Ooh dear ...

First mention will be the census shut down.

 

Nah.. I doubt they'll mention it if they shut it down.. nor will the acknowledge questions if it's 'down' or 'removed' for at least a week..
Or, maybe, 'it was never intended to be player accessible, we just 'fixed' it'.

 

I think Kander and company have lost their collective marbles lol .....its the only thing that makes sense at this point .

 

Having never interacted with it and just going by what I've read the Overseer system sounds like a way to gate player progress with as little effort as possible by the devs.

totes funsies

 

Except it doesn't actually have the players or toons actually DOING anything. I doubt the bean counters want players to log in for 1-5 minutes 2-3 times a day and then immeditely log off. That is about the MOST you can get out of the EQ2 overseer system.

 

Yeah, it really doesn't sound like it belongs in EverQUEST or any other MMO or RPG. Wonder what Kander thinks it actually is that he's supposed to be working on? Stupid brainless phone app is what comes to mind.

 

Stupid brainless phone app is the monetization method they're going with, so maybe it shouldn't be surprising that they think it's the right direction to take the gameplay too.

 

heh.. I always thought they wanted bodies in the server

 

It's just a way to keep subs active that would normally stop paying. I mean, I'm doing exactly what you're describing. I'm sure Allistra is getting tired of seeing, "Niayl has logged on, Niayl has logged out, Omalley has logged on, Omalley has logged out," 2-4 times a day. I'll run the weekly on my swashy because it takes like 11 minutes. That's it. I suppose if I weren't back playing EQ1 again it wouldn't matter as much and I'd just unsub but there are plenty of others who will keep subbing for the missions and the DBC for singing steel crates every month until the next expac or GU.

 

They're idiots. All of them.
And btw, just looking at Kander makes me sick, what an arrogant pig.

Allistra is not happy with you.

 

Bot Population makes the game look a LOT healthier than it actually is.

Number of individual players is severely down on the past. You can tell that alone by the number of raid guilds that have disappeared.

1 person with 1 bot group gives a 500% boost on population numbers.

 

Surely it's fairly simple for them to figure out which accounts are boxxed or botted with even rudmentary usage tools....

 

Of course it is, but why would they mention it?

"We have more characters in zones than ever!" sounds better than "We have a few remaining players paying for multiple accounts making up numbers"

 

I don't expect them to tell their customers; it's clear we're mushrooms to them.
But they HAVE to know that having a bunch of box/bot accounts versus unique players is NOT good for the health of the game, near or long term. And 'health of the game' also means 'length of time they can extract cash from it'.

 

There was one sentence in the last Podcast that to me explains a lot. EQ is the "Crown jewel" for DPG and Kander.
It sounded to me that they would rather have EQ survived even if it means EQ2 being gone.

My main concerns from listening to the pocasts is that they plan a lot for Luclin Part II but nothing really for this expansion.
A GU so late in the Game ? It seems they wrote off this expansion but expecting people to run subs the next 6+ months.

According to the Podacst announcements Luclin II will feature :

AA Revamp
Update /Revamp for Crafting
Longer Questlines / 1 -2 HQs

I mean after this expansion disaster how can they expect player to believe they can deliver with that small team ?

When the Council Resource Team starts summerish there better be postive news /vibes.

 

Whenever they hype anything up I'm reminded of the Sonic cycle:

 

Sadly its pretty much all I've done since January. Login, check broker, check overseer, log out. Occasionally I'll run a solo instance with my wife but thats about it.

 

I saw that and also noted that Kander used that "crown jewel" comment within the context if "protecting" EQ.

The Fuli has been speculating this is the case for quite awhile: they've been harvesting eq2 to protect eq and hit revenue goals [slipping this in before Tekka slithers into the conversation and shamelessly takes credit for for the take].

On a related note, these podcasts strike me as DPG's version of a corona virus briefing.