What caused the decline of EQ as the #1 MMO?

[Thrymm]

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

I left to go to DAoC. Still no better PvP game out there.

As did I, and agree with the Realm vs Realm, was fucking awesome!

[jilena]

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

As did I, and agree with the Realm vs Realm, was fucking awesome!

If this thread was "What caused the decline of any likelihood of there ever being a good PvP game?" the answer would be "People who think DAoC is a good PvP game."

[Thrymm]

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

If this thread was "What caused the decline of any likelihood of there ever being a good PvP game?" the answer would be "People who think DAoC is a good PvP game."

Thank you captain obvious.

[Baldrik]

No game last forever, EQ had to decline. It wasnt the leading MMO tho, Lineage had a much larger playerbase but it was mainly korean.

I think EQ did a great job all the way but the new generation of MMO's were much more player friendly, not only in content but also in UI, made it hard to go back. I still love EQ but I cant invest the time to play it the way I like it.

[madhatta317]

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

...when they allowed those erudites in.

Haha racism ftw. No erudites please O.o

[jilena]

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

No game last forever, EQ had to decline. It wasnt the leading MMO tho, Lineage had a much larger playerbase but it was mainly korean..

You have to understand, no one cares about Koreans. No one. (well okay maybe blizzard looking at SC2's release but no one else)

[stormlord]

Although it's true that EQ was gaining subscribers until at some point between 2002-2005, it's evident that it wasn't gaining at the same rate. People fixate on whether EQ was gaining subscribers over the years and do the same for those periods where subscriptions were decreasing. What they miss is the RATE of gain or decrease. The RATE of new subscribers went down from the very first year to the present present time. In fact, the rate was negative many years ago. MMOCHART.com and a few other sources point to this. I consider the rate of gain more important than the gain itself. Why? Because EQ is a group-based game.

Why did it happen? Well, it's arithmetic. Games get old. Pick a game, any game, and it steadily loses its audience. This is true for mmorpgs and online games as well even though they tend to have a longer lifespan of patches. This tends to be true for anything that's old. It's not a difficult concept.

How? First of all, the game gets old and people get familiar with it. The first kiss steadily becomes a memory. What once was new and fresh becomes old news. It's like watching a lost love slowly age until they're skin and bones. It can be painful. It can be discouraging. It can turn you off. The newness factor brings incredible appeal to a game. People are drawn to it like they're drawn to new sensations. They will leave old things for new things just to experience something new. You can only do the same old thing for so long. Eventually, you get tired of it. A game can't be new forever.

Second of all, code also gets old and it's expensive to keep it up to date. There comes a point when it's more expensive to keep it up to date than it's to make entirely new code. The primary reason is you have to understand the old code before you can effectively change it. That's an extra step in the process that drives up costs. It's comparable to an old computer you might have. How many people do you know that still use the same components they used in 1992, but happen to have a semiconductor factory in their backyard so they can keep it up to date? While this isn't a perfect or ideal comparison, it might help to get across why it's so expensive to stay with the same old code. Another example I can think of is an old person. Trying to keep a 70 year old looking like a 20 year old is a lot more difficult than just making a new baby that will grow to be 20 years old. This example isn't perfect because we know how to MAKE computers but we don't know how to manufacture babies. The key is that you have to know everything about the 70 year old before you can make them look 20 again. You have to master it. This is the same with old code. You can't just replace it. You have to first master it. Then, and only then, can you make appropriate changes to keep it up to date.

The problems that associate with old code, generally, apply to content as well. And this is ignoring the fact that people get tired of old content even if you could keep it up to date with the latest polygon counts and gfx. So maintaining peoples interests in content is not easy, and it's only one part of the puzzle.

My attempt at trying to convey why old code becomes a burden might not be effective. Keep in mind I program as a hobby. I've used VC++, C, Visual Basic, assembly language, various scripting languages, etc. I even have a programming degree. I'm familiar with coding, but I don't think I can express perfectly how code gets old. All I can say is that it does. People do complete rewrites often. They do have libraries for reusing certain routines and groups of routines that don't change much, but there're big portions of code, whether you like it or not, that're always eternally going to change.

Lastly, don't forget that there're types of games. Some games have larger audiences than others. If we picked a game, any game, we could probably produce a popularity graph of how many people play on easy difficult, medium difficulty, hard difficulty, and insane difficulty. These variations in the game itself are smaller examples of the kind of variation you find in different games. Not all MMORPGS are the same. The one example I can think of is FREE REALMS. It's technically an MMORPG and boasts over 10 million accounts. It has by far more subscribers than most other mmorpgs, but it's also not the same type of mmorpg. It was primarily aimed at the pre-teen and teen market. Just go to their website and take a look. It's very clear even with a brief assessment. The point is that you can't easily compare EQ, EQ2, Matrix Online, WoW, SWG, and all of the other MMORPGS. They're each different and tend to attract different audiences. Some of them try to attract everyone, but as the saying goes, you can please everyone, but only some of the time!

I'd be a lot more hesitant than most to say that WOW or any of the other MMORPGS is why EQ lost subscribers. Someone who says this is just skipping over all of the possibilities to please their own expectations. The reality is that people leave for other games for a multitude of reasons. There's no single reason. I think a quote that fits well here is one Bill Walton said in a recent chat during halftime of the lakers vs celtics game. He said, "It's what you know after you know it all that matters most."

[Stickyfingers]

I left to go play WoW Beta. That wasn't the only reason though, the game became really diluted.

[Kerrik]

There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.

Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.

Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).

As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.

[stormlord]

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

There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.

Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.

Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).

As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.

Oh geez. The rate of new subscribers went down the entire time. The number of zones went up. Do the #%!! math. This means more teleporters, things like luclin spires, pok books, guild hall portals and even guild lobby summoners. The things that you say dumbed the game down were necessary and didn't make the game any easier because people had to travel across more zones and gain more levels. That's another way of saying that faster leveling is meaningless if there're more levels to gain. Same for travel. Having a merc to accompany you isn't making the game easier if you can't find groups because there's no one to group with. Do the #$%^ math and it all becomes clear. They didn't decide one night to "make it easier" to please a whiner. They have a bottom line, they have a job, they have expectations. They make more choices based on data, not opinions.

It's like this global chat controversy. They didn't have it enabled because of preferance. They had it enabled because the population wasn't high enough. Now whether we have enough population for it or not is beside the point. The point is, these are design choices based on data, not preferences. Learn to discriminate.