Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerrik
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There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.
Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.
Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).
As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.
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Oh geez. The rate of new subscribers went down the entire time. The number of zones went up. Do the #%!! math. This means more teleporters, things like luclin spires, pok books, guild hall portals and even guild lobby summoners. The things that you say dumbed the game down were necessary and didn't make the game any easier because people had to travel across more zones and gain more levels. That's another way of saying that faster leveling is meaningless if there're more levels to gain. Same for travel. Having a merc to accompany you isn't making the game easier if you can't find groups because there's no one to group with. Do the #$%^ math and it all becomes clear. They didn't decide one night to "make it easier" to please a whiner. They have a bottom line, they have a job, they have expectations. They make more choices based on data, not opinions.
It's like this global chat controversy. They didn't have it enabled because of preferance. They had it enabled because the population wasn't high enough. Now whether we have enough population for it or not is beside the point. The point is, these are design choices based on data, not preferences. Learn to discriminate.