EQ and New Player Population

[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.

[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?

[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

[Appaullo]

I played consistently until my guild broke into PoTime. At that point the next expansion was around the corner ... I dabbled a bit, but for me the feel of old EQ (long travel times, corpse runs, etc.) was gone, baby gone. Plane of Knowledge did indeed ruin the game, making everything just way too easy. Although I put many, many holes in my wall while leveling my necro hehehe. I'm geeked beyond words to play on this server when it goes live, just not sure if the old feeling will be the same or not. My fingers are crossed.

[calaxa]

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

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.

Regards,
Mg

I think that all future MMOs should follow this type of ruleset. If you advance at a certain speed, you should be split off onto a different server. Seperate the powergamers from the casuals. They already do this for blue vs. red. Why not for this other portion of the community instead of a sandbox. You'll segregate the high end drama and stabilize the economy of both communites. No massive mudflation and item dilution. Probably will never happen though.

[Appaullo]

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

[mgellan]

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

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

True, but the issue becomes co-existence - on one hand you have a population that moves very quickly and consumes content at a high rate, and a slow population that log on for a few hours to have fun. The raiders then create twinked alts that compete with the casuals at lower levels, and the server economy floods with plat and farmed items. To me thats a good reason to try splitting servers, so the two populations don't mix...

Regards,
Mg

[Dangergirl]

I'm pretty confident WoW is what killed EQ. Of course combined with Sony's mistakes. I played EQ hardcore from 99-2004, every few months a grp of peeps would say, Im leaving for DAOC, Im leaving for FF, half the server said they were leaving for Star Wars Galaxies! I just stuck to my guns on EQ and watched 90% of them filter on back to EQ. So when a few peeps said they were leaving for wow in 2k4 I just waited for them to come back...and waited and waited. December 2k4 i met this cute chick in a store who played wow so i decided to give it a chance and I really liked wow. The graphics were fresh and brighter, and played better on my grfx card, and there was a bit of challenge to it and alot more pvp which I loved.

After playing a month or so I knew EQ was in trouble. Every single thing I heard peeps complain about in EQ was addressed in wow, it was pretty impressive whoever led wow along those lines. I mean EVERY complaint. I hate having only 8 spells memed, I hate CR, I hate losing exp, I hate having things i need camped in dungeons, i hate not knowing where to lvl, i mean even camping out was reduced to 20 seconds vs 30 and u could have 9 or 10 toons per server instead of 8.

One complex thing most peeps dont understand about MMORPG's is, the hardest thing to balance in these games is the economy.

To me there was only one thing that would make or break WoW...would players accept bind on equip gear that they could never re-sell or hand down? WoW's economy could not survive as designed without BoE gear, but peeps accepted it without even blinking.

So in the end I think I'm saying you can chalk up EQ's demise to peeps accepting BoE gear. But that was not what turned me.

From my point of view as a PvPer, with so many friggin zones in eq in 2k4 and pvping solo or with 1 friend, it took hours just to find anyone you could pk, so I was willing to accept wow and its faults just so I could get some pvp action.

[xnolanx]

Lots and lotsss of good points brought up here. Goes to show how good the community is here, and we need to be grateful that we have such a server as P99 still.