It was also a different era bro. 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.
I can somewhat agree with these parts even though everyone was out to make money. Do you think Brad snorted thousands of dollars into his nose because he was trying to save the industry? Or make better games? Blizzard just did a better job than everyone else. We shouldn't blame Blizzard. We should blame both the players and Blizzard's competition. They just made a better game than EQ and kept updating. No one else had the vision to go much further than that. Something started before the turn of the century was the best this genre's makers could create? Pathetic. We should have had better but maybe @Utnayan is right. If you keep feeding inferior talent money and resources, will they ever transcend past their limitations? The evidence points to no.
I lived in rural WV in late 1999. $50 monthly dial up. No one was paying hourly for internet at that time or they were morons. Digital differences Internet usage went from around 40% in 1999 to around 60% in 2001. Internet usage went up to just 63% by 2004. It did climb to around 73% by 2005. The quick and massive growth of the internet actually helped EQ grow much more than it did WoW. Or maybe games were the driving force for fast internet adoption? Either way, the decision by Blizzard to make their game accessible to the masses was very smart and possibly the primary reason for such huge sub rates. I realize why this was harder for EQ but their CS was always terrible. Did you forget how little they gave a damn to fix problems? Broken aspects of their game? Anything beyond pumping out half-assed expansions twice a year? Sorry, bro. I remember EQ including all of the shit.
Your arguments and several others are making my argument for me. EQ wasn't some amazing game. It came out at just the right time with a specific gimmick that helped sell boxes. Lots and lots of people tried it and did not like it enough to stay. They got tired of SOE never fixing shit and pumping out new expansions twice a year while never fixing shit from the original release. Or they just found something they liked better. Either way, a far better game was made by 2004 and EQ never recovered. They had all of the advantages and pissed them away. Blizzard still says, thank you, I'm sure.
Edit- Poor Dullahan doesn't like any facts thrown in the mix.
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