EQ and New Player Population

[stormlord]

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]

its easy, soe killed eq starting with planes of power

[clacbec]

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

[Grento]

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.

[calaxa]

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.

[mitic]

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]

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.

[stormlord]

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.

[calaxa]

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

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're 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.

Storm,

I'm saying you misread the chart. EQ leveled off in 2001 with it's peak subscriber rate in 2004-2005. Look at the chart again. It basically held steady at 450K-500K sub during the years 2001-2005. This actually coincided with Sony press releases. After that, they kept their mouth shut as to how many subs they had. The dropoff didn't occur until 2005. You must have been looking at a different line. I played well into this era and perhaps many of you guys left but there were true newbs still entering into the fray. There were many boxxers appearing increasing the overall sub rate and many returning players to check out the new expansions. I dabbled in other MMOs during this time as well but kept my accounts on EQ one year after I left (accidentally actually as I had forgotten to cancel and paid the year in advance).

[stormlord]

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

Storm,

I'm saying you misread the chart. EQ leveled off in 2001 with it's peak subscriber rate in 2004-2005. Look at the chart again. It basically held steady at 450K-500K sub during the years 2001-2005. This actually coincided with Sony press releases. After that, they kept their mouth shut as to how many subs they had. The dropoff didn't occur until 2005. You must have been looking at a different line. I played well into this era and perhaps many of you guys left but there were true newbs still entering into the fray. There were many boxxers appearing increasing the overall sub rate and many returning players to check out the new expansions. I dabbled in other MMOs during this time as well but kept my accounts on EQ one year after I left (accidentally actually as I had forgotten to cancel and paid the year in advance).

You seem to only care when the active subscriptions go down, but not what the rate of active subscriptions is in a positive direction. The rate matters, not whether it's plus or minus. It's a sign of what's going on underneath. Unfortunately, we're not privy to the details, but this gives us hints. When the rate decreased, that was a sign that active subscriptions were going in a negative direction. What happened in 2001 and in the years that came after was a sign of bad things. A trend.

In mid 2001 and after, barely enough people were coming back from a break or buying the game to try it out to make up for people who were leaving or taking a break to make a positive gain. When you see the trend, you see that less and less people were coming back from a break or coming into the game for the first time. It was so small that for 2.5 years only 50,000 active subscribers were gained - a trickle compared to pre-2001 gains. Between 2001 and 2004, it's hard to say whether new players or old players were coming into the game to replace those who left, but what we can say is that there were less and less of them.

Underlined that because it's the important part and ties into the thread.