Daybreak Sues The Heroes Journey EQ EMU Server Devs

Sylas said:

The lead on the game now was like a junior guide 10 years ago, which was 10+ years past the last time EQ was even relevant.

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Who are you referencing here?

Afaik most of their leads have been there for around 18+ years and none of them started as a guide.

If anything Absor, who has been there from the start and probably knows the most of game's innerworkings, is also the driver of stagnation and unbelievably out of touch decision making for quite a while now. In the ama they did here 5 years ago it was pretty apparent he was type of developer (not just gaming) that is extremely set in his ways, hates change/innovation, and due to his tenure, gives his words and direction more weight than they deserve.

Sylas said:

it's not that they want to sunset, if they could collect 15/month forever from a few thousand subs they would.

They don't want to take any chances messing with any coding for the same reason why they can't offer anything new, they lack all technical authenticity and know how. The lead on the game now was like a junior guide 10 years ago, which was 10+ years past the last time EQ was even relevant. Nobody is left that actually understands how the game works. They just copy paste some art assets and tinker with 1 little piece of code a year in hopes of releasing something new for an expac.

hobbyist's fucking around modding the EMU client files are better everquest developers than daybreak.

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such a dumb take.

The issue is that there revenue is split evenly and their code base is not.

Nobody would redesign EQ at this stage to solve this issue, however they should just let "official" EMU creators be apart of the official login servers at this point

Kebabman said:

The issue is that there revenue is split evenly and their code base is not.

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Had typed up something about this but knew it was pointless.

And the idea that the original devs were some beacon of development excellence is . The people who "knew how the game worked" created a game they didnt initially expect to have an expansion much less 30.

aLovingRobot's developer interviews go into detail on how short sighted the design was and the crazy bandaids they had to implement to keep the game chugging along only a few years in. OG eq excelled due to great timing, bugs that turned into defining features, and lots of luck that they seemed to try to undercut at every step of the way.

Outside of their nonsensical comments in the suit about the game going under, there's no signs of that in reality. The game still gets monthly updates, a yearly expansion, and yearly tlps that get newly developed rulesets. The quality of all of those things continue to deteriorate, but still occur none the less.

EQ2 would be the canary in the coal mine for some future sunset but even that shitfest still gets minimal development efforts and lives on.

That definitely isn't discussed enough when people opine about the EQ code base. The world EQ launched in was the world of shrink-wrapped software. Games had to launch at a specific time to make the money work, and by and large future maintainability of the project didn't matter much because players were going to buy the game, play it for a while, and move on to another game.

EQ had a server side component, a persistent online world, and a subscription, but everyone involved with the project in the 90s has explicitly said the idea was there would be maybe a 5 year window and then players would be moving on to a new game, SOE would shutter EQ and other iterative games like it would replace it. They imagined expansion packs sort of how other shrink wrapped titles had them--you'd do a few then move to a new iteration of the base game. That had been how games had always worked. There was never any remote idea they were launching a product that needed forward maintainability for 30 years.

Wasn’t part of EQ2 engine’s issues (of many) that it was designed in the era of single core processors and they built the engine with future efficiency / raw GHz improvements in mind. Little did they know, multi core processors rolled out around 2006 and multi core processing became the new norm. EQ2 engine was never optimized for this and it just sucked and bogged out like crazy.

That was my distant memory of the experience.

One of EQ2's biggest design issues was that they tried really hard to make it a NEW game rather than an UPDATED EQ.

Things were different in EQ2 for the sake of being different. They weren't different because it was good. It was just different so that it wasn't directly competing with EQ.

It was one in a million bad design decisions that SoE/DBG/DPG has made. They continue to make bad decisions one after another with no indication that they ever will stop. It's insanity.

It wasn't until the Kunark expansion in EQ2 that they threw away the "be different' idea and started making an UPDATED EQ. We got familiar zones that were actually somewhat laid out the way they were in EQ except with better visuals for a modern MMORPG. Unfortunately, EQ2 had already been a really bad implementation of EQ for so many years that the Kunark expansion came along too late to save the game.

People have been saying it for years, but the powers to be just fucking won't pull their collective heads out of their ass long enough to hear what the PAYING CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING.

The paying customer base wants EVERQUEST circa 1999 to 2005 in a NEW GAME ENGINE. They don't want different. They want the same old fucking game, but in a brand new game engine that actually runs like a game made in 2025. It's that God damned simple.

• Use a modern game engine (Don't fucking write your own because you do NOT have the talent at DBG/DPG to make one that will compete with whats already available on the market!!!!)
• Forget everything made after the Shadows of Luclin expansion
• Create a new timeline that diverts off of the original directly after Shadows of Luclin
• Never add fucking Plane of Knowledge... ever... ever ever ever ... EVER. Keep porting a thing for Christ sake
• Fuck Gates of Discord and Omens of War. If you are too fucking lazy to come up with real lore-based names for your zones and monsters, then get another fucking job
• Add multi-classing ala FFXI/FFXIV. EverQuest NEEDS more powerful solo/duo gameplay for when the INNEVITBLE down turn of paying customers. Every MMORPG loses population over time. Stop pretending that you are going to have a massive playerbase a decade in to your game's production and beyond. Forcing a perfect 6 man group is fucking stupid. Stop being fucking stupid.
• Use the housing/guildhall system from EverQuest 2
• Use the crafting system from EverQuest 2
• Use modern player character models that are BASED on the original 1999 player character models. It's a STYLE that is unique to EverQuest. Do not use the shit character models from EQ2.

That's it. That's the winning strategy for the next EQ.

Will we get it?

FUCK NO.

They will spend their fucking time making new pride pets to give out each year and putting MINIMAL time in to creating an iterative expansion that adds two new zones and reuses three other old zones. Nothing new. Nothing innovative. Nothing worth fucking playing.

Again, EMU servers did not cause DPG to suck as a business. DPG caused DPG to suck as a business. The company that owns DBG/DPG should fire them all, and sell the IP to the highest bidder.

Pharone said:

It wasn't until the Kunark expansion in EQ2 that they threw away the "be different' idea and started making an UPDATED EQ. We got familiar zones that were actually somewhat laid out the way they were in EQ except with better visuals for a modern MMORPG. Unfortunately, EQ2 had already been a really bad implementation of EQ for so many years that the Kunark expansion came along too late to save the game.

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This is so crazy to me because EQ2's Rise of Kunark was the beginning of making EQ2 more like WoW. Before RoK, the leveling experience was much more like EQ, where the best way to get XP was to group up and kill heroic mobs. RoK changed that by making the most efficient leveling method to be solo questing through quest hubs in each zone. If you decided to level up via grinding in dungeons instead, not only was XP less efficient, but there were less camps than previous expansions in the lower level dungeons (because people were not expected to level in the dungeons) and you would not be able to gain enough faction reputation with the various Kunark factions to access necessary vendors and epic quests for end game. If anything, Kunark was an EQ nostalgia costume with a WoW clone underneath.

Kriptini said:

This is so crazy to me because EQ2's Rise of Kunark was the beginning of making EQ2 more like WoW. Before RoK, the leveling experience was much more like EQ, where the best way to get XP was to group up and kill heroic mobs. RoK changed that by making the most efficient leveling method to be solo questing through quest hubs in each zone. If you decided to level up via grinding in dungeons instead, not only was XP less efficient, but there were less camps than previous expansions in the lower level dungeons (because people were not expected to level in the dungeons) and you would not be able to gain enough faction reputation with the various Kunark factions to access necessary vendors and epic quests for end game. If anything, Kunark was an EQ nostalgia costume with a WoW clone underneath.

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I was more referring to the Karnors Castle actually being laid out like the old EQ Karnors Castle. They tried really hard to make nothing like the original before that.

Punko said:

EQ2 was detrimental to the brand

it wasn't a sequel but a different game, a ton of players went from EQ1 to EQ2, saw it wasn't for them and left

splitting a MMO playerbase over 2 different games is a terrible idea, this is why we will never see WOW2

detaching players from their hundreds / thousands of invested hours, is a stupid move

was saying this on forums back when they did it, but hey, they knew best

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In a way though, we DO have a WoW2, WoW3, WoW4, etc...

• WoW Classic
• Cataclysm Classic
• Hardcore
• Mists of Pandaria Classic
• Season of Discovery

*editted*
Well, actually.. we have 3 TLP's (WoW Classic, Cataclysm Classic, and Mists of Pandaria Classic) and 2 WoW+ (Hardcore and Season of Discovery).

And, in my eyes, this is what EQ needs. It needs an EQ+ that runs on a completely new game client with a completely new game server. Ala the NEXT EQ.

imready2go said:

If they were really smart they would take all the emu servers and put them right on the server select under "Custom Rule Servers".

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This is not a easy "Add to server selection" This is a lot of work for a small niche community. I bet the people who are dev'ing the game right now have 0 clue on how to even implement a system like this.

Punko said:

EQ needs:

1. full gfx and UI revamp
2. streamlining of the experience for new people
3. consolidation of old stuff (info, AA, quests, .. everything)
4. marketing campaign / model aimed towards younger people
5. gameplay options aimed at younger people (box up to 6 chars on 1 account, but only manual, no macros or anything automated) on specific servers

I think they could ask current EQ players to fund it, since most of them are hugely invested / addicted and want to keep EQ alive.

THJ mechanics with improved GFX and UI would likely attract a lot of young players, its potentially a high attention dopamine farm.

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You would have better luck building a whole new game, instead of trying to "update"' EQ.

I bet the Spaghetti is strong within there code base, it would be easier to blank-slate the game and start over.