Daybreak Sues The Heroes Journey EQ EMU Server Devs

Control said:

This isn't exactly true any more. I think the cc companies give certain companies some leeway on expirations based on some trust score. I've had some companies successfully charge my card long after its expiration.

edit: Also, if they accept paypal, it will happily charge your bank monthly forever. I'm sure there are other payment providers that will do the same. Not sure about eq, but some mmos use non-cc-based payments since ccs aren't as common in some countries.

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That's a good point about PayPal. I had forgot about that. Well, that brings the total up to about 13 now.

If your CC issuer is allowing a CC charge to go through on an expired card, you need to ream their fucking asses about that and have them update/cancel your account. Only shitty CC companies allow for account updater services like that.

Kirun said:

Only shitty CC companies allow for account updater services like that.

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Well, it's the biggest one. Probably still true.
Just to clarify though, the card was renewed but I never updated the expiration on some accounts I have either subscriptions with or stored billing info. Some places required updated expiration info, and some just happily kept working under the old date.

Sylas said:

um yeah you pulled this completely out of your ass, never said this. I don't for a second trust eg7's numbers now that you showed me they are claiming 66k subs in 2020 despite none of them ever logging in. I have to go back and find the video that was linked again from 2023 and find the spot where they then claimed only 20k subs 3 years later. Yet they still say no fall in subscribers? and they magically sell just enough krono to support that 66k number and not one cent more. You really believe that there are zero excess krono on any account anywhere? they magically sell just enough to cover next months subscription cost? lol

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You have a very serious comprension issue of rather simple concepts other adults wouldnt struggle this much to pick up on. It took 3 replies for your to finally understand the lines were going up and not down. You do not play this game, you do not know what the populations look like or how anything related to the game works. You do not understand how they account for krono. Stop acting like you do.

Krono isn't required to sub and they more than likely attribute krono revenue to a game when its actually consumed in game. There's also 3rd party krono sells which have probably been in circulation for years and what most people use. The revenue numbers would be massively out of whack if those were added on purchase.


I tell you there was leaked data on YouTube, but you'll trust the investor data.

Sylas said:

Oh and "leaked data"? Yeah right. I'll believe the enads investor data over some bullshit numbers like that.

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I try my best to explain to you how graphs and numbers work and why you are massively wrong. You double down and proceed to making up a slide that doesn't actually exist in the video to cover your stupidity and continue your charade.

You proceed to decide that a source from youtube, who is shilling thj, is now a reputable source when he gives you zero information on how he managed to do that. For good reason, because there is no actual way of doing it.

Youtube numbers went from bullshit to unquestionable source of truth within hours of each other.
And then investor data, from a company who just willy fully initiated litigation and will have to open their books is actually a money laundering front.

Sylas said:

First or all, again you are quoting the mau slide not the sub slide. I'm not sure why you think this is a gotcha, you are looking at the wrong slide.

posted here back when THJ launched. This guy did all the legwork, logging in to all the different live and emu servers and checking population numbers. Everything he says matches what we see from the server status and their financials, that they are down to maybe 4k active players total with about 15k accounts. he claims that the 2k THJ players (at that time) was more than any EQ server had and rivaled any TLP launch such as Teek. He also shows that there were only 3 official EQ servers that were even worth playing on, that had a population large enough to support it.

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I look forward to that timestamp about the 20k subs that doesn't actually exist. I gave you the exact timestamp where he says they GAINED(Bigger number, not smaller number) everquest subs in 2023.

Sylas said:

Ah now we see you are full of shit too. You just claimed it's impossible for streamers to spend a week logging in to every server during prime time and do a bunch of /who all to get aggregate numbers, and that there is no where you can possibly get login numbers of subscribers from anywhere, yet you pull these out of your ass from where?

I don't trust anyone 100%, but since every single EQ streamer all come to the same conclusion on numbers, and you are the only person anywhere claiming otherwise, that you are full of shit.

Once again, the only hope I have for this trial is that the real numbers are released and we learn that it's all just been a money laundering operation, and I hope they lay you off first

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The leaked numbers were from dbg employee who shared it outside of the company and then it spread. I know they are real personally, and I dont expect that to mean anything to you. But there's a pretty substantial detail in the leak that makes it more trustworthy for non believers.



Being that you dont know shit about live, this probably means nothing relevant to you. But somehow this 2022 spreadsheet has Tormax listed as a potential offload server for im guessing yelinak that ended up not getting used. Tormax proceeded to launch 2 years later. So, did the the british canuck "make up fake numbers" and manage to just guess the right npc name out of thousands for a server that would eventually get announced 700 days later? Or more logically, was this generated in house with current insider information and leaked?


Lastly, the idea that I work for dbg is comical. I assure you I hate dbg as much as anyone in this thread. Your posts were just so pants on head that you managed to bring me out of lurking to make sure you were aware.

I see you guys are still at it.

Are we saying that Vaniki had a peak of 6882 players? I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

Arbitrary said:

Are we saying that Vaniki had a peak of 6882 players? I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

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Starts at 7:50. 6882 is total logins over the course of the whole day which is gueesed to be people logging off and back on, so not unique.

Arbitrary said:

Are we saying that Vaniki had a peak of 6882 players? I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

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It had 1.2 million you fucking retard

I have seen DPG internal numbers for multiple servers and they are always vastly higher than the numbers we see in game.

For Vaniki the peak amount of players online during the first week was about 700 and dropped very fast from there. I dont see how you come anywhere close to some of the numbers I have seen in this thread for Vanaki as being offical numbers.

I do question their method of how they count logins and when the Oakwynd scandal happened and I was able to prove their numbers 100% false it leads me to believe that their statistical data is not good, or they are inflating their numbers.

Juvarisx said:

P99 is probably more popular over time then this was, they just didnt ask for $$

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While I see the fun of P99, I lived that in real life back in '99. Shards of Dalaya, on the other hand, is a real banger. They took the EQ game (characters, items, world) and changed it all up. Made a new story of it all. Zones are in completely different locations, and they are no longer the same zones they used to be. That game ruled.

Sylas said:

the fitness model is based on guilt, people want to get in shape, lose weight, etc. The multi-year commitment gym contracts are sold that way, initially as motivation for you to keep showing up, since you're all pumped up initially you agree to it.

When you stop going it's the guilt that keeps you paying each month as you show up less and less, and then when you finally swallow your pride and admit you are failure, you realize that the gym contract is in fact ironclad so you're forced to continue paying anyway.

It should also be noted that gyms are notorious for being fronts for money laundering operations because of this fact.

I doubt that anyone is keeping their EQ subscription going out of guilt about letting daybreak games down, despite not playing the game. Not since you can always just swap to f2p, it's not like they delete your account and all your characters when you cancel your membership. So even if it's attachment/nostalgia you can just switch to f2p.

They must have sold 40-50k lifetime subs which generate no revenue, and will always count as "active" no matter what.

Still, it's very peculiar that they generate the exact revenue year after year of 66k subscriptions plus a $35 expansion per year to 30k players (assuming half do not buy expansion packs and only play on TLPs as dragonbr stated, backed up by what the youtubers claim as well). They sell exactly as many krono per month to pay for each month's sub....No excess krono, no cash shop sales. No one, not a single player on any server, has bought more than their month's subscription worth of krono? no account anywhere has any excess krono stored anywhere? Maybe they only count revenue as revenue once it's expensed (which is illegal, maybe not in denmark or whatever fucking country they are from)

It's like china's economy growing at 8% a year every year without any fluctuation....

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The gym comment was more tongue in cheek but the reality is that shitloads of people sign up for yearly subs (yay semi-illegal contracts, depending on state) and they go for a month or two and then never again, letting it lapse at the end of the year. They're technically paying customers until their term ends/etc, but they absolutely aren't using the product. I remember speaking with a guy at Gold's in SB one year and he said that they make all their money from December to February, and then spend the rest of the year fielding calls about cancellation from people who didn't read the fine print etc while they slowly extract money until the first "legal" cancellation date. Apparently a lot of people pay one big up front fee because it's technically cheaper in the long run, and then rarely ever show up (and apparently never in more than a few cases. Purchase and then never swipe in)

I think at this point that anyone who is still subbed to Live is almost certainly running all their accounts on the lifetime sub deals, and then DBG basically just makes money from expnsions/cosmetics for that group, while they catch the "Sub for three months" group for the TLPs. But even then, I would imagine a lot of people who do the TLPs also have lifetime subs.

DBG is absolutely fudging numbers.

I'm pretty sure there was a limited amount of lifetime sub deals. There's no way most live players have those.

All this twisted pretzel logic trying to justify a subcount that doesn't in any way reflect how "busy" the servers are, seems rather pointless. The obvious answer is that DPG are being extremely liberal with how they calculate a "subscription".

Which is fine, but it'll be interesting to see how they attempt to calculate "loss of revenue" without releasing more definable metrics. I suspect this is why they initially wanted the case sealed and why they're likely hoping to bully THJ into some kind of settlement agreement.

Here's the thing though... nobody cares. It's just reality.

We all know that DBG/DPG is a shitty company ran by shitty people that couldn't give one flying fuck about the game or the players. That's been blatantly obvious for well over a decade. They put out shit expansions with minimal effort put in to their design and development, and they are so disconnected from their player base that they have zero clue why the decisions they make are bad.

I mean, we are talking about a company for which I remember seeing one of them on a live stream trying to pretend he knew the game by playing on a TLP, and the idiot couldn't even figure out how to get out of water. He literally fucking drowned because he didn't know how to swim up.

They openly support the monetization of their product through 3rd party services and actively punish anyone who gets in the way of those individuals. They protect the bad guys with a "no name or blame" policy on their forums. They suspend/ban you on their forums for pointing out anything dirty that is going on.

What is it going to take to get people to realize that DBG/DPG is literally your fucking enemy here? This is the worst of the worst of California that couldn't possibly get a job anywhere else in the world, and they are in charge of your beloved game. If you don't get that, you just fucking never will.

If you want to play the game until the doors are closed and the lights are finally turned off, nobody is keeping you from doing it. We'll be right there with you because nostalgia is a bitch.

But, for the love of God stop thinking that they will EVER fucking stop being the shitty pathetic bottom feeding low life fucktards that they are today. They always have been, and they always will be. They are 100% failures that are existing completely on the backs of a 25 year old nostalgia trip.

Lol.

Not sure who thinks or thought DBG was a good company. I would be hard pressed to not name a bad gaming corporation. They are all out for max profits and obfuscate any hard numbers to prevent bad PR.

Most of this thread is the people who play THJ and are lashing out because it will probably be shut down, and the rest that are just poking them for reactions.

Anyone remember that website that used to track the high/medium/low status of each server throughout the day? Then it would give a percentage of time each server spent as each status. I think it eventually went behind a paywall but maybe there's some older links or screenshots still around (or it still exists and someone has access). That was somewhat useful.

Sylas said:

4 servers with 1k+
14 servers with 0
7 with like 50 ppl each on average?

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This is the shit that's so dumb. You believe what you said is a fact as you've repeated the conclusion multiple times.

Between 11am and 12pm today here are the counts for General and NewPlayer chat for the low population servers that I could access (many are locked behind all access so I couldn't login, but you know all those accounts are paying). Mind you, this would be the absolute floor since plenty of players remove themselves from channels. I include NewPlayer since, by default, a new player is not joined to General chat and so I'm guessing those are largely bazaar bots but it's worth noting you need a paid account to use the bazaar.

ab = 210, 41
drinal = 227, 144
ero marr = 269, 120
luclin = 325, 124
mangler = 52, 15
povar = 260, 108
ragefire = 1, 1
the rathe = 221, 91
xegony = 242, 51
zek = 35, 12

Pretty far from zero and, again, this is 11:30 am on a Monday. I'd have to guess primetime is at least a couple hundred more. Even a server like Mangler that looks close to dead here has at least two active raiding guilds. I logged into a medium server but the General channel was full at 400 so didn't seem worthwhile to continue -- suffice to say, pretty far from 50 people. Obviously, no way to tell free players from not, which makes this yet more inconclusive, but still better than pulling something entirely made up. I've got no dog in this fight as I haven't played EQ in years and don't even play MMOs anymore but it wouldn't take much effort to not make completely awful conclusions based on nothing.

I mean, that's only 2500ish people on low pop servers, and while it doesn't include people who have left chats, it also doesn't tell you if they're a subscriber or not, since EQ is technically F2P now.

It seems to me that 20-30k accounts is probably pretty accurate. I think that number goes up if they're also including any account that has "paid" subscription time on it via Krono - which is probably how they're getting their 60k+ number.