MassivelyOP -- EverQuesting: Is EverQuest II in a Downward Spiral?

The poster makes an interesting point.

EQ2 had sort of a smaller, niche following, but, it's customers were absolutely 100% loyal to the game. To many EQ2 players, there simply was no better game out there.

And, over the last couple of years, DBG has through its own actions, been methodically destroying that loyalty.

It boggles my mind how they can not realize it's not just the EQ franchise that is going to be affected, but the entire DBG brand.

I'm certainly going to be skeptical of buying any future title with the DBG producer's label on it.

I feel like I'm watching a train wreck, only it's taking three years to happen. I mean, I know I shouldn't watch, but a part of me just can't help it.

 

nothing wrong with watchin a train wreck. The masturbation is a bit weird, mind you.

 

Oh, that's frowned upon? Damn.....

In any case, it seems to me that if they are going to let the titles die, fine. Just kill them and be done with it Going about it the way they are by being dicks and manipulating as much cash as they can out of the few loyal customers they have left is only going to create more damage to their brand in the long run.

I don't get how they can't understand this.

 

you've just described capitalism! congrats.

 

There are better and worse ways to generate income. Guess which path Daybreak has chosen?

I am more than willing to throw handfuls of cash at games I enjoy, but they have to earn it first. And after that trust has been burned, it takes a lot more to earn it.

 

I saw this yesterday on MOP as well.

If MJ is feeling this way, then things are dire indeed in the "back rooms" of DBG-- MJ has been one of the biggest supporters of EQ2 for many years, and is overall a "class act" and a very positive person.

I truly felt angry to learn that she had been unceremoniously cut off/shut out, as Feldon had. So apparently she printed something that was said by a Dev in Discord, and that was her terrible crime?

Honestly, the problem I am having with this game is the "team", as I haven't even gotten to end game grind, and don't plan to TBH.

And this whole Discord situation with the top-heavy banhammer (not blaming you Feldon, you created it "for good" but it has been hi-jacked for their own purposes) is just weird to me. Seems like they want to exist in their own echo chamber.

Sorry for my rant, I don't usually get angry, but it's finally getting to me. When I learned that they had banned you Feldon, I was dumbstruck. I saw the handwriting on the wall then.

It's made me realize something about myself and games -- the team behind the game really matters a lot to me. If they are passionate about their game, communicative with the playerbase, and demonstrate basic integrity, I am much more likely to give financial support and forgive honest mistakes, bugs etc. (as long as they are eventually fixed). I have a finite amount of money and time for recreational pursuits, and I want to spend both wisely.

Please don't take this as a personal attack on any members of the DBG team -- as I don't know any of them personally and wouldn't attack them even if I did. But it does reflect the way I am seeing Daybreak as a company providing a service to me as a customer. I can always take my business elsewhere (as Devs have pointed out to players on Discord, with worse things said).

 

Oh thanks .. haha apparently I can't remember what I read a day ago

But I got the spirit of it. And actually that makes even LESS sense to me ... I mean, wha ???

That's some kind of crazy censorship going on.

 

How short (or selective) their memories are.

They tried this crap before and eq2 flames was born.

You'd think they would learn. Social media hype can cut both ways, and the more you try to control people, the more they are going to assert their independence.

The cat is out of the bag, now. They are going to have a difficult time recovering from this remarkably juvenile failure in judgment.

And the entire dbg brand is going to feel it.

 

Outside of the EQ2 bubble folks are genuinely surprised that the game even still has the lights on. To be fair, some of the folks IN the EQ2 bubble are surprised about it as well at this point.

Daybreak Games has an abysmal reputation, and there is a very large part of the gaming community that will never touch a product with their name on it, no matter how enticing the sales pitch. You can find that sentiment on subs and forums all over the place where DBG doesn't have the power to squash it.

 

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

Warren Buffett

From Warren Buffett Quotes

 

I don't know how they could possibly think that disparaging and alienating your most loyal customers and community leaders could ever possibly be a good thing on any level. When I think of the huge amount of money and support many of us have given to the EQ franchise over the years and the lack of appreciation we are getting in return, it just makes the bile rise up in my throat. I really don't have words to express all of my feelings, but great sadness is at the top of the list.

 

I keep saying that Discord is a bad idea for EQ2. There are good reasons why most game companies have some one between the developers and the community. Some people should never be allowed to speak in public lest they damage your brand. I will leave you to join the dots.

 

I don't even know where to start. Pushing away the only few cheerleaders left is a pretty idiotic move.

Some people might disagree with me.

Sony should have forced smedly out like 5 years before they sold to columbus novo, georgesen should have never been hired. They should have kept Brasse and canned RadarX. Eh, it all is really down Sony should have gotten rid of smed years ago. But an avalanche since then.

But they have made so many poor moves and yeah, I don't feel Daybreak gives a **** about players or their games. They are in a bubble now and I can't see it getting any better. They used to give a **** about the community, the games etc.

 

Smokejumper was the beginning of the end. Smed prob saved himself because the EQ franchise mostly did ok on his watch, but H1Z1 continues to make the company a pile of money, and that was his baby.

As a side not, don't know how accurate Steam is as a proxy, but this is a snapshot of their users around the time of the expac last year:

 

Steam only keeps track of those starting EQ2 via steam, any one directly using the launcher would not be recorded.

I have tried to estimate subscription numbers in EQ2 at different times using different techniques and have never come to a sensible conclusion.

Just by doing a '/who all' or a '/who all good' and '/who all evil' you can get a bit of an idea as to how many are currently logged on. However I only played on HOF and AB so any numbers I got I was applying across the servers to give me a total. At it's worst I was seeing less than 100 on HOF and at it's best 200+. Since I am retired I could check these right across the day which included US peak time.

Keep in mind that 100 is the highest number /who will show. The special event servers skew the counts badly as well. AB was hugely effected by this at one stage which motivated me to move to HOF.

I would be very interested in any other methods of collecting numbers, not sure what census can provide, and the counts.

One of my less than startling conclusions is that my method does not provide any estimates of subscribers just of current characters online. Therefore if you have 10 payed accounts and rotate through each one and each character on those accounts then I would just count you once via this technique.

BTW Subscription numbers are one of the closely guarded secrets for most MMO's. Sometimes you get to see a number as marketing is showing off

 

It's only guarded really closely when something sucks. When companies are doing well, it's plastered everywhere.

 

I had no idea if the steam data was a decent ptoxy/indicator of actual populations. I was more interested in the spread between eq2 and the others. That screenie was just the last group I was looking at.