EQ and New Player Population

stormlord · #1 04-12-2010, 10:08 AM

I originally attached this to another post, but thought I'd make a thread about it to see what others think about what caused EQ to crash. This could be a great troll thread, burning flames and spewing guts. Up to all of you.

-----------------------

This site estimates the rate if you look here:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

(this is an estimate, it could be wildly wrong or close to right, but it's all we got!)

You see that the rate in EQ declined at a slight pace until mid 2001, where it took a dive. I don't know how to explain the dive. I took a look at another chart, and I saw that Lineage gained over 500,000 subscriptions around that time period. Anarchy Online launched summer 2001. (I recall in late 2001, early 2002, near S Karana, someone asking me to join them in Anarchy Online.) Anyway, hard to know. EQ never recovered, for lots of reasons. It could be that sony wasn't advertising, but i think what was more important was that dozens of mmo's were firing up and stealing away potential new people before they ever got to even see it. Secondly, the game was growing older, attrition was eating away at the veterans, and the group-based play of EQ really hampered its survival in this kind of compromised environment. Sony has tried to reduce the ceiling a bit so new players could better accommodate their needs in a crippled world, but it's a losing game.

Imagine a new player coming into EQ after 2000-01. The world they would see would have less people. No, i'm not talking about Kunark or Velious. I mean places like Qeynos and Freeport and Greater Faydark. It would have been harder to find a group. By then, the population would have been very top heavy, and without advertising, new players are going to come up empty. There'd be lots of zones, and they wouldn't be sure where to start. And then, in the spirit of exploration, in late 2001, they log into DAOC and servers are crawling with people, by comparison. Back then, DAOC had a babies butt and was shiny new. Things aren't so brutal in DAOC. Given a choice, i think most new players would stay with DAOC, as just one small example. I don't see how EQ could have been saved, unless the whole package could be redone.

WOW is a phenomenon. Absolutely. It's not even listed on that chart because it would make them all look like ants in comparison. It bit bigger and bigger chunks like some kind of Goliath. It brought MMORPG to the world. It even got at one of my sisters (her poor dear soul). But, I'm wondering at what point people will start saying things like, "You know, WOW isn't what it used to be, " or things like, "WOW sucks now." You know, everything gets old. It gets harder and harder to update and manage old software. It gets harder and harder to keep old players with the same name without a do over. I'm wondering what will come after WOW? Will Blizzard make a sequel, or will someone else poke out their nose from behind a bush, and steal the world??

But WOW didn't kill EQ. EQ had been dying for a while. It's still spitting blood and crawling forward

mitic · #2 04-12-2010, 10:21 AM

its easy, soe killed eq starting with planes of power

clacbec · #3 04-12-2010, 10:28 AM

more like Plane of knowledge, That one was really Shit in Da Soup imo
G'

calaxa · #4 04-12-2010, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stormlord [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I originally attached this to another post, but thought I'd make a thread about it to see what others think about what caused EQ to crash. This could be a great troll thread, burning flames and spewing guts. Up to all of you.

-----------------------

This site estimates the rate if you look here:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

(this is an estimate, it could be wildly wrong or close to right, but it's all we got!)

You see that the rate in EQ declined at a slight pace until mid 2001, where it took a dive. I don't know how to explain the dive. I took a look at another chart, and I saw that Lineage gained over 500,000 subscriptions around that time period. Anarchy Online launched summer 2001. (I recall in late 2001, early 2002, near S Karana, someone asking me to join them in Anarchy Online.) Anyway, hard to know. EQ never recovered, for lots of reasons. It could be that sony wasn't advertising, but i think what was more important was that dozens of mmo's were firing up and stealing away potential new people before they ever got to even see it. Secondly, the game was growing older, attrition was eating away at the veterans, and the group-based play of EQ really hampered its survival in this kind of compromised environment. Sony has tried to reduce the ceiling a bit so new players could better accommodate their needs in a crippled world, but it's a losing game.

Imagine a new player coming into EQ after 2000-01. The world they would see would have less people. No, i'm not talking about Kunark or Velious. I mean places like Qeynos and Freeport and Greater Faydark. It would have been harder to find a group. By then, the population would have been very top heavy, and without advertising, new players are going to come up empty. There'd be lots of zones, and they wouldn't be sure where to start. And then, in the spirit of exploration, in late 2001, they log into DAOC and servers are crawling with people, by comparison. Back then, DAOC had a babies butt and was shiny new. Things aren't so brutal in DAOC. Given a choice, i think most new players would stay with DAOC, as just one small example. I don't see how EQ could have been saved, unless the whole package could be redone.

WOW is a phenomenon. Absolutely. It's not even listed on that chart because it would make them all look like ants in comparison. It bit bigger and bigger chunks like some kind of Goliath. It brought MMORPG to the world. It even got at one of my sisters (her poor dear soul). But, I'm wondering at what point people will start saying things like, "You know, WOW isn't what it used to be, " or things like, "WOW sucks now." You know, everything gets old. It gets harder and harder to update and manage old software. It gets harder and harder to keep old players with the same name without a do over. I'm wondering what will come after WOW? Will Blizzard make a sequel, or will someone else poke out their nose from behind a bush, and steal the world??

But WOW didn't kill EQ. EQ had been dying for a while. It's still spitting blood and crawling forward

Storm,

I think you need to reread that chart. The huge plummet did not occur until 2005 (a few months after EQ2 and WOW launch). I was still playing on live during this era and there was no mass exodus just yet. Stormhammer server opened during this time as well as a few other servers. Wasn't until 2006 did SOE start doing server merges and that's what you see on the chart. Numbers are inaccurate after that as SOE introduced station pass which means anyone subscription numbers can be duplicated for multiple games.

Grento · #5 04-12-2010, 10:32 AM

I loved all of the Raids in POP, I just hated how you had to go about getting into them and hated POK. If they had just implemented the content differently, it would have been awesome.

mitic · #6 04-12-2010, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clacbec [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

more like Plane of knowledge, That one was really Shit in Da Soup imo
G'

yea that, pop books, instanced zoned... anything that soe took over after brad left

the funny thing tho, guilds HERE are already causing drama about boss mobs and that shows me the reason why they coded instanced zones on life.

calaxa · #7 04-12-2010, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grento [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I loved all of the Raids in POP, I just hated how you had to go about getting into them and hated POK. If they had just implemented the content differently, it would have been awesome.

I agree with Grento. Some of the best raid content was in POP in my opinion. I do understand that POP was quite game altering and see why many people disliked it. It destroyed what little lore was left in EQ. It shrunk the world down to make travel so much faster. It forced the casual gamer population to raid just to keep up. Many of the scripts and encounters were completely broken when first introduced. POK and POT were laggy beyond belief. The entire direction of EQ became item based over all else. Despite all these problems, I still enjoyed EQ very much into this era but obviously, the audience here is going to skew the other way.

guineapig · #8 04-12-2010, 10:38 AM

Meh, before PoP everyone was hanging out in Shadowhaven and the Nexus.
Nobody mentions that.

stormlord · #9 04-12-2010, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by calaxa [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Storm,

I think you need to reread that chart. The huge plummet did not occur until 2005 (a few months after EQ2 and WOW launch). I was still playing on live during this era and there was no mass exodus just yet. Stormhammer server opened during this time as well as a few other servers. Wasn't until 2006 did SOE start doing server merges and that's what you see on the chart. Numbers are inaccurate after that as SOE introduced station pass which means anyone subscription numbers can be duplicated for multiple games.

The MMO's after 2003 might have "broke the camels back," but it had had a bad back for a while.

The decline does not have to be huge. If you have a decline in active subscriptions, you'll very likely also hve a decline in new player subscriptions. In fact, I think this is highly likely. We all know that EQ, just like any other mmorpg, becomes top heavy in short order. Without a strong thriving new player population that can find groups and survive in EQ's world, all you got left are the veterans. Veterans get tired of playing the same game over and over. They try new things. When EQ2 and WOW came out, just as Anarchy Online and DAOC and others, EQ lost accounts. The decline did not start with WOW or EQ2, as I was trying to point out here by referring the reader to the event that happened in mid 2001 when there was a marked decrease in the rate of active subscriptions. It might not have started with it, but it certainly was hit hard in 2005. Some other mmo's that came out in 2004-05 were: Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Matrix Online, Conquer Online.

MrBeerBelly · #10 04-12-2010, 10:44 AM

EQ was fine in 2001 and 2002.

I remember being online in 2002 in of of the zones introduced in the Shadows of Lucin when a GM came on to announce that EQ just broke it's own record for most people logged in at one time.

EQ didn't die until WOW/EQ2 came out.