What caused the decline of EQ as the #1 MMO?

[Tsuken]

Everquest died eventually because gameplay was often based on some very negative feelings. Like corpse running and having to calling out to get a port. And calling out for a rez. And calling out to join a group and being unable to solo. And stuff in general simply taking ages.

I never liked a single second of doing those things. It involved a lot of waiting and frustration. But it did add risk, realism and difficulty to the game. It wasn't 100% bad, but it did go at the cost of some gameplay.

The negative feelings in Everquest gave other games like WoW the chance to attract players away from Everquest.

[Doors]

I think it was the direction they went with EQ. That and other games, like WoW.

[Harputluyuzz]

Thanks for share

[G13]

When they lost the most hardcore players. Furor from FOH for example. Up until the release of WOW, EQ was the l33t game where the most hardcore raiders played. People like Tigole and Furor became lead developers on WOW. The reason being that with the launch of Luclin and AA's, SOE had become arrogant and made development decisions that were open cockblocks/fuck yous to their player base.

When EQ lost forums like FOH and the most influential communities, they started to go downhill. I worked at SOE at the time WoW came out and EQ2 was being developed. Up until that time, SOE was the king of MMOs. 60 minutes even did a documentary about the game. It was a revolutionary product.

SOE made 2 major mistakes with the development of EQ2 that forever changed their future.

1. A graphics engine that was too realistic and even the top PCs at the time couldn't run it. It still runs like shit today. WoW was polished and artistically stylized. It ran on low end machines very well. It was a polished product designed to attract as many players as possible. You had to do a serious upgrade to run EQ2. EQ2 was had ugly horrible character models that looked like they had down syndrome.

2. The newbie experience. EQ2's Newbie experience was pathetic. The ISle of Dawn was boring and repetitive. Leveling was abysmally slow and you couldn't even pick a class until lvl 10. It was a huge grind just to pick a class. The 2 starting cities were a mess. Tons of "race city" zones around the huge castles that were barren and empty and difficult to fund your way around. Constant zoning over and over in the newbie areas sucked balls. It wasn't a centralized hub for social gathering. That's why there was "Barrens chat" and everyone leveled. A huge zone that felt like a community. Yes, I understand it got annoying, but you enjoy these games more when there is a real sense of community. Not a buggy POS cluster of bad zones with too much ugly brown and mobs like "crabs" and "snails" to endlessly whack. It was terrible game design.

SOE was oblivious to this. I rememberr George Scotto at the time would make fun of WOW. We weren't allowed to lay it at work. His exact words were "We've seen WOW and we're not impressed. Let's just say we're not worried about the competition."

They had lost their touch on the pulse of gamers, and started developing games to feed the addiction of their play base. Cock block them from content to keep them playing. Take their money. Where else are they going to go? EQ was it at the time. As soon as another option game that was from gamers who knew what people wanted, EQ was finished. WOW pre BC was the shit, and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise. It was a bad ass game with raid content that was a lot of fun. Naxx pwned faces and will always be the pinnacle of MMO raiding IMO.

[Amphitryon]

The hardcore raids and raiders are what ultimately made me leave EQ.,<I really HATED Planes of Power as that expnasion was a destroyer of casual guilds..I was really sick of the non-stop bleed off of members to raid guilds, and the common excuse of "thats the only way I will see those places"

I simply had no time for raiding, and damn near all EQ raids then qualified as 'hardcore' events where you better carve off 8 hours of the day.

I got sick of being pressured to level, and as it turned out, going about 60 to and try and chase my guild into PoP was the worst mistake I could have made, as I was pretty happy at 60 collecting AAs, but everyone always says "levels > AA", which is true, but levels are NOT more fun than AAs.

SO I got to L63, the GoD came up and raised the level cap to 70, and I had enough of the level treadmill because I was sick and tired of grinding to raid, sick of trying to keep up with people with way more time than me, sick of winding up at the bottom of the DKP pile, and sik of being required to give up my real life in order to earn more DKP and 'merit'.

I like smaller guilds, and am cool with grouping, and exploration but everyone was only wanted to group camp to XP grind to beef up for raids.

It was at that point I decided EQ held nothing for a player like me. It had nothing for small guilds, and grouping was only about XP grinding (I get sick of sitting int he same camp for hours).

What also wound up killing EQ for me back then was when I camped in OOT for the damn part of JBoots...stayed wake at that spot for 26 hours straight with a guildmate..finally got the damn item at like 6:30 am the next morning, then my baby daughter woke up and I had to tend to here, but later I had to contend with that guildmate who decided to bitch me out on the guild forums about how I 'bailed out' on him and a guild leader who backed him up.

That was a major 'screw that guild, and screw that game' moment

I started playing Star Wars Galaxies instead, and oh that felt like such a wonderful relief to the drudgery that Was 5 years of 'playing' EQ.

I have not even so much as looked at EQ again until now..having long ago thrown away all my EQ disks and boxes, and this time coming at the game fresh, focusing on what I enjoyed the most about it, and saying to hell with raids..I don't care if I NEVER raid again. EQ raids provide so little loot compared to how many people it takes, and factor in the raid wipes and the sheer amount of prep time, just aint worth it imho.

I am glad for Project 1999, and the fact they are not going to go beyond Velious when it comes to expansions, the best years I had playing EQ were in the Kunark-Velious period.

[MegamanXZOBMV]

My opinion on what killed EQ?

1. SoE.

2. EQ2

3. WoW

4. WoW

5. WoW


The expansions got worse with each release, IMO, though I'm told some of the more recent ones are better. DAoC did some damage, I remember that. I remember people logging on to EQ to /ooc about how much better DAoC was compared to EQ. Then WoW hit it big. WoW nabbed a lot of people, but the reason I list Warcraft 3 times (other than the fact that Warcraft 3 is better than World of Warcraft), is because of it's more...err... lasting impression. Because of it's popularity, everyone else decided to mimic WoW.. and a messy cluster of poorly designed MMOs leeched away even more subscribers, from all games. For some reason a bunch of people get the idea that if they take a popular theme and copy it, save some aesthetics and minor details, they're going to be the next big hit.

Anyways, I still think SoE is what killed EQ above all else, even WoW

[Kika Maslyaka]

One thing i surely will agree on, that SOE dogged their own grave.
And then they ruined EQ2 as well. It was rushed into release before it was finished, but it actually started to look promising after about 1 year worth of fixes and adjustments, but then they started on a desperate race to catch up with WoW, and kept re-hauling the game every 6 month, till half of those who did liked it, just gave up and quit.

[Ongbak]

Honestly, I think SOE did it to themselves.

[moklianne]

A combination of GoD and WoW.

I remember many top raiding guilds left during the GoD expansion to WoW. GoD was a horrid expansion that had the bar set way too high for the time with the only intent of SOE delaying raid guild progress with difficulty instead of type/amount of content. They 'retuned' most of the encounters, made the AA's cost less, etc, but the damage was already done by then.

That and then over the years other fantasy based mmos kept coming out, chipping away slowly at the remainder of EQ's base. Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage 2, and Horizons (?-may have been a different one) were a few. All had better graphics at the time.

WoW also appealed (even more so to this day) to casuals, which EQ never did. People just got sick of spending an entire day camping one mob for a chance at one item.

[bhatz01]

I started to lose interest when the game got too convoluted. All the crazy cats on the moon stuff was one big blow to the game in my opinion. I also disliked the change in art direction as well. I thought the original game artistic style had a lot of charisma and charm. The artwork started getting really detailed and complex, with zero charm.