EQ and New Player Population

[calaxa]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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]

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

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