Future of EQII

My conclusion is this:

Unless they change hands and someone who knows what they are doing run the company and game development at the helm, there is no hope.

Still wonder how much CN would want for DB, maybe kickstarterable purchase.

CN will just milk it until it's dead.

 

No one is gonna buy the eq2 franchise.

Milk it till it's dead.

 

Which I don't think will be too much longer I think the tipping point (or point of no return) is very fast approaching.

 

I think so too.

But you know what, this is how markets are supposed to work. They reward well run companies and punish poorly run companies, even if it means they fail and go away.

This is not just about the eq franchise. The entire brand may fail unless there are drastic changes to how they do business.

 

Ouch....

 

Only way this franchise has a future is if someone with resources picks it up, lets it lay fallow while they work on a solid updated engine, then start over with the IP and new tech.

Honestly, I don't see that happening, though I have been pleasantly surprised on various subjects before.

 

Regarding H1Z1, my speculation is that it was a quick cash grab from the start. Smed (or someone else) saw that survival games with zombies was "very inn" at that time. So they hurried to develop the game and released it filled with bugs and exploits, like everything they do. They payed a bunch of popular twitch-streamers to play it for marketing... It was popular for a little while, untill people got pissed nothing ever got fixed... streamers uninstalled on stream cursing DBG... When PUBG was released people switched and left H1Z1 in the dust.

I too wonder what they are developing next.... what piece of crap will they hype this time? I doubt they learned that to grow a HUGE pool of players you actually need to release polished games.

 

I like how the market for game engines is evolving. Let them compete, watch the engines get better, and let's gaming companies focus on creating fun.

Be interesting to see where this leads.

 

I think City State has done their own engine for Camelot Unchained because they need it to do very specific things that tweaking current engines won't provide and don't usually focus on: large scale pvp battles that can hold up with several hundred to a thousand participants + animations and effects.

 

I don't know what Forgelight is? I'm not terribly good with tech names.

I just know they have done their own in house and it appears to be standing up very well to some pretty brutal stress testing.

Edit: OH! You mean SOE's engine. HAHA. No. No it's nothing like that from what we've seen so far.

 

The rumor I got ...... Some EQ2 devs were promised high positions on the H1Z1 gravy train, when EQ2 transitions. Hence the snark. Only the gravy train turned into the gravey train.

Watch the health of the H1Z1 franchise. When it goes more south, see Feldon's charts, I suspect a Daybreak selloff or shutdown of assets. H1Z1 or DC Universe Online won't be the first out the cost cutting door.

Steam Charts are a subset of the total player base. Representing trends, not total players.
Except for the H1Z1 variants, which were launched on Steam. Likely represents total players.

DC Universe Online - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 3,112
- Average Players 30 days 535
-- 30 Days Down 2.4%
EverQuest Free-to-Play - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 803
- Average Players 30 days 237
-- 30 Days Up +17.7%
EverQuest II - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 523
- Average Players 30 days 149
-- 30 Days Down -1.5%
H1Z1 - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 150,179
- Average Players 30 days 9,360
-- 30 Days Down -22.9%
Just Survive - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 40,254
- Average Players 30 days 879
-- 30 Days Down -19.3%

The competition.

PUBG PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS - Steam Charts
- All-Time Peak 3,236,027
- Average Players 30 days 1,500,893
-- 30 Days Down -5.3%

Postmortem of Service Outage at 3.4M CCU 2/8/2018
Fortnite hit a new peak of 3.4 million concurrent players last Sunday

 

Oh, these people are highly controlling.

It's just that they harbor an arrogant disdain for a professional marketing infrastructure and so they won't pay for those resources.

All well and good 15 years ago when the game was pretty good, but just as social media can grow your brand, it can also kill it when a company starts pissing people off

So, rather than looking inward and improving their product and marketing strategy, they bully, bulls**t, and alienate anyone who calls them out on their product quality and business practices

They don't hire marketing professionals and resources because they don't respect the field, and don't see any need to pay for them.

These people are indeed extremely arrogant and disrespectful toward their customers and the gaming community, and clueless about how to run a good business.

Perhaps CN can slap some sense into them, but I suspect they are going to wring as much cash out of the assets as they can and then sell off what they can.

The management culture at DB is at this moment, not capable of producing a healthy, long term business.

 

Even if I assume that the non-steam players are 100 times the steam average, and all paying $15/month to sub, for a full year, that is just under 2.7 million dollars in gross revenue. There is no way that EQ2 is profitable, it's actually at the bottom of the list.

You know, strangely, EQ1 has made a HUGE push for tradeskilling, and it is seriously driving the economy now. TS'ers in EQ1 are now making some of the best gear in the game, and are pretty pleased to be able to make things and sell them in the Bazaar for some serious profits, while EQ2 is just moving more and more to a single zone raiders zergfest with idiotic scripting.

 

After Landmark launched, they slowly transitioned developers off to Just Survive and H1Z1, then pulled more from JS over to H1Z1 in order to focus and hopefully compete with PUBG. We all saw how successful they were.

90% sure JS will be Landmark'd (my phrase I coined - the process Daybreak used to shut down Landmark), but keep it around until 2019 for the tax write-off. Is it any wonder why Landmark was shut down immediately after New Years?

Anyway, EQ2 has the potential, blah blah we heard it all, but it'll take a miracle to save it. Daybreak kills miracles, though.

 

You can lead a gnome to water, but you can't make them come out of the bubble and drink it.