Why didn't EverQuest remain as popular as other old MMO's?

[Ekco]

the masses were wrong though, WoW was bullshit, why i moved to and played Eve Online for a decade

the worst iteration of the genre won, because people are terrible,



we are without a doubt in the worst timeline for mmorpgs its basically "ya, you know all the cool parts of ttrpgs, lets emulate the dice rolling and loot but fuck the character progression and other cool shit that makes DnD fun" the roleplaying

[Duik]

Spoke to a workmate who played WoW 6 months from the start. He said he only liked the 1st couple years, he further added early WoW is brutal.
When i told him about nekkid corpse runs and rotting gear/corpses his face went all contorted. Although his description of death was interesting. Cant drag corpses.
What a baby game.

[BradZax]

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

the masses were wrong though, WoW was bullshit, why i moved to and played Eve Online for a decade

the worst iteration of the genre won, because people are terrible

Standard masses behavior.

[Wakanda]

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

World of Warcraft killed it. That's really it. No reason to go back after the majority of the player base moved to WoW.

Not to be rude, but that wasn't really the question I was asking. I know why EQ died. What I don't understand is how MMOs that were less popular and games that I considered inferior at the time, are somehow more popular than EQ is 25 years later.

I also don't share the sentiment that Anarchy Online was better than EQ. I remember my parents getting mad that I made them buy it and let me use their credit card to play it, but within a week I was already back on EQ [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] had friends leave for Asheron's Call and DAoC and also come back very swiftly.

[Wakanda]

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

Spoke to a workmate who played WoW 6 months from the start. He said he only liked the 1st couple years, he further added early WoW is brutal.
When i told him about nekkid corpse runs and rotting gear/corpses his face went all contorted. Although his description of death was interesting. Cant drag corpses.
What a baby game.

I've been playing WoW off and on since 2004. I'm not asking why WoW is more popular than EQ, I'm asking why other non-EQ old school MMO's seem to have a larger and more active player-base than EQ does? I could understand if they were more popular than EQ when all of the games were new, but they weren't. It's like these other games aged better or something?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I've been playing WoW off and on since 2004. I'm not asking why WoW is more popular than EQ, I'm asking why other non-EQ old school MMO's seem to have a larger and more active player-base than EQ does? I could understand if they were more popular than EQ when all of the games were new, but they weren't. It's like these other games aged better or something?

I want to say the issue with Live Everquest in 2026 is that Live has always been chasing WoW. But WoW is just better at being WoW. So you get the worst of both worlds, where you lose the classic feel of Everquest, while being a worse WoW.

I haven't played Runescape in 2026, but I heard that it is more true to the original game.

So perhaps Everquest is just the farthest from it's roots. That's why people play P99 instead.

[Danth]

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

I've been playing WoW off and on since 2004. I'm not asking why WoW is more popular than EQ, I'm asking why other non-EQ old school MMO's seem to have a larger and more active player-base than EQ does? I could understand if they were more popular than EQ when all of the games were new, but they weren't. It's like these other games aged better or something?

What you see makes sense to me. EQ has a lot of descendants and derivatives, including World of Warcraft itself and consequently including that game's many clones. If a player sort of liked EQ but wanted a little different, there are a great many options. Most of the other old games you mentioned had vastly fewer copycats, or none at all, so folks who wanted one of those general styles of games were more likely to stick with the originals out of necessity.

[Swish]

This doesn't belong in Norrath...as fun and innocent as it is...

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[branamil]

The quality of life issues drove everyone away except the masochistic and autistic.

Other games are very easy to put down and pick up whenever you want. People have shit to do and don't want to lose 10 hours of XP grinding because of a network glitch making them die.

[BradZax]

The classic look of everquest quickly devolved with each expansion too.

to swish's point. I felt kunark looked like that.

Ive learned to like it through p99 but kunark was ugly to me and weird. And mistmoore and qeynos was cool, and interesting.