at what point people will start saying things like, "You know, WOW isn't what it used to be, " or things like, "WOW sucks now." You know, everything gets old. It gets harder and harder to update and manage old software. It gets harder and harder to keep old players with the same name without a do over. I'm wondering what will come after WOW? Will Blizzard make a sequel, or will someone else poke out their nose from behind a bush, and steal the world??

But WOW didn't kill EQ. EQ had been dying for a while. It's still spitting blood and crawling forward

Storm,

I think you need to reread that chart. The huge plummet did not occur until 2005 (a few months after EQ2 and WOW launch). I was still playing on live during this era and there was no mass exodus just yet. Stormhammer server opened during this time as well as a few other servers. Wasn't until 2006 did SOE start doing server merges and that's what you see on the chart. Numbers are inaccurate after that as SOE introduced station pass which means anyone subscription numbers can be duplicated for multiple games.

[Grento]

I loved all of the Raids in POP, I just hated how you had to go about getting into them and hated POK. If they had just implemented the content differently, it would have been awesome.

[mitic]

more like Plane of knowledge, That one was really Shit in Da Soup imo
G'

yea that, pop books, instanced zoned... anything that soe took over after brad left

the funny thing tho, guilds HERE are already causing drama about boss mobs and that shows me the reason why they coded instanced zones on life.

[calaxa]

I loved all of the Raids in POP, I just hated how you had to go about getting into them and hated POK. If they had just implemented the content differently, it would have been awesome.

I agree with Grento. Some of the best raid content was in POP in my opinion. I do understand that POP was quite game altering and see why many people disliked it. It destroyed what little lore was left in EQ. It shrunk the world down to make travel so much faster. It forced the casual gamer population to raid just to keep up. Many of the scripts and encounters were completely broken when first introduced. POK and POT were laggy beyond belief. The entire direction of EQ became item based over all else. Despite all these problems, I still enjoyed EQ very much into this era but obviously, the audience here is going to skew the other way.

[guineapig]

Meh, before PoP everyone was hanging out in Shadowhaven and the Nexus.
Nobody mentions that.

[stormlord]

Storm,

I think you need to reread that chart. The huge plummet did not occur until 2005 (a few months after EQ2 and WOW launch). I was still playing on live during this era and there was no mass exodus just yet. Stormhammer server opened during this time as well as a few other servers. Wasn't until 2006 did SOE start doing server merges and that's what you see on the chart. Numbers are inaccurate after that as SOE introduced station pass which means anyone subscription numbers can be duplicated for multiple games.

The MMO's after 2003 might have "broke the camels back," but it had had a bad back for a while.

The decline does not have to be huge. If you have a decline in active subscriptions, you'll very likely also hve a decline in new player subscriptions. In fact, I think this is highly likely. We all know that EQ, just like any other mmorpg, becomes top heavy in short order. Without a strong thriving new player population that can find groups and survive in EQ's world, all you got left are the veterans. Veterans get tired of playing the same game over and over. They try new things. When EQ2 and WOW came out, just as Anarchy Online and DAOC and others, EQ lost accounts. The decline did not start with WOW or EQ2, as I was trying to point out here by referring the reader to the event that happened in mid 2001 when there was a marked decrease in the rate of active subscriptions. It might not have started with it, but it certainly was hit hard in 2005. Some other mmo's that came out in 2004-05 were: Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Matrix Online, Conquer Online.

[MrBeerBelly]

EQ was fine in 2001 and 2002.

I remember being online in 2002 in of of the zones introduced in the Shadows of Lucin when a GM came on to announce that EQ just broke it's own record for most people logged in at one time.

EQ didn't die until WOW/EQ2 came out.

[Bentheb]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

[calaxa]

The MMO's after 2003 might have "broke the camels back," but it had had a bad back for a while.

The decline does not have to be huge. If you have a decline in active subscriptions, you're very likely also hve a decline in new player subscriptions. In fact, I think this is highly likely. We all know that EQ, just like any other mmorpg, becomes top heavy in short order. Without a strong thriving new player population that can find groups and survive in EQ's world, all you got left are the veterans. Veterans get tired of playing the same game over and over. They try new things. When EQ2 and WOW came out, just as Anarchy Online and DAOC and others, EQ lost accounts. The decline did not start with WOW or EQ2, as I was trying to point out here by referring the reader to the event that happened in mid 2001 when there was a marked decrease in the rate of active subscriptions. It might not have started with it, but it certainly was hit hard in 2005. Some other mmo's that came out in 2004-05 were: Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Matrix Online, Conquer Online.

Storm,

I'm saying you misread the chart. EQ leveled off in 2001 with it's peak subscriber rate in 2004-2005. Look at the chart again. It basically held steady at 450K-500K sub during the years 2001-2005. This actually coincided with Sony press releases. After that, they kept their mouth shut as to how many subs they had. The dropoff didn't occur until 2005. You must have been looking at a different line. I played well into this era and perhaps many of you guys left but there were true newbs still entering into the fray. There were many boxxers appearing increasing the overall sub rate and many returning players to check out the new expansions. I dabbled in other MMOs during this time as well but kept my accounts on EQ one year after I left (accidentally actually as I had forgotten to cancel and paid the year in advance).

[calaxa]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

[stormlord]

EQ was fine in 2001 and 2002.

I remember being online in 2002 in of of the zones introduced in the Shadows of Lucin when a GM came on to announce that EQ just broke it's own record for most people logged in at one time.

EQ didn't die until WOW/EQ2 came out.

I don't know about you, but I know without a doubt that there were far more people in the low level zones in 1999 than there were in 2001-02 when I started a new character. I got by, and I did so well, all on a pvp server (in 1999 I played on Rallos Zek). But I was well aware, even way back then, that things weren't the same. Today I know that as a top heavy population, but back then I could only think that it was dead by comparison. Now, looking back on all of it, I see a picture with more going on in it.

You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to understand what this thread is about. If you do that, you'll see that it, literally, hits a wall in mid 2001. Like it was run over, and stays that way for years. In fact, I wonder if it even recovered at all? That spike in 2004 is suspect, and I know GOD, as John Smedley put it, was probably EQ's worst expansion ever. They made it for level 70 cap, and most people were barely 50.

[Bentheb]

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

till they debugged it raid content was hopelessly broken, and drove people away. not to mention Raid flagging version 1.0 when EVERYBODY had to do the full kt quest line to move on,

and the group content was so over the top for anybody that wasnt raid geared (see the 1st versions of tpt /vex) it drove those people off

[MrBeerBelly]

I don't know about you, but I know without a doubt that there were far more people in the low level zones in 1999 than there were in 2001-02 when I started a new character. I got by, and I did so well, all on a pvp server (in 1999 I played on Rallos Zek). But I was well aware, even way back then, that things weren't the same. Today I know that as a top heavy population, but back then I could only think that it was dead by comparison. Now, looking back on all of it, I see a picture with more going. You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to really get an idea what the gist of this thread is.

Sure there were more people per zone in 1999 than in 2001, but that was because there were far more zones. Also the best EXP was in Lucin, so that is where every one went (even the low levels). You could level from level 1 to 30 in a day in that one zone killing those bandit like things. I remember there being near 100 people in that zone ALL THE TIME.

[Omnimorph]

It's the nature of MMO's, they have to introduce fresher content to keep the current players happy, and then new players to it are in places with less population and as such the experience isn't the same.

I wonder how many actual zones eqlive has now, i mean it must be hundreds... maybe even thousands. And factor into that how few people play (especially at lower levels) and then you end up with the game being geared towards the max level players, even WoW's gone that way. So what you get from that is a bunch of excess zones that no longer serve a purpose because you're only in that level range for a small amount of time.

On the note of EQlive, i remember them doing the revamps of BB, guk, unrest and CT. Those zones became quite lively at that time :) then they introduced the classic monster missions. Basically they were just trying to give players a feel of the old stuff... and that's why we're all here at p99. We want the old stuff because that was the fun stuff.

[calaxa]

till they debugged it raid content was hopelessly broken, and drove people away. not to mention Raid flagging version 1.0 when EVERYBODY had to do the full kt quest line to move on,

and the group content was so over the top for anybody that wasnt raid geared (see the 1st versions of tpt /vex) it drove those people off

Hmmmmm....Bentheb is bringing back some bad memories of my first few days in GoD zones. My groups were elemental geared and we were having horrible time just xping in these zones. I being the enchanter was forced to charm everything for dps. Worked a for a few kills till the charm broke and I'm getting pummeled for 800 quads. I think after a month of tackling GoD content, decided to avoid completely.

I also think the massive amounts of MQ2 usage around this time certainly did a number on server population. I remember half an entire "elite" guild getting banned overnight.

[Grento]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

This is when most of my friends started to leave. A good chunk of them weren't even in the elemental planes by the time GOD came out so there wasn't really anything for them to do, gear lacking and what not.

[Rael]

I left in 2001 for DAOC. Intended to play both DAOC and Luclin but it's almost impossible to effectively play 2 MMOs so DAOC won over. Then came SWG and WoW which easily took me until 2006 before I felt like trying EQ again.

[calaxa]

I don't know about you, but I know without a doubt that there were far more people in the low level zones in 1999 than there were in 2001-02 when I started a new character. I got by, and I did so well, all on a pvp server (in 1999 I played on Rallos Zek). But I was well aware, even way back then, that things weren't the same. Today I know that as a top heavy population, but back then I could only think that it was dead by comparison. Now, looking back on all of it, I see a picture with more going on in it.

You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to understand what this thread is about. If you do that, you'll see that it, literally, hits a wall in mid 2001. Like it was run over, and stays that way for years. In fact, I wonder if it even recovered at all? That spike in 2004 is suspect, and I know GOD, as John Smedley put it, was probably EQ's worst expansion ever. They made it for level 70 cap, and most people were barely 50.

I agree with this statement. EQ did hit a wall or plateau by 2001. That peak you saw at the tail end of 2004 was because SOE told players of EQ that they would receive beta testing priority if they were current subscribers. That's why there is that huge spike. GoD=worst expansion? Yeah, I'll agree with this one too. It just totally made no sense at all.

Your experience is going to be skewed as you started on a PvP server where SOE had tons of problems. They had major rules revisions (Sullon Zek anyone?) and the game was just not very good as PvP goes (seems to be majority opinion, not just mine). SOE admitted that they didn't really care about balancing that aspect as the number of blue servers vs. red was something like 25:1? I also think 2001 was when the PvP servers started merging and consolidating the ruleset (correct me if I am wrong about these dates).

[stormlord]

Storm,

I'm saying you misread the chart. EQ leveled off in 2001 with it's peak subscriber rate in 2004-2005. Look at the chart again. It basically held steady at 450K-500K sub during the years 2001-2005. This actually coincided with Sony press releases. After that, they kept their mouth shut as to how many subs they had. The dropoff didn't occur until 2005. You must have been looking at a different line. I played well into this era and perhaps many of you guys left but there were true newbs still entering into the fray. There were many boxxers appearing increasing the overall sub rate and many returning players to check out the new expansions. I dabbled in other MMOs during this time as well but kept my accounts on EQ one year after I left (accidentally actually as I had forgotten to cancel and paid the year in advance).

You seem to only care when the active subscriptions go down, but not what the rate of active subscriptions is in a positive direction. The rate matters, not whether it's plus or minus. It's a sign of what's going on underneath. Unfortunately, we're not privy to the details, but this gives us hints. When the rate decreased, that was a sign that active subscriptions were going in a negative direction. What happened in 2001 and in the years that came after was a sign of bad things. A trend.

In mid 2001 and after, barely enough people were coming back from a break or buying the game to try it out to make up for people who were leaving or taking a break to make a positive gain. When you see the trend, you see that less and less people were coming back from a break or coming into the game for the first time. It was so small that for 2.5 years only 50,000 active subscribers were gained - a trickle compared to pre-2001 gains. Between 2001 and 2004, it's hard to say whether new players or old players were coming into the game to replace those who left, but what we can say is that there were less and less of them.

Underlined that because it's the important part and ties into the thread.

[Isphet]

The death of EQ in my mind happened through "raid force softening" by Gates of Discord because it was so damn difficult, and there was far too little in the way of diverse content. If I never have to kill another damn blue golem again, I'll be happy. That expansion was SUCH a meat grinder.

The death knell though was the combination of Omens release and WoW coming out (maybe it was beta still, but I was enamored with WoW at the time when it was hella new.)

We had just made it through the grinder that was GoD and Omens came out to sucker punch us again with another level grind and more super difficult raiding. I just couldn't stomach working that hard again when WoW was fresh and new and had all that promise. Our raid guild, Silent Tempest on Drinal, finally decided to call it quits because not enough people were motivated to log in and field a proper raid force.

[calaxa]

You seem to only care when the active subscriptions go down, but not what the rate of active subscriptions is in a positive direction. The rate matters, not whether it's plus or minus. It's a sign of what's going on underneath. Unfortunately, we're not privy to the details, but this gives us hints. When the rate decreased, that was a sign that active subscriptions were going in a negative direction. What happened in 2001 and in the years that came after was a sign of bad things. A trend.

In mid 2001 and after, barely enough people were coming back from a break or buying the game to try it out to make up for people who were leaving or taking a break to make a positive gain. When you see the trend, you see that less and less people were coming back from a break or coming into the game for the first time. It was so small that for years only 50,000 subscribers were gained - a mere trickle compared to pre-2001. Between 2001 and 2004, it's hard to say whether new players or old players were coming into the game to replace those who left, but what we can say is that there were less and less of them.

You're focused too much on growth rates. At some point, it will plateau and that's what the chart demonstrates. If you're only focused on rates, a movie has it's greatest growth on opening weekend and it's downhill from there. I wouldn't call that a failure of that particular movie. If it stays level, that's an anomoly. I would think an MMO having a plateau of 3 years is quite successful as that is sustained revenue. Believe me, 50K sub gain per year is still substantial revenue (not sure if it was $10 or $12 but assuming $10/month, that's 500K/month or 6 million/yr extra for no addition capacity neeeded?). SOE knew that EQ would peak and began development on their sequel during this cycle. It's probably the reason why SOE milked us with 2 expansions per year during this time adding an extra $50 per account. Another famous MMO decided to cancel their sequel and let their product stagnate and surprisingly, it still grew, reaching its peak around the same time as EQ.

I tried almost every single MMO during this era but after this, if an MMO was older than 6 months, I just would never go in. Why? I felt current players would have too much advantage over me. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way and it.

I understand the trend analysis you're trying to make but the growth rate is not an indicator of the quality of play or dissatisfaction of current subscriber base. The statistics merely show that EQ had met its saturation point and you would not attract any new players to this genre.

[Sono_hito]

All i can cite is my personal experience. I left shortly after the PoP came out. I found that making things so easy, what i always called pandering to the players, was what killed it for me. Its started taking away what felt like the essense of the game. It also started making an already huge game a little unwieldy. And with player loads going down, it started devolving into the few "best" zones that had any players in them, leaving much of the world to feel empty.

While WoW did definately do a few things to streamline the whole experience, it made such a small accessable world that it always felt crowded. And with fast-travel the modis-operandi on such all already small world. As just a small thing, it made it feel too easy. Eventualy, with the ease of play and it being SO accessable, the large numbers of players turned things into the social game it is now. (imho) The expected MMO experience now, for most users that i poll personaly, is no longer that your playing a very challenging videogame that requires groups to compete. But to be something "experienced" (whatever the fuck that means). I watched a video on the "hooks" of games and why things like FarmVille works. It very quickly shows why games like WoW work. Not because they are a challenge, but because of their native competition between players as a social networking tool.

We, as real gamers, expect a challenge. Social connections between the challenge is very much a secondary thing. In so much as to be something that comes as a benefit of facing the challenges together. When end-game is reached, and all content is used up, the only part left is the social aspect. So for gamers looking for content/challenge, its hard to keep playing a game in which theres nothing new. And new players looking for a challenge cant play when the major user-base is high level and not playing the low content any longer. So a vicious loop occurs. Old players want more content but dont want to play the same thing over and over. New players want to play the content they have not seen before, but have no one to play with.

To solve this, a new MMO can be procured. But for people like us, the challenge just does not seem to be there. The experience is lost. We are looking for a challenge like we once saw and felt, but these new MMO's seem to be running off of the social base first, game challenge second. One of the games that ive seen circumvent this is Eve online. I played that game for 2 years and was still learning things. But to say its a wholetogether new experience is to underlay exactly what the game is. This can be a challenge to some of us that are looking for the experience we where missing from EQ. And in the end, while the game is fun. I found it ultimately lacking in that...essense (for lack of a word.

Vanguard was to be the sequel that we where looking for. But, if you followed that at any length, you know what happened to it. I lement this. As i for one could see what they where really trying to do. Which was make a game for people like us. If they had the needed DEV time and proper advertising. I really think that this game could have gone off. But as things stand, it had a faltering start and bad press. Which killed any chance it had. Which is really a shame.

[stormlord]

Lets say no more new players come into a server.

Who will play the low levels?

1) Old players making alts
2) Old players coming back and resuming play on their low level

Anybody want to hazard a guess how many new players, as opposed to old players making alts, are needed to keep the low level zones occupied?

I did a really quick guess and came up with 474 per month.

Here's what I did:

7 home cities x (3 adjacent zones) = 21 noob zones to occupy

21 noob zones x 4 players each = 84

84 x (4 time slots based on 4 hours per play with an 8 hour empty window) = 366

366 x (.50% of them are old player alts) = 158

158 x (10 days average for +5 levels so multiple by 3 for 1 month) = 474 per month

474 x 30 months = 14220 in 2.5 years for a single server

So you can mess with it to get different output. But I'm wondering how many new players are needed to occupy new character zones in the presence of old players playing their alts.

This of course hints at the complexity of determining how many are needed to occupy a zone and keep players happy. How many old players are making alts? How people people need to be in the low level zones for low level characters to level up? What is the threshold for an average person? How much punishment will they take before they quit looking for a group and just /leave?

[stormlord]

All i can cite is my personal experience. I left shortly after the PoP came out. I found that making things so easy, what i always called pandering to the players, was what killed it for me. Its started taking away what felt like the essense of the game. It also started making an already huge game a little unwieldy. And with player loads going down, it started devolving into the few "best" zones that had any players in them, leaving much of the world to feel empty.

While WoW did definately do a few things to streamline the whole experience, it made such a small accessable world that it always felt crowded. And with fast-travel the modis-operandi on such all already small world. As just a small thing, it made it feel too easy. Eventualy, with the ease of play and it being SO accessable, the large numbers of players turned things into the social game it is now. (imho) The expected MMO experience now, for most users that i poll personaly, is no longer that your playing a very challenging videogame that requires groups to compete. But to be something "experienced" (whatever the fuck that means). I watched a video on the "hooks" of games and why things like FarmVille works. It very quickly shows why games like WoW work. Not because they are a challenge, but because of their native competition between players as a social networking tool.

We, as real gamers, expect a challenge. Social connections between the challenge is very much a secondary thing. In so much as to be something that comes as a benefit of facing the challenges together. When end-game is reached, and all content is used up, the only part left is the social aspect. So for gamers looking for content/challenge, its hard to keep playing a game in which theres nothing new. And new players looking for a challenge cant play when the major user-base is high level and not playing the low content any longer. So a vicious loop occurs. Old players want more content but dont want to play the same thing over and over. New players want to play the content they have not seen before, but have no one to play with.

To solve this, a new MMO can be procured. But for people like us, the challenge just does not seem to be there. The experience is lost. We are looking for a challenge like we once saw and felt, but these new MMO's seem to be running off of the social base first, game challenge second. One of the games that ive seen circumvent this is Eve online. I played that game for 2 years and was still learning things. But to say its a wholetogether new experience is to underlay exactly what the game is. This can be a challenge to some of us that are looking for the experience we where missing from EQ. And in the end, while the game is fun. I found it ultimately lacking in that...essense (for lack of a word.

Vanguard was to be the sequel that we where looking for. But, if you followed that at any length, you know what happened to it. I lement this. As i for one could see what they where really trying to do. Which was make a game for people like us. If they had the needed DEV time and proper advertising. I really think that this game could have gone off. But as things stand, it had a faltering start and bad press. Which killed any chance it had. Which is really a shame.

Well, if WOW is being played by my sister, everything is a lot clearer. Not to say WOW has anything wrong with it, but it's a lot friendlier than eq was in 1999! In 1999, things weren't exactly hard, we had friends, lots of friends. But the aim was different, the audience was different. Hmm. I don't think there's anything wrong with WOW going in a social direction. In fact, i think that's a great thing to see. We've seen a lot of that in EQ over the years. We've pointed to it and made it one of the reasons EQ was so great in 1999.

I think that when there're a lot of people playing things are easier in EQ. When you take the people away, things get a lot harder. I know I feel best in EQ when there're other people to help, other people to see, other people to remember in my thoughts. We're dependent on eachother, and when there's no one else to turn to, you're as good as dead in this game unless you can solo. But that ain't good enough anyway. This, like WOW, is an MMO. We need other people, not just to play the game, but to socially meld and make friends.

[Sono_hito]

Well, if WOW is being played by my sister, everything is a lot clearer. Not to say WOW has anything wrong with it, but it's a lot friendlier than eq was in 1999! In 1999, things weren't exactly hard, we had friends, lots of friends. But the aim was different, the audience was different. Hmm. I don't think there's anything wrong with WOW going in a social direction. In fact, i think that's a great thing to see. We've seen a lot of that in EQ over the years. We've pointed to it and made it one of the reasons EQ was so great in 1999.

I think that when there're a lot of people playing things are easier in EQ. When you take the people away, things get a lot harder. I know I feel best in EQ when there're other people to help, other people to see, other people to remember in my thoughts. We're dependent on eachother, and when there's no one else to turn to, you're as good as dead in this game unless you can solo. But that ain't good enough anyway. This, like WOW, is an MMO. We need other people, not just to play the game, but to socially meld and make friends.

I guess i meant that in EQ, you group as a means to an end, that of killing and lving up. In games like WoW, the game is easy enough to play without groups. Which makes it boring to me. So you group to have social interaction in what i consider an otherwise unfulfilling game.

[jilena]

See I don't really think EQ content is any harder than Pre-BC WoW. At least in terms of "skill" required to defeat content. I do think that EQ required a good deal more socializing when you had limited shared content, and less soloable content, and some classes that simply couldn't solo. If you didn't have friends you didn't make it too far.

[mgellan]

What killed liveEQ for me as a casual player (especially the second time round starting from scratch) was as a 50ish warrior sitting around Velks in my lowly Cobalt with alts twinked to the nth degree, getting grouped only out of pity.

What was really attractive about the Progression servers is they allowed everyone to start fresh, although IMHO the progression went too fast for casuals/family guilds. P99 captures this as well.

I'd love to see P99 split when Kunark comes out to let the high end guilds run off and have their dramafest on the new content while anyone who wants to hang out and play the Classic content at a slower pace can now have a chance at the end game. Allow character transfers to the new server, rinse and repeat for Velious.

Alternatively, open source the database and custom code immediately prior to each progression (sans account table obviously) and let others host Classic servers and perhaps do char transfers between them. To me a fringe benefit of this would enable more donations, as people would see some benefit even if the devs pulled the plug. P99 Network ftw!

Regards,
Mg

[Appaullo]

I played consistently until my guild broke into PoTime. At that point the next expansion was around the corner ... I dabbled a bit, but for me the feel of old EQ (long travel times, corpse runs, etc.) was gone, baby gone. Plane of Knowledge did indeed ruin the game, making everything just way too easy. Although I put many, many holes in my wall while leveling my necro hehehe. I'm geeked beyond words to play on this server when it goes live, just not sure if the old feeling will be the same or not. My fingers are crossed.

[calaxa]

What was really attractive about the Progression servers is they allowed everyone to start fresh, although IMHO the progression went too fast for casuals/family guilds. P99 captures this as well.

I'd love to see P99 split when Kunark comes out to let the high end guilds run off and have their dramafest on the new content while anyone who wants to hang out and play the Classic content at a slower pace can now have a chance at the end game. Allow character transfers to the new server, rinse and repeat for Velious.

Regards,
Mg

I think that all future MMOs should follow this type of ruleset. If you advance at a certain speed, you should be split off onto a different server. Seperate the powergamers from the casuals. They already do this for blue vs. red. Why not for this other portion of the community instead of a sandbox. You'll segregate the high end drama and stabilize the economy of both communites. No massive mudflation and item dilution. Probably will never happen though.

[Appaullo]

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

[mgellan]

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

True, but the issue becomes co-existence - on one hand you have a population that moves very quickly and consumes content at a high rate, and a slow population that log on for a few hours to have fun. The raiders then create twinked alts that compete with the casuals at lower levels, and the server economy floods with plat and farmed items. To me thats a good reason to try splitting servers, so the two populations don't mix...

Regards,
Mg

[xakle]

I quit shortly before Velious came out. I raided all the time more so for the fun of it than the loot. We had generally the same group of 30 people that would do plane of sky every other weekend and plane of sky had average at best loot because this was not long after Kunark was released.

It was great because our server wasn't guild biased. You could be in any guild and get into any raid. Because of this, our server (Tunare) was the first to not only get the Fiery Avenger (Musk... with Drool giving him the glory), but the first to get the Rogue epic (Kaylum) and a number of other epics and (unconfirmed) the first to spawn the Sister of the Spire in PoS.

However, shortly before Velious, things started really tilting into being guild biased. Guilds were becoming greedy (greed will imprison us all). It also didn't help that I played a druid, and the server was loaded with druids. Then there was a server split to Drinal and most of the people I normally raided with went with it because they saw the same thing happening with the guilds.

[Mmohunter]

SoL , New Models, and AA killed EQ. Or should I say "the vision".

[Olorin]

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

i concur, I quit soon after omens myself ....

[Dangergirl]

I'm pretty confident WoW is what killed EQ. Of course combined with Sony's mistakes. I played EQ hardcore from 99-2004, every few months a grp of peeps would say, Im leaving for DAOC, Im leaving for FF, half the server said they were leaving for Star Wars Galaxies! I just stuck to my guns on EQ and watched 90% of them filter on back to EQ. So when a few peeps said they were leaving for wow in 2k4 I just waited for them to come back...and waited and waited. December 2k4 i met this cute chick in a store who played wow so i decided to give it a chance and I really liked wow. The graphics were fresh and brighter, and played better on my grfx card, and there was a bit of challenge to it and alot more pvp which I loved.

After playing a month or so I knew EQ was in trouble. Every single thing I heard peeps complain about in EQ was addressed in wow, it was pretty impressive whoever led wow along those lines. I mean EVERY complaint. I hate having only 8 spells memed, I hate CR, I hate losing exp, I hate having things i need camped in dungeons, i hate not knowing where to lvl, i mean even camping out was reduced to 20 seconds vs 30 and u could have 9 or 10 toons per server instead of 8.

One complex thing most peeps dont understand about MMORPG's is, the hardest thing to balance in these games is the economy.

To me there was only one thing that would make or break WoW...would players accept bind on equip gear that they could never re-sell or hand down? WoW's economy could not survive as designed without BoE gear, but peeps accepted it without even blinking.

So in the end I think I'm saying you can chalk up EQ's demise to peeps accepting BoE gear. But that was not what turned me.

From my point of view as a PvPer, with so many friggin zones in eq in 2k4 and pvping solo or with 1 friend, it took hours just to find anyone you could pk, so I was willing to accept wow and its faults just so I could get some pvp action.

[dacduster]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

Its when I left. I had been lsing interest in the direction it was going and then the mobs during this expansion hit so much harder to accomodate the new armor. I wasnt a raider and had to give up playing my five and dime armored warr.

[Bhutt]

Brad McQuaid left SOE in October of 2001. Coincidence? I think not.

[kevincheese]

Honestly, I think AA has always been a good idea - just not one intelligently implemented. It should be something you can gain in other ways than grinding. EQ2 is probably a better model for AA gain.

I've always thought WoW needed AAs, mostly due to the fact that you hit cap so fast, and then what?

[xnolanx]

Lots and lotsss of good points brought up here. Goes to show how good the community is here, and we need to be grateful that we have such a server as P99 still.