EQ TLP - Mischief (Free Trade / Random Loot)

moonarchia said:

Trying to get groups to do the right dungeons for LDON is what ultimately killed EQ for me the first time around. That was just an entire clusterfuck. LoY and LDON were both also extremely small and much less interesting that PoP was. Killing all your gods is kind of a hard act to follow.

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They lost their long term vision a long time ago. Every time they finish an expansion they basically go, so what should we do next. There is no long term design or plan.

yerm said:

So when people say they quit in god because they're bored and not enjoying the game - why? What made pop and ldon not boring that went away? Imo its often the socializing in easy groups and the cruise control or alt friendly raiding that was lost and killed interest. But people will say its mob names.

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I think you're on the right track. Twice now I've found myself in late PoP, both times having fully planned to play beyond it and see some actual new-to-me content, only to find myself logging in and not finding anything to do. It only takes a few days of that before you're just raid logging and this quickly snowballs into player numbers dropping off a cliff.

I think the problem is actually PoP itself because it is when the grouping game radically changes. Pick-up groups all but disappear as everyone farms the hot spots in specialized groups. Just logging in and trying to find a group to grind some mobs with is easy in the first few expansions but much harder in PoP and beyond. At the same time, the number of AA required to perform adequately goes up and solo play becomes entirely pointless as a way of progressing beyond the lower levels.

The only players that seem to really stick around are those that have a self-sufficient box army or those in a pre-arranged clique. As a "log in and find something to do" game, EQ pretty much dies in PoP.

Much less so on mischief where doing PoN, Grummus, or 7th hammer which are all easily accessible and one group able can yield the best loot in the game though.

Let's face it, everyone quit EQ and went and played WOW back in the day when it came out.That's why no one really goes past POP on the TLPs. It has nothing to do with whether the expacs after POP are good. No one goes past a certain point Because they didn't originally. If I want new, there are dozens of better games to put my time into, but the first few expacs of EQ have a hold on me like no other game. Everyone went on and tried to copy WOW's success and we have dozens of clones, but only one EQ. I really wish they had spent the money they spent making EQ2 on making EQ1 a better looking game, maybe then we would have a dozen EQ clones, and only one WOW.

4 months is a long time. However, on mischief most our A team (35+ people) will have BiS across the board instead of hopefully maybe 1 or 2 Q pieces. This idea has really changed the tone for us and I love it. Official raids for the harder zones, off night parties for the Solro scale targets. DZs and random tiered loot has made this fun for me. March 3 will be here fast for LDON augs.

There's also the difference between what you consider the goal gear and literal BiS. like technically AoW and Vulak rings are BiS for casters in velious, but rarely outside of enchanters do you see casters doing that. in PoP things like Quarm Cloaks and Quarm neck are sort of similar. Except on this server you just do it anyways because who cares.

Zaide said:

What guild are you in?

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Elf Sim. Good times all around.

With free trade sometimes the BiS calculus changes because it was based on a click that is highly desirable for your class, but now you can just bum a click off a guildy and get the next best item.

Korzax Stonehammer said:

Let's face it, everyone quit EQ and went and played WOW back in the day when it came out.That's why no one really goes past POP on the TLPs. It has nothing to do with whether the expacs after POP are good. No one goes past a certain point Because they didn't originally. If I want new, there are dozens of better games to put my time into, but the first few expacs of EQ have a hold on me like no other game. Everyone went on and tried to copy WOW's success and we have dozens of clones, but only one EQ. I really wish they had spent the money they spent making EQ2 on making EQ1 a better looking game, maybe then we would have a dozen EQ clones, and only one WOW.

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It's a component of the problem, yes. When you reach that point where you aren't heaving that great a time plus you know literally nothing about the next expansion the little trail of breadcrumbs gets broken. Stick around and roll the dice on content that I'm going to need my hand held on? Take a break and come back to content that I'm going to need my hand held on? Meh.

Another problem is the ripple effect. If one person quits, others may join. If one person stops grouping and only raids, another may lose interest entirely now that his group is stalled.

Masakari said:

How much are they making a month off each TLP?

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Enough to continue making them, I'd wager.
Their biggest purchases, as far as I can tell, come from both types of servers whaling on stuff like cosmetics (ie; deputy mask illusion) and durable purchases (ie; Expansions with items included like x-slot bags, TLP launch bundles, etc).

I'm not sure how much Krono is actually bought directly from them, but it's enough that there's always some in circulation - and those add up quick.

Hardly a day goes by where you don't see somebody asking in general why it's taking so long for their krono to show up, so I'm sure there's still plenty buying direct from the company as opposed to 3rd party.

Hard to resist the urge to tell them to go to ectunnel or similar where it's cheaper and faster.

People buy and sell krono like hot cakes. There should be no question about EQ's profitability, enough to pay their bills (at the very least) to be specific. In just my short stint of maybe 4-5 months played, Ive bought somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 krono. On that same note, the krono Ive made from a combination of everything that Ive sold (and lets be honest, half that shit shouldnt have been worth the krono the person spent on it) has totaled up to somewhere over a 130 krono. I should have sold it off a long time ago, but I just dont.. care? I have a feeling I'll log back in at some point, cause well, its EQ and even after quitting in ~2004, I still revisit it. If I can make that with my sporadic playstyle, I have to imagine that DB is doing quite well with each TLP.

Gotta save that Krono to buy the EQ3 Ultra Platinum Founders Pack

Kuro said:

Gotta save that Krono to buy the EQ3 Ultra Platinum Founders Pack

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As a six boxer, I made over 900 Krono gross on mischief, and most of that was in luclin and POP, and almost entirely just from running DZs or GDKP. It really blew my mind just how much demand there was for everything. I know a lot of people think that krono is just getting recycled but I really do think there's still a lot of people buying from DPG. Almost every day in chat I'd see people complaining about not getting their krono because the first purchase always takes time.

This is what I tell people when they think they and their 10 friends are the majority of everquest.

There are so many non serious everquest players.

Imagine the 900 krono you made. And think about how many people just on mischief probably made the same or close or even more. Then remember we are just 1 tlp server. People farm on other servers too.

We are talking 100s of thousands of krono just floating around and none of those krono are being purchased by any of us cool kids.

There are so many casuals and they're the ones keeping this game afloat.

It's why I laugh when any group of people think they matter.

EQ has -always- turned a profit. It was my understanding that it usually paid for the other games under the studio's banner.

A few years ago I read that EQOA even had more profit margin than EQ2. All this time later I bet that P/L ratio still holds.

If I could play EQ on my ps5, I would.