EQ and New Player Population

[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.

[guineapig]

Meh, before PoP everyone was hanging out in Shadowhaven and the Nexus.
Nobody mentions that.

[MrBeerBelly]

EQ was fine in 2001 and 2002.

I remember being online in 2002 in of of the zones introduced in the Shadows of Lucin when a GM came on to announce that EQ just broke it's own record for most people logged in at one time.

EQ didn't die until WOW/EQ2 came out.

[stormlord]

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

EQ was fine in 2001 and 2002.

I remember being online in 2002 in of of the zones introduced in the Shadows of Lucin when a GM came on to announce that EQ just broke it's own record for most people logged in at one time.

EQ didn't die until WOW/EQ2 came out.

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.

[MrBeerBelly]

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. You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to really get an idea what the gist of this thread is.

Sure there were more people per zone in 1999 than in 2001, but that was because there were far more zones. Also the best EXP was in Lucin, so that is where every one went (even the low levels). You could level from level 1 to 30 in a day in that one zone killing those bandit like things. I remember there being near 100 people in that zone ALL THE TIME.

[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).

[Omnimorph]

It's the nature of MMO's, they have to introduce fresher content to keep the current players happy, and then new players to it are in places with less population and as such the experience isn't the same.

I wonder how many actual zones eqlive has now, i mean it must be hundreds... maybe even thousands. And factor into that how few people play (especially at lower levels) and then you end up with the game being geared towards the max level players, even WoW's gone that way. So what you get from that is a bunch of excess zones that no longer serve a purpose because you're only in that level range for a small amount of time.

On the note of EQlive, i remember them doing the revamps of BB, guk, unrest and CT. Those zones became quite lively at that time [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] then they introduced the classic monster missions. Basically they were just trying to give players a feel of the old stuff... and that's why we're all here at p99. We want the old stuff because that was the fun stuff.

[Bentheb]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

[calaxa]

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

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

[Bentheb]

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

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

till they debugged it raid content was hopelessly broken, and drove people away. not to mention Raid flagging version 1.0 when EVERYBODY had to do the full kt quest line to move on,

and the group content was so over the top for anybody that wasnt raid geared (see the 1st versions of tpt /vex) it drove those people off