Ooh dear ...

The worst part of it is when their cloud gets hacked and everyone's intimate pictures get leaked but no one else cares because it's EQ2.

 

I would believe this is it, also that all cloud hardware is not the same. You can have some nodes that do not have the same processing capability as other nodes.
Also, the cloud provider themself could be having issues in their datacenter which would in turn cause issues for us.

 

I personally have found the raids being less laggy recently and the time frame he states is about the time frame I saw improvements.
The lag is still there, just not as bad. Mind you, our guild doesn't raid when everyone else raids.

I found the class reset thing a little strange, I was like, why would you need to delete all the quests, just change the class, keep the level, and drop all the class spells to apprentice. It would be good for completionists who want to get all the possible quests/achievements done on a single character.

As for the mounts in houses, I think what the person was wanting to say was that they wanted the mount to be visible so that they could do the mount training in the house or add mount gear in the house.
It could also be that they wanted to fly around their 1 bedroom house, but decorators are already breaking out of the boundaries anyway and it would be a boon for decorators to be able to fly and decorate from a personal opinion.

I actually agree with them about the stat squish, I'm probably the only one. Anyway, people generally get real ansy over changes, it doesn't matter how big the changes, someone will complain for sure.
If their systems can take the numbers, fine. We will probably be doing quadrillions in dps next expac.
It will probably end up being part of innuedo too, I did 10 quad hehe....you fa* quad.

In terms of raiders spending money, me personally, I have not spent more than the premium expac this year around.
Too much financial uncertainty for the next 2 years due to the pandemic.

 

I suspect most of you think I'm nuts in my little hypothetical for assuming most raiders are spending $500 a year in the shop, but it's helpful to think of that number as the mean of a bell-shaped distribution, approaching $0 on the lhs, and maybe something like $1,000 on the rhs. I'll bet all Memut's credit card #'s I'm in the ball park (don't ask questions).

In any case, the underlying point of all that was this: there is no way this game is surviving on sub and box fees. Even under the assumptions I used, we're looking at a measley couple of million dollars a year in gross revenue.

That's terrible, and the only way things improve is to drive even more shop revenue or increase the # of subs. That's were I'm coming from on the p2w side of things - i.e where things are going (in my opinion).

As far as the cost side of things, I wouldn't be surprised if the server costs alone are in the $500k to $1MM per year range, which ties into the crappy server performance issues - things are tight.

Short story version: Kander is full of sh*t. The game is NOT doing "extremely well". Most likely, it's hanging by a thread, which increases the liklihood of more shady stuff and crap quality to come.

 

Can you ELI5 what the differences are? $1m is a hefty chunk of cash. What benefits do DPG/the customers get for that money? On the flip side, how does the competitor which offers this service for free make its money, and how does the switch impact DPG/the customers?

 

EQ2 exists due to EQ1. I doubt the total revenue brought in by EQ2, including the cash shop whales, covers the maintenance costs. They've got two new TLPs launching tomorrow I believe and they will be packed full of paying subscribers.

 

As you describe things, I believe that's most definitely the case now. I also believe that up until this point, Longdale and Kander have raped the sh*t out of eq2 - so here we are.

The only way this game has a chance of surviving is to minimize costs (raid environment = cheapest production cost), and increase shop revenue. Manipulating min. raid checks and encouraging loot boxes are the easiest way to drive shop sales.

As far as how things sit now, one has to accept that either the number of subs is AT LEAST 2x what I assumed in my hypothetical, or, that shop revenue is much higher than what people would like to believe in order for eq2 to be profitable.

P.S. Fun fact: Ask anyone who's ever been a loan officer or an underwriter, and they'll tell you that most people under report what they owe and over report what they have.

This is more commoly not because they're bad people, it's because it helps them feel better to remember their situation this way.

The lesson: take what people claim they are spending in the shop with a grain of salt.

 

I'm not sure that's even arguable unless he meant extremely well (by EQ2's standards), and even then it's unlikely. Even back when I played several years ago, whenever I brought it up to other people, their reaction was; "Wow, that game's still going?" Yeah, it was aged, clunky, and had a low population, but it was still fun. Since then, EQ2 has fallen extremely far behind just about every other MMO out there in terms of...everything, minus pay-to-win features -- they're up to date with that. I watched a few videos of the Diaku Corral and some current raids, and outside of curious returners and masochists, I can't see any new people wanting to show up and pay the standard MMO price to peer out at ancient graphics from behind a half-screen wall of poorly balanced abilities.

 

I promise you that 2 will die before they let 1 go. EQ1 fills a niche that is, relatively, no longer available. Whereas 2 is in a niche that is overcrowded and filled with much newer, better run, more in depth titles. 2's crafting system used to be one of the few things it did better than any other title. That is no longer the case. I actually prefer, well preferred, 2 for a long time because it scratched an itch and didn't require as much "hardcore" attention as 1 does. None of the other titles in that niche hold my attention for very long, I am sure it's a sunk cost fallacy failing on my end.

 

Nope, I think don't think you're nuts. If anything, I think there's a good chance you're underestimating the amount spent in the shop, though. Not sure if you saw when I posted this in the OF (or on Discord), so I'll repost here: From mid-September to mid-April, I spent $512.48 on Mystbolt's account. Another $537.62 on Wulf's. And I wasn't a raider, or even regularly running heroics. The bulk of the DBC (~16.5k per account) was for unlocking reforging, house depots, and unlocking "hire anywhere" mercs (including at least 2 per, for 4 alts each). I also picked up 3 krono between the two accounts to get some platinum, 'cause being broke sucks in a game economy where hyper-inflation meant my couple hundred pp from "way back when" wasn't even enough for an iced Maj'Dul coffee.

So that's over $1,000 for two accounts for a non-raider in about 7 months. Of course, a good chunk of that would have been spread out for a raider that's been playing all along - but now think about a returning player like me, that decides they want to be a top-tier raider? Here's the breakdown I previously posted for Myst, but expanded to include dates and Wulf's info:



Combined with Kander's bullshit and all the other issues that have been noted ad nauseam, that was enough to solidify my decision to cancel my subs and leave them as F2P. Heck, I'm more likely to log into Wulf 1.0 (at the lofty level of 68) in EQ1 than I am to load EQ2!!

Edit: I stand corrected: At least 4 mercs per alt.

 

Yep. I was trying to paint a picture that was optimistic with respect to sub/box revenue, and conservative with respect to shop sales to drive home the point, that imo, a p2w raiding game was the end game for eq2 (I mentioned that I suspected that the average was actually more than $500).

I can't even begin to fathom the amount of processing resources consumed by eq2, let alone a healthy mmo. I agree with Zynt that these server migrations have nothing to do with improving server performance, and everything to do with cash flow issues.

 

The abilities having tiers you could grind for used to be great, but as with everything else they added the last 5 years, its infected by heavy p2w mechanics. They dont add any new features to the game, and have not added any new features to the game for many years unless you can use DBC on it. Its pathetic how the playerbase just accept getting ****ed in the ass (my self included, but im very close to limit now)

At this point I think 9 out of 10 eq2 players have part Stockholm Syndrome, part hope that the game eventually will be good again. So we keep trucking along for some reason that has no hold in reality.

Fact is, there are at least a dozen MMOs out there that have better, more content than eq2, but eq2 players are hostages that refuse to move even when it would do us all good to do so.

 

The stat-flation is partly to blame for the ever increasing lag. Each expansion they add additional calculations and checks for character stats, merc stats, familiar stats, gear stats, buffs, etc.
Couple this with significantly larger values (stat caps) and the server falls on its face trying to run the numbers through its algo.

Add in 24 people in a raid encounter and the hardware (cloud or not) cant keep up with Kanders un-optimized crappy code and plethora of stat checks, calculations and outcomes.

 

I know I have a suspicious mind but could someone be taking a forum holiday?

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/lore-and-legend-roekillik.594854/

 

lol did he have to make a new account?

 

Lols, if that's Burrito on different accounr, the funniest thing about it is he's going out of his way to make sure people know it's him.

Still, it will be equally as funny if turns out someone is trolling him

 

I've spent more on EQ2/1 this past few months than I have on hookers or coke. I'm about to go back to hookers and coke tho.

It's actually DMT and hippy chicks but hookers and coke has a better ring to it.

 

Judging by how far the population has fallen the playerbase doesn't accept it. But Daybreak has transitioned to a whale milking operation so they don't need the numbers anymore. Just the whales.

 

They straight up said the reason why the cut out double cast is because of the impact it was having on servers yet he then says he's not going to do any stat squish because people wouldn't like it because hey don't like change. Well, the some change they would like would be less server lag.