Eh, with every passing year that this is in development, more and better technologies are coming out. Technologies that the team would basically need to start from scratch in most cases to really incorporate. Taking 5-6 years to develop a game is one thing if you are breaking the mold. If you are literally trying to recapture a 20 year old game audience (there hasn't been a "hardcore" game since, unless you are big into PVP which EQ was never big about), you're basically starting to hit those attrition rates where the types of players that would play these games now have families/jobs/etc that won't let them play the type of poopsockery that games like EQ largely require to really get everything out of it. And taking what is likely to be a decade from announcement to get it out the door? Yikes. Forward progress or not, that is an absurd development cycle, intentional or otherwise. Thinking it's a sign that the game is doing well is using some seriously rose-tinted glasses, hah.
I'm sure there's an audience out there and I'm sure they are excited about the game. I'm also sure they remember a vastly different EQ during Live's heyday than most the rest of us do (waiting on shit to spawn, having to hit critical mass to compete with other guilds for stuff, having timezone almost be more important than quality, etc. Sitting on my ass while I wait for people to log in so we could kill bosses that honestly just needed people paying attention at their keyboards for 20-30m at a time. That is what I remember from EQ, aside from the people) outside of the concept of community, which had I the poopsock hours available I might like one of those long term static communities again. But the days of my desiring to log in and wait while a group needed a tank and/or puller in OS, or grinding AAs mindlessly on shrooms, or any of the other incredibly repetitive activities while I was constantly waiting for other people to log in to do the stuff I wanted to do, are looooong gone. The people who fondly remember that stuff probably more closely remember the fact that EQ was almost as much of a chat client as it was a game. And certainly nowhere near as "hard" as people like to make it out. It was largely timezone and number of college kids/independently wealthy nerds you could field to enjoy the endgame. The difficulty was in having a life while trying to do that (before instancing).
I hope it releases, but I think you have to have some pretty thick blinders on to think it's going to be some huge success and the devs aren't going to start making questionable decisions (according to the target audience) if/when they get funding from someone who wants to actually make money on it. Remember Wildstar and being "hard" ? Yeah, game's been offline for awhile now; hard doesn't make money when you aren't the only game in town.
Have they tried to get Notch to fund it for the lulz? Because that's likely the only way you get it out with a 1999 mindset in 2022+; someone with money to burn who doesn't care if it makes money or not.
