1. I have corrected the e-mail settings so that outgoing e-mails from these forums should be sent now. If you tried to Register or Reset your Password, please try again!
    Dismiss Notice

Death of a Game: The EverQuest Franchise

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Sweatypie, Aug 21, 2018.

  1. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    Not mine but was a decent walkthrough:

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 21, 2018
    • Informative Informative x 3
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 2
  2. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    Needed more facts and examples of what points he was making but he's a good speaker to listen to at least. :)
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  3. Errrorr

    Errrorr Active Member

    It's not dead, there is a potion on marketplace to revive it I think
     
    • Funny Funny x 6
    • Fishy Fishy x 1
  4. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Seems a little heavy on opinion asserted or implied as fact.

    I'm also inclined not to agree with the thesis that the franchise's decline was because it moved away from eq1 design philosophies.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    The timesinks in EQ are just not realistic for a modern game. Not with cell phones and Netflix.
     
    • Agree Agree x 8
  6. Cindrax

    Cindrax Active Member

    Well, he got the part where EQ2 was rushed out without proper testing right. This have haunted the game ever since release and gotten worse with each expansion. The part that EQ2 play is clunky and laggy while WoW is smooth as hell he also got right.

    The thing he missed, imho, in the video is the decision to make the game F2P and the cash shop that slowly but steady turned it into p2w. For short term they probably racked in quite a profit the first months since for each cancelled sub it took ONE person to buy a mount from the shop to make profit. So they pumped out stuff on the shop while bugs, balance etc never got fixed... Guilds folded left and right during this period... and the exodus of players have continued to this day.
     
    • Agree Agree x 5
  7. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    I had totally forgotten about Meridian 59 until they mentioned it. :)

    I agree with what was said earlier - I don't think the issue was a "over-simplification" of EQ1. I played EQ1 from the beginning and started EQ2 at it's beginning but then stopped because it was so buggy and played WoW about 1 year before going back to EQ2 after they worked some bugs out. I would argue the buggy release was a much bigger problem because if I did not have a history with the franchise (EQ1) or if WoW had really grabbed me like it did for so many, I probably never would have come back to give it a second chance.

    And then I feel like all of us are painfully aware of the more recent sinking ship and all of the details that have caused the current sad state.
     
  8. Endymion

    Endymion Active Member

    A lot of people are probably watching Netflix while doing their mindless MMO grinding :p (EQ2 or otherwise).
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  9. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    And porn, if accidental open mics on Teamspeak are any indication. Although I can't rule out a frustrated raid leader encouraging us all to "slap that ass" on the 7th wipe.
     
    • Funny Funny x 3
  10. Meneltel

    Meneltel Active Member

    Ran with a casual family guild that raided very well and one of the GLs was joked about running porn on his second computer while we did raids, as he would be encouraged to look up strats by putting his porn on hold while using his second computer for that! I don't really know if its true but about 20 or more guildies lived within an hour or so of each other so they often got together IRL, so its possible... or just an inside joke. Either way, I miss them all!
     
    • Like Like x 1
  11. BisonZabi

    BisonZabi New Member

    Necroing this.

    Much of what he spoke about with EQ1 was correct, but with EQ2 I agree that he was a little off with it on many areas. Though I can't blame him at all, EQ2 always suffered from an identity crisis, especially during the first 3 years of its life where every single mechanic was revamped several times over and the game ran like complete ass due to optimization issues. I played from 2004-2015 (stopped when SoE became DBG) and EQ2 was definitely a game that had no actual guidance and clear scope of what it wanted to be thanks to the mismanagement up top. From what I read it's gotten worse (no surprise) after the dev team's been stripped down to a skeleton crew.

    On top of this, EQ2 will always be in the shadow of EQ1 in the MMO genre. It never caught on big, go to the EQLive servers, P99, or even Vanguard/Pantheon communities and ask them for their opinion on EQ2 and it's usually very negative with many giving mixed perspectives depending on what time period they initially played the game in. Many in the P99 forums played the game during beta and thought that's how the game operated throughout its lifetime while others didn't play the game until around 08-2013 when the game became so solo heavy in the first 20 levels and beyond. It's frustrating to the say least because EQ2 had stellar group and raid zones by the time RoK came out which is around the time I really got hooked with endegame. But for new players interested in the game that had to go through zones of 1-90 with a barren population (let alone knowing where the **** to go in order to progresss) and then grind up AA's to just even be considered for PUG's

    I'll always prefer EQ2, it wasn't the most artistically creative MMO nor the prettiest MMO but it excelled in many areas and tried to really push the envelope upon its initial launch, it's just a shame SoE couldn't just wait until around 2006 or something to release the game rather rush it out so quickly like they always did with their games. And after playing P99 again, I'm always reminded "Oh yeah, now I remember why they did what they did with EQ2"

    Not to mention that we live in an age where we have unlimited amount of videogames at our disposal. Back in 1999, there was Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call. You really didn't have many choices. Same with genres like the FPS genre, you had only a handful of current titles like Quake, Unreal, and Half-Life ect. Now you have dozens and dozens of titles each single year, older games with live services attached to them such as games like TF2 and Overwatch, and on top of the super cheap sales that keep popping up on sites like Humble Bundle and Steam. God knows how many games I have on Stream from Humble Bundle alone.

    I wish that were the case, but years back when they tried to jumpstart the franchise with EQ Next it couldn't even hit over 800k views on Youtube within several years of it being up before it was taken down with the cancellation of the project. Then you have the acquisition of SoE and several of its franchises by some outsider company rather than an standard industry publisher. These are usually red flags.
     
    • Agree Agree x 4
    • Like Like x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  12. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    So much of SOE's early success was dumb luck, a few good ideas and dedicated teams working their butts off. The rest of the time, SOE's lack of optics on what its players want has been its repeated downfall. They tried when they first announced EQN to include players, but very quickly it became obvious that the "polls" they were doing were just an exercise and all the important decisions had been made before they rolled cameras. It was foolish for us to think that EQNext had any real shot at success.

    EQ2 came out the same year as WoW so by no means did it *need* to be overshadowed. People could have switched from EQ to EQ2 in droves as they did from EQ to WoW. They didn't. Why? A ridiculous graphical engine, 24 unbalanced classes, and a constant identity crisis over how tedious group-forcing hard the game should be. Of course this comes down to the company as a whole not understanding its customers, something it has struggled with for 2 decades. SOE still doesn't understand EQ2 players. They didn't understand their SWG customers. They didn't understand that FreeRealms was hopelessly simplistic for 11 and 12 year olds (its original target audience). There's so much that SOE has just plain not understood about its customers.

    Every time you told someone that SOE had a marketing team, they busted out laughing. I wasn't laughing cause I knew how many people were employed at San Diego wages yet didn't return any value to the company. How many times did SOE announce something and the players were like "Wow they really thought this through and consulted with players!". Most of the time SOE would come out with something and then spend 3 days denying, backpedaling, and then finally announce a reasoned compromise. I've never seen a company so dependent upon customer satisfaction have no operational mechanism for determining customer satisfaction. This is a company that almost never takes the pulse of its players.

    Up until Columbus Nova bought the company, the teams had no idea the finances of each game. It was all rumor and speculation. As soon as CN took over, they started making this information transparent and started focusing on producing content that makes the company money instead of just throwing darts at a wall. It's the kind of fiscal discipline that would have been really helpful before the company blew $100 million on EQNext, The Agency, and FreeRealms.
     
    • Agree Agree x 11
  13. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    And what makes this so tragic is so many, myself included, tried so hard to be heard and give feedback. They just didn't want to hear it - ever.
     
    • Agree Agree x 8

Share This Page