Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[kazroth]

Originally Posted by Messianic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Honestly, i'm not sure SoE made any mistakes that, at the time, the people involved in the field of MMOs would have done differently. Their goal was to make as many people as happy as possible.

People who say "greed" was the problem usually haven't looked into it deep enough to really see all the facets of the decline. The number 1 reason I found after discussing it with people who played through Luclin and beyond was The infinite creation of needless hurdles - the time commitment for some of the luclin and post-luclin content was so insane (counting AA grinding as one of the worst - the talent system was a massive improvement to the endless AA grind) that it turned people off.

Simultaneously, EQ became a massive, unending timesink yet possessing none of the original hurdles people complain were removed - i.e. transportation, corpse runs, etc. Which is it? Was it too easy and catered too much to the casual player, or was it too difficult and too much a timesink for high end players? Well, it can be both - but in retrospect our vision is a lot clearer than theirs was at the time they made these decisions.

The EQ model was mostly what made WoW so wildly successful. They were able to balance difficulty without needless hurdles - it takes a LONG TIME to travel on foot from odus to faydwer or odus to kunark (thinking in terms of the longest possible distance you have to travel without player/pok/translocator assistance) - it didn't take long to travel from, say, Darnassus to STV if you were high enough level - and after you did it once, it didn't take as long because you had the flight points. See the balance?

EQ attempted to find that same balance and failed. It's like balancing on a razor's edge, and it wasn't because of "money-grubbing" or some other unsatisfying, oversimplified answer (if they wanted only money, wouldn't they have made changes with more longevity?). They just missed the mark.

Excellent response. To be honest, none of us can really say what the climate was like at the "EQ headquarters" when all these decisions were being made. Company climate can make a huge impact on the product that gets put out. I think the previous poster made a point that the vision got lost somewhere - and that's not to say it got lost in the "money" aspect (EQ was a product, money had to be made or it failed as a product) - but the root of what made EQ what is was got lost in the developers' minds. They saw other MMO models and rather than trying to separate from the pack, they let the beta wolves rip out their aging throat.

Or was it the suits who were simply dictating company policy? "You will implement this, WoW has it - and it will be implemented in 6 months for our next expansion." So many good companies have been destroyed by this kind of policy. Look at Ford during the 60s/70s (think Pinto) or Kodak (one of the largest companies on the planet, today financially bankrupt - loss of ethics is so key to these failures).

Anyone have any insight into the internals of the company at this time? Would make for a hell of a book.