[Messianic]

Eh. You only make money if your goal is to create an experience people want. So they were trying to create the experience people wanted, and in doing so, have a business that is successful (defined as making more money than it costs to run).

So duh. Part of everything is "surviving and prospering" which in modern, sophisticated economic terms is "making money". But it's such a poor explanation for discussions to which you're not privy.


Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins. What makes you money is what keeps subs going and new game purchases flowing. That requires content people *want* to play. So, to "make money", they had to focus intensely on what people want to play. So don't do the trite "they only want to make money omgs everything after velious sux cuz sony".

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode MMO principle and did many of the things EQ did in releasing the expansions it did up to PoP. So it's really, really easy to argue that EQ didn't go in that direction far enough to prosper, not that "a bunch of greedy executives only wanted money so they made more expansions that would ultimately fail and not earn them money".

So it's really amusing to watch players - however knowledgable about the game, and however hardcore - judging business decisions as if "gosh if only they had listened to me and other hardcore players of their now niche game 14 years later they would have succeeded".