EQ and New Player Population

[Appaullo]

I played consistently until my guild broke into PoTime. At that point the next expansion was around the corner ... I dabbled a bit, but for me the feel of old EQ (long travel times, corpse runs, etc.) was gone, baby gone. Plane of Knowledge did indeed ruin the game, making everything just way too easy. Although I put many, many holes in my wall while leveling my necro hehehe. I'm geeked beyond words to play on this server when it goes live, just not sure if the old feeling will be the same or not. My fingers are crossed.

[calaxa]

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

What was really attractive about the Progression servers is they allowed everyone to start fresh, although IMHO the progression went too fast for casuals/family guilds. P99 captures this as well.

I'd love to see P99 split when Kunark comes out to let the high end guilds run off and have their dramafest on the new content while anyone who wants to hang out and play the Classic content at a slower pace can now have a chance at the end game. Allow character transfers to the new server, rinse and repeat for Velious.

Regards,
Mg

I think that all future MMOs should follow this type of ruleset. If you advance at a certain speed, you should be split off onto a different server. Seperate the powergamers from the casuals. They already do this for blue vs. red. Why not for this other portion of the community instead of a sandbox. You'll segregate the high end drama and stabilize the economy of both communites. No massive mudflation and item dilution. Probably will never happen though.

[Appaullo]

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

[mgellan]

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

Hhhmmm. I remember doing Vox and Naggy raids after Kunark came out. Thats the beauty of a growing server and expansions. When the bigger, more established guilds come out the older content is still there for the younger levels. I mean, once the current raiding guilds move on to Kunark raid content then new "classic" raiding guilds will form up. I see no need to split servers for this sort of thing (just my opinion). Also raiding is not for everyone. I was in a high end raiding guild on EQLive and let me tell you, at my age I cant go into work with 90 minutes of sleep anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I wouldnt worry, I think there will be content for all levels of raiders.

True, but the issue becomes co-existence - on one hand you have a population that moves very quickly and consumes content at a high rate, and a slow population that log on for a few hours to have fun. The raiders then create twinked alts that compete with the casuals at lower levels, and the server economy floods with plat and farmed items. To me thats a good reason to try splitting servers, so the two populations don't mix...

Regards,
Mg

[xakle]

I quit shortly before Velious came out. I raided all the time more so for the fun of it than the loot. We had generally the same group of 30 people that would do plane of sky every other weekend and plane of sky had average at best loot because this was not long after Kunark was released.

It was great because our server wasn't guild biased. You could be in any guild and get into any raid. Because of this, our server (Tunare) was the first to not only get the Fiery Avenger (Musk... with Drool giving him the glory), but the first to get the Rogue epic (Kaylum) and a number of other epics and (unconfirmed) the first to spawn the Sister of the Spire in PoS.

However, shortly before Velious, things started really tilting into being guild biased. Guilds were becoming greedy (greed will imprison us all). It also didn't help that I played a druid, and the server was loaded with druids. Then there was a server split to Drinal and most of the people I normally raided with went with it because they saw the same thing happening with the guilds.

[Mmohunter]

SoL , New Models, and AA killed EQ. Or should I say "the vision".

[Olorin]

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.

i concur, I quit soon after omens myself ....

[Dangergirl]

I'm pretty confident WoW is what killed EQ. Of course combined with Sony's mistakes. I played EQ hardcore from 99-2004, every few months a grp of peeps would say, Im leaving for DAOC, Im leaving for FF, half the server said they were leaving for Star Wars Galaxies! I just stuck to my guns on EQ and watched 90% of them filter on back to EQ. So when a few peeps said they were leaving for wow in 2k4 I just waited for them to come back...and waited and waited. December 2k4 i met this cute chick in a store who played wow so i decided to give it a chance and I really liked wow. The graphics were fresh and brighter, and played better on my grfx card, and there was a bit of challenge to it and alot more pvp which I loved.

After playing a month or so I knew EQ was in trouble. Every single thing I heard peeps complain about in EQ was addressed in wow, it was pretty impressive whoever led wow along those lines. I mean EVERY complaint. I hate having only 8 spells memed, I hate CR, I hate losing exp, I hate having things i need camped in dungeons, i hate not knowing where to lvl, i mean even camping out was reduced to 20 seconds vs 30 and u could have 9 or 10 toons per server instead of 8.

One complex thing most peeps dont understand about MMORPG's is, the hardest thing to balance in these games is the economy.

To me there was only one thing that would make or break WoW...would players accept bind on equip gear that they could never re-sell or hand down? WoW's economy could not survive as designed without BoE gear, but peeps accepted it without even blinking.

So in the end I think I'm saying you can chalk up EQ's demise to peeps accepting BoE gear. But that was not what turned me.

From my point of view as a PvPer, with so many friggin zones in eq in 2k4 and pvping solo or with 1 friend, it took hours just to find anyone you could pk, so I was willing to accept wow and its faults just so I could get some pvp action.

[dacduster]

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.

Its when I left. I had been lsing interest in the direction it was going and then the mobs during this expansion hit so much harder to accomodate the new armor. I wasnt a raider and had to give up playing my five and dime armored warr.

[Bhutt]

Brad McQuaid left SOE in October of 2001. Coincidence? I think not.