Ooh dear ...

38 achievements for mindlessly pressing buttons - just what you need to get the grey cells charged up and HAVE FUN

 

Now we know where all the "Solo" Content will be.....

 

I hereby declare that you "win" EQ2 the same way you "win" EVE: You log off, uninstall, and never go back.

 

That's what Kander does.

Step 1: Don't be creative or innovative. Just recycle/copy what's been done in the past by either EQ2 or its competitors.

Step 2: Design decisions are to be driven by costs and the cash shop; not customer enjoyment of the product.

Step 3: Never accept that your design decisions were terrible and never, ever abandon them. Instead, double down, revisit step 1, and keep trying to bait people into logging in and playing your system by cycling through the same, tired, 5 or 6 mmo customer motivations, gimmicks, and manipulations.

Step 4: Continue to assert that it's not your design decisions that are responsible for losing customers. If customers aren't having fun it's their fault, not yours.

Step 5: Take out your frustrations on your discord community, because step 4.

Step 6: Six months in to the current expansion, claim that you do listen to feedback and hype changes that are coming with the next expansion.

Step 7: Return to step 1 and repeat.

 

Agreed!!!!!

They should have stuck to the core tenets of the EQ franchise. And they did for a time, with EQ1. Where through persistence and teamwork you can advance yourself in a difficult game world. You know, the "hardcore game play" model. Instead of the failed attempt at chasing those 10m subs WoW had, by pandering to people who wanted a more "accessible" game.

 

Wow.. the folks working on the raiding side actually did listen. (I made a polite post in the official forums with the ward numbers asking if the debuff was working as intended w/o zero commentary after venting my frustrations here)
I don't have the full description of the altered Chaotic Leech, but the 'calculated value' that is visible to players was about 1/6th what it was on Saturday.. and my mystic's grp ward was landing for around 850m.

 

They can't really do this justice though. There's not many people who play both versions, they each appeal to different types of folks. There's no, or very little, what I call, "Outside the realm of normal solutions" involved in any particular situation in 2. Where in 1, it's an hourly thing. I won't go into details or give specifics because folks don't really care but it has always been that way in 1 and, hopefully always will be. I play 2 if I don't feel like concentrating or thinking about what I'm doing to come up with a solution to a situation that requires creativity. 2 is a whole lot of the same thing over and over and over again and if you can't do it the "normal" way you probably can't do it at all so hit gen chat and ask for a group.

 

Hey now, that's not fair. We totally got pandas before WoW did!

 

Lols. This bit of on-going history always makes me chuckle.

EQ1 comes out and revolutionizes pc-gaming. Both Blizzard and SOE then improve upon the concept with EQ2 and WoW. Both companies have immensely talented development staffs, however, there is one key difference: Blizzard has always understood and invested in the marketing process.

And I'm not just talking about advertising. I'm referring to the entire marketing pipeline from market research, to focus group testing, to customer feedback, to professional messaging strategies.

The EQ franchise has always seemed to remain stuck in the EQ1 mindset that marketing is a waste of time and money; that their work is so superior, so awesome, and so innovative that the product will sell itself via social media hype.

So, how did WoW do it?

That's easy. They listen to to their customers and they creatively develop and innovate around what their customers want (well, until recently. Activision seems to be asserting itself more aggressively, and the direction of the franchise seems to be changing for the worse - Longdale will fit right in over there).

I believe I mentioned somewhere around here that while waiting for AoC, and with nothing else to tickle my fancy at the moment (outside of ESO), I decided to dust off my copy of Diablo II, and upon doing so, was reminded of just how well-designed that game is. I mean, it was published around 2000 or so, and it's still an absolute blast to play. Why?

Design, texture, and challenge. There's plenty of complexity with respect to character building and for a 2000 game, the AI is pretty damn good. They key difference (imo) is that everything about that game revolves around the fact that choices matter.

Inventory space is limited. You get three skill point re-sets for the entirety of progression - normal to hell mode. Choices matter, especially for hellmode. They have a muli-player environment, a competitive ladder environment, and hardcore (perma death) environment. Want to craft something? Well, think it through because there is a real cost.

In other words, the concept of the game and the story is fairly simple. The complexity and the challenge comes from the choices players make. "Wow, this is a great drop but shoot, I've no room for it.......what to do, what do....."

The EQ franchise seems to take the opposite approach. While Blizzard in general has been is a big believer in manufacturing customer enjoyment with parsimonious design concepts (which also means accepting the reality of ideas don't work and cutting them), the EQ franchise appears too married to sunk cost fallacies to avoid bloat.

With EQ2, we have bloated systems, bloated stats, bloated abilities, bloated hotbars, bloated inventory space, bloated inputs (thus necessitating more inventory)......and only a few things to do. Hardware and coding issues aside, it's no wonder people are bored, and on top of all that, Kander actually needs the bloat-push because that's how he's pushing cash-shop sales.

In short, both Blizzard and SOE/DBG have and continue to have talented development. The difference is WoW succeeded mostly because the business has been (a) customer-focused, and (b) well-managed. The EQ franchise on the other hand, has been (a) developer focused, and (b) poorly managed.

IOW, the decision-makers at the EQ franchise seemingly continue to be oblivious to the fact that WoW's success rests mostly on its willingness and ability to listen to customers and innovate based on that feedback.

The EQ2 folks can copy WoW all they want, but until they learn to understand it's the customer that matters most, they'll keep failing.

 

There's a huge, very vocal part of the WoW gamer base, that bitches and moans just as much about WoW as we do about EQ1/2. Their OF, reddit, and Discord is full to the gills with complaints that mirror EQ's. It's in our nature. They also took the TLP route, not because of how much their base wanted it (It was a constant request for years and years) but because of how popular it was for EQ and they were losing subs to it. It was a very good business decision for them, too.

 

Let's not forget that they started with a pretty substantial existing player base as battle.net emptied into WoW at launch.

 

There are always going to be people who bitch on social media about the games they play. "This game is dying..." "The Devs hate X class...." "This game sucks now..." "X class is op, nerf it....". . It's not a difficult task to separate the noise from the substance.

Regarding battlenet, yeah, Diablo was and still is hugely successful.

Granted, I'm no fan of WoW, mostly because of the style art. Still, Blizzard didn't achieve such huge numbers by accident.

If the eq2 staff is perplexed about how WoW does/did it, the answer lies less with copying their design ideas, and more with WoW's understanding of customer-centered decisions and what marketing actually is.

P.S. The last few years, it has also been amusing to watch the eq franchise treat social media partners and environments with such overt contempt.

I mean, when things were going great, they were happy to soak up all that free marketing.

But social media cuts both ways. Sell a sh*tty product and/or treat your customers like crap and/or lie to them, and people are going to talk about it.

So rather than look inward and fix the problems within, they lash out and alienate the folks speaking out.

Edit and P.P.S.:

I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect and super-awesome. No company is, imo.

But you don't have to be. All you have to do is put the customer first and use your creativity and industry expertise to innovate around their feedback and good things tend to happen.

For example, with Diablo IV, Blizzard blew it. To me, this is an unfortunate example of Activision's influence.

Imo, they could have knocked it out if the park if they had released a p.c. version with a mobile companion.

Instead, they went for the cash grab, and they've paid dearly for it.

 

Yea that is what people forget, they had a massive online gaming community through battle.net (Diablo) and a massive following of the Warcraft series for a few years before WoW itself ever launched. Couple that together with the fact that they were able to effectively replicate the magic of and enhance upon EQ1, it was a perfect recipe for a blockbuster hit.

Edit: and the price of computers plumeted in the early 2000's. They suddenly became accessible.

 

All this just reminds me of when they tried to push the appeal of the EverQuest franchise through other games (Lords of EverQuest, Champions of Norrath, EverQuest Online Adventures, etc.) but managed to rub just about every genre the wrong way through crappy customer service and poor testing.

 

Apparently EQ2 is a racist game now.. who would have thought...

But not sexist enough to get boob settings to THICC!

 

I'm as liberal leftist as it gets w/o being on a watchlist and I wanted to rage so hard on that thread. Also, I can say, "Leftist" since I am one. Also joking about the watchlist, there's several areas of the world I can not legally enter.

 

Wait, someone seriously tried to pull that crap in the OF?

 

I don't really agree that "racism in EQ2" is an issue, but at the same time I do agree that the comments the NPCs make get real old real fast. NPCs should drop the mean dialogue after you betray.