Not sure if this is just edgy banter, or if you honestly don't think there is enough of a population of people who still play EQ. There are over 50K people still playing EQ in either live or some variation of it in total at any given time. There is a crowd for this type of game, whatever it is you want to call it. EQ is a product of it's time, but it is enough of an escape still from the trash tier zoomer korean MMOs and gacha game AI slop which dominates the current market. Western MMOs are a dying breed, what there are 2, maybe, Western MMOs still going strong? Shit on the EQ clone games all you want, if a company actually manages to stay afloat and get a chunk of that playerbase it will be a success. I would not bet money on it happening, to many things going against it, but the reason for failure is not because the company is trying to stay true to EQ era forced downtime mechanics.
Yeah, there's a "crowd" for EQ. There's also a crowd for rotary phones and VHS collections. It doesn't mean we should start mass-producing them again and pretend they're the future. Let's not confuse persistence with relevance. And let's not inflate that into some hidden market waiting to be "tapped." It’s the same echo chamber chasing the same high, on repeat, every two years.
And this whole "Western MMOs died because of zoomer gacha trash" narrative is just cope and fatalism, giving lazy and uninventive devs a pass. They didn't die because people stopped wanting challenge, they died because devs kept mistaking
wasting time for depth. Corpse runs, hour-long commutes, XP debt, etc.? That wasn’t "risk vs reward." That was punishment disguised as design. You can slap "immersion" on it all you want, but it's still just dead air between the parts that are actually fun.
If the design goal is to capture the EQ crowd, sure, you'll probably get your 5-10k subs. But let's not pretend that means the formula works. It just means the genre never moved on, and the same small circle of players won't let it.
At some point, you have to stop mistaking "still existing" for "still relevant."
I'm coming into this game after playing Lost Ark for 3 years. Lost Ark is significantly harder than just about any MMORPG out there. I like the change of pace. Your obsession with mmorpg difficulty is frankly bizarre considering most people who play games aren't good at them and aren't looking to have their dicks smashed in by their lack of mechanical skill, and the fact that you never got anywhere in Lost Ark and resorted to playing the easiest class in the game, but I digress.
The thing about boxing is that I don't see why anyone would try to skirt the rules and play multiple boxes on a no box server when there will be boxing server options. Why risk getting banned when you're allowed to be a complete degen on the server with rules that allow it?
Lost Ark launched with
two support classes, man. Two. So because I didn't want to prance around as a fairy-ass Bard, Paladin was literally the only viable choice. The "you picked the easy class" take is just lazy. I didn't pick it because I was scared of a challenge, I picked it because I wanted to play a support without looking like I belonged in a K-pop boy band.
And the "difficulty flex" thing? Come on. It's mechanical memorization with pretty particle effects. It's rarely about mastering systems or making smart decisions under pressure, it's about remembering when the boss does his 3rd spin before the laser sweep and praying the servers don't lag. Everybody knows it's a raid wipe simulator wrapped in RNG checks and damage uptime spreadsheets. There's a reason Amazon just deleted the AGS Irvine studio and it wasn't because Lost Ark is a smashing success and model of what difficulty in MMOs looks like.
And as for this weird projection about me being "obsessed with difficulty"? Nah, I'm obsessed with games respecting my time. There's a difference. I don't need a game to beat me over the head to feel accomplished, I need it to make my engagement feel earned. If I'm dying, I want it to be because I made a bad decision, not because I got stun-locked by clunky, outdated mechanics or had to corpse-run across three zones just to get back to playing. That's not difficulty. That's disrespect disguised as "depth."
The whole "well, not everyone wants their dick smashed in by difficulty" argument is hilarious too. Yeah, no kidding, but nobody's asking for that. What people
do want is a game that doesn't treat their time like a renewable resource. I've got a life, a job, and a brain. I want meaningful challenge, not masochism dressed up as "hardcore authenticity."
As for boxing? The idea that "people won’t do it if it’s against the rules" is just adorable.
People bot in retail WoW, they'll sure as hell box in M&M. The real question isn't "why would they?" but "why wouldn't they?" when the systems practically reward them for it.
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