EQ and New Player Population

[Bentheb]

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

[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).

[calaxa]

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

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

[stormlord]

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

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.

I don't know about you, but I know without a doubt that there were far more people in the low level zones in 1999 than there were in 2001-02 when I started a new character. I got by, and I did so well, all on a pvp server (in 1999 I played on Rallos Zek). But I was well aware, even way back then, that things weren't the same. Today I know that as a top heavy population, but back then I could only think that it was dead by comparison. Now, looking back on all of it, I see a picture with more going on in it.

You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to understand what this thread is about. If you do that, you'll see that it, literally, hits a wall in mid 2001. Like it was run over, and stays that way for years. In fact, I wonder if it even recovered at all? That spike in 2004 is suspect, and I know GOD, as John Smedley put it, was probably EQ's worst expansion ever. They made it for level 70 cap, and most people were barely 50.

[Bentheb]

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

I kinda agree with Bentheb on this one. Though the content wasn't bad, it was definitely strange compared to the earlier releases. Omens was even stranger and I coudn't get past that hurdle.

till they debugged it raid content was hopelessly broken, and drove people away. not to mention Raid flagging version 1.0 when EVERYBODY had to do the full kt quest line to move on,

and the group content was so over the top for anybody that wasnt raid geared (see the 1st versions of tpt /vex) it drove those people off

[MrBeerBelly]

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

I don't know about you, but I know without a doubt that there were far more people in the low level zones in 1999 than there were in 2001-02 when I started a new character. I got by, and I did so well, all on a pvp server (in 1999 I played on Rallos Zek). But I was well aware, even way back then, that things weren't the same. Today I know that as a top heavy population, but back then I could only think that it was dead by comparison. Now, looking back on all of it, I see a picture with more going. You have to look at the rate of incoming active subscriptions to really get an idea what the gist of this thread is.

Sure there were more people per zone in 1999 than in 2001, but that was because there were far more zones. Also the best EXP was in Lucin, so that is where every one went (even the low levels). You could level from level 1 to 30 in a day in that one zone killing those bandit like things. I remember there being near 100 people in that zone ALL THE TIME.

[Omnimorph]

It's the nature of MMO's, they have to introduce fresher content to keep the current players happy, and then new players to it are in places with less population and as such the experience isn't the same.

I wonder how many actual zones eqlive has now, i mean it must be hundreds... maybe even thousands. And factor into that how few people play (especially at lower levels) and then you end up with the game being geared towards the max level players, even WoW's gone that way. So what you get from that is a bunch of excess zones that no longer serve a purpose because you're only in that level range for a small amount of time.

On the note of EQlive, i remember them doing the revamps of BB, guk, unrest and CT. Those zones became quite lively at that time [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] then they introduced the classic monster missions. Basically they were just trying to give players a feel of the old stuff... and that's why we're all here at p99. We want the old stuff because that was the fun stuff.

[calaxa]

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

till they debugged it raid content was hopelessly broken, and drove people away. not to mention Raid flagging version 1.0 when EVERYBODY had to do the full kt quest line to move on,

and the group content was so over the top for anybody that wasnt raid geared (see the 1st versions of tpt /vex) it drove those people off

Hmmmmm....Bentheb is bringing back some bad memories of my first few days in GoD zones. My groups were elemental geared and we were having horrible time just xping in these zones. I being the enchanter was forced to charm everything for dps. Worked a for a few kills till the charm broke and I'm getting pummeled for 800 quads. I think after a month of tackling GoD content, decided to avoid completely.

I also think the massive amounts of MQ2 usage around this time certainly did a number on server population. I remember half an entire "elite" guild getting banned overnight.

[Grento]

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

Gates of discord is when people started to leave.

This is when most of my friends started to leave. A good chunk of them weren't even in the elemental planes by the time GOD came out so there wasn't really anything for them to do, gear lacking and what not.

[Rael]

I left in 2001 for DAOC. Intended to play both DAOC and Luclin but it's almost impossible to effectively play 2 MMOs so DAOC won over. Then came SWG and WoW which easily took me until 2006 before I felt like trying EQ again.