Well, you got the attention of the EQEmu developers, since Secrets linked this thread in our IRC channel! I couldn't help myself from replying here. Sorry in advance for the length of this post. I could probably write an entire book as a response to your question, but I will try to keep it within the limitations of the max post size on these forums (whatever that may be). Assuming you are who you claim to be, Elidroth, it is exciting to see EQLive take interest in the emulator even if only to get a better understanding of why it has any player-base at all considering Live is F2P.
So many topics to touch on...
1. EQNext (not directly related to this topic):
As mentioned in this thread already, it seems like EQNext is taking an amazing leap into player created content to an extent that has not been seen on an MMO level before. If things work out the way they are sounding so far, we may see the first real revolution in the gaming industry since EQ1 hit the market and introduced MMOs to the world. Something that changes the game so much that players logging in for the first time don't even comprehend what is going on at first. I remember being blown away the first time I logged into EQ1. Landing in West Freeport and seeing dozens of players running around and even chatting with me to help me get started. No game I had played prior to that could compare. EQNext (or at least Landmark) has that kind of potential in my mind. It isn't just the building stuff, which we have seen in dozens of Minecraft clones (granted, nowhere near the same level of quality). It is the future additions of being able to create models and even some basic scripting functionality to govern them. It sounds to me like it will be a sandbox that allows players to create their own mini-mmo of their own to an extent. The dev team has already been surprised multiple times with what the players have been able to create, and I think the future holds many more surprises for them. I don't even believe they fully grasp the potential of what they are creating.
I wrote a long-winded post on the old SOE forums back in 2008 (or so) that is no longer available, but covered many of the ideas being put into place for Landmark. It was about player created content in EQ. I almost feel that it was actually read and discussed by the EQNext devs.
2. EQEmulator Centralized Community:
The Everquest Emulator stands out from many other emulators out there. We have a centralized community due to our global Login Server and Forums that allows all players to quickly see what servers are available and how popular they are. Many emulators run individual login servers for each server or small group of servers. That divides up the community and requires more advertising for any particular server to gain a player-base. It also makes it more complicated for players to switch from server to server, so it is less likely that players will try something new. In EQEmu, it is fairly easy to switch between most servers. Even if they require a few custom files to be downloaded for the full experience, at least anyone can try it out easily before deciding if they want to take the extra time to get the custom files. Other emulators also have many different favors of server code, which further divides the community. Without the centralized community of EQEmu, our project would not exist other than the Project 1999 server, which is extremely popular on its own due to the nature of the server. Even though P99 holds the most players by far on a single server for the entire project, the rest of the servers in EQEmu still double (or more) the total EQEmu player-base.
3. EQEmulator Server/Player Types:
Classic:
As mentioned already in this thread; one of the most common types of EQEmu players are those who want to have the nostalgia of reliving their first days in Everquest. This is something they can't do on Live currently. I can't blame them, as I have very fond memories from the good old days in EQ as well. I just don't have the time anymore to invest in it all over again. Also, a big part of what I enjoyed most was the mystery of EQ and exploring the world. Doing it all a second time would not be the same.
God-Mode/Non-Legit:
Many EQEmu players join with the idea of playing on a server in God-Mode. This type of play is of course very short. Players will join a server and use commands to level themselves to max level, and summon the best gear in the game. Then they run round to a few zones they had always wanted to check out, but never had the time to invest to make it to on Live. They will kill a few bosses solo and then leave the server and never return. This type of server is created from time to time, but generally does not last for more than a month before the players and the server owner get tired of this style of play. The only good thing about this type of player is that they may come to our community for God-Mode style play, but end up as permanent players on one of the custom servers that are fast paced but still have enough content to retain them as players for a good amount of time.
Live-Like:
This type of server tries to mimic Live as closely as possible. They generally work their way through populating content in the order that expansions were released, but are fairly far behind Live because they can't keep up with the pace or a paid SOE team. A Live-Like server would have been a good alternative to paying to play on Live before it went F2P. I am not completely sure how they retain decent player numbers since Live is now F2P, but I am sure some of it has to do with community. Once you spend a ton of time building a character somewhere, it is hard to say goodbye and start elsewhere from scratch. This is a very important type of server, as almost every EQEmu server is based off of the database and quests provided by a server of this type.
Custom:
The custom servers of EQEmu are by far my favorite type. I am probably biased because I have ran one for about 6 years. I am not sure you quite understand the extent of how much we can customize the content. It isn't just that some servers allow different expansions, or even different rulesets. Some servers completely redesign the content and story from scratch, only utilizing the existing available models and zones. Many servers have dozens of zones that have been completely respawned manually with different NPCs, quests, tasks, loot tables, scripted events, and so on. There are custom items (different stats from Live), custom spells, AAs, Titles, and just about anything else you can think of other than the models, zones, and icons themselves. We also have custom features that aren't available on Live, or at least that weren't when we first created them. For example, years ago I implemented something we refer to as Saylinks on EQEmu which look like item links in NPC quest text that you can click and it will make your character respond with the appropriate quest text. I believe something similar was added to Live recently (about time!!!).
Custom servers allow the creators to make something fresh, or even simply build upon someone else's ideas to improve game-play (or attempt to do so). Most custom servers are inspired by Live or by other custom servers. They then build upon those ideas to fit the style of their own concept of how it should be. There are many failures due to lack of the skill, time, and persistence that is required to create a lasting project. The few that remain over the years, are all impressive in their own ways.
Nearly every EQEmu player has played on Live at some point in the past. The ones that play on EQEmu Custom servers do so for various reasons, but one of those reasons is to experience something fresh. By joining a custom server, you are once again able to relive that time where the world was unknown and mysterious. Where you don't know all of the good places to hunt, or what the optimal path to level and gear up are, even though you are in the familiar EQ world that you love. It can be like experiencing a new EQ for the first time.
4. EQEmulator as an MMO Engine:
In EQEmu, we are all there because we love Everquest. The cool thing about the emulator is that it allows server owners to create their own world in whatever way they wish while still retaining that cool Evequest feel. Some do take it to extremes, and basically use it as a way to create their own game only using the data from the client to do so. In this case, it is more like an MMO engine similar to the Hero engine, but where most of the work is already done for you. I envision Landmark as being similar to this idea in the end. Players could essentially use it to create their own little section of the world for others to enjoy their vision. There is a 2D IOS version of a similar concept to this in an app called Growtopia. It is very primitive and limited in comparison to how I envision Landmark being in the end, but the basic concept is there. Players get their own little instances of worlds, and they can build it however they like. Many players have developed their own worlds to fit certain types such as the very popular Parkour world where they create courses for players to try to survive their way through it. Players have basically created their own mini-games within a game. I believe there is huge potential in this type of system, which could be heavily expanded on with combat and other common systems.
5. Player Created Content:
All emulators are proof that there is huge untapped potential in player created content. There are many skilled people out there willing to spent endless hours working for free to create something that they believe in and that others can enjoy. Many are able to rival even the top studios in my opinion.
I could line out nearly every aspect of fully implementing a system in EQLive to allow player created content with the flexibility of what we have in the emulator, but that would make this post way too long. Please feel free to contact me if you want a huge write-up on the concept. If implemented correctly, it would probably make the emulator completely obsolete and pointless. Being a part of the emulator team, I definitely do not wish for it to die, but if done right, I think our project would be happy to move under SOE's wings.
Having a system similar to EQEmu that is supported by SOE would be beneficial to both parties. SOE would be able to leverage a development team with a size that they could not otherwise afford. They would also be able to take risks (through player created content) that they could not otherwise justify to the business side of things. In this case, if a player fails to create something great, SOE would be at little-to-no loss. But, if another player is a huge success, SOE would also benefit from that success. The emulator project would benefit by being exposed to a much larger player-base that could easily switch between different servers to find the right fit for them. This would definitely increase the player numbers for every server over what we can currently strive for on eqemulator. The emulator project would also benefit by not having to work to emulate Live or work on compatibility and availability of clients that work with EQEmu. The focus could be moved to purely content generation.
If SOE was willing to share the money that the player created content generates, I can imagine highly organized teams of player content developers working together to create some amazing content. They already have similar stuff in place with the player studio, so I don't think it would be hard to rework that system into something that could cover player created content similar to what is found in EQEmu.
EQEmulator is big enough to take notice of, but our community is still relatively small. Imagine what it could do if a similar project was supported and promoted by SOE. I would not be surprised if it doubled or more the number of players on Live. If done right, it could be a huge success without impacting the existing Everquest players in any way.
My main concern with this system would be the legal aspects and unfortunately I am not very knowledgeable in that. For example; a player who creates a server with content that breaks copy rights (such as using a Starwars theme). I am not really sure how that situation would be dealt with other than maybe having policies in place to restrict this, and maybe a report system where players could report content that breaks policies. The reports would then need to be reviewed and acted upon by an SOE employee.
6. EQEmulator and Money:
Naturally, one would think that players turn to emulators to avoid a subscription fee or other costs from playing on a Live server. This is surely the case for some, but certainly not for all (or even the majority).
As groups become more difficult to find, many players resourt to multi-boxing. As someone who did this back in the subscription days, I can attest that that the cost of doing this is hard to justify. In the new F2P model, I don't really know the details, but I imagine a similar monetary burden for multi-boxers. In the subscription model, I would have loved to have seen a multi-account discount. I am sure that could have been abused to an extent, but it would have gone a long way for multi-boxers IMO. In the F2P model, maybe some similar discounts could be applied (assuming they aren't already, as I don't really know).
On the emulator, there is generally no fee for multi-boxing on servers where it is allowed. Some players box as many as 20+ characters at a time on some emulator servers (we call them Big Boxers). Being able to see more content and progress at a steady rate without having to wait for groups and raids is very desirable to some, and drew them into the EQEmu scene. While you may not want to see that extreme on Live, if you are still generating money from each account, it will limit the players to a reasonable amount of accounts in most cases and still allow extra earnings from them.
Many players prefer to play solo and/or don't have the hardware to support multi-boxing more than a couple of accounts. Some joined because it was free, but many also joined because they wanted to see new and different content or faster drop/leveling rates, or any number of other reasons that make EQEmu stand out from Live. There are also servers that are balanced around solo or small group play, which fits this type of player's style of play.
A large number of these players are willing to spend money even playing on the emulator. Players see the amount of work put into the servers and most are more than happy to support the server they spend so much time on. They aren't just playing there because it is free, which should be abundantly clear now that Live is F2P and EQEmu didn't even take a notable hit to the player-base after that change.
7. Personal Experiences:
My own server has hardly any players on it at this point due to the lack of time that myself and my co-developer have had over the past year or so to continue developing content for it. It was one of the top custom servers for a good amount of time in the past on EQEmu. As I am sure you are very well aware of as a developer/designer, it is very difficult to predict the success of content. We designed much of our content with the idea in mind that our server would have a large player-base that wanted very challenging and unique scripted events. Unfortunately, without the large player-base, the balance of our server is not stable and so it doesn't sustain itself very well. It is in a paradox of not having enough players to properly support the content we created, and without high player numbers it is not easily attracting more players.
I am still very happy to have spent so much time developing it over the years. We have created dozens of unique events and implemented tons of features and ideas that have been used by other servers in the community. I have learned a wide variety of tools and languages such as MySQL, C++, Perl, PHP, HTML, javascript, etc, etc. They have not only been valuable in my ultimate goal of someday creating my own game, but also have been great for my current career. I have created several web-based tools and scripts that increase productivity and performance of my entire project at work.
Again, I am sorry for the length of this post. Believe me when I say that it could have been much longer. Once you get me started, I have trouble stopping! There is so much left to say...
Lastly, I highly recommend checking out a few EQEmu servers if you really want to get an idea of why the emulator is as popular as it is.
