EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
The weird thing is, EverQuest was considered a smash hit and massive success, and yet 500,000 was its absolute peak. Nowadays everyone proclaims failure!! failure!! if something doesn't have a million or more players. I'm surprised nobody at this point has realized, WoW was the exception not the rule. That's why nobody else has even come close. And while everyone chases the moon and fails, one game game will satisfy a loyal niche and be successful. Eventually.
Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 279
- 39
The weird thing is, EverQuest was considered a smash hit and massive success, and yet 500,000 was its absolute peak. Nowadays everyone proclaims failure!! failure!! if something doesn't have a million or more players. I'm surprised nobody at this point has realized, WoW was the exception not the rule. That's why nobody else has even come close. And while everyone chases the moon and fails, one game game will satisfy a loyal niche and be successful. Eventually.
The even weirder thing is...it's not 1999 any more!. Sony may have been happy to spend X tens of millions back then and get a game which bounced along between 300K~500K in a marketplace withessentiallyno competition (UO was too PvP-happy, AC was too weird and looked like rancid donkey scrotum). Isuspectthey wouldn't be quite as happy with a brand new game a decade and a half later that cost at least four times as much to make and bumbled along with <100K subs.
Because if they were to make a niche game as designed by this thread, the budget - by necessity - would betiny, and therefore so would the dev team. Now how would you like to spend $15/m on a game which has worse graphics, poorer balance and less content than the next half-dozen free-to-play MMOs?
And he could do the exact same thing again - if he gets it right. EQN could be the big thing we are all hooked on for the next 10 years, but he has to get it right.
No what I'm saying is that they could spend less today than any other MMO, because they don't have to go for expensive graphics, voice overs, cutscenes, etc. and just make an indie style, old school style, yet quite slick MMO. It could still look good and seem modern and slick, it just doesn't have to top end.
And if EQ had 500,000 a decade ago, it should be able to at LEAST have that again today. Yes there is more competition now but the market has grown too, and of all the competition, it's only really WoW which is huge, and that has the downside of being old fashioned now too.
Apparently 450,000 or so people bought Vanguard. They all quit within a month or so... but it shows what a game could do which aimed at a niche. And that was 450k without any real marketing, just Brad yapping on FoH.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
- 3,215
- 895
No offense or disrespect because I really don't know any truth or untruths here but I call bullcrap. There is no way they wouldn't let Brad have "some" input or let him review things as they have went along. Why else would they employ him? To play with VG? A friendly favor? Nah, he's there as a resource. Regardless if they use it or not, hated or not, whatever, he was still there and was apart of the accident, the beginning, and everything that has gone on in his life up to now. They can't risk not considering Brad's opinion because it's Everquest... "Next" and how can you go to the next step without picking his brain?
I can very well see them asking Brad, "Hey, come and look at this... what do you think?" Brad offers some opinion. They nod, talk about how stupid he is and sends him back.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 4,865
- 6,822
I'm curious, does anyone actually think that Devs see any upside to commenting in public threads?
What could they possibly say that wont be taken out of context and used against them in the future? Other than the most general marketing pablum that is... and even that would be ripped apart.
The Devs will not come here and we only have ourselves to blame for that.
What could they possibly say that wont be taken out of context and used against them in the future? Other than the most general marketing pablum that is... and even that would be ripped apart.
The Devs will not come here and we only have ourselves to blame for that.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 8,761
- 613
yea, I don't really see much to be gained from a Dev posting here either but who knows. It's hard to even get a pulse on what people even want ina lot of these threads. I think if they want to ask questions for player feedback this thread could be valuable. But to debate us on MMO's would be silly lol
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 4,865
- 6,822
I'm sure he saw it differently. His "vision" wasn't implemented perfectly and he got burned for it. But no game ever matched the initial vision. The same is true of every creative endeavor. Reality always changes the end product.
Brad's biggest mistake was being naive enough to think the the public would understand that basic truth. But instead they accused him of "lying" and all kinds of vile things that I'm sure hurt him in ways none of us will ever be able to understand.
Gaming Devs owe him a debt of gratitude though, because he showed them how fast the public cam turn on you if you put yourself out there. So they don't and we all lost because of it.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 8,761
- 613
Lets face it. VG was a mess and the blame was all Brads since it was his company. That's just the bottom line. I think the personal attacks were out of hand for sure but he was misleading people and he got called on it. I'm a brad fan and his vision unless it has changed has been on par with the type of game I want to play
Smed isn't taking notes. He won't be making a game that would peak at such a smaller number of users. He is also not making a game for neckbeards. What you guys want can be found in a web browser/flash game. Any major game studio is going to make a game with current graphics. If your graphics aren't modern the game won't sell. Sure a lot of current games settled at 300-600k users these days, but they sold over a million boxes that recoups a lot of cost. Shit like WAR and AOC had decent sales. A game that has shit graphics isn't going to sell that many boxes.
i beta tested VG from the beginning, and the fact of the matter is brad flat out lied about the game, about the company, and about the state that the game was in when it was released. hell, he didn't even have the balls to tell his employees that they were fired; they just had some suits meet them in the parking lot and tell them there. up until right before it happened, brad was denying that sony was even acquiring sigil and VG. all brad really managed to do is push out a game that was still about a year away from being finished and ran so shitty even on the most powerful computers at the time that as far as i know to this day the game still hitches like holy hell. so after all that, what exactly did we owe him?
so it's impossible to make EQ with modern graphics? that's what you're telling us?