SoE is missing money

[Ghesta]

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

How can SoE not think that 500+ people at peak times, and 200-400 during off hours, is not enough to make an official classic everquest server?

Everyone that's posted on this thread has missed one very obvious, and HUGE point. Bear with me while I explain.


If they opened a classic server, hell let's call it the p1999 server, they wouldn't get 1000 old players to return. What would instead happen would be they might get 900 old players to return, then they'd have 6,000 to 10,000 of their CURRENT players switch from the luclin server, Rathe, etc over to their p1999 server.

Now those other servers which had a good balance load are now unbalanced. Players on the Rathe start bitching that there's no one playing there and some switch servers, but others decide that it's time to quit EQ.

Meanwhile half of the people on their p1999 server bitch that it's too crowded on p1999 with 3000+ online at peak hours, giving SOE one of two choices. Choice 1: they open a SECOND server - the P1999b server. This generates another problem as 3/4ths of the p1999a server jump ship and now p1999b is overcrowded. More people like you, me, and others on this thread get frustrated and quit everquest again. SOE nets $30 to $45 from us "returning" players who quit again. Choice 2: they ignore the problem, leading to the exact same problem, but save themselves the time and cost of setting up the second p1999b server.

In the meantime back on the normal servers server population has dipped on 1 or 2 servers so badly that they now have to combine servers in order to prevent any other playerbase bleeding. This costs time and money.

Eventually the player population swing levels out somewhat. With the gain and loss of players, an optimum estimate would be to say they would gain 1000 players for over a year.

Now they have a VERY challenging server that needs GM staffing, and special attention. Do they put rubi in the game? How often do they release the expansions? Do they let manastones work anywhere / no where? There's a lot of questions to be asked, and for every single one of them, there's going to be 3 people; the guy who loves the decision, the guy who hates the decision, and the guy who thinks SOE is retarded and should let him have a full set of rubi since his main character is level 352 with 19,023,236 AA points on the prexus server.





Considering ALL that, if the other choice is to simply sit back, and let the servers that they have keep on bringing in cash as they focus their time, resources, and money elsewhere........ can you really still wonder why SOE isn't doing this?

[nilbog]

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

Now they have a VERY challenging server that needs GM staffing, and special attention. Do they put rubi in the game? How often do they release the expansions? Do they let manastones work anywhere / no where? There's a lot of questions to be asked, and for every single one of them, there's going to be 3 people; the guy who loves the decision, the guy who hates the decision, and the guy who thinks SOE is retarded and should let him have a full set of rubi since his main character is level 352 with 19,023,236 AA points on the prexus server.

These are the same decisions we make for free. No matter what the choice, people get upset.

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

i think soe dosnt like the idea of classic because the 1000s or 2000s junkies on it wont BUY the new expansions as they come out so they axed the idea..

and they know none of us will pay for kunark again if they tried that ;P

They own the property/intellectual property rights to say.. the Trilogy client. I think they could offer a digital download of it, and a lot of people would buy it. They wouldn't even need to ship boxes to stores and they could make burst profit from a client that would otherwise not produce income.

Originally Posted by Aadill [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Rogean could sell the modified code back to Sony as the original EQ, once done (or even as expansions come out); all current p1999 GMs/Devs can become the support staff for the server and rely on a yearly stipend for payment.

The subscription fee would pay for hardware maintenance and the majority of the stipend. Considering these jokers do it for free (THANKS!), they could gain some cash out of it and still have control of their amazing work.

No development work on the part of Sony, the staff is already in place, and a portion of the server population already loyal.

There is no way they are going to buy their own source code. They have real code, and can fill in the 'unknowns' a lot better than the open source community. Rogean and Haynar are doing a great job at tuning Titanium to run classically, but the work done is for the Titanium client. It would be quite an undertaking to ,as Excision put it, 'jive' together. I'm surprised no one mentioned the database or quests. That's what provides the content you are playing. I spent the last year researching and implementing/fabricating hacks of little insignificant situations. If they do not have a stored database and original quest system, they would be paying someone to do this yet again.. and it would take A LOT of time and effort. If they are reading, I'm LFJ, btw :P

[Aadill]

Fair enough. I was thinking more along the lines of an adopted internal project. If only The Vision leader were still around.

Get hired and turn EQ around Nilbog. Continue The Vision! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Zexa]

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

They have real code, and can fill in the 'unknowns' a lot better than the open source community.

I don't know about that one Nilbog. While I'm no programmer and it's all a foreign language to me, I followed the progression server development and classic server discussions from day one. While making the progression servers, Maddoc(I think he was the lead dev on prog?) said they had lost all data/code for past EQ. They made very few changes besides the obvious ones.

You certainly see a lot more updates and work going on here. I thought it was funny to see a change in a raid in the newest expansion apologizing for how difficult it was because they just forgot to ever test it.

[Aeolwind]

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

I'm surprised no one mentioned the database or quests. That's what provides the content you are playing. I spent the last year researching and implementing/fabricating hacks of little insignificant situations. If they do not have a stored database and original quest system, they would be paying someone to do this yet again.. and it would take A LOT of time and effort. If they are reading, I'm LFJ, btw :P

I fixed about 600 classic quests that were broken/unimplemented: Newbie tunics (Only 1 was working/had correct text/correct item/correct note on the character. Not to mention scripted events that Nil and I have poured portions of our soul into to get working. And that is JUST Perl.

There were 70,000 invalid entries for a rusty dagger in the DB, 30,000 invalid references for bone chips. Loot drops, faction hits, faces, clothes, weapons, abilities...at one point I'd figured up over 700,000 DB changes that Nil had made & god only knows how many since then. There were 1300 individual threads on the beta boards of fixed issues: from dozens of merchants to goblin ears in HHK.

Remember, I started late on the project. I came in in February of last year. Nil and X has been working for a while when Nil made my phone ring and dragged me in as a content consultant. Well, I learned perl along the way and he's been stuck with me ever since.

By no means do I want anyone to think that I'm knocking the work that has been put in on the Emulator by much more talented and gifted people. We just needed a LOT of changes that were specifically us.

[Aeolwind]

Also, keep in mind, one "thread" on the old forums would prob have like 15 issues in it.."All newbie tunics broken" was one, for example [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

[Trimm]

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

By no means do I want anyone to think that I'm knocking the work that has been put in on the Emulator by much more talented and gifted people. We just needed a LOT of changes that were specifically us.

I've been wondering this for a while, and haven't really seen a proper thread to ask, so if I may derail for a minute or two: How exactly was the Project1999 world created? Is there any way you could give us a dumb-downed explanation of the process for those of us new to the EQEmu community (such as myself)?

Far as as I assume, you took the Titanium client and locked all of the post-classic zones, and then re-coded the old world quests/scripts/npcs/items by hand. I figure that's a very layman's way of describing it.

[nilbog]

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

Far as as I assume, you took the Titanium client and locked all of the post-classic zones, and then re-coded the old world quests/scripts/npcs/items by hand. I figure that's a very layman's way of describing it.

I played on a few "classic-ish" servers. CKV, complexity, and vztz. Got tired of seeing too many little things that were off... and ruining my immersion. I read a lot of posts on eqemulator.net, then set up my own server. I thought it would be a good way to learn sql and perl. I was correct [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You need a few things for an eqemu server.

-A database- MySQL -(npcs, loot,doors, book text,zone lines, etc etc) (eqemu schema)
-Quests - perl scripts - pretty much anything aside from an npc attacking and defending is done with perl. *Any* hail, quest trigger, for example.
-Source - C++, and a lot of it. This controls how the client(Titanium) works.(npc mitigation, random fade invises, pets disappearing on zone, etc) Here is the eqemu public repository.
-RESEARCH- I have spent a LOT of time researching using google hacks, waybackmachine, translating asian archives, screenshots, and various other things. For this project, researchers were and still are essential.

There were pretty much 2 databases at public disposal in 2008. The PEQ DB (most live-like) and the axclassic db (things like pok books removed). So I started with the axclassic db. I contacted a couple of fellow players from the servers I played on previously to help me find the non-classic features.

Me, Xzerion, Tantalar and a few others worked many months prior to announcing open beta testing. http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=27260 The majority of this time was REMOVING non classic aspects.(bird bath aug containers, beastlord trainers, berzerker trainers, vah shir, etc) Almost all of this was database work. Original spell formulas/effects were redone by Xzerion. Tantalar looked through almost every merchant and visually inspected NPCs for armor/face discrepancies. We ended up replacing almost every existing loottable (thx Wenai).. and looking back on it, it might have been easier to do from a blank slate.

For perl, I had to work solo for a while. Then, I made Aeolwind help me. This is now his primary job. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] All of the dragons, gods, etc are controlled from scripts. Want 1-5 ancient crocodile PHs? Perl will do that for you. See boats ? That's perl.

It took FOREVER to get people to help with the source changes. Ladoth was the first full time source developer. Rogean, Haynar, and various others have contributed and continue to improve the source. They have contributed more source work in the past 3 months than the ENTIRETY of beta source submissions.

During beta testing, we picked up a lot of good help (Wenai, Ladoth, and Lany, to name a few). There were other contributions that helped along the way. Lany remade the classic spell gems and made the current node-pathing that you use in some of the dungeons.

Under the delusion that not many people would play, and the lack of continued beta testers, the beta community got antsy and pushed for a release. It had been around a year since I started working solo, so, a 2 week "release date thread" was made. Then the population surged.. and has continued exponentially since then.

The first day of release, hosting the server from my house or even my city became impossible by the amount of players. Rogean stepped in, offered temporary assistance, and is now a fundamental part of the team. Acting as Server Administrator, he keeps the servers up and going, implements patches, and answers dumb questions.

It takes a lot of work, with many different facets of development and maintenance. All of the developers have contributed so much work, that I feel bad only listing some of it.

[Aeolwind]

-RESEARCH- I have spent a LOT of time researching using google hacks, waybackmachine, translating asian archives, and various other things. For this project, researchers were and still are essential.

I have my purple belt in Search-Fu thanks to this project.

omg, after this, I love Asians...more than after I saw Asia Carrera.

[Excision Rottun]

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

Project 1999 Stuff

I just went from six to midnight!