Slashdot Mirror
Player Disquiet Leads To EverQuest Expansion Delay
EvilBastard writes "Sony Online Entertainment have announced that, due to an almost universal player backlash against the next expansion pack that is seen more as a $30.00 patch for missing content, they are delaying the new EverQuest expansion by 6 weeks, and will 'spend time fixing the problems you have brought to our attention'. Also announced is a plan to fly some of the more vocal website people to SOE headquarters, to try to restart enthusiasm for what may be the last EverQuest expansion ever. With the cancellation of Everquest for Mac, some high-profile guilds quitting, 6 months of allegedly declining numbers, big - budget competition and now a widespread call to boycott future games, is the much-predicted end of EverQuest almost here?"
I for one dumped EQ over this exact problem. Why charge your loyal customers another $30 for something that should have been in the last bloody expansion!
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The bizarre thing is that the mechanics of just about every MMORPG are identical to the mechanics of MUDs, only the interface is significantly altered.
Now, with most MUDs, especially free muds, the client is free but you can use a commercial one (telnet, tf, zmud). With MMORPGs, you have to pay for the client, and it's the same price as most modern PC retail box games.
MUD: $0
PC Game: ~$50US
MMORPG: ~$50US
With most MUDs, and most modern PC games, online multiplayer is free. You need to pay a monthly fee for MMORPGs. Valve also wants you to pay a monthly fee to play CounterStrike (they call it Steam, but if it looks like a porkbarrel and it quacks like a porkbarrel...)
MUD: $0
PC Game: ~$50
MMORPG: ~$50 + ~$10/month
Now we come to expansions, which is what this is all really about. Expansions for MUDs just happen overnight, and they're more or less free. PC Game expansions are rarely free but usually inexpensive. MMORPGs use the same price structure. There will probably be more than one expansion on a successful game.
MUD: $0
PC Game: $50 + $30 + $30 = $110
MMORPG: $50 + $30 + $30 + $10/month = $110 + $10/month
Okay so basically MMORPG's cost a lot of money. Do they provide a better interface than a standard PC game? Debatable but lets' say it's about the same. So we can more or less suggest that in terms of measurable quality metrics (graphics, sound, polygons, etc) a MMORPG is identical to a PC game.
In terms of gameplay, you essentially need to be a mudder to appreciate a MMORPG (bear with me) because the nature of MMORPG gameplay is identical to that of a MUD. You farm items, you kill rats and level up and gain XP and gain gold and gain items. The gameplay is identical. MMORPG's are more successful than MUDs have been because the interface has broader appeal. This is nothing new! Gaming in general is in a golden age because the level of quality in the graphical interfaces has progressed to the point where games appeal to a vast and wide audience, previously locked into TV only.
So in essence, a MMORPG is a graphical interface on a MUD, and it's an interface that people are willing to pay more than the cost of a similarly interfaced PC game for the privelege of play. Combining in essence MUD and PC game.
Will EverQuest die?
MUDs have been known to live for over a decade. Theoretically then, EverQuest has the potential to live for over a decade. However, the eyecandy factor that attracts more players to EverQuest than muds have attracted also works against EverQuest. More and more MMORPGs are entering the market. They have nicer, cleaner graphics, because like a PC game, a new MMORPG will have better graphics than an older MMORPG. Let's assume that all MMORPG's cost around the same - so there is no price factor in demand. Let's assume that there is a fixed number of people playing MMORPG's, this figure will not grow dramatically over the coming years any more than the overall gaming market will. The determination then is whether the value of the time invested in EverQuest outweighs the personal pleasure obtained in playing a newer, better interfaced MMORPG.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
After creating a worthless design in star wars galaxies, he got promoted to overall creative designer to EQ,SWG,EQ2 and others. Look what we get from him.
If you think this expansion pack is good wait until we get EQ2.
Its a sad world we live in when we're happy at the thought of getting gameplay half as good as the graphics... ...sadder still because people settle for less than half.
In comparison, modern MMORPGs have succeeded in one thing if nothing else. Making it possible for the casual gamer to jump into a game with a set standard of rules that they can learn on the fly. Wanna go drown yourself? Theres water over there, oh wait for some reason you can't enter it. I guess you can't do that. Wanna go blow up that town with your fireball spell? Its not targetable, so I guess you can't do that. Wanna go try and kill that dragon that owned a group of 20 people 50 levels higher than you? Sure, but you just got your ass smeared across the ground. I guess you're not experienced enough.
Guess which of the two types of games will appeal to the casual gamer first? Yes MUDs are free, expansions are free, and support is unbeatable (I've seenen MUDs where the programmer is the GM, hard to top that). But the casual gamer (who has money) would rather spend a few dollars on a game he doesn't have to read a 20 page manual just to get started and then spend weeks learning the tricks of trade in the game.
Look at UO. It crashed and burned as well with expansions. They all hit a spot where the mistakes are going to outweigh the desire to stay and then you're going to shed the less dedicated players. There will always be tens of thousands of players, probably a couple hundred thousand players, that will cling to Everquest until the day they close the doors out of sheer stupidity. Stupidity on the part of Sony because they can charge these people for ever and ever because they have established relationships in the game that they'd rather not risk messing up for the sake of some other MMORPG that just has the same shit.
There are MMORPGs like UO and older that still have hundreds of thousands of players and don't look to be faltering any time soon. That's just how it is. Call them names, do what you want, but THEY aren't going anywhere.
Think Kill Bill Volume 1, then Volume 2. The last expansion "Gates of Discord" (GoD in eq jargon) was by most accounts a dismal failure. It is reasonably innaccessible to non super-guilded types (i.e. the masses), but pathetically easy to the super-guilds on any server. So in other words, it made no one at all happy...
To be honest, it was tiny, expensive ($30), did not appeal to the masses, and was not worthy of discussion and immediately after release (feb '04) made me mad. I spent the most time ever in those expansion zones last night (a whopping 2 hrs) and still don't get it...
As if to throw salt on the wound SOE announced for E3 the next expansion "Omens of War", which seems to have almost an identical plot, promises many of the same ill-defined effects, involves much the same plot-line and characters, and by all appearances appears to be "Gates of Discord - The Missing Content". It honestly seems like an excuse to bilk us out of another $30 for the same content.
I think however it is premature to call EQ dead, or dying. I have played almost all the MMOGs out there, and they're all mostly boring time sinks. I still find EQ to be the least boring of all of them which is why I kept dropping my subscription and returning.
Take a step back now and look at yourselves. Everquest is dead. Everquest is dying. Isn't that an old enough cliche that even the most cynical retards would know better than to repeat?
Everquest is going to be around forever.
Literally.
I've played quite a few MMOG's over the years. Beta tested for a few. Ran an emulator for awhile. I don't think this is the death knell of EverQuest. Look at UO, which is even more dated then EQ, which is still running along its merry way. What we are going to see is a trend towards second generation MMOG's become more popular. This is really a natural progression. The fundamental question of what happens to old MMOG's that have run a long time and no longer become viable hasn't really been answered yet. It will be interesting to see how it is. In the meantime, I think we will see consolidation of servers across various MMOG's as the user base becomes smaller. Though I think this will only apply to the MMOG's that have a long and successful history. Slowly, by the time 3rd or 4th generation MMOG's come around, I think those too will fade quietly or maybe with a loud bang as the creators let the world go out in a huge fight. I don't know that we can really count SWG as a true second generation MMOG. I played it, it was like EQ in the future with Jedi. You waste huge amounts of time performing tedious tasks. FFXI I never played. I can't speak on it. City of Heroes - I have played it, its very good and you don't waste huge amounts of time doing tedious tasks. It appeals to casual gamers with the sidekicking option. This one has potential to last awhile. WoW will prove to be huge for too many reasons to list. We're at the transitional stage right now, between the passing of the old and the coming of the new. Which really makes it a great time to invest in some of your non-graming related hobbies while you watch to see what tumbles where :)
Think Kill Bill Volume 1, then Volume 2.
What the hell kind of analogy was that? Are you trying to say that you had to see the first movie to understand the second? Are you trying to say that one of the movies was worse than the other?
According to Rotten Tomatoes both movies rated pretty high, and I know that I enjoyed the hell out of them.
-prator