Death of a Game - Everquest franchise

EQ2Wire said:

SOE had over 800 employees in 2008.

July 2009 -41
July 2010 -35
March 2011 -205
August 2013 -70
March 2015 -140
April 2018 -70
December 2018 -70

Current staff: 170

It's an unbroken trend under Sony Online Entertainment and then Daybreak. This has to be a high blood pressure moment for the company. At this point, I just don't see how the company:

• has the staff to initiate a new tier 1 project
• can attract the talent needed to develop and support such a game
• has the marketing and community staff to announce and support this game even if they had one

At this point the ship has taken on too much water. They've gone from a 2nd tier major studio to an indie with none of the agility or grace needed to survive at that level. 2017 was Telltale. 2018 was Trion. Is 2019 Daybreak?

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Yeah, and I agree that Daybreak probably doesn't have a chance to turn their corporate ship around. They might, 170 staff is still a lot of staff. But it would take years rather than months, and long term thinking tends to be on the months scale. One thing I would mention though is what the games industry has been finding out in the past decade -- bloat kills. That's not particularly insightful or surprising. Bloat kills in any industry outside entertainment. Vidja games don't operate under the hollywood model. Ten years ago, with all the crazy money being tossed around, it would seem that a lot of important people decided they could, would, and might. Not a stupid thing to think, honestly. Turns out to be wrong. People don't consume the product the way that they consume netflix's or marvels.

Smaller studios with more clearly defined projects has got to be the way to remain profitable.

Bandwagon said:

Serious question - why is wow finally going to topple? I played at launch and heard that shit until I quit, never seeing anything close to denting WoWs numbers. Just curious what the tl;dr is.

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To be clear, you're right people having been calling the fall of WoW more or less since TBC. However the current climate seems different.

Activision having purchased blizzard a few years back has begun to take a more hands on approach to the company. Game design decisions are allegedly being made by the bean counters now.

There are also substantial rumors of morale being very low with their developers plus a ton of talent has left recently. Overall Blizzard appears, from the outside, to be primed for a big fall. We'll see, they're recent decision making seems to support this imo. Feels like they're running on 2nd rate talent.

The big thing is that I read there wasn't that expected "resub" bump after their last expansion.

Dunno if that's true, but if it is that would be the first time. It would indicate that the playerbase has moved and that peak that everyone has falsely predicted for the past 8 years has finally happened.

Every year that designers and programmers work on EQ and EQ2 is a year that they are falling behind in the industry and marketable knowledge.

EQ2 hired a tools programmer in like 2009 who was supposed to do nothing but write a set of tools so they are not building content with stone tablets and rocks. Then the entire EQ2 dev team went to EQN and he became the lead programmer for EQ2. Most of the designing for EQ and EQ2 happens in text files.

When devs leave the EQ or EQ2 teams, they're going to have to take a crash course in UE4, Unity, etc. or some tooling that was invented less than 15 years ago.

I just wish daybreak would let P99 wipe, I mean cmon it's been 10 years in 3 expansions... They are killing the game for good

Locnar said:

Just so long someone buys the IPs at the auction and

a) brings back vanguard
b) brings back EQmac
c) releases a "hardcore" EQ server with the mechanics form the good old days (first person view, corpse runs, no maps, all that).

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Doubt this would ever happen, my guess anyone who picks up the IP will either.

1. Keep the game running how it is(literally skeleton crew to keep server's up) , and maybe work on another EQ from what they can scrap together from EQ:N.

2. Kill the servers and sit forever on the IP, doing nothing with it.

Honestly the best outcome would have to be that a bigger company buys out the IP and they pass it off to a subsidiary that actually gives a shit about game design.

I totally did see that coming.

God damnet..

cabbitcabbit said:

Honestly the best outcome would have to be that a bigger company buys out the IP and they pass it off to a subsidiary that actually gives a shit about game design.

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It would be a from the begining start though, yes they can build out from the lore that 989/Verant/SOE/DBG all built, but anything "new" would be years out, unless they hired some savants at game design..

Folanlron said:

It would be a from the begining start though, yes they can build out from the lore that 989/Verant/SOE/DBG all built out, but anything "new" would be years out, unless they hired some savants at game design..

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Alright, you buy the IP. You churn out a fresh progression server every nine months. You retrofit the existing EverQuest card game into its own standalone product with a full relaunch. You start a GoFundMe, a Patreon, and a KickStarter for "ForEver" (aka EverQuest 3, name is a work in progress). There's gotta be some good people bailing on Blizzard/Activision. You ain't got big money but you can give them a free hand. Get a game made, take the company public, and hope you don't end up in jail for SEC violations.

I got better things goin on then working on a dead horse, sorry but anyone who will be buying up the IP will probably just be sitting on it for years too come, it is a money generator at least. (I think anyway, not sure on the server costs, but it's probably pretty cheap) It will probably be that way till the engine no longer works on current computers. hahahaha.

I can't believe people are buying these lifetime subs.... I simply do not get it. I've patronized them for a long time and I appreciate more than anyone the fun EQ/EQ2 has given me but this is just crazy.

Also, in regards to Blizzard, i've been hearing from the inside (just a couple of acquaintances low on the totem pole) is morale is low. Direction has changed, priorities have shifted, and they feel more like Activision than Blizzard. To my understanding they're still working on some exciting stuff but there's a lot of remaking and decisions like Diablo Immobile being made first.

I really dislike the state of gaming we are in but it's just like the DLC battle, until gamers start making them pay for the stupidity, this is what we'll get.