Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Erronius
<WoW Guild Officer>
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For me I think it was a 50/50 split between WoW looking awesome (and having tried beta) and EQ1 sucking balls. But up until WoW there just wasn't anything that was good enough to see a mass exodus of players. Even EQ2 was meh to a lot of people and their release was terribad.
I honestly think that if WoW hadn't come out, if it hadn't existed, I might have kept playing EQ1 infrequently here and there with friends. EQ2 didn't seem like a very good alternative, nor did games like UO/AC/DaoC/etc. Even as bad as GoD was, people COULD have dealt with it. IMHO it took WoW looking badass and having SPECTACULAR beta reviews and first-hand accounts to spur so many EQ1 players to leave EQ1 like a sinking ship. And that has nothing to do with non-MMO players at all, as they were a separate outside group.
Or another way of looking at it: ask yourself why, if GoD was such a large factor, that there wasn't an exodus immediately or at any other time between the WoW release and the GoD release. What was it anyways, like 8 months? EQ2 released before WoW and while some people left I don't remember a 'mass exodus', and people I knew opted to play both EQ1 and EQ2 (mostly the "WoW looks too cartoony" crowd). If GoD was the reason EQ1 tanked, then why didn't we see a mass exodus in March, April, May, June, July, August, September or October? People sucked up the GoD release and dealt with it for a good, long time. Because people were waiting for WoW to come out and a lot of people had been playing the WoW beta that summer and knew without a doubt that as soon as WoW released that they'd be there.
WoW killed theSHITout of EQ1, and it had already done thatBEFOREit even released. I even want to say that I remember hearing and reading rave reviews about WoW before GoD even released and I want to say that people were already talking about the WoW release before GoD was even a thing.
I honestly think that if WoW hadn't come out, if it hadn't existed, I might have kept playing EQ1 infrequently here and there with friends. EQ2 didn't seem like a very good alternative, nor did games like UO/AC/DaoC/etc. Even as bad as GoD was, people COULD have dealt with it. IMHO it took WoW looking badass and having SPECTACULAR beta reviews and first-hand accounts to spur so many EQ1 players to leave EQ1 like a sinking ship. And that has nothing to do with non-MMO players at all, as they were a separate outside group.
Or another way of looking at it: ask yourself why, if GoD was such a large factor, that there wasn't an exodus immediately or at any other time between the WoW release and the GoD release. What was it anyways, like 8 months? EQ2 released before WoW and while some people left I don't remember a 'mass exodus', and people I knew opted to play both EQ1 and EQ2 (mostly the "WoW looks too cartoony" crowd). If GoD was the reason EQ1 tanked, then why didn't we see a mass exodus in March, April, May, June, July, August, September or October? People sucked up the GoD release and dealt with it for a good, long time. Because people were waiting for WoW to come out and a lot of people had been playing the WoW beta that summer and knew without a doubt that as soon as WoW released that they'd be there.
WoW killed theSHITout of EQ1, and it had already done thatBEFOREit even released. I even want to say that I remember hearing and reading rave reviews about WoW before GoD even released and I want to say that people were already talking about the WoW release before GoD was even a thing.
Soygen
The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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Yeah, I had WoW beta access all during GoD and it was pretty clear at that point that EQ was in trouble. The fact GoD was broken, simply made a lot of hardcore raiders quit a few months earlier than they would have, while waiting for WoW. They still would have been gone once WoW released.
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 3,656
- 1,382
The graph I linked earlier bears this out. You'll notice that EQ subs actually spike in mid-2004 (GoD came out in Feb of 04) but like you said, it was such a shitpile and WoW was looking all that that there really wasn't a hard choice at that point. But it also proves that it wasn't simply GoD that made people leave. In my opinion if everything stayed the same with the exception of WoW existing in 2004, EQ subs still would of went down but it would of been a gentle decline, not off the cliff like the graph shows. In a lot of ways that's the case with WoW now. Subs have been declining but in a slower pace since there really instead anything else out there that's much better than it.
Can we talk about WoW Beta?
I remember getting in during GoD and playing an Orc Warlock, I killing the seeing the named scorpion in the orc newbie grounds and thinking he was a named spawn that would drop items and I tried to camp him for a bit. Then I remember swimming in the ocean in durotar and finding a wrecked ship with a treasure chest in it and being amazed that they would just "spawn" items for people to get.
I also tried to collect prickly pears to sell to people before I knew what "quest" tagged items meant.
Having to break all those old EQ-isms took a bit.
I remember getting in during GoD and playing an Orc Warlock, I killing the seeing the named scorpion in the orc newbie grounds and thinking he was a named spawn that would drop items and I tried to camp him for a bit. Then I remember swimming in the ocean in durotar and finding a wrecked ship with a treasure chest in it and being amazed that they would just "spawn" items for people to get.
I also tried to collect prickly pears to sell to people before I knew what "quest" tagged items meant.
Having to break all those old EQ-isms took a bit.
Bruman
Golden Squire
- 1,154
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Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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- 277
The only chart I found has EQ in decline before and after a spike in early 2004. Looks to me like people that quit over PoP (it wasnt a great expansion for non-raiding casuals) checking out GoD and finding out that even the first zone is gating them with an impossible instance, and leaving again right away.
The chart I saw also has a data point with 450k EQ1 subs 8 months after the WoW release, which is equally surprising if everyone jumped over to WoW the moment it hit the stores. I do think WoW is the biggest reason EQ went down, but apparently alot of people stubbornly held onto it for half a year
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
- 1,408
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EQ could not have competed with WoW probably no matter what they did. The growth in computer gaming from 99 to 04 was so much bigger than the growth from 04 to 14, we went from dial-up on 800x600 CRTs in 99 to 100x faster cable on LCDs by 04. Total game changing shifts in the technology. EQ was technologically limited, there is no way it could have released with combat that would rival WoW, and then they were stuck in a NGO situation where you can't change it too much too fast or tons of people will hate that too.
After velious the quality was pretty shit too. Luclin conceptually was ok but bugs and a stupid shift in art style that crippled performance and made a disjointed game world that no longer really fit together were big big issues. PoP was not even conceptually good and neither was GOD, on top of both being pretty buggy and plagued with unfinished content. LDON was an ok idea to get casuals back into the game but the mind set at the time among the devs that said you either raided or did ungodly grinds to get anything really ruined it, coupled with the fact that it was poorly tuned for the nonr-raider people it was designed for. But lets say the devs had been good, the expansions had followed the model set in velious and kept casuals relatively engaged, I still don't see the game really remaining strong against WoW, best they could have done was have a gradual decline from 450k to whatever instead of falling off the cliff.
After velious the quality was pretty shit too. Luclin conceptually was ok but bugs and a stupid shift in art style that crippled performance and made a disjointed game world that no longer really fit together were big big issues. PoP was not even conceptually good and neither was GOD, on top of both being pretty buggy and plagued with unfinished content. LDON was an ok idea to get casuals back into the game but the mind set at the time among the devs that said you either raided or did ungodly grinds to get anything really ruined it, coupled with the fact that it was poorly tuned for the nonr-raider people it was designed for. But lets say the devs had been good, the expansions had followed the model set in velious and kept casuals relatively engaged, I still don't see the game really remaining strong against WoW, best they could have done was have a gradual decline from 450k to whatever instead of falling off the cliff.
...
Goonsquad Officer
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- 14,428
I think eq was crushed by it's age, and buggyness, and graphical horribleness more than it's "tougher world, no instance, old school" design philosophy.
When Wow came out it had:
Great graphics, great art style , smooth play control, easy accessibility, ran well on shity machines, instanced themepark dungeons and quests by the nose.
What if a competitor had came out around the same time that had:
Great graphics, great art, smooth play control, easy accessibility, ran well on shity machines, compeditive pve content, open world dungeons, and for-reward quests (eq style. where you did for the item, not xp).
I'm not really sure the 'more hard core' version of it would have bombed because of it's game play. I'm sure each would have been judged by its art style and /dance quality more than it's game play by the unwashed masses, but You would have a seen a clearer trend in 'who prefers what kind of game'. truth is we haven't had a game with WoW's smooth play and art combined with an eq style progression / asymetry / open world / penalties for failure etc. It just hasn't really existed yet.
I don't really count eve as the latter kind because it's just numbers in space. not so much hack and slash dungeons and loot haul kind of game.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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- 185
WoW classic was also way way closer to EQ than current WoW. I kinda doubt you would even see this push from alot of people to have remakes of EQ if WoW was still like it was originally. Travel in WoW was slow, death was pretty punishing back when they 7g on death meant like 20 minutes farming. It was just far far more accessible on the low end and better built overall. EQ really started to implode when they let raider progression outpace group progression so dramatically at the end of luclin through to GoD, and poor design decisions (like AA) that constantly add to the time it took to get into the game caused new players to stop coming.
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
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Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
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- 3,166
