Originally posted by grandpagamer Even with all the SOE hostility I would wager EQ3 would see a ton of preorders. Even those that bitch about the company are captivated by the world of Norrath.
EQ3 has the potential of being a mold breaker, without necessarily having to be a WoW killer. SOE has 10 plus years of experience. They should know by now where they have succeeded and where they have failed. I'm sure they paid close attention to their competition. EQ3 could be SOE's new break in the MMO world, but they have to draw on the lessons of the past.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Originally posted by blueturtle13 So true. People like to rag on SOE but they publish games that hundreds of thousands of gamers pay to play. EQ3 will be a big hit for preorders and just like EQ1 and EQ2 today, hundreds of thousands will pay to play it. The REAL vocal majority are the ones who pay for the subs NOT silly people on forums who spew negativity.
Not to mention a game that people still play and one that people often return to.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Originally posted by blueturtle13 I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you. http://www.mmogchart.com/AGC%202006%20MMOG%20Subscription%20Numbers.pdf or this one http://www.mmocrunch.com/2007/12/10/subscription-by-subscription-october-edition/
One thing I agree with you on, is that EQ1/2 are money makers for SOE. When there are people out there that are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars in one night on buying online trading cards, just for a chance to get a cool mount, you know they got something going. Nobody is disputing the fact that EQ1 & 2 are making SOE money.
What people are talking about is how many people have left the Everquest franchise because of the way SOE handles their games. Their refusal to upgrade EQ1's character models & engine, their decisions to pull devs away from EQ1 and use resources ($$) earned from EQ1 to to work on other projects, their way of buying sub-rated titles like Vanguard and leaving it to slowly die off, their business decision to go by word of mouth rather than advertise their own products (until recently they finally advertised eq2 & FR), Smed loading all their games up with RMT/online cash shops, etc....
People's concerns about SOE are valid, because it would be sad to see SOE ruin what could potentially revitalize the Everquest franchise by loading EQ3 up with cash shop items, by designing the game to cater to people not interested in EQ in the first place, by making the same mistake about making the game with too high sys requirement, by making you zone, by creating a decent game then pulling resources away to work on something else rather than making it excellent, etc etc..
If you want to talk about numbers, these sites showing graphs and numbers have become more and more unreliable ever since companies stopped releasing real numbers. There's a reason why mmogchart.com hasn't been updated since forever. At least they're honest and stopped updating these graphs when they stopped receiving real data from press releases. Going by insider information and secret sources isn't reliable by any means.
Originally posted by blueturtle13 I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you. http://www.mmogchart.com/AGC%202006%20MMOG%20Subscription%20Numbers.pdf or this one http://www.mmocrunch.com/2007/12/10/subscription-by-subscription-october-edition/
One thing I agree with you on, is that EQ1/2 are money makers for SOE. When there are people out there that are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars in one night on buying online trading cards, just for a chance to get a cool mount, you know they got something going. Nobody is disputing the fact that EQ1 & 2 are making SOE money.
What people are talking about is how many people have left the Everquest franchise because of the way SOE handles their games. Their refusal to upgrade EQ1's character models & engine, their decisions to pull devs away from EQ1 and use resources ($$) earned from EQ1 to to work on other projects, their way of buying sub-rated titles like Vanguard and leaving it to slowly die off, their business decision to go by word of mouth rather than advertise their own products (until recently they finally advertised eq2 & FR), Smed loading all their games up with RMT/online cash shops, etc....
People's concerns about SOE are valid, because it would be sad to see SOE ruin what could potentially revitalize the Everquest franchise by loading EQ3 up with cash shop items, by designing the game to cater to people not interested in EQ in the first place, by making the same mistake about making the game with too high sys requirement, by making you zone, by creating a decent game then pulling resources away to work on something else rather than making it excellent, etc etc..
If you want to talk about numbers, these sites showing graphs and numbers have become more and more unreliable ever since companies stopped releasing real numbers. There's a reason why mmogchart.com hasn't been updated since forever. At least they're honest and stopped updating these graphs when they stopped receiving real data from press releases. Going by insider information and secret sources isn't reliable by any means.
you got to understand mmo never was accepted by some in soe ,and its still the same issue ask the guy that asked his boss with two colegue first time they were refused soe WAS against it!later a new boss came took a gamble and it paid off but even trough all the success and money eq1 brot to soe today they WILL BE LIKE THE FIRST DAY THEY TRIED TO MAKE EQ1 a reality .even tho their success speak for themselves lol player still play eq1 its been 10 years and their would be more if soe sent copy to various chain but the fact is soe is tired of those title and WANT something else to pick up they tried with vanguard didnt work so they had to continue pouring money in eq1,then they tried again at some point with start wars and again with free realm they lost a lot of money but soe just wont accept the fact that eq1 made them become mmo 3d none other and player would rater move to other like wow instead. i do hope soe go to those 3 eq1 father and say hey guys ,do the same magic you did for eq1.because right now eq branch is having it hard.
Humm...EQ 3; I might give it a try. I never played much WoW (tried getting into it twice and just couldn't). I did play a lot of EQ1 and had a number of 50+ toons before quitting EQ2. EQ2 doesn't strike me as memorable. But EQ1 now:
I remember when death meant something. I remember when it took a raid of near epic porportions when you were deep in an instance and party wipped...and you had to get back in and reclaim your corpse that still had all your best equipment on it. It was often harder to recover your corpse than doing anything else in game. I remember the horrendously looooonnnnggggg camps for those epic items. There was a time in EQ1 when you saw someone with an epic weapon and you knew they had accomplished something epic.
Do I miss those dreadfully long camps and ninja looters: No. Do I miss littering a zone with corpses equipped with shoddy gear trying to revover the prime corpse (and regressing a level on the way): No.
I'm talking about EQ1 like I tell my kids I remember when there were only three TV channels in black & white and something was always on (unlike now we have 300 channels in HD and nothing on....ok...not all are HD). I like my HD TV.
I don't want EQ1 back with modern graphics either. But I do miss the EQ1 sense of accomplishment at times.
So true. People like to rag on SOE but they publish games that hundreds of thousands of gamers pay to play. EQ3 will be a big hit for preorders and just like EQ1 and EQ2 today, hundreds of thousands will pay to play it. The REAL vocal majority are the ones who pay for the subs NOT silly people on forums who spew negativity.
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
So true. People like to rag on SOE but they publish games that hundreds of thousands of gamers pay to play. EQ3 will be a big hit for preorders and just like EQ1 and EQ2 today, hundreds of thousands will pay to play it. The REAL vocal majority are the ones who pay for the subs NOT silly people on forums who spew negativity.
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
did you see evercracked!theres one the boss of eq1 at the time and there are two other back then they were nobodys and were laghed at by soe. thats the father of everquest !are you saying those 3 dont work for soe anymore!(im not talking about the 3 noob that when for wow!)just in case. found his nick
eq1 guru:SMED,designer:brad mcquad and steve clover. those are the father of everquest 1 and for me those should do everquest 3
So true. People like to rag on SOE but they publish games that hundreds of thousands of gamers pay to play. EQ3 will be a big hit for preorders and just like EQ1 and EQ2 today, hundreds of thousands will pay to play it. The REAL vocal majority are the ones who pay for the subs NOT silly people on forums who spew negativity.
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
I liked EQ2 but man the game wasn't designed well for progression. That and the endgame kept getting easier.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
because some other employe are clawing and nailing anyone that try to shut those 2 game lol.if it wasnt for that it would never have even seen the light of day lol
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
Battered Person Syndrome. I mean, I agree with #1 and while I won't commit to #2 I do think SOE is hurting.
But yeah, there will always be people who think they just have to take the changes they don't like to the SOE game they are playing and there is nothing they can do but yell on a forum a little about it. They don't realize they can just quit the game and go find another game they like that won't, for example, pull a 180 on gameplay while giving only a weeks notice of said changes and having sold an expansion the weeks before that.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
eq2 was made becuase lot didnt have time or eq was to hard , i played eq2 for 6 months all i hear was poeple complain how hard Uqua was and that was enough for them to go play another game. from my understanding eq2 has fallen into were eq1 waas a few years ago where nothing matters but upper game and its frustrating for a new player to get there , worst part is eq2 is way more screwed over than eq1 has ever been. right now eq1 isn't hard to catch up with the mercs and seems to be a growing population of players now. . Right now in eq2 you got to plan to solo to 70 and than play WOW til your 80 , yes Kurnark is 100% clone of wow leveling wise.. but imo way worse... if an EQ3 came out it probly just be eq2 with updated models i would think just more dumbed down hell maby guild war style you can get 5 mercs in your group and private instance of every zone.
eq1 is healthy and will defently out live eq2. and with what happen to vanguard got to be stupid to buy any other SoE MMO.
9 years and still going on eq , stop being mmo hoppers stick with one its more rewarding
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
They could also try some new mechanics instead.
Lets face it, any game with EQ like mechanics releasing the last 3 years have failed miserably. It is not just because they are a piece of cake to play, but also because it has been done, and many times.
You want a good looking game with EQ mechanics? Try Vanguard.
If SOe want a new hit game that leads the market like EQ did once they must re invent the genre, like EQ did in a time were UO and Meridian 59 were the games people played. The problem is that they need a visionary to do that. Brad used to be a visionary but he showed with Vanguard that he had a great idea and now seems to be repeating it again with a few changes.
That will not make a great game. It would be better to just up enough money to make a new GFX engine and high textures for the old EQ instead.
Norrath is a world that works very good for a MMO. Basically it is a ripp off from Forgotten realms but with it's own rather nice personalities. So we have a world-
But EQs mechanics isn't enough for another hit game. We need something that is fun and hasn't been done before. The mobs need to be smarter, they should react close to a real person forcing the player to react and rethink their strategy several times.
What we really need is a game maker with his own ideas, like Brad had when he started the whole thing. Oh, and we also need Smedly distracted from the whole process, he would just say "Can you make it closer to Wow"?
eq2 was made becuase lot didnt have time or eq was to hard , i played eq2 for 6 months all i hear was poeple complain how hard Uqua was and that was enough for them to go play another game. from my understanding eq2 has fallen into were eq1 waas a few years ago where nothing matters but upper game and its frustrating for a new player to get there , worst part is eq2 is way more screwed over than eq1 has ever been. right now eq1 isn't hard to catch up with the mercs and seems to be a growing population of players now. . Right now in eq2 you got to plan to solo to 70 and than play WOW til your 80 , yes Kurnark is 100% clone of wow leveling wise.. but imo way worse... if an EQ3 came out it probly just be eq2 with updated models i would think just more dumbed down hell maby guild war style you can get 5 mercs in your group and private instance of every zone. eq1 is healthy and will defently out live eq2. and with what happen to vanguard got to be stupid to buy any other SoE MMO. 9 years and still going on eq , stop being mmo hoppers stick with one its more rewarding
It is more than 10 years and you have to understand that almost any player gets bored of the same game after a few years. It isn't that odd, computer games have a limited life length. A few people play something longer but most don't.
If something isn't funny it is work and I already have a work.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
I think you have a real hard time reading what people say and instead read what you want people to say (IE straw man attack).
A company or product doesn't simply vanish the second it starts to lose money and profits can be achieved by cutting costs for a rather long and unhealthy time. Laying off employees, pushing back development cycles, closing servers, replacing experienced employees with less experience (and less costly) employees, increasing fees (directly or indirectly) to access the product, etc. Anything sound familiar?
What I read from most detractors is that soe is not running a good business and their marketshare has suffered as a result of that. I doubt anyone could make a believable argument that soe is doing better today that it was only a few years ago and even worse the further back you go. If you put every soe game on a scale from Growing to Failing I would bet that every single one of them (to one degree or another) is heading towards the failure end of the scale.
Why are the everquest games not gone? In my opinion, they have to go through far more ugly stages of the soe mmo life cycle before closures become a possibility.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
That is a huge leap of faith my friend. I am curious what would give you the belief that soe would head that direction.
Based on what the president of soe talks about and the direction of almost every soe game currently, any new everquest game would most likely be some microtransaction based game that tried to appeal to the maximum number of people possible.
It will deliver snack sized 15 minute play session experiences that appeal to some demographic I can't name or something completely opposite of where you think it will go.
This is just basing an opinion off what the company is currently doing. Maybe they do a compete 180 and get back to their roots. Anything is possible I guess.
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
That is a huge leap of faith my friend. I am curious what would give you the belief that soe would head that direction.
Based on what the president of soe talks about and the direction of almost every soe game currently, any new everquest game would most likely be some microtransaction based game that tried to appeal to the maximum number of people possible.
It will deliver snack sized 15 minute play session experiences that appeal to some demographic I can't name or something completely opposite of where you think it will go.
This is just basing an opinion off what the company is currently doing. Maybe they do a compete 180 and get back to their roots. Anything is possible I guess.
Yeah, something like that. I would bet one million U.S. dollars that if EQ 3 (or next or whatever they call it) ever gets made it will be, to use the common pejorative phrase, dumbed down.
It will be quest grinding with marked quest givers and X marks the spot on a mini-map. There will be very little or no death penalty. It will make heavy use of instancing. It will be solo "friendly" to the point that grouping will actually slow you down. Leveling will be very fast.
In other words it will be nothing like the old original EQ except in the re-use of place names and lore. It will be a piss poor WoW wanna-be and it will flounder around showing poor retention rates and quickly fade into the status of yet another "also ran".
Smed and his henchmen at SOE will fail to understand why it wasn't a smash hit and likely come to the conclusion that they didn't dumb it down enough. Thus further sealing the fate of SOE as clueless, third rate game developers.
Vanguard is what EQ2 should have been. SoE elected not to properly invest in Vanguard which makes make me doubt they'd make an Everquest 3. I think the future of MMOs for SoE will be things like Free Realm, cash-shops etc.
Two things I always find amusing are. 1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else. 2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under. My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
Because there are a lot of idiots out there who think MMOs only make money with millions of subs.
If Free Realms brings in revenue, Everquest certainly does.
Everquest 2 was, well what was it? A modest success? It wasn't a horrible failure, but it wasn't a smash hit. Would it make sense to try Everquest 3? Third times a charm? Or, pack up the EQ franchise and start from scratch?
If they do it right and do not get too "experimental", it could be a huge hit. WOW is fading, and rumors of Blizzard's new MMO indicated some sort of FPS Space MMO. So, the big slot for top fantasy MMO is up for grabs.
There are standard MMO elements that people want, only in a newer format, such as a new world, slightly different approach on classes, etc...
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EQ3 has the potential of being a mold breaker, without necessarily having to be a WoW killer. SOE has 10 plus years of experience. They should know by now where they have succeeded and where they have failed. I'm sure they paid close attention to their competition. EQ3 could be SOE's new break in the MMO world, but they have to draw on the lessons of the past.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Not to mention a game that people still play and one that people often return to.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
One thing I agree with you on, is that EQ1/2 are money makers for SOE. When there are people out there that are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars in one night on buying online trading cards, just for a chance to get a cool mount, you know they got something going. Nobody is disputing the fact that EQ1 & 2 are making SOE money.
What people are talking about is how many people have left the Everquest franchise because of the way SOE handles their games. Their refusal to upgrade EQ1's character models & engine, their decisions to pull devs away from EQ1 and use resources ($$) earned from EQ1 to to work on other projects, their way of buying sub-rated titles like Vanguard and leaving it to slowly die off, their business decision to go by word of mouth rather than advertise their own products (until recently they finally advertised eq2 & FR), Smed loading all their games up with RMT/online cash shops, etc....
People's concerns about SOE are valid, because it would be sad to see SOE ruin what could potentially revitalize the Everquest franchise by loading EQ3 up with cash shop items, by designing the game to cater to people not interested in EQ in the first place, by making the same mistake about making the game with too high sys requirement, by making you zone, by creating a decent game then pulling resources away to work on something else rather than making it excellent, etc etc..
If you want to talk about numbers, these sites showing graphs and numbers have become more and more unreliable ever since companies stopped releasing real numbers. There's a reason why mmogchart.com hasn't been updated since forever. At least they're honest and stopped updating these graphs when they stopped receiving real data from press releases. Going by insider information and secret sources isn't reliable by any means.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
One thing I agree with you on, is that EQ1/2 are money makers for SOE. When there are people out there that are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars in one night on buying online trading cards, just for a chance to get a cool mount, you know they got something going. Nobody is disputing the fact that EQ1 & 2 are making SOE money.
What people are talking about is how many people have left the Everquest franchise because of the way SOE handles their games. Their refusal to upgrade EQ1's character models & engine, their decisions to pull devs away from EQ1 and use resources ($$) earned from EQ1 to to work on other projects, their way of buying sub-rated titles like Vanguard and leaving it to slowly die off, their business decision to go by word of mouth rather than advertise their own products (until recently they finally advertised eq2 & FR), Smed loading all their games up with RMT/online cash shops, etc....
People's concerns about SOE are valid, because it would be sad to see SOE ruin what could potentially revitalize the Everquest franchise by loading EQ3 up with cash shop items, by designing the game to cater to people not interested in EQ in the first place, by making the same mistake about making the game with too high sys requirement, by making you zone, by creating a decent game then pulling resources away to work on something else rather than making it excellent, etc etc..
If you want to talk about numbers, these sites showing graphs and numbers have become more and more unreliable ever since companies stopped releasing real numbers. There's a reason why mmogchart.com hasn't been updated since forever. At least they're honest and stopped updating these graphs when they stopped receiving real data from press releases. Going by insider information and secret sources isn't reliable by any means.
you got to understand mmo never was accepted by some in soe ,and its still the same issue
ask the guy that asked his boss with two colegue first time they were refused
soe WAS against it!later a new boss came took a gamble and it paid off
but even trough all the success and money eq1 brot to soe today they WILL BE LIKE THE FIRST DAY THEY TRIED TO MAKE EQ1 a reality .even tho
their success speak for themselves lol
player still play eq1 its been 10 years and their would be more if soe sent copy to various chain but the fact is
soe is tired of those title and WANT something else to pick up
they tried with vanguard didnt work so they had to continue pouring money in eq1,then they tried again at some point with start wars and again with free realm
they lost a lot of money but soe just wont accept the fact that eq1 made them become mmo 3d none other
and player would rater move to other like wow instead.
i do hope soe go to those 3 eq1 father and say hey guys ,do the same magic you did for eq1.because right now eq branch is having it hard.
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Humm...EQ 3; I might give it a try. I never played much WoW (tried getting into it twice and just couldn't). I did play a lot of EQ1 and had a number of 50+ toons before quitting EQ2. EQ2 doesn't strike me as memorable. But EQ1 now:
I remember when death meant something. I remember when it took a raid of near epic porportions when you were deep in an instance and party wipped...and you had to get back in and reclaim your corpse that still had all your best equipment on it. It was often harder to recover your corpse than doing anything else in game. I remember the horrendously looooonnnnggggg camps for those epic items. There was a time in EQ1 when you saw someone with an epic weapon and you knew they had accomplished something epic.
Do I miss those dreadfully long camps and ninja looters: No. Do I miss littering a zone with corpses equipped with shoddy gear trying to revover the prime corpse (and regressing a level on the way): No.
I'm talking about EQ1 like I tell my kids I remember when there were only three TV channels in black & white and something was always on (unlike now we have 300 channels in HD and nothing on....ok...not all are HD). I like my HD TV.
I don't want EQ1 back with modern graphics either. But I do miss the EQ1 sense of accomplishment at times.
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
http://www.mmogchart.com/AGC%202006%20MMOG%20Subscription%20Numbers.pdf
or this one
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2007/12/10/subscription-by-subscription-october-edition/
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
http://www.mmogchart.com/AGC%202006%20MMOG%20Subscription%20Numbers.pdf
or this one
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2007/12/10/subscription-by-subscription-october-edition/
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
did you see evercracked!theres one the boss of eq1 at the time and there are two other back then they were nobodys and were laghed at by soe.
thats the father of everquest !are you saying those 3 dont work for soe anymore!(im not talking about the 3 noob that when for wow!)just in case.
found his nick
eq1 guru:SMED,designer:brad mcquad and steve clover.
those are the father of everquest 1
and for me those should do everquest 3
The real vocal majority have moved away from SOE games because they do not like what Smed is feeding them. If you want to talk about the majority, which are the paying customers, just compare the golden says of EQ1 when it had 450k+ subscribers. Ever since SOE changed its focus from EQ1 to EQ2, they've been on a constant downhill slide subscribers wise. Paying subscribers voiced loudly when they did not embrace EQ2, as EQ2 never came anywhere close to 450k players.
Yet SOE continued to pull resources away from EQ1 to dump money into EQ2, buy out Vanguard, make Free Realms, etc.. SOE's market shares fell dramatically ever since their switch of direction. Now, if we are to judge soley on the vocal majority, the paying subscribers have spoken loudly and they do not work towards SOE's favor.
People want a true EQ1 upgrade, not EQ2. But with Smed in charge, you can bet we'll see another EQ2 with tons more RMT loaded into the game from the start. Think EQ3 will be a success? Current SOE track records do not say EQ3 will be a success, and it pains me to say that because I loved the Everquest franchise during its first 5 years.
Sorry your wrong. EQ2 has a hundreds of thousands of paying players. Try again.
I doubt SOE has hundreds of thousands of subscribers combined from all their games, but if you have a link to show EQ2 with 100k's please feel free to share it.
Also, I think you misunderstand the article where infinity ward is hiring soe devs. Soe the company is filled with all forms of failure. That doesn't mean there all of the employees are talentless.
If I were a dev and the two companies offered me a job, it wouldn't be a difficult choice to make. Who would want to risk being assigned to planetside, vanguard or some other mmo corpse.
I didnt misunderstand anything I am more than familiar with SOE besides it is not just A developer from EQ2 team it is the Lead Developer ALL companies are full of fail NOT just SOE. Infinity can have their pick of people. They are not fools. EQ2 may not have WOW numbers but they can still pull in almost 3 million dollars a month in subs on a game alot of posters claim is a failed product? Sorry but that is not fail. If you dont like it fine but EQ1 and EQ2 are money makers and do quite well thank you. Oh and your link is provided for you.
http://www.mmogchart.com/AGC%202006%20MMOG%20Subscription%20Numbers.pdf
or this one
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2007/12/10/subscription-by-subscription-october-edition/
Brenlo has been the producer (not developer) of EQ2 for about 8 months (May 09) after coming over from customer service. Not exactly a rock star if you know what I mean. Soe is in a very vulnerable position and losing lots of their top employees. They are easy pickings compared to trying to lure someone away from a company with strong gaming franchises.
As for your links
Link #1 shows EQ2 at about 180K in January 2006. After falling from about 335k in Jan 2005.
Link #2 shows EQ2 about 180k in 2007 from a site that was never updated from a site that stopped getting updates 6 months before the article was written.
3-5 year old charts are hardly compelling evidence to run around telling people they are wrong.
I liked EQ2 but man the game wasn't designed well for progression. That and the endgame kept getting easier.
Rise above hate.
Ignore fan boys.
Two things I always find amusing are.
1. Detractors say-SOE is just about making money and care not about anything else.
2. Detractors say- EQ and EQ 2 are bleeding subs and going under.
My question is, if SOE is all about the money and the EQ games are not making money why arnt they gone?
because some other employe are clawing and nailing anyone that try to shut those
2 game lol.if it wasnt for that it would never have even seen the light of day lol
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
Rise above hate.
Ignore fan boys.
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
Battered Person Syndrome. I mean, I agree with #1 and while I won't commit to #2 I do think SOE is hurting.
But yeah, there will always be people who think they just have to take the changes they don't like to the SOE game they are playing and there is nothing they can do but yell on a forum a little about it. They don't realize they can just quit the game and go find another game they like that won't, for example, pull a 180 on gameplay while giving only a weeks notice of said changes and having sold an expansion the weeks before that.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
eq2 was made becuase lot didnt have time or eq was to hard , i played eq2 for 6 months all i hear was poeple complain how hard Uqua was and that was enough for them to go play another game. from my understanding eq2 has fallen into were eq1 waas a few years ago where nothing matters but upper game and its frustrating for a new player to get there , worst part is eq2 is way more screwed over than eq1 has ever been. right now eq1 isn't hard to catch up with the mercs and seems to be a growing population of players now. . Right now in eq2 you got to plan to solo to 70 and than play WOW til your 80 , yes Kurnark is 100% clone of wow leveling wise.. but imo way worse... if an EQ3 came out it probly just be eq2 with updated models i would think just more dumbed down hell maby guild war style you can get 5 mercs in your group and private instance of every zone.
eq1 is healthy and will defently out live eq2. and with what happen to vanguard got to be stupid to buy any other SoE MMO.
9 years and still going on eq , stop being mmo hoppers stick with one its more rewarding
They could also try some new mechanics instead.
Lets face it, any game with EQ like mechanics releasing the last 3 years have failed miserably. It is not just because they are a piece of cake to play, but also because it has been done, and many times.
You want a good looking game with EQ mechanics? Try Vanguard.
If SOe want a new hit game that leads the market like EQ did once they must re invent the genre, like EQ did in a time were UO and Meridian 59 were the games people played. The problem is that they need a visionary to do that. Brad used to be a visionary but he showed with Vanguard that he had a great idea and now seems to be repeating it again with a few changes.
That will not make a great game. It would be better to just up enough money to make a new GFX engine and high textures for the old EQ instead.
Norrath is a world that works very good for a MMO. Basically it is a ripp off from Forgotten realms but with it's own rather nice personalities. So we have a world-
But EQs mechanics isn't enough for another hit game. We need something that is fun and hasn't been done before. The mobs need to be smarter, they should react close to a real person forcing the player to react and rethink their strategy several times.
What we really need is a game maker with his own ideas, like Brad had when he started the whole thing. Oh, and we also need Smedly distracted from the whole process, he would just say "Can you make it closer to Wow"?
It is more than 10 years and you have to understand that almost any player gets bored of the same game after a few years. It isn't that odd, computer games have a limited life length. A few people play something longer but most don't.
If something isn't funny it is work and I already have a work.
I think you have a real hard time reading what people say and instead read what you want people to say (IE straw man attack).
A company or product doesn't simply vanish the second it starts to lose money and profits can be achieved by cutting costs for a rather long and unhealthy time. Laying off employees, pushing back development cycles, closing servers, replacing experienced employees with less experience (and less costly) employees, increasing fees (directly or indirectly) to access the product, etc. Anything sound familiar?
What I read from most detractors is that soe is not running a good business and their marketshare has suffered as a result of that. I doubt anyone could make a believable argument that soe is doing better today that it was only a few years ago and even worse the further back you go. If you put every soe game on a scale from Growing to Failing I would bet that every single one of them (to one degree or another) is heading towards the failure end of the scale.
Why are the everquest games not gone? In my opinion, they have to go through far more ugly stages of the soe mmo life cycle before closures become a possibility.
All I have read are critical analysis of how Sony has handled its Everquest franchise, which gives us insight of what we can expect from them with EQ3.
like i say it depends who is heading eq3.one thing is sure,the mecanic will be closer to eq1 then eq2.yes it will look better but it will be a brainiac game like everquest.
That is a huge leap of faith my friend. I am curious what would give you the belief that soe would head that direction.
Based on what the president of soe talks about and the direction of almost every soe game currently, any new everquest game would most likely be some microtransaction based game that tried to appeal to the maximum number of people possible.
It will deliver snack sized 15 minute play session experiences that appeal to some demographic I can't name or something completely opposite of where you think it will go.
This is just basing an opinion off what the company is currently doing. Maybe they do a compete 180 and get back to their roots. Anything is possible I guess.
That is a huge leap of faith my friend. I am curious what would give you the belief that soe would head that direction.
Based on what the president of soe talks about and the direction of almost every soe game currently, any new everquest game would most likely be some microtransaction based game that tried to appeal to the maximum number of people possible.
It will deliver snack sized 15 minute play session experiences that appeal to some demographic I can't name or something completely opposite of where you think it will go.
This is just basing an opinion off what the company is currently doing. Maybe they do a compete 180 and get back to their roots. Anything is possible I guess.
Yeah, something like that. I would bet one million U.S. dollars that if EQ 3 (or next or whatever they call it) ever gets made it will be, to use the common pejorative phrase, dumbed down.
It will be quest grinding with marked quest givers and X marks the spot on a mini-map. There will be very little or no death penalty. It will make heavy use of instancing. It will be solo "friendly" to the point that grouping will actually slow you down. Leveling will be very fast.
In other words it will be nothing like the old original EQ except in the re-use of place names and lore. It will be a piss poor WoW wanna-be and it will flounder around showing poor retention rates and quickly fade into the status of yet another "also ran".
Smed and his henchmen at SOE will fail to understand why it wasn't a smash hit and likely come to the conclusion that they didn't dumb it down enough. Thus further sealing the fate of SOE as clueless, third rate game developers.
Vanguard is what EQ2 should have been. SoE elected not to properly invest in Vanguard which makes make me doubt they'd make an Everquest 3. I think the future of MMOs for SoE will be things like Free Realm, cash-shops etc.
Because there are a lot of idiots out there who think MMOs only make money with millions of subs.
If Free Realms brings in revenue, Everquest certainly does.
If they do it right and do not get too "experimental", it could be a huge hit. WOW is fading, and rumors of Blizzard's new MMO indicated some sort of FPS Space MMO. So, the big slot for top fantasy MMO is up for grabs.
There are standard MMO elements that people want, only in a newer format, such as a new world, slightly different approach on classes, etc...
But, they'd better do it well.