EQ and New Player Population

[calaxa]

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

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

Hmmmmm....Bentheb is bringing back some bad memories of my first few days in GoD zones. My groups were elemental geared and we were having horrible time just xping in these zones. I being the enchanter was forced to charm everything for dps. Worked a for a few kills till the charm broke and I'm getting pummeled for 800 quads. I think after a month of tackling GoD content, decided to avoid completely.

I also think the massive amounts of MQ2 usage around this time certainly did a number on server population. I remember half an entire "elite" guild getting banned overnight.

[Olorin]

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.

i concur, I quit soon after omens myself ....

[Grento]

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.

This is when most of my friends started to leave. A good chunk of them weren't even in the elemental planes by the time GOD came out so there wasn't really anything for them to do, gear lacking and what not.

[dacduster]

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.

Its when I left. I had been lsing interest in the direction it was going and then the mobs during this expansion hit so much harder to accomodate the new armor. I wasnt a raider and had to give up playing my five and dime armored warr.

[Bhutt]

Brad McQuaid left SOE in October of 2001. Coincidence? I think not.

[kevincheese]

Honestly, I think AA has always been a good idea - just not one intelligently implemented. It should be something you can gain in other ways than grinding. EQ2 is probably a better model for AA gain.

I've always thought WoW needed AAs, mostly due to the fact that you hit cap so fast, and then what?

[Rael]

I left in 2001 for DAOC. Intended to play both DAOC and Luclin but it's almost impossible to effectively play 2 MMOs so DAOC won over. Then came SWG and WoW which easily took me until 2006 before I felt like trying EQ again.

[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.

[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]

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.