Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Skanda

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All I'm seeing now is a series of excuses being made to try and justify those rose colored glasses. EQ has nothing magical about it that other games don't have. Even as you try and make some connection between the WoW patch eb and flow as compared to some mythical EQ standard bearer who holds the line you conveniently forget about all those millions of people who continue to play WoW at a steady rate even while the casuals pop in and out for a month or two every 6 months.
 
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Nirgon

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I wonder what would have happened if Blizzard was taken over by SoE instead of Activision.

Spoiler: I wouldn't be happy with either. I used to buy Blizzard games on principal, now I don't even buy them if they are reportedly good.
 
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zzeris

zzeris

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Reht said:
Just like EQ's numbers which never stayed that consistent. I played both EQ and WoW at that point too and to say EQ is/was any different is silly. People would drop off at the 6-8 month mark in EQ waiting for an expansion to drop just like people who quit WoW temporarily - we always had to go into recruitment high gear at roughly the same times in expansion cycles - WoW's content patches smoothed it more through Wrath than the loss we saw in EQ during PoP - God. The only real difference now is that there are a lot more options to lure people away during lulls than there were in 2005 MMO era.
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To add further concrete to your foundation. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Everquest-die .This gem within;

"EverQuest had an unprecedented 450,000 players and was the big beast of the genre. Everyone who played it loved it! However, what they didn't do was account for the 800,000 people who had played it but left." Everquest had massive turnover. It's sad and hilarious to hear these anecdotal personal experiences used as fact when they are anything but fact. Tons of people did not like LDoN, OoW, Luclin, etc. For many people, the game started going downhill after Velious. I knew many people who went to DAOC, Shadowbane, AC, back to UO, etc. The facts back this up.

There are a huge number of people who play WoW casually because it is set up to benefit people who put in at least a modicum of playtime every day. It has a vast amount of casual, PvP, and raid content. WoW has refurbished the game and added tons of content that has always brought back huge numbers of players. EQ barely keeps the few it still has. I can't even remember the last time they reported honest sub numbers within that game. Hell, one of the best indicators of EQ turnover is P99 and other 'classic' servers. People moved on from the sanctioned game and only went back to a specific timeframe they personally enjoyed. These are nostalgia posts trying to beatify a turd while shitting on the true king of the hill. Vanilla WoW was a far better game than EQ. Blizzard may have moved on to ensure high sub rates but it was created by people who had played EQ and wanted to improve it. They did with incredible results.
 
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Dullahan

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I'm not trying to shit on WoW, but your facts actually support what I said, not what you're suggesting. First of all, I completely agree that in 2004, WoW was a more enjoyable game than EQ. EQ had been slowly converted to an endgame grinder and soe pretty much abandoned their original vision and audience. WoW blew them out of the water in that regard.

That said, 800k lost of 1300k is astronomically high retention - over 38% (it was reported to be even higher before Luclin). Blizzard reported in 2010 that only 30% of their players even make it past level 10. You can safely conclude that their retention would then be a much smaller figure.

So if we're talking about what makes the most money, we know who achieved this. If we're talking about models that retained players, EQ, especially in the early years, was and still is the reigning champion in that regard.
 
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Rezz

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Er, no. EQ had, at it's height, retention of roughly 38% at 550k-ish players of players over its entire lifecycle. WoW was substantially better than that during Wrath, at 11m players. The population continued to grow, not shrink, through Wrath. Your cherry-picked number is during the height; if you are using cherry-picked numbers, compare them to WoW's cherry picked numbers. WoW was easily at 50% or more retention during Wrath, and 22x the population.

I don't even need Nicholas Cage with his hair shaped like a bird to know your argument is invalid. Rose-colored goggles to the max up in here.

If you want to talk about the massive decline during Cata? Lets talk decline during GoD. You know, when well over half the population of EQ left... for WoW. And WoW? Lost 1/3 during Cata, and a chunk of those resubbed for Mists. There was no "spikes" after GoD. People quit and didn't come back. People -still- come back to WoW. -That- is actual retention, not month to month numbers.

edit: Man, I sure hope someone brings up community as being what differentiated EQ from everything else. That's such a great point for people who have only ever played EQ to make. I think it's coming, because the math side of things is just going to shit all over the rose-colored-glasses brigade.

edit2: Blizzard reported that only 30% of their playerbase had played beyond level 10. That means, in 2010, that over 30 million people (given their massive turnover rate, rite?) had tried the game and only leveled to 10. Which is 15x as much as the entire populace of the world that had ever tried EQ. Period.

EQ existed in a veritable vacuum, and their best was 38% or so according to your numbers. WoW existed in a market rife with options, and at their height was substantially better.

Wakandan, please.
 
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Kharzette

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You'd never be able to compare the two because of cafe accounts. A very large portion of warcraft "subscribers" were weird pay by hour pc bang accounts in the east.

I also think your 30 million number is low. A very large number of people have tried the game. I'd wildly guess that Dullahan is right though, eq's retention the first few years would be greater.
 
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zzeris

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Kharzette said:
You'd never be able to compare the two because of cafe accounts. A very large portion of warcraft "subscribers" were weird pay by hour pc bang accounts in the east.

I also think your 30 million number is low. A very large number of people have tried the game. I'd wildly guess that Dullahan is right though, eq's retention the first few years would be greater.
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I think it's pretty easy to tell who had a much larger following cafe accounts or no. That's rather ridiculous. EQ also released at the perfect time when computers still had an advantage over consoles and no one else had the 3D setting like EQ. EQ released with very little true competition and didn't get much until DAOC a full 19 months later. What?!! Did I hear retention rate for a game with no true competition was really good for the time it didn't have competition? Wow, color me amazed....
 
ZyyzYzzy

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Who cares? WoW player base is an order of magnitude larger than EQs when comparing their peaks. Orders larger now.
 
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Skanda

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EQ has the worlds best retention among the MMO market. That's why they had to sell to the Russians. Those Ruskies just couldn't let that deal pass them by.
 
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Khane

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EQ retained customers like North Korea retains tourists.
 
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Punko

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i quit EQ 7 years ago

of the 68 people on the guild roster, 12 of them are people i instantly recognize as i'd been guilded for over 5 years with them at that point

heck, the guy that became the 4th guildleader since i joined the guild, is still doing it today .. not even mentioning people that rerolled or went to other guilds ..

EQ retains some people extremely well, to this day
 
Raign

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xzi said:
Don't you have to pay like 1000$ to play right now?
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Yep, and even that isn't out until next month (ish). They went on record as saying their pre-alpha will be available in Dec., what they have been showing in streams is apparently pre-pre-alphawtf, $1000 whales get in for the 'actual' pre-alpha. I am looking forward to info that comes out of that though - hopefully they aren't as turd-like as the Evocati (avacado?) leaks on Star Citizen 3.0.. I would actually like to see this go live in my lifetime.
 
mkopec

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zzeris said:
But that's not actually true. EQ also had massive attrition and the only reason they tried new things was to get new subs to make up for lost ones. There is a reason EQ never had over maybe 500,000 subs at any given point. There is a reason less than 60,000 play today. There is a reason WoW not only had over 10 million but has fluctuated with that number several times during it's history. WoW is the game that has a variety of things to do, new experiences, etc for not only the new players but for people that wanted to come back for a while. EQ's version? P99. Not even close to similar in impact. It's crazy to compare a game that has dominated the landscape for over 13 years with a blip in the early years. EQ was king...for a very short time. The king did not keep a majority of it's players and it never had the majority of the market. These comparisons are stupid.
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It was also a different era bro. the vast difference between hardware and internet at home were vastly different between 1999-2000 than in 2004 when wow released. Average computer that could run EQ back in the day was like $2k plus you had to have internet, and remember, that was a whole other issue in of itself. I remember playing EQ on dialup in 1999 which cost like $50 per month and tied up your home phone line as well. some I remember paid hourly rates, lol.There was no comcast at the time, or if there was, it was very expensive to get.

So yeah, its not that easy to compare the two games. again it was different generations in that span of 5 yrs. when wow came out, you had lap tops that could run it or buy a $600- $800 dell, and most people had high speed by then either DSL or Cable. That number probably tripled when wow hit its 10 million peak (which also had asia in those numbers, I specifically remember only a fraction were NA players, like 3-5 million) Still huge numbers, nto taking that away from them but i also blame them for single handedly ruining the entire genre, since everyone after WoW wanted to emulate it for that swee sweet $$ instead of doing their own thing and growing the genre outwards with new ideas.
 
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Dullahan

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mkopec said:
It was also a different era bro. the vast difference between hardware and internet at home were vastly different between 1999-2000 than in 2004 when wow released. Average computer that could run EQ back in the day was like $2k plus you had to have internet, and remember, that was a whole other issue in of itself. I remember playing EQ on dialup in 1999 which cost like $50 per month and tied up your home phone line as well. some I remember paid hourly rates, lol.There was no comcast at the time, or if there was, it was very expensive to get.

So yeah, its not that easy to compare the two games. again it was different generations in that span of 5 yrs. when wow came out, you had lap tops that could run it or buy a $600- $800 dell, and most people had high speed by then either DSL or Cable. That number probably tripled when wow hit its 10 million peak (which also had asia in those numbers, I specifically remember only a fraction were NA players, like 3-5 million) Still huge numbers, nto taking that away from them but i also blame them for single handedly ruining the entire genre, since everyone after WoW wanted to emulate it for that swee sweet $$ instead of doing their own thing and growing the genre outwards with new ideas.
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None of those things mattered. WoW was just the greatest mmo ever cuz numbers and 6 yr old EQ was always a shoddy, bug-riddled mud ripoff created by a dirtbike riding junkie gardener with no fresh ideas.
 
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