Plans for keeping Live servers "alive" or joining EQ2 and EQ2X population [Archive]

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 06:54 PM

Okay, I know this is an invitation for people to jump in and tell me how much I'm a liar and a fraud, but in the interest of staying open about all this, and because I haven't updated info on this for a while:1) We haven't spent a dime advertising EQ2X yet. We've only had one single PR announcement and we're still in Beta.2) We'll be coming out of Beta for EQ2X soon...at which time we'll finally start advertising.3) We won't know, for a fact, exact population impact until after we start doing that. During beta, there has been a *small amount* of account transferring from EQII Live to EQ2X (we really didn't sell many copy tokens and only a small number of people are cancelling EQII Live to play EQ2X instead)...but the concurrency numbers (number of people playing at the same time) on the Live servers has been steady from pre-EQ2X-launch, despite the small amount of transferred accounts.The results in #3 are pretty much what we expected, but that's why we had the Beta period...so that we could test those assumptions. If our assumptions were incorrect, then we would have needed to adjust stuff quickly before we could go forward with EQ2X. But that hasn't needed to happen yet.When we go forward with advertising, we expect to see a population increase on EQ2X and also on the Live servers. Granted, they won't be the same size of increases, but we should see pop increases on both services.And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.(Tiny trivia fun fact: A large majority of the accounts playing EQ2X beta have never created had an EQII character created on their account. So we *are* seeing new players come to the franchise to give it a try. This bodes well for population on both services after we start advertising.)That's how things stand right now. We won't know factual impact on any of this until a month or so after we take the Beta tag off of EQ2X. But we are cautiously optimistic on this for both services so far.

Aule

09-17-2010, 07:08 PM

When should we expect to see more detailed information on server merges? Such as which servers will be merging together (or better yet, merge them all)? What sort of timeline should we expect before these changes will take place? What is the status of necessary hardware upgrades? etc

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 07:14 PM

<cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>When should we expect to see more detailed information on server merges? Such as which servers will be merging together (or better yet, merge them all)? What sort of timeline should we expect before these changes will take place? What is the status of necessary hardware upgrades? etc </blockquote>Honest answer: I don't know yet. I am trying to get budgets approved for the hardware upgrades. It is not a speedy process due to SOE having so many other irons in the fire right now. But I'm trying to move it forward as quickly as possible.

Coho1

09-17-2010, 07:18 PM

I'd like a merge with EQ2X but I can see the massive plat influx from live really screwing the emerging economy up.

kiku

09-17-2010, 07:27 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>Okay, I know this is an invitation for people to jump in and tell me how much I'm a liar and a fraud, but in the interest of staying open about all this, and because I haven't updated info on this for a while:1) We haven't spent a dime advertising EQ2X yet. We've only had one single PR announcement and we're still in Beta.2) We'll be coming out of Beta for EQ2X soon...at which time we'll finally start advertising.3) We won't know, for a fact, exact population impact until after we start doing that. During beta, there has been a *small amount* of account transferring from EQII Live to EQ2X (we really didn't sell many copy tokens and only a small number of people are cancelling EQII Live to play EQ2X instead)...but the concurrency numbers (number of people playing at the same time) on the Live servers has been steady from pre-EQ2X-launch, despite the small amount of transferred accounts.The results in #3 are pretty much what we expected, but that's why we had the Beta period...so that we could test those assumptions. If our assumptions were incorrect, then we would have needed to adjust stuff quickly before we could go forward with EQ2X. But that hasn't needed to happen yet.When we go forward with advertising, we expect to see a population increase on EQ2X and also on the Live servers. Granted, they won't be the same size of increases, but we should see pop increases on both services.And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.(Tiny trivia fun fact: A large majority of the accounts playing EQ2X beta have never created had an EQII character created on their account. So we *are* seeing new players come to the franchise to give it a try. This bodes well for population on both services after we start advertising.)That's how things stand right now. We won't know factual impact on any of this until a month or so after we take the Beta tag off of EQ2X. But we are cautiously optimistic on this for both services so far.</blockquote>With the talk of merger's what about The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. Any plans for this? Wll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 07:32 PM

<cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)

kiku

09-17-2010, 07:36 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>Thanks for the reply and ""if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" Is so funny. There is more selling on a normal server then LG one lol. The normal servers attitude on that aways makes me laugh.

Dreadpatch

09-17-2010, 07:37 PM

Smokejumper- Thank you for taking the time to respond to this and provide us with some info. I can't speak for everyone else, but I really appreciate it personally. I know the populations appear steady according to your numbers, but my server has been horribly dead from a chat/pug standpoint the last month or so. I have friends and guildmates, so it's not the end of the world, but man would some increased population be really nice. Please do not refrain from posting because some of us can be a little passionate and nasty at times (myself included). It really goes a long way whenever we see that you took the time to give us some info. Please keep us informed, that's really what most of us are looking for. We really enjoy this game and have put a lot of time and effort into it, so unfortunately these pixels mean something to us no matter how lame that might seem. Regards, Elu

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 07:39 PM

<cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>Thanks for the reply and ""if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" Is so funny. There is more selling on a normal server then LG one lol. The normal servers attitude on that aways makes me laugh.</blockquote>Well, let's just say that LG activity has been pretty low. There's not much to be annoyed by if we merged Bazaar and Vox into other servers, but it's still an issue anyway. Some folks have a very low tolerance for that sort of thing, and that's their right. And besides, there are legal issues we have to hammer out anyway.

denmom

09-17-2010, 07:47 PM

Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 07:51 PM

<cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.

Seffrid

09-17-2010, 07:56 PM

We all know that if SOE now does something that it always said it wouldn't do, then it will lose another chunk of its already dwindling credibilty, not to mention another chunk of its established playerbase. Hence RMT servers of both past and present kinds can never be merged with the traditional Live servers unless there's a willingness to lose a massive number of players as a result.Personally I'd be interested in knowing what the merger plans are for Splitpaw, is it intended to leave it alone or merge it with Runnyeye? I see no reason for the latter option.I think that too much reliance can be placed on the theory that we all want more people to run around with. I'm personally a player who only solos or duos and I'm not interested in losing my characters' names as the price to be paid for making my server more crowded. In any event, wherever my characters go and at whatever levels, there are usually other players around. Killing off the cities through the excess development of guildhalls, removing the most popular starting areas and increasing the gameworld with every expansion are the things that cause the game to feel empty at times. Merging servers will simply make the more popular areas over-crowded without doing anything to boost the less popular areas. That will only be resolved by adding new content within and directly off those less popular areas, rather than adding wholly new areas a long way away from them.

denmom

09-17-2010, 07:58 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote>Given that DCUO is due to release soon, I can speculate what splash they hope to make soon.Given that Clone Wars Adventures just released live, hopefully some will come over from there.And given that in the last six years I've yet to see any advertising for EQ2 anywhere, despite begging from the customers, I have to say that I doubt there will be any time soon.Such a shame. This game deserves better.Thank you for your quick reply. I appreciate it.

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 08:00 PM

<cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote>Given that DCUO is due to release soon, I can speculate what splash they hope to make soon.Given that Clone Wars Adventures just released live, hopefully some will come over from there.And given that in the last six years I've yet to see any advertising for EQ2 anywhere, despite begging from the customers, I have to say that I doubt there will be any time soon.Such a shame. This game deserves better.Thank you for your quick reply. I appreciate it.</blockquote>Although I agree that marketing cash is being spent in those areas, I was specifically saying an EQII-splash. We're getting some marketing love soon. They're still debating the size of the splash though.

lemey

09-17-2010, 08:36 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote>Given that DCUO is due to release soon, I can speculate what splash they hope to make soon.Given that Clone Wars Adventures just released live, hopefully some will come over from there.And given that in the last six years I've yet to see any advertising for EQ2 anywhere, despite begging from the customers, I have to say that I doubt there will be any time soon.Such a shame. This game deserves better.Thank you for your quick reply. I appreciate it.</blockquote>Although I agree that marketing cash is being spent in those areas, I was specifically saying an EQII-splash. We're getting some marketing love soon. They're still debating the size of the splash though.</blockquote>i'll belive it when i see it, which being a euro i wont anyway......

Dethdlr

09-17-2010, 08:36 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>Although I agree that marketing cash is being spent in those areas, I was specifically saying an EQII-splash. We're getting some marketing love soon. They're still debating the size of the splash though.</blockquote>1. Ask them to calculate what they think is a reasonable amount to spend on advertising the SOE flagship game: EQ2.2. Ask them why that amount is lower than the cost of lunch at McDonald's, then ask them to move the decimal point many positions to the right.3. Ask them to multiply that by 6 to figure out how much SHOULD have been spent during the last 6 years.4. Ask them to subtract the amount that actually WAS spent during the last 6 years.5. Ask them to spend the remaining amount on advertising and make a tsunami sized splash.Alternative:1. Ask them to place their right hand, palm up, on their right shoulder.2. Ask them to place their left hand, palm up, on their left shoulder.3. Thrust both hands skyward at the same time while yelling POP!4. Tell them that now that they have their heads out of their rear end, advertise this game like it deserves to be advertised. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" />The alternate method probably won't go over that well but you may want to keep it handy just in case. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

snowli

09-17-2010, 08:40 PM

Smokejumper,<ol><li>I would be extremely surprised if most of the new players of eq2 over the years (new in a new to SoE sense) didn't come from buzz from the live-server community itself, marketing has been largely non-existant, so keeping us engaged and in the loop is extremely practical, not just for keeping existing subs, but for keeping positive word of mouth amongst the established pay-to-play communities.</li><li>You can't take our subs and spend them all on building EQ2X instead, please never again do another useless contentless GU with only annoying & pointless changes and nothing your live subscribers want.</li><li>How do you deal with european servers who may have population issues if merged? Getting a lot more patches in prime time is a serious issue, one wants to be able to use a service one pays for.</li><li>On the european side, does it ever get brought up internally that this SOE blinkerview bubble that EU can't be fully worthwhile/profitable ever get burst by the fact blizzard makes as much or more money in the EU with wow than they do in the states? Fixing your marketing in the EU could reap huge rewards, with no coding or dev time needed at all.</li><li>Whilst more info is always better, it still appears extremely nebulous how EQ2X is supposed to lead to any positive population influx for eq2live, all factors currently visible are only drain factors.</li></ol>

Dethdlr

09-17-2010, 08:52 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Whilst more info is always better, it still appears extremely nebulous how EQ2X is supposed to lead to any positive population influx for eq2live, all factors currently visible are only drain factors.</li></ol></blockquote>Here is my guess. Lets say EQ2X draws in X amount of brand new players. Of those new players, 0.1% of them look at the matrix of advantages/features/etc., decide that they would be better off on the EQ2Live servers, and decide to start playing over there instead. That's 0.1% of X new players that wouldn't have started playing on EQ2Live without EQ2X. Not saying I agree one way or another, but I'm guessing this is the thought process of how EQ2X can possibly help EQ2Live populations.

Jeepned2

09-17-2010, 08:53 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.

Geothe

09-17-2010, 09:11 PM

<cite>Jeepned2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.</blockquote>That is characters made since the game as created. This game has been out for 6 years. The vast majority of those are from completely inactive accounts.Dont try and crunch numbers you dont understand ;p

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 09:18 PM

<cite>Dethdlr@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>Although I agree that marketing cash is being spent in those areas, I was specifically saying an EQII-splash. We're getting some marketing love soon. They're still debating the size of the splash though.</blockquote>1. Ask them to calculate what they think is a reasonable amount to spend on advertising the SOE flagship game: EQ2.2. Ask them why that amount is lower than the cost of lunch at McDonald's, then ask them to move the decimal point many positions to the right.3. Ask them to multiply that by 6 to figure out how much SHOULD have been spent during the last 6 years.4. Ask them to subtract the amount that actually WAS spent during the last 6 years.5. Ask them to spend the remaining amount on advertising and make a tsunami sized splash.Alternative:1. Ask them to place their right hand, palm up, on their right shoulder.2. Ask them to place their left hand, palm up, on their left shoulder.3. Thrust both hands skyward at the same time while yelling POP!4. Tell them that now that they have their heads out of their rear end, advertise this game like it deserves to be advertised. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" />The alternate method probably won't go over that well but you may want to keep it handy just in case. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>I'll send that right over. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

ArivenGemini

09-17-2010, 09:21 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>(Tiny trivia fun fact: A large majority of the accounts playing EQ2X beta have never created had an EQII character created on their account. So we *are* seeing new players come to the franchise to give it a try. This bodes well for population on both services after we start advertising.)</blockquote>Not to sound confrontational here, but creating an account is trivial... if I tried out eq2x I would create a new station account to do it with, and its not hard to see others doing the same, especially after some of the issues that happened to people who tried eq2x on their regular account..Are you taking that into account? i.e. trying to at least cross reference at least -some- of the crossovers that happen that way by checking email addresses, etc?

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 09:22 PM

<cite>Dethdlr@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Whilst more info is always better, it still appears extremely nebulous how EQ2X is supposed to lead to any positive population influx for eq2live, all factors currently visible are only drain factors.</li></ol></blockquote>Here is my guess. Lets say EQ2X draws in X amount of brand new players. Of those new players, 0.1% of them look at the matrix of advantages/features/etc., decide that they would be better off on the EQ2Live servers, and decide to start playing over there instead. That's 0.1% of X new players that wouldn't have started playing on EQ2Live without EQ2X. Not saying I agree one way or another, but I'm guessing this is the thought process of how EQ2X can possibly help EQ2Live populations.</blockquote>The concept you're stating is pretty close. I hope the percentage is extremely conservative though. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Once we get the pipeline of folks coming to check things out, it's easy to experiment with "flow diversions" to ensure we get the behavior we want.

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 09:23 PM

<cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>(Tiny trivia fun fact: A large majority of the accounts playing EQ2X beta have never created had an EQII character created on their account. So we *are* seeing new players come to the franchise to give it a try. This bodes well for population on both services after we start advertising.)</blockquote>Not to sound confrontational here, but creating an account is trivial... if I tried out eq2x I would create a new station account to do it with, and its not hard to see others doing the same, especially after some of the issues that happened to people who tried eq2x on their regular account..Are you taking that into account? i.e. trying to at least cross reference at least -some- of the crossovers that happen that way by checking email addresses, etc?</blockquote>It doesn't happen as often as you'd think. That's one of the reasons we allowed /claim items to work on EQ2X. Players have incentive to utilize the same account on both services. Plus, we have other insights as well.

ArivenGemini

09-17-2010, 09:24 PM

<cite>Jeepned2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.</blockquote>eq2 players stats are missing a crucial piece.. active accounts. I have 4 accounts with about 22 alts.. but I only currently have one account on... but the alts from the other 3 accounts still show up on eq2players.

SmokeJumper

09-17-2010, 09:32 PM

<cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Jeepned2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.</blockquote>eq2 players stats are missing a crucial piece.. active accounts. I have 4 accounts with about 22 alts.. but I only currently have one account on... but the alts from the other 3 accounts still show up on eq2players.</blockquote>Ack. Yeah...I wish that math was correct (oh, how I wish it was), but it's not even close to reality.Sure, we might have had something like a half-million accounts created in the lifetime of the product (probably more), but no way are those all active right now.Some percentage of those created accounts are Live subscribers right now. Then we also have the EQ2X service to attract the players out there that *won't* subscribe immediately.Most of the players that come to play EQ2X would never have come to play EQII at all because they won't commit to a subscription. (Even though we offer a Gold membership, the percentage of folks that take us up on it is small.)On-line products are very interesting businesses to run, but they're not simple. Not at all. And dev teams are *expensive*. (Plus all the sundry expenses like servers, rack space, bandwidth, ludicrously large monthly electrical bills, etc.) Add marketing, customer service, QA time, etc...and huge amounts of money get subtracted from that monthly income.You'd be surprised at how low the profit margin can be. Don't get me wrong. We're in the *business* of making entertainment and it's my job to make sure we don't go into the red, but we spend a LOT of what we bring in so that we can keep making the game bigger and better (and more attractive) over time.

hoosierdaddy

09-17-2010, 09:39 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service.</blockquote>Thank you for unambiguously answering this question and hopefully putting some of the matter to rest.

Mellia

09-17-2010, 09:43 PM

Smokejumper - three things.First, YOU'RE ALIVE!!!! I was getting worried. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Nice to see you here, in any case.Second, Does SOE give any thought to the reputation it has earned in changing games out from underneath players? Sure, you can make a strong argument that SOMEthing had to be done to keep EQ2 off life support, but the communication about this decision, particularly in regard to how you will, in fact, keep the original servers going, has been, ummm, not good. There are already a LOT of people who flat out will not play an SOE game because of SWG. I would have thought TPTB at SOE would have learned something from that experience. Speaking as a former SOE fangrrrrl (you do NOT want to know how many accounts I have for EQ2 and SWG - no really, you don't), I find my immense irritation with SOE over this debacle a tad discouraging, and I do not seem to be alone.Third, If it truly IS SOE's intention to keep the Live Servers actually, ya know, alive (and I will take your word for it that it is) why, oh why, have you taken so many steps to ensure just the opposite? Things like killing our free trial and failing to allow transfers from the Extended Servers to the Live Ones?

Nijia

09-17-2010, 09:54 PM

<cite>Dethdlr@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote>Of those new players, 0.1% of them look at the matrix of advantages/features/etc., decide that they would be better off on the EQ2Live servers,(..)</blockquote>I'm really curious as to why anybody would want to go from eq2x to the walled gardens that live has become? Live has all races unlocked on the basic subscription, that's about all I can think of. I just bought one race pack, and took the gold subscription which is exactly the same price than live.Why would you be better off on a live server? I've played eq2 for about 4 months and all I remember from live is grouping with people who already know every nook and cranny of every dungeon, guildies who /mentor all the time to play with alts and new players like me because there is no other option. Running ,running, and running some more after people who can play the game eyes closed, who already have a level 90 guild and so on.As a fairly newb EQ2 player myself, I can't think for the life of me why a new player would want to move to the live servers. Please enlighten me!Because the mature community? It's the same on eq2x, people are nice. There's more sillyness on the world chat but you can turn it off if you don't want to listen to the teenagers raving in the afternoon.Because it costs less? Putting aside the initial cost if you really need to unlock all races, you need to buy nothing more if you dont want to, and AFAIK you have 100% identical content.EQ2X is the better option for new players, bar none. Guilds start a new, they actually can help their guilds level and experience the content with other people discovering the game. All I can think of is live now is for people who live in the past and / or just can't move on with the times.Me, I don't really need to buy any commodity items from the market place but why not? It's certainly a possibility. If I see a nice mount or hat I could see myself spending a few euros to get it. I most likely won't, so in the end I pay the same subscription amount but I am on a server that will see a continuous stream of new players excited about the game.Thumbs down at SOE however for making live players pay so much to copy a character. And will you please adapt the price to the character level ? There's no way I was going to pay 2x35 €to copy my level 37/34 chars. If you asked 35 € for a level 90, 20 € for a level 50 and so on, 10 € for a level 1-30 character and so on, I would have preferred to copy my characters.

hoosierdaddy

09-17-2010, 10:07 PM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm really curious as to why anybody would want to go from eq2x to the walled gardens that live has become.[blah, blah, blah]</blockquote>Seriously, do you cut and paste this tired metaphor into every EQ2 Live thread?If EQ2X is so much better than EQ2 Live, then why are you still trolling these forums with lists as to why one is better than the other instead of playing EQ2X or posting in the EQ2X forums?It's obvious that you've given up on the Live servers, so why continue posting where Live server issues are being discussed?

Rijacki

09-17-2010, 11:36 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>When we go forward with advertising, we expect to see a population increase on EQ2X and also on the Live servers. Granted, they won't be the same size of increases, but we should see pop increases on both services.</blockquote>How? The URL that's on ALL of the media currently being published (any videos, including the Gnoob ones, all emailers, etc) go to a page which has a single very non-descript button low on the page (I have to scroll down unless I have my browser in full screen on a large monitor) labeled "Purchase EQII Subscription" with zero information any benefits of a subscription vs EQ2x or even that a subscription is on differen servers than EQ2x with the full page being as flashily pointed toward EQ2x as possible.The ONLY place there is even a half-arsed side by side of EQ2x and EQ2 Live is as a splash screen for Everquest2.com which is NOT a URL on ANY published information about the game right now. That splash screen, too, rarely shows up for anyone unless it is their very first ever visit to Everquest2.com. AND, that has a "SHOP" button for subscription with a "Play Now" for EQ2x.There have been at least 2 emailings, maybe more, to random current and former players all about the benefits of EQ2x and/or how it is now part of Station Access. I'm sure that's not referred to as "marketting" though.How can you fathom there will be a pop increase for EQ2 Live? a trickle of a handful of players who jump through a bunch of hoops and poke at stuff blindly to find information about the Live servers, sure.. I guess that could be called an increase. +1 is an increase but rather paultry when you're considering hundreds or more.Look for yourself at the URLs on all the media and then look for yourself what information you can find on that URL (and the utter lack of links to anywhere other than EQ2x and EQ2x information.

Madmonte

09-18-2010, 01:30 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>When should we expect to see more detailed information on server merges? Such as which servers will be merging together (or better yet, merge them all)? What sort of timeline should we expect before these changes will take place? What is the status of necessary hardware upgrades? etc </blockquote>Honest answer: I don't know yet. I am trying to get budgets approved for the hardware upgrades. It is not a speedy process due to SOE having so many other irons in the fire right now. But I'm trying to move it forward as quickly as possible.</blockquote>Read the 12 page long thread I created a while back on PVP forums titled "Death of Vox Imminent?", if you want to know how every player on Vox feels right now, and is talking about in open chat every day. Vox is hanging on by a thread praying for this merger process to be speeded up. Look through the 1-9 chat logs for that server for the last week alone if you don't believe me.

Ceeamee

09-18-2010, 02:00 AM

I'm one of the biggest advocates for allowing people to have a choice on which set of servers they'd like to play on. I'm also fearful of any new players that are just coming to the game, and what they will think when they log on and see some of the population issues on the low pop servers. Then they go to EQ2X and see loads of people, and think that it's a better deal. Then they have to start buying race packs and all of the little extras if they want to be able to play the game past certain points. It just rubs me the wrong way.I honestly never really cared about the Marketplace, or if it got some extra luvin every month. I buy things off of there if there's something that I want, and I don't even think twice. Cool furniture for my house? Excellent! I'll take the set! My Fae needs a Kelethin set of armor to be a cheerleader for the teeny people? Hook me up! But I won't be sucked into a HEAVY RMT game again. I did it on Gaia and I allowed it to siphon cash out of my pockets for a couple of months. Shame on me. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Even still, I think that there should be some way to merge the two services together so that those of us that have been loyal SOE fans for so long can reap the benefits of a stable community. Where you can run down the streets in any town and have other players around. I've made some of my best friends in EQ1 and EQ2.

Ralpmet

09-18-2010, 02:09 AM

pantherr

09-18-2010, 02:37 AM

<cite>Ralpmet wrote:</cite><blockquote>Second off, superbowl ad to make up for the years of lack of advertisement <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" /> Now that would be a splash.</blockquote>+ 1000000

Dreyco

09-18-2010, 02:59 AM

<cite>pantherr wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ralpmet wrote:</cite><blockquote>Second off, superbowl ad to make up for the years of lack of advertisement <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" /> Now that would be a splash.</blockquote>+ 1000000</blockquote>Don't I wish <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> If it wasn't the most expensive time to air an add. So many companies are shut out of super bowl ads except for the largest of the large because they're the only ones who have the dollar to do so.

Gaige

09-18-2010, 03:06 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>And dev teams are *expensive*.</blockquote>Well, I'm sure some are. EQ2's is rather small, and most of the QA staff has always been from a temporary agency in San Diego.I'm fairly confident when I say that most of EQ2's profit goes to funding the development of other games, especially Free Realms.

Mythal_EQ2

09-18-2010, 03:19 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>3) We won't know, for a fact, exact population impact until after we start doing that. During beta, there has been a *small amount* of account transferring from EQII Live to EQ2X (we really didn't sell many copy tokens and only a small number of people are cancelling EQII Live to play EQ2X instead)...but the concurrency numbers (number of people playing at the same time) on the Live servers has been steady from pre-EQ2X-launch, despite the small amount of transferred accounts.The results in #3 are pretty much what we expected, but that's why we had the Beta period...so that we could test those assumptions. If our assumptions were incorrect, then we would have needed to adjust stuff quickly before we could go forward with EQ2X. But that hasn't needed to happen yet.</blockquote>Underlined and bolded... therein lies the problem with your data gathering.Why would any current EQ2Live player choose to abandon the majority of their hard-won items, houses, money, etc to pay $10 more than what it would cost them to transfer completely to a different Live server, for a mere (and incomplete) copy to a beta server?You can't seriously take data like that into account.The moment you allow full moves from the Live servers to the X servers, only then will you be able to see how many people decide to stay on Live and how many don't. Or, alternatively, the moment you allow full copies (not this "you lose everything you're not wearing" crap).

Ralpmet

09-18-2010, 04:25 AM

<cite>Daervon@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>3) We won't know, for a fact, exact population impact until after we start doing that. During beta, there has been a *small amount* of account transferring from EQII Live to EQ2X (we really didn't sell many copy tokens and only a small number of people are cancelling EQII Live to play EQ2X instead)...but the concurrency numbers (number of people playing at the same time) on the Live servers has been steady from pre-EQ2X-launch, despite the small amount of transferred accounts.The results in #3 are pretty much what we expected, but that's why we had the Beta period...so that we could test those assumptions. If our assumptions were incorrect, then we would have needed to adjust stuff quickly before we could go forward with EQ2X. But that hasn't needed to happen yet.</blockquote>Underlined and bolded... therein lies the problem with your data gathering.Why would any current EQ2Live player choose to abandon the majority of their hard-won items, houses, money, etc to pay $10 more than what it would cost them to transfer completely to a different Live server, for a mere (and incomplete) copy to a beta server?You can't seriously take data like that into account.The moment you allow full moves from the Live servers to the X servers, only then will you be able to see how many people decide to stay on Live and how many don't. Or, alternatively, the moment you allow full copies (not this "you lose everything you're not wearing" crap).</blockquote>Maybe that's why the ""You lose everything you're not wearing" crap" is inplace. Idunno I might just be giving credit where credit is due in the department of thinking ahead there.

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-18-2010, 05:32 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.</blockquote>Just don't make antonia bayle a regular server please. The whole reason everyone i know on AB plays on AB is becuase it's a RP server. If you must merge anything with it, only merge lucan dlere and keep it a RP server. LD has a small population compared to AB. While some folks think it might be best to leave them as they are, if there is a need to merge them with anything, it should be with each other. Also don't get rid of the pvp server, because we know what kind of drama that will stir up...

MurFalad

09-18-2010, 06:25 AM

Can we get marketting to look at UK and the rest of Europe? Especially with DC Heroes online launching it should be an ideal way to get all the other SOE titles trojan horsed into international distributors (with EQ2 being the best selling PC game for 2 weeks of 2010 it should sell itself to be honest!), and for MMO populations Europe should be sitting at 14 or so servers compared to the US looking at the potential sub base.Also, if marketting are going to do some online ads can they take a look at the excellent Eve adverts (I do not play that game, but its clear they make the game sound exciting and enticing with beautiful classy artwork), just no more luminous coloured dishwasher powder style ones please.

Kordran

09-18-2010, 07:19 AM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm really curious as to why anybody would want to go from eq2x to the walled gardens that live has become? Live has all races unlocked on the basic subscription, that's about all I can think of. I just bought one race pack, and took the gold subscription which is exactly the same price than live.</blockquote>In a word? Raiding. While I don't doubt that there will be a few raiding guilds on EQ2X, it's really not a very good environment for it because (as SJ stated) most of those players are Bronze/Silver. Any raiding guild would be limited to recruiting only those who have Gold/Platinum subscriptions, and that pool is going to be very small. Most raiding guilds on Live have a tough time recruiting skilled players; it'll be that much harder where a majority of the population can't even wear legendary gear, let alone wear fabled and be able to scribe master spells.There's also the reality that most of the players on EQ2X are going to be casual, ranging from a few hours a week to maybe an hour or two a day. They're simply not going to have the time and committment required to seriously raid the high-end content in the game. So if you really want to experience the complete game, not just a portion of it, the Live servers are really the only option.

Munu

09-18-2010, 08:32 AM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dethdlr@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote>Of those new players, 0.1% of them look at the matrix of advantages/features/etc., decide that they would be better off on the EQ2Live servers,(..)</blockquote>I'm really curious as to why anybody would want to go from eq2x to the walled gardens that live has become? Live has all races unlocked on the basic subscription, that's about all I can think of. I just bought one race pack, and took the gold subscription which is exactly the same price than live.Why would you be better off on a live server? I've played eq2 for about 4 months and all I remember from live is grouping with people who already know every nook and cranny of every dungeon, guildies who /mentor all the time to play with alts and new players like me because there is no other option. Running ,running, and running some more after people who can play the game eyes closed, who already have a level 90 guild and so on.As a fairly newb EQ2 player myself, I can't think for the life of me why a new player would want to move to the live servers. Please enlighten me!Because the mature community? It's the same on eq2x, people are nice. There's more sillyness on the world chat but you can turn it off if you don't want to listen to the teenagers raving in the afternoon.Because it costs less? Putting aside the initial cost if you really need to unlock all races, you need to buy nothing more if you dont want to, and AFAIK you have 100% identical content.EQ2X is the better option for new players, bar none. Guilds start a new, they actually can help their guilds level and experience the content with other people discovering the game. All I can think of is live now is for people who live in the past and / or just can't move on with the times.Me, I don't really need to buy any commodity items from the market place but why not? It's certainly a possibility. If I see a nice mount or hat I could see myself spending a few euros to get it. I most likely won't, so in the end I pay the same subscription amount but I am on a server that will see a continuous stream of new players excited about the game.Thumbs down at SOE however for making live players pay so much to copy a character. And will you please adapt the price to the character level ? There's no way I was going to pay 2x35 €to copy my level 37/34 chars. If you asked 35 € for a level 90, 20 € for a level 50 and so on, 10 € for a level 1-30 character and so on, I would have preferred to copy my characters.</blockquote>You are experiencing a new server/player experience, and there is no doubt it is huge fun to explore a new game with folks your own level and be a ppart of levelling up a guild etc. You have a year... if that. Make the most of it. New doesn't stay new for very long. Your server will soon be full of lvl 90 chars running alts through dungeons in exactly the same way as live atm.The only problem being... then you'll be lvl 90, paying through the teeth to play your char the way you want and to equip your alts. If the current trend continues and most players on ur server have silver/bronze subs then there will be diffiiculty raiding and grouping for your end game. A lack of tradeskillers to make you some MC stuff for your alts to level with. meaning you will most lileky need to buy it with SC. Levelling your guild will get harder and harder as it gets nearner 90, and A guild hall? How many are gonna stick around long enough to actually donate status etc? Are you gonna transfer over to the live servers where there are more options for the same subscription? NO.. because you can't!

Nijia

09-18-2010, 09:20 AM

Off topic, apologies.

Detor

09-18-2010, 09:34 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, let's just say that LG activity has been pretty low. There's not much to be annoyed by if we merged Bazaar and Vox into other servers, but it's still an issue anyway. Some folks have a very low tolerance for that sort of thing, and that's their right. And besides, there are legal issues we have to hammer out anyway.</blockquote>It sounds like you're heavily leaning towards just closing Livegamer altogether. If that is the case what about those (even if a small amount) that do use it sometimes? Will they have no choice but to go back to the underground market for whatever server they get merged into? (Presumably it wouldn't be a choice if you want to be moved or not)Or - are you thinking of a split method where maybe LG is on EQ2X (since people already are fine with buying things there, and really the audience is more likely to use Livegamer) as a subscription level perk (maybe even convince some people not to quit if they go to subscribe to sell their character, stick around a month and decide to stay) and those that don't want to be sent to EQ2X LG would be automatically merged onto a non LG server?

Beef_Supre

09-18-2010, 09:40 AM

<cite>Eschia@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.</blockquote>Just don't make antonia bayle a regular server please. The whole reason everyone i know on AB plays on AB is becuase it's a RP server. If you must merge anything with it, only merge lucan dlere and keep it a RP server. LD has a small population compared to AB. While some folks think it might be best to leave them as they are, if there is a need to merge them with anything, it should be with each other. Also don't get rid of the pvp server, because we know what kind of drama that will stir up...</blockquote>I would actually love to see the two RPing populations merged.. and AB turned into 'the high population server' or something more catchy. AB has Rpers, but they aren't the majority, sadly.As a RPer in a RPing guild, I know we'd jump at the oppurtunity to move to a new all-in-one RPing server, provided names were handled fairly (meaning, whoever has the most play time). I have some friends on Lucan I'd love to play with, and a single RPing server where all the game's population of that type actually gathers would be GREAT.Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-18-2010, 10:35 AM

<cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote>Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?</blockquote>Definitely. A RP only server would be great. Of course "some" players will complain and yell at me, but PvP types get their own server that is for their play style ONLY. It's not "preferred" like ours. If they pulled that, the pvpers would be all over the devs "why can't i kill them? It's not fair!". At least it's not like vanguard where they merged the servers and got rid of the RP tags, making all the servers plain servers. The RP community in that game pretty much either died or became so recluse you don't know they exist after that.

Andok

09-18-2010, 01:39 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote> the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.</blockquote>Please don't lump all of us rational folks in with the rabid anti-RMT people. I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.

Beef_Supre

09-18-2010, 02:23 PM

WeatherMan

09-18-2010, 02:47 PM

<cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote> the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.</blockquote>Please don't lump all of us rational folks in with the rabid anti-RMT people. I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.</blockquote>QFTAm I crazy about RMT? Not really - but in the grand scheme of things, it isn't anything to get worked up over. I'm not going to pay good money for something I can have made by a crafter, or that I can quest for, but if someone else wants to spend their cash to do it, I couldn't care less, really. Knock yourself out - it's your wallet.Buying for plat isn't really all that different - all you have to do is grind trash for it. And if you earned it the non-RMT route, that's just a feather in your cap.I always get a kick out of people who endlessly weep and boo-hoo over things like "They let him BUY a slot in a raid to get his MYTHICAL *sputter, sputter* - what WERE they thinking?!!" He (or she) wanted their &^%$# Mythical, and they found a way to get it - people need to get over it, and get over themselves. It is a truism that, aside from family and friends, no one in the real world really gives a rip what anyone else thinks - and EQ2 is no different. The "You only need this if you're a raider (or whatever), so you shouldn't have it otherwise" mentality is just socially autistic - not that anyone will give a rip what I think (and rightly so).I used my 'free' Gold membership to check out EQ2x - and there IS a rather impressive population. I'm just curious to see how long it takes for the novelty to wear off.

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-18-2010, 03:05 PM

Based on the fanfaire feedback and the people i know on AB, a lot of people don't like RMT. I once bought plat for EQ1 about 8 years ago. That plat didn't help me in the long run. Sure i got some decent stuff from the bazaar, but the "good" stuff is nodrop from dungeons. I was still not the "uber" character i was hoping to be. When i look back on this today, it feel it was a huge mistake. I only bought plat 1 time, but i feel like i helped cause the inflation of the game's economy. Every since then i have been earning my way to the top on every character i make. Prior to that moment I always wondered why people who worked hard to get something, get all worked up over someone else getting it handed to them for free or pays for it straight up. These days i understand. It's a mixture of jealousy and nostalgia. I feel it myself from time to time. For example the carpet quest in sinking sands. My original toon had a difficult time doing that when it was new. Nowadays my alts can breeze through it. It's no longer an accomplishment. It's handed to me.Not only that but theres better mounts you can get from station cash... This is the reason so many people are scared the marketplace being inflated with helpful items, would hurt the game in the long run. In fact when the marketplace was first introduced, nobody i talked to about it wanted it. Some of the recent additions to it only spark that negative feeling they originally had, once more. People will not be earning things, paying other players to build them, and wont be raiding to get them if its all available on the marketplace. The whole "work with the community" aspect i always thought this game was all about, would be a farce. What would be the point of playing if the only thing you gotta do is pay to be awesome? Thats my only concern. I'm sure i will get flamed for this, but whatever. It's my opinion, and how i truly feel. Excuse me for caring about the game i pay my hard earned money to play. Of course i wont get mad at smokejumper for doing this, but i would no longer care about this game. I've seen this happen to other MMOs before, and it always ends badly...

Kordran

09-18-2010, 03:33 PM

<cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>New doesn't stay new for very long. Your server will soon be full of lvl 90 chars running alts through dungeons in exactly the same way as live atm.</blockquote>Actually, I kind of doubt that'll be the case. They'd basically be limited to the contested Hole, and the Library, Conservatory and Demitrik's instances. With a group in all mastercrafted gear with adepts, it'd be tough and anything other than spells that would drop would be unusable by them. For the most part, the majority of T9 players on EQ2X are only going to see the solo content there. Vigilant? Labs? Cella? Palace? They'd be destroyed by the trash mobs, let alone even have a shot at killing any of the named.So, their options are going to be (A) as you pointed out, upgrade to a Gold subscription and pay more money than what people on the standard servers are paying for, for the same thing; (B) congratulate themselves on soloing from 70 to 90 (since there's very little group content outside of instances after level 70), and immediately create a new character and start leveling up again. My guess is that a vast majority of them are going to choose option B. Which means the practical reality is that the EQ2X is likely going to be filled with perma-lowbies. Even if they do decide to go with option A, they're going to find very few people to actually play with at the level cap.Right now, a lot of the players there (including some EQ2 vets) think they've found the land of milk and honey. But I predict that's not going to last, and you're going to find increasing dissatisfaction with the service as the EQ2X population ages and finds that more and more of the game's content is off-limits to them unless they spend more and more money. So, over here we can wait and watch as the "hey, this is absolutely fantastic, I'm loving it!" crowd eventually picks up their torches and pitchforks and starts demanding that SOE allow them to transfer their characters to the standard servers where they can actually play the end-game content.

Hyst

09-18-2010, 04:10 PM

The marketing plan will be only for NA, or the some others regions.Because the in France we are in pain to find a box still the beginning, and retailer dont know everquest. Is was a disater with Ubisoft, we think Koch media didnt do as bad as Ubi, but they did. The marketing is near the zero, for SF i didnt see advertasing or an article about it on major video game web site.So, for me the first step is video game journalist talk about EQ2. Talk about the LU and the next expension Velious, like blizzard.

Nijia

09-18-2010, 04:17 PM

<cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote> the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.</blockquote>Please don't lump all of us rational folks in with the rabid anti-RMT people. I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.</blockquote>Ditto. This is an emotional thing, and also ignorance. Part of ignorance may be SOE's fault for not addressing in a plain english no-nonsense way the live customers and tell them what's good about the new server model and how it works (did they?).I was very negative about it at first, I was shocked when I saw all good/evil races so blatantly disabled on the creation screen. It took a while to get the matrix around my head, but I tried it and realized it wasn't all that bad.Now it's not entirely SOE's fault in that they are changing the business model of the game, it's like making a big change on an application. It upsets a lot of people. Like SOGA models. I was also shocked at first, but now I just flip the checkbox and don't use them. Others use them. I started getting used to some SOGA models and they're not that bad. It's just change, and people don't like change.With that in mind SOE should not have separated the server and forced the new model on all servers. People would have screamed for a month and then things would be back to business as usual. And those very few customers who really couldn't fathom the change would have easily been offset by the new eq2x subscriptions anyway...I play on a French speaking server, and just disappointed that I have to leave the friendly Storms community if I want to experience the eq2x model. I am also sorry to see people on my server talking negatively about this. If everybody was forced to "update" and move on with the times, these discussions would be over in a month. Now they'll just keep on going and going ...

Nijia

09-18-2010, 04:23 PM

@Arandar: keep in mind Silver is Expert spells. It's a one time payment for a permanent unlock.

lollipop

09-18-2010, 04:30 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>Please dont get rid of LG. Take Kiku's idea and put LG on eq2x. Its already a server that has RMT.

Gaige

09-18-2010, 04:36 PM

<cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.</blockquote>Obviously you're in the minority, if SOE could get away with it on live they would've already done it. "Robust" marketplace on live would kill what is left of EQ2.

dracoon

09-18-2010, 05:10 PM

<cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm really curious as to why anybody would want to go from eq2x to the walled gardens that live has become? Live has all races unlocked on the basic subscription, that's about all I can think of. I just bought one race pack, and took the gold subscription which is exactly the same price than live.</blockquote>In a word? Raiding. While I don't doubt that there will be a few raiding guilds on EQ2X, it's really not a very good environment for it because (as SJ stated) most of those players are Bronze/Silver. Any raiding guild would be limited to recruiting only those who have Gold/Platinum subscriptions, and that pool is going to be very small. Most raiding guilds on Live have a tough time recruiting skilled players; it'll be that much harder where a majority of the population can't even wear legendary gear, let alone wear fabled and be able to scribe master spells.There's also the reality that most of the players on EQ2X are going to be casual, ranging from a few hours a week to maybe an hour or two a day. They're simply not going to have the time and committment required to seriously raid the high-end content in the game. So if you really want to experience the complete game, not just a portion of it, the Live servers are really the only option.</blockquote>I don't think experiencing all the content on the EQ2x server will be an issue at all. First off, this "very small pool" of gold/platnium players you are talking about is already as big or bigger than 90% of the active population on most live servers, and I have no doubt that many more bronze/silver players will upgrade when they hit higher levels. People said the same things about getting out of the newbie zones, that the population would dwindle and that you would see EQ2x wasn't so great, and it's been completely the opposite. I haven't touched my Live account since EQ2x opened except to transfer characters over.Of course there will be casuals that never go anywhere and people who just try it because it's free, but that also means there is a lot more opportunity to suck in new players who otherwise would have never given the game a chance. I can't tell you how many people I've seen say they never would have given EQ2 a shot but fell in love with it after playing it.When EQ2x was released I was negative as could be about it, but after playing there for a few weeks, there's no way in hell I'd go back to a live server. How can you claim playing on a Live server is the only way to experience the complete game when most of the time you play will be solo due to the horrible player populations? The vast majority of EQ2 servers have zero population outside the cap, and IMO that's half of the experience.Worst case scenario, even if the new server scent wears off, the EQ2x server will at worst be no worse off than the average live server at end game and will still be much more populated through the rest of the levels.<cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>You are experiencing a new server/player experience, and there is no doubt it is huge fun to explore a new game with folks your own level and be a ppart of levelling up a guild etc. You have a year... if that. Make the most of it. New doesn't stay new for very long. Your server will soon be full of lvl 90 chars running alts through dungeons in exactly the same way as live atm.The only problem being... then you'll be lvl 90, paying through the teeth to play your char the way you want and to equip your alts. If the current trend continues and most players on ur server have silver/bronze subs then there will be diffiiculty raiding and grouping for your end game. A lack of tradeskillers to make you some MC stuff for your alts to level with. meaning you will most lileky need to buy it with SC. Levelling your guild will get harder and harder as it gets nearner 90, and A guild hall? How many are gonna stick around long enough to actually donate status etc? Are you gonna transfer over to the live servers where there are more options for the same subscription? NO.. because you can't!</blockquote>So, like I said, at worst it ends up like a live server, but with a better population through all the lower levels. And how exactly will people be "paying through the teeth" to play the characters the way they want? It's $7.50 a race pack, which is three races, after that it's the same exact cost as live. The only advantage Live has is that all the races are free to start with, but I'll take population over $7 any day of the week.A far as tradeskills and guild halls, you obviously have never stepped foot on the EQ2x server, because there are already plenty of crafters. My guild alone has over a dozen that are capped with another two to three dozen that are half-way there. We also are nearly a level 60 guild and are very close to our tier 3 guild hall with a very active population of people adding status daily.I get that the Live population loves to hate the Extented server, but so far all I see are people coming up with negatives that don't exist. The only negative that has, up to this point, had even a shread of truth is the cost to buy races, which is really minimal. I mean, you get all but the last expansion for free anyway, so paying a few dollars for a race pack or two is no big deal at all. In fact, buying all of them will cost you about the same as your average PC game and you NEVER have to spend another dime again, except for the subscription.

Beodragon

09-18-2010, 05:12 PM

After five years I'll finally post in these forums.Those of you that know me on the bazaar,know I've never bought anything,I picked the server not knowing what it was about because it had a low pop and at the time i had a crappy connection.So i could care less if i were able to buy ,,whatever.Now,as I read through this thread, it keeps coming to mind when i went to watch one of the gnoobish videos,how a banner add for a third party site selling plat and accounts,kept flashing right below.Banner ads aren't free, so they must be doing ok,and I've seen these adds for years.Mighty ironic. Exchange servers were brought about in the first place because soe knew these third party sites existed(as they do in almost all mmo's),and they wished to provide a safe place for their patrons to conduct such transactions.So I find it deliciously ironic that the thought is being entertained to close it down,rather than pursue the illegal activities of the third party sites via legal means.Just the use of the name everquest in the ad has to be a trademark bust on its own.If it is closed,the third party sites will just get bolder,the spam will get worse as they dodge the filters.As for you hypocrits on the other servers with your noses all up in the air,while your hand is behind your back getting that coin,keep paying triple for yor plausible deniability.As for you others with your nose in the air because you never have bought anything,well actually I'm kinda with ya,lol.However being a "nonbuyer" on an exchange server,I can tell you with complete confidence that "clothes don't make the toon",so get off your high horse and sort them out with the rest of the scrubs.

Anastasie

09-18-2010, 05:14 PM

I really can't see why they couldn't just implement FTP into the live servers and restrict the enhanced RMT to the exchange servers. This would breathe new life into the exchange servers since new players wanting to buy all their gear can go there and all the other new players would end up on normal live servers and bolster the live community.I really don't see how we can keep a healthy population on live servers since all the advertising and links go to eq2x. Have they fixed the Recruit-a-Friend yet? Last I heard the recruit-a-friend e-mail was sending a link to the eq2x patcher and not the live game. This really needs to be fixed if it hasn't been already. Since server mergers are in the works I sincerely hope that the new hardware (like AB received recently) is implemented prior to any mergers since lag is still quite bad on live servers on the old hardware. Lag is far worse since the game update this last week (from a raiding perspective).I think we would all like a clear answer as to what is being done to increase the population on live servers since all the evidence suggests the opposite.

snowli

09-18-2010, 05:15 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dethdlr@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><ol><li>Whilst more info is always better, it still appears extremely nebulous how EQ2X is supposed to lead to any positive population influx for eq2live, all factors currently visible are only drain factors.</li></ol></blockquote>Here is my guess. Lets say EQ2X draws in X amount of brand new players. Of those new players, 0.1% of them look at the matrix of advantages/features/etc., decide that they would be better off on the EQ2Live servers, and decide to start playing over there instead. That's 0.1% of X new players that wouldn't have started playing on EQ2Live without EQ2X. Not saying I agree one way or another, but I'm guessing this is the thought process of how EQ2X can possibly help EQ2Live populations.</blockquote>The concept you're stating is pretty close. I hope the percentage is extremely conservative though. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Once we get the pipeline of folks coming to check things out, it's easy to experiment with "flow diversions" to ensure we get the behavior we want.</blockquote>The problem is, that 0.1% of X number of people who choose live right away and pay upfront, might actually be smaller than the Y figure of new people who came in via the free trial for live servers, and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.

Munu

09-18-2010, 06:06 PM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>@Arandar: keep in mind Silver is Expert spells. It's a one time payment for a permanent unlock.</blockquote>Yeah, and once U hit 80+ with gold or better membership, try and actually find a crafter that can make the expert spells you need to research your T9 masters. There are not gonna be that many of you around. Of course you could always try and get a group to run a few dungeons for your master drops and gear upgrades, if there are actually enough of you in more than 5 playable classes, with decent enough gear, to actually make that happen.

Munu

09-18-2010, 06:14 PM

<cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't think experiencing all the content on the EQ2x server will be an issue at all. First off, this "very small pool" of gold/platnium players you are talking about is already as big or bigger than 90% of the active population on most live servers, and I have no doubt that many more bronze/silver players will upgrade when they hit higher levels. People said the same things about getting out of the newbie zones, that the population would dwindle and that you would see EQ2x wasn't so great, and it's been completely the opposite. I haven't touched my Live account since EQ2x opened except to transfer characters over.</blockquote>The "very small pool" is a direct quote from SJ, who stated the vast majority of players on the ONE Eq2X server are on bronze/silver plans, not even able to access T9 content. So forgive me if I treat your words with a very large pinch of salt. As you are not in possesion of any of the facts (ie. how many T9 players there are on each live server and how many are on yours), I'll chose to believe SJ on this one.. and that will be a first.But back to the topic of the thread... I dislike RMT, always have. I can however live with it if I have to, as long as people are paying for CONTENT, not stats items. Even the MC stuff hurts crafters. People who are genuinely interested in playing the game, are going to pay to see more of it. Fluff is also fine, but lets face it... it's easy enough to level and get gear for your level in this game as it is. If it's even easier you might as well get someone else to play the game for you.

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-18-2010, 06:34 PM

<cite>Beodragon@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote>As for you hypocrits on the other servers with your noses all up in the air,while your hand is behind your back getting that coin,keep paying triple for yor plausible deniability.As for you others with your nose in the air because you never have bought anything,well actually I'm kinda with ya,lol.</blockquote>Where do i fit in? lolI bought plat long ago, but i regret it now, and wish i never did. Either way i still got my nose in the air, but thats because i smell cheese.

TigTiger

09-18-2010, 06:52 PM

Wow...congratulations to everyone on here, we made it thru 5 pages of posts without this becomes a "I WILL CLOSE ALL 40 OF MY ACCOUNTS IF RMT COMES TO LIVE!!!" Ragefest. LOL Maybe all the RMT ragers finaly left the game and the rest of us can get on with normality and the people who don't like RMT and can talk about it in a constructive fasion like some of the posters here will actualy be heard and talked to instead of ignored. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Personaly I have no major problems with RMT. I am with some of the posters here though in that RMT items should never be as good or better than what can be gotten from a player crafter in the game itself, it simply kills the urge and interest to craft. But all the fun items and special visual effect items are fun and i've actualy gotten a few of them just for the heck of it. The prowler mounts are fine with me, they don't have anything on them that is significantly important to any player over about lvl 10-15 other than the speed and the look, so I look at the stat bonuses on them as simply a sort of small perk for something that someone spent real money on. <cite>Annelise@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really can't see why they couldn't just implement FTP into the live servers and restrict the enhanced RMT to the exchange servers. This would breathe new life into the exchange servers since new players wanting to buy all their gear can go there and all the other new players would end up on normal live servers and bolster the live community.I really don't see how we can keep a healthy population on live servers since all the advertising and links go to eq2x. Have they fixed the Recruit-a-Friend yet? Last I heard the recruit-a-friend e-mail was sending a link to the eq2x patcher and not the live game. This really needs to be fixed if it hasn't been already. Since server mergers are in the works I sincerely hope that the new hardware (like AB received recently) is implemented prior to any mergers since lag is still quite bad on live servers on the old hardware. Lag is far worse since the game update this last week (from a raiding perspective).I think we would all like a clear answer as to what is being done to increase the population on live servers since all the evidence suggests the opposite.</blockquote>Haveing some servers split a few different ways is an interesting idea to see how it affects the dynamic and generation of new players into the game. But I imagine it would be costly to "seperate" out the software so it could be applied selectively to certain servers. But it is a good idea.As for wanting the clear answer about what is being done to increse live server population. Errr...dident you just contradict yourself since in the previous paragraph you were talking about the fact that we've all been informed that live server merges are comeing?<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>When we go forward with advertising, we expect to see a population increase on EQ2X and also on the Live servers. Granted, they won't be the same size of increases, but we should see pop increases on both services.And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.</blockquote>This seemed pretty clear to me. Am I missing something here? I mean obviously Smoke can't know what's going to happen untill it happens. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Unless he's developed some new godlike powers and if so I hope he's useing them to hypnotize everyone in SOE Finace into giveing EQ2 Marketing more money..."Superbowl ad???" OMG YES. I don't ever see it happening though. Would be nice but no <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Very few companies have that kind of money to dump into advertiseing. In any case as Smoke said before alot of info about how EQ2X will affect and hopefully help Live server population wont be known untill EQ2X is "Officialy" not beta anymore won't be known for at least a month after that happens. But so far from other things he's said it looks like it's at least going in the direction they wanted it to.

Felshades

09-18-2010, 07:01 PM

<cite>Jeepned2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.</blockquote>I have a feeling it goes into a pool that's divided up amongst all its projects. Much like wow's revenue is funding a new game in development over at blizzard, as well as Diablo 3.If they put all the money earned by EQ2 into EQ2, there wouldn't be any money left to develop new software. It doesnt work that way.

Felshades

09-18-2010, 07:06 PM

<cite>Eschia@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>And yes, we're intending to do server mergers on the Live service. Not because of player transfers to EQ2X (which are minor), but just because pops were low there to start with (compared to the number of worlds we're running) and the game is more fun with more people around to play with.</blockquote>Just don't make antonia bayle a regular server please. The whole reason everyone i know on AB plays on AB is becuase it's a RP server. If you must merge anything with it, only merge lucan dlere and keep it a RP server. LD has a small population compared to AB. While some folks think it might be best to leave them as they are, if there is a need to merge them with anything, it should be with each other. Also don't get rid of the pvp server, because we know what kind of drama that will stir up...</blockquote>If they merge LDL with AB there's going to be even more problems then there are now unless they fix the freaking chat channels.I log in over there and i get "unable to join <channel>, channel is full" entirely too much for my own liking. Not happening.LDL does not want merged with AB to begin with.

Felshades

09-18-2010, 07:16 PM

<cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would actually love to see the two RPing populations merged.. and AB turned into 'the high population server' or something more catchy. AB has Rpers, but they aren't the majority, sadly.As a RPer in a RPing guild, I know we'd jump at the oppurtunity to move to a new all-in-one RPing server, provided names were handled fairly (meaning, whoever has the most play time). I have some friends on Lucan I'd love to play with, and a single RPing server where all the game's population of that type actually gathers would be GREAT.Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?</blockquote>I chose RP because RP in these games usually means "once you get past the newbie levels you lose a lot of the idiotic morons". And while in another particular game it's not "entirely" true, here, it seems to.Once the lolrp crowd sees that we don't give a crud about them, they tend to leave. I myself do not RP on this account. I have, but I dont do it often. I'll go IC when a group is, but I can't manage to stay in it long. These games are a part of my social network, not my "escape from reality to be something I'm not", and as such, I'll spend more time discussing how people's days are going and how their kids are doing over "how many orc heads have you bashed this week?"The face RP servers tend to have better, closer knit communities is one big draw to why non RPers join RP servers.Figure I'd clarify that for you. It's "roleplay preferred" not "roleplay enforced". Enforced roleplay on any RP server would make your population drop like a rock.

Felshades

09-18-2010, 07:21 PM

<cite>Eschia@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote>Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?</blockquote>Definitely. A RP only server would be great. Of course "some" players will complain and yell at me, but PvP types get their own server that is for their play style ONLY. It's not "preferred" like ours. If they pulled that, the pvpers would be all over the devs "why can't i kill them? It's not fair!". At least it's not like vanguard where they merged the servers and got rid of the RP tags, making all the servers plain servers. The RP community in that game pretty much either died or became so recluse you don't know they exist after that.</blockquote>Im gonna go ahead and state you don't need a RP tag on your server to RP.SEE: dynamic content run by the Guide program on non rp servers.

Detor

09-18-2010, 07:23 PM

<cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>Please dont get rid of LG. Take Kiku's idea and put LG on eq2x. Its already a server that has RMT.</blockquote>Yeah, even Kiku's post has a sentence that starts Quote: 'alot of us like the service'; I think some people would rather stay than get merged if it meant they had no choice but to go back to buying from 3rd party sites instead of a publisher sanctioned site like Livegamer.

Rijacki

09-18-2010, 07:39 PM

<cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote> the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.</blockquote>Please don't lump all of us rational folks in with the rabid anti-RMT people. I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.</blockquote>Ya know, not all "rational" folk like having open Player to player sales for real money. Nice veiled insult (anyone who doesn't agree with you is therefore irrational).Does it occur on all servers, yes, I'm not an idiot, I know it does (actually it occurs as 3rd party RMT, but a different matter altogether). But it's not sanctioned and it is NOT every player, it's not even most or a high percentage of players. I can find more players on AB, the largest of the servers, who haven't done any real money trades for in-game items/characters/coin than I can those who have. It's not a vocal "minority" who don't want it. The vocal ones might be a minority of those who don't want it, sure.You could also say there is a vocal minority of those who do want it on all servers and most of that vocal minority who want it on all servers are currently or who have been at some time on either the Bazaar or Vox.That some of the vocal players who want RMT on all servers characterise anyone who doesn't on the rest of the servers as irrational doesn't make it any more acceptable to those players (whether minority or majority doesn't matter) who don't want it.

kcirrot

09-18-2010, 07:45 PM

<cite>Annelise@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really can't see why they couldn't just implement FTP into the live servers and restrict the enhanced RMT to the exchange servers. This would breathe new life into the exchange servers since new players wanting to buy all their gear can go there and all the other new players would end up on normal live servers and bolster the live community.I really don't see how we can keep a healthy population on live servers since all the advertising and links go to eq2x. Have they fixed the Recruit-a-Friend yet? Last I heard the recruit-a-friend e-mail was sending a link to the eq2x patcher and not the live game. This really needs to be fixed if it hasn't been already. Since server mergers are in the works I sincerely hope that the new hardware (like AB received recently) is implemented prior to any mergers since lag is still quite bad on live servers on the old hardware. Lag is far worse since the game update this last week (from a raiding perspective).I think we would all like a clear answer as to what is being done to increase the population on live servers since all the evidence suggests the opposite.</blockquote>It's because the model they chose for their F2P service requires the enhanced Marketplace in order for them to make any money. Now one could argue that they should have taken Turbine's model and restricted content. That would have allowed them to sell content as the way to make money. But SOE decided to give away most of the content and sell items, both vanity and otherwise. Really, there's nothing on the Extended server that's really that darn game-breaking anyway. It's mostly just the same things you can buy from crafters. As for what's being done to increase population on the live servers, the answer, as you must realize, is "not much." This is a six-year old game. Besides it's current competition, some heavy hitters like Guild Wars 2 and TOR are coming down the pipe. SOE doesn't have limitless resources and so while they'll support the EQ2 service as long as we want to keep paying, I really can understand why they don't want to sink large amounts of money into marketing the service. Especially when they have titles of their own coming out now or in the next couple of months (DCUO, Clone Wars).The truth is that EQ2's best days are behind it. That doesn't mean it's going to shut down, but it does mean that we'll see a pretty steady bleed from now on. The fact that they're ready to acknowledge server mergers are coming shows that. But the good news is that like EQ before us, it's likely we'll still get updates and expansions and there will still be a game here for us to play. And if Extended eclipses the Live service, then they'll merge the services and EQ2 will live out its existence as a F2P.

Anastasie

09-18-2010, 07:52 PM

<cite>TigTiger wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Annelise@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really can't see why they couldn't just implement FTP into the live servers and restrict the enhanced RMT to the exchange servers. This would breathe new life into the exchange servers since new players wanting to buy all their gear can go there and all the other new players would end up on normal live servers and bolster the live community.I really don't see how we can keep a healthy population on live servers since all the advertising and links go to eq2x. Have they fixed the Recruit-a-Friend yet? Last I heard the recruit-a-friend e-mail was sending a link to the eq2x patcher and not the live game. This really needs to be fixed if it hasn't been already. Since server mergers are in the works I sincerely hope that the new hardware (like AB received recently) is implemented prior to any mergers since lag is still quite bad on live servers on the old hardware. Lag is far worse since the game update this last week (from a raiding perspective).I think we would all like a clear answer as to what is being done to increase the population on live servers since all the evidence suggests the opposite.</blockquote>Haveing some servers split a few different ways is an interesting idea to see how it affects the dynamic and generation of new players into the game. But I imagine it would be costly to "seperate" out the software so it could be applied selectively to certain servers. But it is a good idea.As for wanting the clear answer about what is being done to increse live server population. Errr...dident you just contradict yourself since in the previous paragraph you were talking about the fact that we've all been informed that live server merges are comeing?</blockquote>Actually, they already have the enhanced rmt (statted gear for sale) on a seperate server - it's called eq2x. If they did away with eq2x and just incorporated ftp into the live servers and, like I proposed, keep the enhanced RMT on the exchange servers it would help this game instead of killing off the live servers.Also, I was referring to new players - not just shuffling veteran players onto fewer servers. Yes the server mergers will increase populations on the individual servers since there will be far fewer servers, but it will do nothing for the overall popluation of the live game in general.The fact that they are pushing all new players onto the eq2x server and seemingly doing everything they can to disuade them from joining the live servers, it was a very valid question. I would like to know if this will continue status quo only to see the live servers slowly dwindle, or will they actually do something to promote new players join the live servers.

Beef_Supre

09-18-2010, 08:21 PM

<cite>Arcata@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would actually love to see the two RPing populations merged.. and AB turned into 'the high population server' or something more catchy. AB has Rpers, but they aren't the majority, sadly.As a RPer in a RPing guild, I know we'd jump at the oppurtunity to move to a new all-in-one RPing server, provided names were handled fairly (meaning, whoever has the most play time). I have some friends on Lucan I'd love to play with, and a single RPing server where all the game's population of that type actually gathers would be GREAT.Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?</blockquote>I chose RP because RP in these games usually means "once you get past the newbie levels you lose a lot of the idiotic morons". And while in another particular game it's not "entirely" true, here, it seems to.Once the lolrp crowd sees that we don't give a crud about them, they tend to leave. I myself do not RP on this account. I have, but I dont do it often. I'll go IC when a group is, but I can't manage to stay in it long. These games are a part of my social network, not my "escape from reality to be something I'm not", and as such, I'll spend more time discussing how people's days are going and how their kids are doing over "how many orc heads have you bashed this week?"The face RP servers tend to have better, closer knit communities is one big draw to why non RPers join RP servers.Figure I'd clarify that for you. It's "roleplay preferred" not "roleplay enforced". Enforced roleplay on any RP server would make your population drop like a rock.</blockquote>I'm not foolish enough to think 'RP enforced' would even be possible, let alone helpful, so don't take my words to mean that.But you qualify as someone that belongs on a RPing server, since you will get in-character in a group that is filled with players doing the same. That counts as RP preferred, so you're not at all what I was referring to when I said I was baffled by Non-RPers flocking to a RPing server.And no, I don't RP full time either.. but I do show text as in-character or not by using (( marks )) like many do. We all enjoy the RL discussions too, but would like to be on a server of like-minded people (like you, btw) that enjoy RP when the opportunity arises and see it as an important and fun part of an MMO.I don't want AB and Lucan merged, I want the RPers of AB and the RPers of Lucan merged. Entirely different, and I agree just putting the two servers together would be a disaster.EDIT: Spelling

snowli

09-18-2010, 08:39 PM

RMT isn't acceptible to me, ever, in any game I play.EQ2 has been getting dangerously close sometimes, hopefully EQ2X in some ways will help ensure that RMT DOESN'T come to EQ2LIVE, by providing servers for that RMT activity.

dracoon

09-18-2010, 10:36 PM

<cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite>I don't think experiencing all the content on the EQ2x server will be an issue at all. First off, this "very small pool" of gold/platnium players you are talking about is already as big or bigger than 90% of the active population on most live servers, and I have no doubt that many more bronze/silver players will upgrade when they hit higher levels. People said the same things about getting out of the newbie zones, that the population would dwindle and that you would see EQ2x wasn't so great, and it's been completely the opposite. I haven't touched my Live account since EQ2x opened except to transfer characters over.</blockquote>The "very small pool" is a direct quote from SJ, who stated the vast majority of players on the ONE Eq2X server are on bronze/silver plans, not even able to access T9 content. So forgive me if I treat your words with a very large pinch of salt. As you are not in possesion of any of the facts (ie. how many T9 players there are on each live server and how many are on yours), I'll chose to believe SJ on this one.. and that will be a first.But back to the topic of the thread... I dislike RMT, always have. I can however live with it if I have to, as long as people are paying for CONTENT, not stats items. Even the MC stuff hurts crafters. People who are genuinely interested in playing the game, are going to pay to see more of it. Fluff is also fine, but lets face it... it's easy enough to level and get gear for your level in this game as it is. If it's even easier you might as well get someone else to play the game for you.</blockquote>Obviously you are misinterpreting his quote to mean what you want it to mean instead of what it actually means. Him saying that the majority of players on EQx are bronze/silver is not the same thing as saying that there is a very small pool of gold/platnium subscribers.The population of Freeport is so much bigger than the average EQ live server that it could very well have a much smaller percentage of players who subscribe and STILL have more people to raid with at cap that most live servers.I wouldn't be surprised to see the Live servers cut in half and a couple more Exchange servers added to the game. Currently there is zero reason for a new person, or even a vet who likes to play at various level ranges, to play on a Live server.<cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite> <blockquote><cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>@Arandar: keep in mind Silver is Expert spells. It's a one time payment for a permanent unlock.</blockquote>Yeah, and once U hit 80+ with gold or better membership, try and actually find a crafter that can make the expert spells you need to research your T9 masters. There are not gonna be that many of you around. Of course you could always try and get a group to run a few dungeons for your master drops and gear upgrades, if there are actually enough of you in more than 5 playable classes, with decent enough gear, to actually make that happen.</blockquote> This is the second time you've said this, and it wasn't true the first time you said it. I find it laughable that people who don't even play on the server claim to know what goes on over there. There is an abundance of crafters, plently of people running around wearing legendary/fabled gear, and tons of people playing classes and races that don't come free.The server is a hit, it's doing very well, and trying to scare people in to believing otherwise seems pretty desperate to me. Of course, playing on a dying Live server, I can't blame you.

Gisallo

09-18-2010, 11:38 PM

I am definitely in the "wait and see crowd". I did a lot of research back when people were RAGING about SC when it first came out and felt that was the beginning of the entire game becoming RMT based. Doing the research I found the following articles<a href="http://snafzg.mmofansites.com/posts/1332-f2p-rmt-valuation-the-89-10-1-rule">http://snafzg.mmofansites.com/posts...he-89-10-1-rule</a><a href="http://www.massively.com/2009/06/13/free-realms-guesstimating-monthly-revenue-using-the-89-10-1-rul/">http://www.massively.com/2009/06/13...he-89-10-1-rul/</a><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30257312/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30257312/</a>Now using this rule you can easily find out how many people they would need to sub to EQ2x in order to make up just 200k subs and the numbers get just down right silly, in the millions. Thats why most f2p games actually have a sub $10.00 "subscription" for full access to encourage more people to enter that 10% bracket. This is the bracket with the most "loyalty" vs the 1% that peak quick, get all the stuff, then bored then move on, and so is the most steady source of revenue. If we apply the 89/10/1 rule noted in these articles we can only really come to one of a few conclusions. One that EQ2x will not be as profitable as Live long term and so it is still definitely in SOE interests to support Live and that this will encourage them to create a synergy between the two as Smokejumper implies. Two that EQ2x will simply fail straight out or three that they don't care what the heck happens to the game, they are just going to milk it for whatever they can while they develope EQ2next and whatever other Console based mmo's they have in the pipe line.Now admittedly I have points one and two partially based on the following hypothesis, that you simply can NOT get the numbers necessary to make f2p profitable with a game that is as dated as eq2 and looks it (sorry but WAR, Aion and Conan etc look new, EQ2 looks its age and eventually someone will have a game that actually appeals to EQ2 and WoW people read not PvP centric). LOTRO is in a slightly different boat because that game attracts people who are simply into High Fantasy due to its connection and devotion to the Tolkein legacy BUT I also think the games "look" will hinder it.We will see after all but so far the trend in the industry shows that going ALL IN on f2p AFTER you have been sub based is a last desperate gasp to get as much money as u can from an IP before you close up shop and that it only makes sense really from the ground up when u have planned on it because the way u handle the games in terms of content, marketing and expectations are very different. Here is hoping that SOE is looking for balance and does not have the first thought in mind.

Kordran

09-19-2010, 02:29 AM

Kordran

09-19-2010, 02:40 AM

<cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>How can you claim playing on a Live server is the only way to experience the complete game when most of the time you play will be solo due to the horrible player populations?</blockquote>I don't know what server you used to play on, or your playstyle, but my experience on the standard servers is nothing like that. I play on one of the lower population servers (Everfrost) and from the time I login, I usually have someone asking me to tank this or that instance. The vast majority of the time, I'm either running instances or I'm raiding. If I'm solo, it's because I'm intentionally taking a break, not because there's no one who wants to group with me.By the "complete game", I'm specifically talking about raiding. If you choose not to raid, that's fine, but you're missing out on a big chunk of some of the most fun content in the game. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I don't really see any top-end raiding guilds evolving on the EQ2X servers. In fact, I'd be surprised if any raiding guilds there make the top worldwide 50.So I'll stand by my statement: if you don't care about raiding, EQ2X may be a good match for you. However, if you do care about end-game raiding and want to tackle hard-mode encounters, then it's a much better bet that you'll actually find guilds doing that content on the standard servers, even 6 months from now.

Felshades

09-19-2010, 02:42 AM

<cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Arcata@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Beef_Supreme wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would actually love to see the two RPing populations merged.. and AB turned into 'the high population server' or something more catchy. AB has Rpers, but they aren't the majority, sadly.As a RPer in a RPing guild, I know we'd jump at the oppurtunity to move to a new all-in-one RPing server, provided names were handled fairly (meaning, whoever has the most play time). I have some friends on Lucan I'd love to play with, and a single RPing server where all the game's population of that type actually gathers would be GREAT.Non-Rpers flocking to one of the two servers tagged RP-preferred always baffled me. I get why people go to AB now, but wouldn't it be great to have one big server that was actually Roleplaying only (of all types!)?</blockquote>I chose RP because RP in these games usually means "once you get past the newbie levels you lose a lot of the idiotic morons". And while in another particular game it's not "entirely" true, here, it seems to.Once the lolrp crowd sees that we don't give a crud about them, they tend to leave. I myself do not RP on this account. I have, but I dont do it often. I'll go IC when a group is, but I can't manage to stay in it long. These games are a part of my social network, not my "escape from reality to be something I'm not", and as such, I'll spend more time discussing how people's days are going and how their kids are doing over "how many orc heads have you bashed this week?"The face RP servers tend to have better, closer knit communities is one big draw to why non RPers join RP servers.Figure I'd clarify that for you. It's "roleplay preferred" not "roleplay enforced". Enforced roleplay on any RP server would make your population drop like a rock.</blockquote>I'm not foolish enough to think 'RP enforced' would even be possible, let alone helpful, so don't take my words to mean that.But you qualify as someone that belongs on a RPing server, since you will get in-character in a group that is filled with players doing the same. That counts as RP preferred, so you're not at all what I was referring to when I said I was baffled by Non-RPers flocking to a RPing server.And no, I don't RP full time either.. but I do show text as in-character or not by using (( marks )) like many do. We all enjoy the RL discussions too, but would like to be on a server of like-minded people (like you, btw) that enjoy RP when the opportunity arises and see it as an important and fun part of an MMO.I don't want AB and Lucan merged, I want the RPers of AB and the RPers of Lucan merged. Entirely different, and I agree just putting the two servers together would be a disaster.EDIT: Spelling</blockquote>I generally dont use brackets unless its fairly obvious that the rest of the group is in character. Sometimes I get groups that are entirely in character, sometimes I get groups where it's only a couple and I'll denote as well just to make it easier.And yeah you can get some real idiots that i have no idea why they're on a RP server if they hate it with such a loathing passion :/

Felshades

09-19-2010, 02:44 AM

<cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>How can you claim playing on a Live server is the only way to experience the complete game when most of the time you play will be solo due to the horrible player populations?</blockquote>I don't know what server you used to play on, or your playstyle, but my experience on the standard servers is nothing like that. I play on one of the lower population servers (Everfrost) and from the time I login, I usually have someone asking me to tank this or that instance. The vast majority of the time, I'm either running instances or I'm raiding. If I'm solo, it's because I'm intentionally taking a break, not because there's no one who wants to group with me.By the "complete game", I'm specifically talking about raiding. If you choose not to raid, that's fine, but you're missing out on a big chunk of some of the most fun content in the game. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I don't really see any top-end raiding guilds evolving on the EQ2X servers. In fact, I'd be surprised if any raiding guilds there make the top worldwide 50.So I'll stand by my statement: if you don't care about raiding, EQ2X may be a good match for you. However, if you do care about end-game raiding and want to tackle hard-mode encounters, then it's a much better bet that you'll actually find guilds doing that content on the standard servers, even 6 months from now.</blockquote>You're a tank.Tanks in most any game do not have problems getting groups from the moment they log in.I just cant really stand to tank in eq2. Targetting being a pita is one main reason. But thats another story.

Nijia

09-19-2010, 06:14 AM

Nijia

09-19-2010, 06:45 AM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>(...) and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.</blockquote>The term has been coined before, that F2P MMO's are a glorified trial. Why would SOE spend time on other "trial" methods now? For new players EverQuest extended is the new trial.The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).

Nijia

09-19-2010, 06:54 AM

<cite>TigTiger wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am with some of the posters here though in that RMT items should never be as good or better than what can be gotten from a player crafter in the game itself, it simply kills the urge and interest to craft. </blockquote>Are you sure?I woud say that the player made Mastercrafted and other are still desirable for the simple fact that they don't cost you real money <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Time is money right? So you'd have to measure just how much time is spent gathering the gold to buy, say, a mastercrafted armor on the broker. And then look at the real money price on the marketplace.

Munu

09-19-2010, 07:07 AM

<cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite>I don't think experiencing all the content on the EQ2x server will be an issue at all. First off, this "very small pool" of gold/platnium players you are talking about is already as big or bigger than 90% of the active population on most live servers, and I have no doubt that many more bronze/silver players will upgrade when they hit higher levels. People said the same things about getting out of the newbie zones, that the population would dwindle and that you would see EQ2x wasn't so great, and it's been completely the opposite. I haven't touched my Live account since EQ2x opened except to transfer characters over.</blockquote>The "very small pool" is a direct quote from SJ, who stated the vast majority of players on the ONE Eq2X server are on bronze/silver plans, not even able to access T9 content. So forgive me if I treat your words with a very large pinch of salt. As you are not in possesion of any of the facts (ie. how many T9 players there are on each live server and how many are on yours), I'll chose to believe SJ on this one.. and that will be a first.</blockquote>Careful with quoting there, I didn't write that; you attributed to me what someone actually wrote in response to a comment that I made -- that the number of Gold/Platinum players is a small overall percentage of the active playerbase on the EQ2X servers (according to SJ himself). I don't play on EQ2X and never plan to.</blockquote>Apologies... was trying to delete all the stuff that wasn't relevant to my point from the quote, and have obvioiusly forgotten to delete your name. Will amend my post.

Munu

09-19-2010, 07:20 AM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>TigTiger wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am with some of the posters here though in that RMT items should never be as good or better than what can be gotten from a player crafter in the game itself, it simply kills the urge and interest to craft. </blockquote>Are you sure?I woud say that the player made Mastercrafted and other are still desirable for the simple fact that they don't cost you real money <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Time is money right? So you'd have to measure just how much time is spent gathering the gold to buy, say, a mastercrafted armor on the broker. And then look at the real money price on the marketplace.</blockquote>I'm sure... Do you know how difficult it is to get the rares for the MC stuff before you outlevel it anyway? Spells are the same, food etc the same. Weapons, jewellery.. all the same. You need to see yourself using these tradeskills at 90 in order to motivate the long grind that tradeskilling can be, however pleasurable. And that means gold/platinum subscription. I'm not saying that bronze/silver subs won't try the tradeskilling out, they'd be daft not to IMO, but the chances of these folks staying around long enough to make any difference to the crafting economy must be slim. Remember the 89/10/1 equation.

Munu

09-19-2010, 07:46 AM

<cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>dracoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite>I don't think experiencing all the content on the EQ2x server will be an issue at all. First off, this "very small pool" of gold/platnium players you are talking about is already as big or bigger than 90% of the active population on most live servers, and I have no doubt that many more bronze/silver players will upgrade when they hit higher levels. People said the same things about getting out of the newbie zones, that the population would dwindle and that you would see EQ2x wasn't so great, and it's been completely the opposite. I haven't touched my Live account since EQ2x opened except to transfer characters over.</blockquote>The "very small pool" is a direct quote from SJ, who stated the vast majority of players on the ONE Eq2X server are on bronze/silver plans, not even able to access T9 content. So forgive me if I treat your words with a very large pinch of salt. As you are not in possesion of any of the facts (ie. how many T9 players there are on each live server and how many are on yours), I'll chose to believe SJ on this one.. and that will be a first.But back to the topic of the thread... I dislike RMT, always have. I can however live with it if I have to, as long as people are paying for CONTENT, not stats items. Even the MC stuff hurts crafters. People who are genuinely interested in playing the game, are going to pay to see more of it. Fluff is also fine, but lets face it... it's easy enough to level and get gear for your level in this game as it is. If it's even easier you might as well get someone else to play the game for you.</blockquote>Obviously you are misinterpreting his quote to mean what you want it to mean instead of what it actually means. Him saying that the majority of players on EQx are bronze/silver is not the same thing as saying that there is a very small pool of gold/platnium subscribers.The population of Freeport is so much bigger than the average EQ live server that it could very well have a much smaller percentage of players who subscribe and STILL have more people to raid with at cap that most live servers.I wouldn't be surprised to see the Live servers cut in half and a couple more Exchange servers added to the game. Currently there is zero reason for a new person, or even a vet who likes to play at various level ranges, to play on a Live server.<cite>Portree@Splitpaw wrote:</cite> <blockquote><cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>@Arandar: keep in mind Silver is Expert spells. It's a one time payment for a permanent unlock.</blockquote>Yeah, and once U hit 80+ with gold or better membership, try and actually find a crafter that can make the expert spells you need to research your T9 masters. There are not gonna be that many of you around. Of course you could always try and get a group to run a few dungeons for your master drops and gear upgrades, if there are actually enough of you in more than 5 playable classes, with decent enough gear, to actually make that happen.</blockquote> This is the second time you've said this, and it wasn't true the first time you said it. I find it laughable that people who don't even play on the server claim to know what goes on over there. There is an abundance of crafters, plently of people running around wearing legendary/fabled gear, and tons of people playing classes and races that don't come free.The server is a hit, it's doing very well, and trying to scare people in to believing otherwise seems pretty desperate to me. Of course, playing on a dying Live server, I can't blame you.</blockquote>My server is far from dead, thank you very much.Smokejumper wrote this on page 2 of this thread.Most of the players that come to play EQ2X would never have come to play EQII at all because they won't commit to a subscription. (Even though we offer a Gold membership, the percentage of folks that take us up on it is small.)This would also fall into line with the 89/10/1 equation. You moved from a live server to Eq2X. You can't possibly pretend to know the figures for active accounts on any server... only SOE know that, we've been trying to second guess these figures on these forums for months.All we can talk about is our perceptions... There were some people who already knew the game well and moved to eq2X, although SJ also states this number is very low. You are going to be mixing in that community now on the EQ2X server, so of course it seems full/big. The server community on my own server seems that way despite it's overall numbers. But the bottom line is if you were happy in the community of your live server you would have stayed there... the game is after all exactly the same. If you've found a community on EQ2X that suits you better, then I am happy for you. But that won't negate the transient, casual nature of a F2P server, or current thinking regarding the retention rates on F2P servers.In my view, your end game will suffer over time due to the low level of players who stick around long enough to actually play in T9. I think we would ALL have been much better off with a f2p model rolled out on live servers that charged for content. That way you could have had a viable end game and the live servers could have revitalised their lower level player base.And as for more exchange servers... SJ has already said in this thread that the numbers on the exchange servers are low and that they are trying to work a way out to be able to merge them with other servers. Why on earth would they roll more of them out? Exchange servers have failed, LiveGamer has failed. The RMT with subscription model has failed... the only thing that makes the EQ2X server any different is that it's F2P. RMT servers have been around in Eq2 for a long time now. People come to play F2P, might spend a bit of real cash along the way, but if they wanted more bag slots, more playable classes/races, better gear, more shared bank slots etc etc, they'd pay for gold/platinum... unless they don't plan on hanging about for long enough to warrant a subscription, or play so irregularly that paying as you go makes more sense than a subscription plan.By their very nature F2P servers are transient, casual gaming.. if Eq2X is a success it will be because of the numbers of bronze/silver plan players who spend extra cash on accessing the broker, more races, more bag slots etc. It won't be because it has a strong subscription base with long term players. As SJ rightly pointed out people are attracted to EQ2X at the moment because its FREE. It may well be a viable option for some, in the same way as the exchange servers, pvp servers and RP servers are for others.Another option is never bad... as long as it doesn't damage your core player base (IE Live servers)

snowli

09-19-2010, 08:25 AM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>(...) and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.</blockquote>The term has been coined before, that F2P MMO's are a glorified trial. Why would SOE spend time on other "trial" methods now? For new players EverQuest extended is the new trial.The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).</blockquote>I think you could be missing the point entirely.Only EQ2X has a free trial now, only EQ2X has try before buy players, and play for free players, the previously existing freetrial for EQ2LIVE had extra SOE time spent on turning it off. Newcomers can only start with EQ2LIVE by either paying upfront immediately without ever trying the game, or abandoning all progress & contacts on EQ2X to start over on EQ2LIVE.

Nijia

09-19-2010, 10:17 AM

/signs off

Alenna

09-19-2010, 12:49 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>(...) and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.</blockquote>The term has been coined before, that F2P MMO's are a glorified trial. Why would SOE spend time on other "trial" methods now? For new players EverQuest extended is the new trial.The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).</blockquote>I think you could be missing the point entirely.Only EQ2X has a free trial now, only EQ2X has try before buy players, and play for free players, the previously existing freetrial for EQ2LIVE had extra SOE time spent on turning it off. Newcomers can only start with EQ2LIVE by either paying upfront immediately without ever trying the game, or abandoning all progress & contacts on EQ2X to start over on EQ2LIVE.</blockquote>well actually there is still the RAF where folks on live servers can invite friends to try for 14 days free. but yeah no off the street person so to speak can try it for free on live.

Anastasie

09-19-2010, 01:24 PM

They should change the Trial forum to the Recruit-A-Friend forum where people can give out RAF's to people wanting to play the live game.

Rijacki

09-19-2010, 01:46 PM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).</blockquote>Since EQ2x launched, every SOE EQ2 video released (including the Gnoob ones) does not have <a href="http://www.everquest2.com" target="_blank">http://www.everquest2.com</a> as the displayed URL, they now have <a href="http://www.eq2extended.com" target="_blank">http://www.eq2extended.com</a> displayed.<ul><li>Gnoob video before EQ2x launched: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR9rW-QRvAw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR9rW-QRvAw </a></li></ul><ul><li>Gnoob video after EQ2x launched (sorry didn't find a non-FB link): <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=420004767682" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/...?v=420004767682</a></li></ul>While the everquest2.com site does have a side by side for your first time ever visiting it, you don't see that even once going to the everquest2extended URL. Not to mention the really nicely done full game trailer which plays on the EQ2x page and, of course, displays the eq2extended.com URL and not everquest2.com. Additionally, all mailers going out to existing and canceled accounts have the EQ2x URL.It does remain to be remain to be seen what URL any of the advertising for the game will have, but my bet is that it will be the EQ2x URL which has no mention of subscription servers except for a non-descript button toward the bottom of the page which requires you to sign up for a Station ID before even providing -any- information about the subscription service.I challenge you to go to the URL shown on the video and find "side by side" information on EQ2 Live vs EQ2x.As for that splash screen the first time you go to everquest2.com: Would you click a SHOP button for more information on a game (including how much it costs)?

TaleraRis

09-19-2010, 01:59 PM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>(...) and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.</blockquote>The term has been coined before, that F2P MMO's are a glorified trial. Why would SOE spend time on other "trial" methods now? For new players EverQuest extended is the new trial.The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).</blockquote>Except the idea of a trial for most MMOs is to try something out and find out if you like it or not. If you do like it, then you can continue on right from where you started. But with EQ2X is only an EQ2X trial. They can't start from where their EQ2X trial ends and continue on into EQ2Live because they can't transfer over there. So they have the option to lose any progress they already had and start anew, or stay where they are. And that's not really much of an option, especially if they made any sort of real progress in EQ2X before they started running into their free account limitations.

snowli

09-19-2010, 02:29 PM

<cite>Alenna@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>(...) and as we all know the free trial for live servers is now closed.</blockquote>The term has been coined before, that F2P MMO's are a glorified trial. Why would SOE spend time on other "trial" methods now? For new players EverQuest extended is the new trial.The new homepage everquest2.com shows the subscription service and the extended service both side by sides (open it in a private browsing, it's only for new visitors).</blockquote>I think you could be missing the point entirely.Only EQ2X has a free trial now, only EQ2X has try before buy players, and play for free players, the previously existing freetrial for EQ2LIVE had extra SOE time spent on turning it off. Newcomers can only start with EQ2LIVE by either paying upfront immediately without ever trying the game, or abandoning all progress & contacts on EQ2X to start over on EQ2LIVE.</blockquote>well actually there is still the RAF where folks on live servers can invite friends to try for 14 days free. but yeah no off the street person so to speak can try it for free on live.</blockquote>This is preciely the problem, all new blood runs into massive DIVERSION signs effectively, the RAF nonsense is purely a smokescreen that in reality only exists for current subs to open another account for a buffbot etc.As any sort of real new player how do you even contact an existing subscriber to try and get RAF off them...via forums? you need to create a EQ2X account, then pay to upgrade eq2x to gold to even get the rights to post here and then want to share your email to try get a subscriber to send you your RAF access.I mean hell, why not require live triallers to apply in person at soe offices, only valid while accompanied by both their grandchildren, and their grandparents....

Faith_heals

09-19-2010, 02:30 PM

Merge servers, make all servers but one a Exchange server. One server for those who dont want it. Kinda like how vanguard is all exchange ect.

snowli

09-19-2010, 02:34 PM

<cite>Faith_heals wrote:</cite><blockquote>Merge servers, make all servers but one a Exchange server. One server for those who dont want it. Kinda like how vanguard is all exchange ect.</blockquote>alternate rulesets? patches during EU primetime? etc etcI don't know ANYONE in game who wants RMT polluting our game.

Detor

09-19-2010, 03:48 PM

<cite>Faith_heals wrote:</cite><blockquote>Merge servers, make all servers but one a Exchange server. One server for those who dont want it. Kinda like how vanguard is all exchange ect.</blockquote>I seriously doubt they would do that, but they definitely shouldn't get rid of the only two Exchange servers that do exist, thereby providing no alternatives to 3rd party sites and preventing anybody from doing things legitimately in an environment where everybody agrees to allow buying/selling.

kiku

09-19-2010, 05:12 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Faith_heals wrote:</cite><blockquote>Merge servers, make all servers but one a Exchange server. One server for those who dont want it. Kinda like how vanguard is all exchange ect.</blockquote>alternate rulesets? patches during EU primetime? etc etcI don't know ANYONE in game who wants RMT polluting our game.</blockquote>Whats really funny, back in eq1 the people buying plat where the ones screaming they hated it and thought it was cheating. People used to say please dont let anyone know....rofl. More then you think buy plat sorry to burst your bubble.

Andok

09-19-2010, 05:34 PM

Valdaglerion

09-19-2010, 06:34 PM

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote> the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.</blockquote>Please don't lump all of us rational folks in with the rabid anti-RMT people. I think the majority of people don't care if the marketplace becomes more "robust" and that the anti-RMT people are just a very vocal minority.</blockquote>Ya know, not all "rational" folk like having open Player to player sales for real money. Nice veiled insult (anyone who doesn't agree with you is therefore irrational).Does it occur on all servers, yes, I'm not an idiot, I know it does (actually it occurs as 3rd party RMT, but a different matter altogether). But it's not sanctioned and it is NOT every player, it's not even most or a high percentage of players. I can find more players on AB, the largest of the servers, who haven't done any real money trades for in-game items/characters/coin than I can those who have. It's not a vocal "minority" who don't want it. The vocal ones might be a minority of those who don't want it, sure.You could also say there is a vocal minority of those who do want it on all servers and most of that vocal minority who want it on all servers are currently or who have been at some time on either the Bazaar or Vox.That some of the vocal players who want RMT on all servers characterise anyone who doesn't on the rest of the servers as irrational doesn't make it any more acceptable to those players (whether minority or majority doesn't matter) who don't want it.</blockquote>I play on Bazaar as well as AB, CB, Nagafen and a few others here and there but the ones listed are primary. I do believe that people have a much different perception of the Bazaar than is the reality. It is actually pretty easy to find just as many people that have never bought coin on Exchange or LiveGamer as those that have. Those that have typically dont make a regular habit of it and those that are regular tend to be playing the market to buy low and sell higher.Most people that buy toons on the Bazaar are buying alts because they are tired of leveling toons, so it becomes the path of least resistance. And honestly, its so easy to level toons now there arent that many being sold anyway. Prices are too cheap and so on.Its just funny how on other servers I hear about these perceptions and they are just so grossly inaccurate where people think you show up on day one, buy an uber toon and tons of plat and you are a god. It just simply isnt true.As for RMT, I personally dont care. I would like to see SmokeJumper actually implement what he eluded to over the last month or so about "alternate paths". For those with more time, play the game and "earn" your stuff. For more with more money that want to line the pockets of SOE and just buy their stuff and get more enjoyment out of the limited time they have to play, fine with me. What people fail to see I think is this is good for the health of the game. The egos can be stroked through a better tuning of achievements, titles, trophies, appearance mounts, etc but having the coolest gear in the game wont do you any good if you have no one developing future content nor other people to play it with.My 2 cents worth anyway.

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-19-2010, 07:10 PM

Someone mentioned recruit-a-friend. I just wanna state I've wasted so many of those on people who either don't sign up for it, or simply sign up just for the trial and never bother to continue. I hardly ever get my pinto horses. I got 2 horses out of wasting about 8 RoF points. I wish this worked better, but it always rests in the hands of the person you're recruiting. Sure you could use your own PR skills to convince / threaten them to stay. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

snowli

09-19-2010, 07:58 PM

There is no realistic route for new players to arrive in EQ2LIVE at present. What new players used to come to live, for example our family of accounts, are now diverted to EQ2X. This still isn't addressed, at all.

isest

09-20-2010, 09:07 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Aule@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>When should we expect to see more detailed information on server merges? Such as which servers will be merging together (or better yet, merge them all)? What sort of timeline should we expect before these changes will take place? What is the status of necessary hardware upgrades? etc </blockquote>Honest answer: I don't know yet. I am trying to get budgets approved for the hardware upgrades. It is not a speedy process due to SOE having so many other irons in the fire right now. But I'm trying to move it forward as quickly as possible.</blockquote>I know I am beating the dead horse with a stick with this question but can we please get some answers soon on the server merges. When you live on a server with low population it is hard some days to get any groups.I personally was willing to come up the cash to move mine and the wife's toons to another server (around 250 bucks), however I would hate to move only to be told guess what where shutting this one down too, and moving it over to this one. The main problem being toon names, most of mine are safe but the wife's names seams are favorites on other servers as well.So I have decided to not move until we know the details. I don't like spending cash unless I know for sure what I am getting into.

isest

09-20-2010, 09:11 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Jeepned2 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> Ok, I'm a little confused (I admit not for the first time). According to EQ2Players there are 4,162,503 toons on all the the EQ2 servers. Just to be on the conservative side, lets say every account has 7 toons, so that would be 594,643 accounts. At say $15.00 a month that's almost $9,000,000.00 a month. Are you telling me that out of that nine million per month (107 million a year) that some money can't be found for promoting and advertising for EQ2? No wonder EQ2xless came about. Makes you wonder what all those millions are actually going, it sure isn't coming back into the game that is generating that money.</blockquote>eq2 players stats are missing a crucial piece.. active accounts. I have 4 accounts with about 22 alts.. but I only currently have one account on... but the alts from the other 3 accounts still show up on eq2players.</blockquote>Ack. Yeah...I wish that math was correct (oh, how I wish it was), but it's not even close to reality.Sure, we might have had something like a half-million accounts created in the lifetime of the product (probably more), but no way are those all active right now.Some percentage of those created accounts are Live subscribers right now. Then we also have the EQ2X service to attract the players out there that *won't* subscribe immediately.Most of the players that come to play EQ2X would never have come to play EQII at all because they won't commit to a subscription. (Even though we offer a Gold membership, the percentage of folks that take us up on it is small.)On-line products are very interesting businesses to run, but they're not simple. Not at all. And dev teams are *expensive*. (Plus all the sundry expenses like servers, rack space, bandwidth, ludicrously large monthly electrical bills, etc.) Add marketing, customer service, QA time, etc...and huge amounts of money get subtracted from that monthly income.You'd be surprised at how low the profit margin can be. Don't get me wrong. We're in the *business* of making entertainment and it's my job to make sure we don't go into the red, but we spend a LOT of what we bring in so that we can keep making the game bigger and better (and more attractive) over time.</blockquote>Yes those numbers are way off, I think all of us know those are the total amount of toons ever created and now account wise. So I know myself they are way inflated.The one question I do have and this might be a hot potato. Have you ever considered a purge. Say for instance you got folks who have not played in 3 years that's a really good bet they are not coming back. I was wondering if you ever considered purging off old account information out of the database. That would help with the log in servers. You could always create a backup, and if somebody did come back they could petition to have there account restored back.Just some thoughts.

Anastasie

09-20-2010, 11:41 AM

They actually did a purge the last time they did server merges. I believe it was only toons that were lvl 10 and below and hadn't logged in for a specified amount of time.

Yimway

09-20-2010, 01:53 PM

<cite>Annelise@Guk wrote:</cite><blockquote>They actually did a purge the last time they did server merges. I believe it was only toons that were lvl 10 and below and hadn't logged in for a specified amount of time. </blockquote>Just purging all the banned accounts was a significant impact as I recall.

Dollin

09-20-2010, 02:22 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote>Given that DCUO is due to release soon, I can speculate what splash they hope to make soon.Given that Clone Wars Adventures just released live, hopefully some will come over from there.And given that in the last six years I've yet to see any advertising for EQ2 anywhere, despite begging from the customers, I have to say that I doubt there will be any time soon.Such a shame. This game deserves better.Thank you for your quick reply. I appreciate it.</blockquote>Although I agree that marketing cash is being spent in those areas, I was specifically saying an EQII-splash. We're getting some marketing love soon. They're still debating the size of the splash though.</blockquote>I remember reading something about the big splash right before the last xpac was to be released. I've yet to see that happen and its been 7 months.. Not holding my breath.

FrostDragon

09-20-2010, 03:01 PM

Well getting back to the topic of SOE advert. it is true SOE spends ZERO cash on product placement. Even at launch it got back corner booking. Blizzard blew big bucks on square footage of retail space. even when SOE expansions came out it took a while to even find them on the shelves at gamestop or bestbuy. I worked electronics retail for 12 years. I shelved titles by who payed corperate to allow it to be placed. SOE has been bleeding the PC market off for its console products. I am surprised SOE has not sold off its PC side in the last few years. the Eq2x is a attempt to get get grass root advertisment to get players. There have been a half dozen almost EQ2 free clones for a while now. When you hit the anime and wiki sites you get hammered with banner streamers of a dozen or more titles of bunny quest or near naked bunny vs trolls stuff. We don't see thumb nailed linked SOE youtube trailers do we? I have played eq for 10 years and in wifi cafe's I get asked what I am playing and blank looks when i tell them. SOE has gotten that forgotten. Fan Faire? How about HITTING GEN CON like you mean it. I checked SOE was sad and weak at gen con. Console only stuff [Removed for Content] to hard core RPG players...please.What does SOE do BETTER THEN EVERYONE ELSE ? Balenced game play. Compressed data streams (I can play on a 3k to 18k data stream)SOE runs EQ and EQ2 for a quarter the bandwidth cost of Blizzard... Oh they pay on their end too...big time the free to play model is a gamble that people will open their wallets enough to cover bandwidth costs. if they can get ahead they can get someone to make updates and new content. a number of these do it with player supporting the updates.SOE could go places if they would release a toolkit for designing items ingame. make contests and winners items go up on marketplace. EQ2interface ring a bell? not talking game engine just a static graphic toolkit... maybe release to art colleges...

Kordran

09-20-2010, 03:07 PM

<cite>Dollin@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>I remember reading something about the big splash right before the last xpac was to be released. I've yet to see that happen and its been 7 months.. Not holding my breath.</blockquote>I suspect that's because they expected New Halas to be part of the SF launch and it was supposed to be the draw in for new players. Instead, it was delayed until late May and I'm sure that took a lot of wind out of the proverbial sails there. Not to mention the various issues, performance and otherwise, which took a while for them to straighten out.As I see it, they have one more shot with Velious but there's going to be a lot of very high expectations there. If they screw it up, then just stick a fork in the franchise. My advice would be threefold:1. Provide a means for EQ2X Gold and Platinum players to move (not copy) to the standard servers. Let them keep everything except marketplace items that don't exist on the standard server; they'd be able to keep their gear because it's mastercrafted that already exists in the game. Yes, there are purists who would object to this. Ignore them, the overall health of the standard servers is more important in my opinion.2. Merge the standard servers before the end of this year. 'Nuff said.3. Stop with the constant rearranging of the deck chairs. For years, the development team (particularly the folks working on classes) have been tightening one set of bolts only to loosen others. Heck, you threw away an entire update on that kind of nonsense (the "Art of War" update that, deservedly, never made it past the test server). Fix bona fide bugs that impact actual gameplay in a substantial way, but other than that, focus focus focus on new content.

yohann koldheart

09-20-2010, 04:26 PM

once the new car smell wears off of eq2x i can see it going the same route that both of the exchange servers are going.the only thing that will keep the pop up on the extenze server will be the freebie accounts.sure the pop is huge now because its new and well free .

Detor

09-20-2010, 05:05 PM

<cite>FrostDragon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well getting back to the topic of SOE advert. it is true SOE spends ZERO cash on product placement. Even at launch it got back corner booking. Blizzard blew big bucks on square footage of retail space. even when SOE expansions came out it took a while to even find them on the shelves at gamestop or bestbuy. I worked electronics retail for 12 years. I shelved titles by who payed corperate to allow it to be placed. SOE has been bleeding the PC market off for its console products. I am surprised SOE has not sold off its PC side in the last few years. </blockquote>I don't know where you get the idea that SOE has focused more on consoles - SOE actually doesn't make a great deal of console games. Yes, Sony does as a whole, but SOE specifically not as much. Now, as far as advertising goes it doesn't seem like any part of Sony really goes crazy with advertising, I saw an article this weekend talking about the Move, and people commented 'Huh? That's out already? I thought that was still months away.' Without marketing telling them otherwise the average person (not your hardcore gamer) has no idea what is available or not available.On Livegamer: I think if Livegamer had been in game from the very very start, and it was made very clear what Livegamer is that it would be one of the more popular server types. You already have plenty of people that buy/sell, plenty of people who even if they don't do it don't care that others do, and if people could go through a legitimate service that the publisher provides (one where nobody can be scammed) without having to transfer to another server among people they don't know they would have jumped at it. Unfortunately EQ2 had already been out for awhile when Exchange/Livegamer came along, and people didn't want to leave their friends to go to another server. Instead they just continued buying from the 3rd party market on the servers they were already on.

Kordran

09-20-2010, 05:31 PM

<cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote>On Livegamer: I think if Livegamer had been in game from the very very start, and it was made very clear what Livegamer is that it would be one of the more popular server types.</blockquote>I have my doubts about that. For the people who are buying plat and (directly or indirectly) items for real money on the standard servers, the appeal is that they buy their way to supposed greatness without the stigma of being on one of the exchange servers. In other words, they like the idea that people will think they've earned their gear, even though they haven't. Of course, if you bother to look, they usually don't have many (or any) red adorns and their achievements don't show any T9 raid mob kills.Bottom line, don't discount the emotional motivation behind people buying plat/gear for cash. Their "awesomeness" also depends on acknowledgement from other players, which would be less forthcoming if everyone knows that they got that way just by opening their wallet rather than actually playing the game well.

Coho1

09-20-2010, 05:57 PM

Free copy to EQ2X token for your account.

Kasar

09-20-2010, 06:34 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>You'd be surprised at how low the profit margin can be. Don't get me wrong. We're in the *business* of making entertainment and it's my job to make sure we don't go into the red, but we spend a LOT of what we bring in so that we can keep making the game bigger and better (and more attractive) over time.</blockquote>Unfortunately the perception that much of the available money goes into developing other products rather than working on what the money's intended for. Podcast discussions have implied that people started on EQ2 work and moved up to more important products from there. Mr. Smedley was diverting interviews to talk about Free Realms (sans naming the new FTP product) in 2005, when this game was still adding players. That probably should've been the first hint concerning priorities.

TigTiger

09-20-2010, 06:38 PM

<cite>Gisallo wrote:</cite><blockquote>If we apply the 89/10/1 rule noted in these articles we can only really come to one of a few conclusions. One that EQ2x will not be as profitable as Live long term and so it is still definitely in SOE interests to support Live and that this will encourage them to create a synergy between the two as Smokejumper implies. Two that EQ2x will simply fail straight out or three that they don't care what the heck happens to the game, they are just going to milk it for whatever they can while they develope EQ2next and whatever other Console based mmo's they have in the pipe line.Now admittedly I have points one and two partially based on the following hypothesis, that you simply can NOT get the numbers necessary to make f2p profitable with a game that is as dated as eq2 and looks it (sorry but WAR, Aion and Conan etc look new, EQ2 looks its age and eventually someone will have a game that actually appeals to EQ2 and WoW people read not PvP centric). LOTRO is in a slightly different boat because that game attracts people who are simply into High Fantasy due to its connection and devotion to the Tolkein legacy BUT I also think the games "look" will hinder it.We will see after all but so far the trend in the industry shows that going ALL IN on f2p AFTER you have been sub based is a last desperate gasp to get as much money as u can from an IP before you close up shop and that it only makes sense really from the ground up when u have planned on it because the way u handle the games in terms of content, marketing and expectations are very different. Here is hoping that SOE is looking for balance and does not have the first thought in mind.</blockquote>*cough* Not to miss your whole point but EQ3 was HINTED at durring FanFaire.... <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> And there was a panel to see what people wanted to be in the "next" EQ game. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> So that is where some of the money is going. Personaly I think it's about time. I know i've heard from some devs and have seen some posts on here from devs indicateing in one way or another the frustration there is sometimes trying to program for a game engine that is this old. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> And I know there are some limitations in the engine that some devs would like to do some interesting things in the game but it's just not possible. But I know from the talk at FanFaire that "EQNext" is at least a few years away. But I can dream....<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

TigTiger

09-20-2010, 06:50 PM

<cite>Willit@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>TigTiger wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am with some of the posters here though in that RMT items should never be as good or better than what can be gotten from a player crafter in the game itself, it simply kills the urge and interest to craft. </blockquote>Are you sure?I woud say that the player made Mastercrafted and other are still desirable for the simple fact that they don't cost you real money <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />Time is money right? So you'd have to measure just how much time is spent gathering the gold to buy, say, a mastercrafted armor on the broker. And then look at the real money price on the marketplace.</blockquote>Sorry but most people are lazy, they will take the fastest way to get what they can. If there is a Mastercrafted item on the broker for what would be considered a standard price on any Live server right now, and the same item is avalible on SC Marketplace, most people would buy it on Marketplace. At the very least it would devalue crafters items in the broker because people will be compareing the time they have to spend getting whatever plat it would cost vs just buying a set of gear from the Marketplace for a few bucks right then. BTW if you don't belive most people are lazy/greedy and want what they want as soon as they can get it, reread any thread in the forums about either "Lvling to 90 in x hours" or any thread about 2 boxing, 3 boxing, 4 boxing, however many boxing. Alot of people are already spending alot more money for extra accounts so they can level ASAP so I don't find it much of a stretch to think they would sooner buy equipment off the Marketplace if it's as good as what they could get from a crafter.FYI I do have an account on EQ2x as well as EQ2Live. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Detor

09-20-2010, 07:00 PM

<cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote>On Livegamer: I think if Livegamer had been in game from the very very start, and it was made very clear what Livegamer is that it would be one of the more popular server types.</blockquote>I have my doubts about that. For the people who are buying plat and (directly or indirectly) items for real money on the standard servers, the appeal is that they buy their way to supposed greatness without the stigma of being on one of the exchange servers. In other words, they like the idea that people will think they've earned their gear, even though they haven't. Of course, if you bother to look, they usually don't have many (or any) red adorns and their achievements don't show any T9 raid mob kills.Bottom line, don't discount the emotional motivation behind people buying plat/gear for cash. Their "awesomeness" also depends on acknowledgement from other players, which would be less forthcoming if everyone knows that they got that way just by opening their wallet rather than actually playing the game well.</blockquote>If people were really opposed to being on a server where people can buy things then there would be nobody on EQ2X and this thread wouldn't exist. Not that anybody on the bazaar really feels any stigma, afterall the only time you interact with people NOT on your server is on the forums and battlegrounds, and the forums don't say what server you are on or what gear you have while the battlegrounds weren't around at the start of the game. People on the Bazaar realize that 3rd party markets exist on all the other servers, and random_person_08 can buy their raid gear with pp on any other server the same as they do on The Bazaar.The real difference is simply that on Livegamer you have one player earning it, selling it to another player, and a cut going to a publisher sanctioned source. On other servers (and I suppose soon on The Bazaar if Smokejumper's team do get rid of the only 2 Livegamer servers) you have someone selling it to another player, and the publisher doesn't get a penny from it. There's no real difference in terms of 'oh look, I see somebody with great gear, I wonder if he bought it or not' between normal servers and The Bazaar.

TigTiger

09-20-2010, 07:07 PM

<cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite>You're making the mistake of assuming that anyone that doesn't use the Marketplace doesn't want it in game. I play on AB too, and most of the people I know that haven't used the Marketplace don't care if it gets bigger or goes away entirely. The others don't use it because it is too expensive. Not a single guildmate or in-game friend has ever said that they don't like RMT or the Marketplace and/or want to see it removed. In fact, I have to come here to this forum to see the anti-RMT rants. </blockquote>QFEI dont know anyone from my server that posts in the forums on a regular basis. And I am online on my main server for several hours sometimes crafting just watching the 1-9 and 80-89 chat and I don't remember ever seeing anyone in there go into a tirade about how RMT is destroying the game or they are quitting because of RMT or whatnot. MOST people simply play the game the way they want and don't get too horribly concerned with the bigger picture as long as it's not drasticly affecting the way they play. I said this before and i'll say it again. I was told by someone at SOE that I have no reason to disbelive and who is in a position to know that about 10-20% of the people who play the game actualy come into the forums and post anything. Sometimes i'd imagine it's slightly higher if there is a issue that really seems to be affecting gameplay, or some major change like the recent major changes to the UI. But overall that percentage stays about the same.

PlaneCrazy

09-20-2010, 07:19 PM

This thread really got me to thinking that in all the time I have been playing SOE games (since '97 and the EQ beta with the then Verant/989 Studios) I have never seen them do much advertising. And that's remained a pretty constant policy all these years, which is really amazing when you consider the changes in the industry.SOE seems to have always relied on viral marketing and a dedicated customer base. More niche marketing then anything else. And of course they pretty much created the "standard" for MMRPG with EQ. Staying true to a working model may have served them well for the last 12+ years, but in today's market, they are going to need to be a bit more creative with how they market new games.Part of the reason I can see for them not advertising really hard is that they never seem to have much capital to spend. Seems like the higher ups hold a tight fist on the purse strings (as SJ alluded to in one of hist posts) I remember one time back in either 2001 or 2002, at the E3 expo, when I was there covering a game SOE was developing called Sovereign. I had websites for both EQ and Sovereign in those days and EQ2 was being shown in development. Anyhow, at this E3 I asked Brad McQuaid why didn't they do all the polished cut scenes and movie intros that Blizzard and others were doing. Brad told me how he toured Blizzard and saw the machine they use to map human motion to make the wire-frame skeletal structure for those movies and that the machine was something like $125,000 and SOE couldn't afford that just to do cut scenes.Sorta makes me think of the axiom "You have to spend money, to make money"

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-20-2010, 09:02 PM

As far as advertising, believe it or not i have ran into people, even friends, who have never even heard of everquest 2 before. This is really sad considering how old it is, and how old the franchise is. I mean this dates back to the late 90s all together. For people to never heard of it, that tells you there just is not enough PR or advertising. But yea EVERYONES heard of WoW... Possibly because they *gasp* Advertise? It can't be the graphics or gameplay because that part is terrible. >.>

snowli

09-20-2010, 09:59 PM

You have to spend money to make money, but it does have to be spent in a smart way, SOE unfortunately tries to somehow make more money by cutting spending even further.

Rijacki

09-20-2010, 11:36 PM

<cite>TigTiger wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Andok wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite>You're making the mistake of assuming that anyone that doesn't use the Marketplace doesn't want it in game. I play on AB too, and most of the people I know that haven't used the Marketplace don't care if it gets bigger or goes away entirely. The others don't use it because it is too expensive. Not a single guildmate or in-game friend has ever said that they don't like RMT or the Marketplace and/or want to see it removed. In fact, I have to come here to this forum to see the anti-RMT rants. </blockquote>QFEI dont know anyone from my server that posts in the forums on a regular basis. And I am online on my main server for several hours sometimes crafting just watching the 1-9 and 80-89 chat and I don't remember ever seeing anyone in there go into a tirade about how RMT is destroying the game or they are quitting because of RMT or whatnot. MOST people simply play the game the way they want and don't get too horribly concerned with the bigger picture as long as it's not drasticly affecting the way they play. I said this before and i'll say it again. I was told by someone at SOE that I have no reason to disbelive and who is in a position to know that about 10-20% of the people who play the game actualy come into the forums and post anything. Sometimes i'd imagine it's slightly higher if there is a issue that really seems to be affecting gameplay, or some major change like the recent major changes to the UI. But overall that percentage stays about the same.</blockquote>Careful on your quote trimming. I didn't say the thing you have attributed to me. It's actually diametrically opposite of something I did say.

Rolande'

09-21-2010, 12:16 PM

lollipop

09-21-2010, 02:10 PM

Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.

Detor

09-21-2010, 04:06 PM

<cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.

Neskonlith

09-21-2010, 05:04 PM

<cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!

Detor

09-21-2010, 05:43 PM

<cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!</blockquote>Actually some people have recommended that in the past. Don't see the need to force them to a PvP server though unless they come from Nagafen; anybody caught on a nonPvP server - sure, send them to The Bazaar.

yohann koldheart

09-21-2010, 06:40 PM

<cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!</blockquote>the problem is how can they tell for sure if somone buys plat ?they would almost have to hire or assign a employee to do nothing but investigate these things.

Rijacki

09-21-2010, 06:47 PM

<cite>Scanki@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!</blockquote>the problem is how can they tell for sure if somone buys plat ?they would almost have to hire or assign a employee to do nothing but investigate these things.</blockquote>They do have a team which investigates it and does ban accounts based on it, both buyers and sellers (though buyers generally don't get an instant ban).

Detor

09-21-2010, 08:41 PM

<cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Scanki@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!</blockquote>the problem is how can they tell for sure if somone buys plat ?they would almost have to hire or assign a employee to do nothing but investigate these things.</blockquote>They do have a team which investigates it and does ban accounts based on it, both buyers and sellers (though buyers generally don't get an instant ban).</blockquote>Yeah, so while they already detect people, why lose the subscription when you can simply move them to a server where everybody has agreed to allow buying and selling? It just makes sense to move them where it's permitted, send them an email letting them know all the advantages of a legitimate service endorsed by Sony, and if they do quit well you aren't out anything that you wouldn't have been if you'd punished them instead. You increase Bazaar population, Livegamer makes more in commission fees if the person continues to buy stuff after they get moved, you continue to make money off of them buying expansions and paying monthly, you reduce customer service effort trying to track down people buying outside Livegamer because they'd be buying from a legitimate, approved site instead, and all the while you're putting more and more strain on the 3rd party sites that operate outside Sony's ability to get a percentage of each transaction as you transfer away their customers.

snowli

09-22-2010, 12:49 PM

<cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rijacki wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Scanki@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Detor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>Open LG on all servers like Vanguard. Make one server for those die hard people who will faint, scream or just poop themselves if they ever find out thier guildmates buys plat.Sony can make more money. LG can make more money. Third party sites can make less.</blockquote>I just don't see them doing that. I know all the arguments for it (third party sites already exist, better that a legitimate site gets the money, etc.) and against it (the forum posters who swear they would quit and that they represent the majority) and really the best thing for you to ask for is for them to keep The Bazaar intact and not close down the only 2 Livegamer servers they have. Maybe merge Vox into Bazaar as a nonPVP server, or merge a nonlivegamer server onto The Bazaar with an option given for people to pick any other server they want too. Basically just keep Livegamer as an option instead of getting rid of it entirely, that's what Smokejumper needs to hear people wanting - asking for that is far more likely than them expanding it to all servers ala Vanguard.</blockquote>SOE could adjust EULA enforcement to banish all plat buyers on non-RMT over to the PVP RMT server instead of an outright ban - this keeps RMT interested players together in a community that is on an even playing field, and it would give PVP players new targets to play with!</blockquote>the problem is how can they tell for sure if somone buys plat ?they would almost have to hire or assign a employee to do nothing but investigate these things.</blockquote>They do have a team which investigates it and does ban accounts based on it, both buyers and sellers (though buyers generally don't get an instant ban).</blockquote>Yeah, so while they already detect people, why lose the subscription when you can simply move them to a server where everybody has agreed to allow buying and selling? It just makes sense to move them where it's permitted, send them an email letting them know all the advantages of a legitimate service endorsed by Sony, and if they do quit well you aren't out anything that you wouldn't have been if you'd punished them instead. You increase Bazaar population, Livegamer makes more in commission fees if the person continues to buy stuff after they get moved, you continue to make money off of them buying expansions and paying monthly, you reduce customer service effort trying to track down people buying outside Livegamer because they'd be buying from a legitimate, approved site instead, and all the while you're putting more and more strain on the 3rd party sites that operate outside Sony's ability to get a percentage of each transaction as you transfer away their customers.</blockquote>Unfortunately this suggestion (move the RMT buyer accounts to officially sanctioned RMT servers) seems to get ignored each time it comes up (in every mmo).I have nothing against RMT, aslong as it isn't even tacitly allowed by 'failure to enforce' on whatever server I play on, elsewhere is fine.

Attrikane

09-22-2010, 08:53 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>You know....there are plenty of people who play on The Bazaar that "earn" what we own.

Detor

09-23-2010, 11:14 AM

<cite>Attricane@The Bazaar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kiku wrote:</cite><blockquote>With the talk of merger's what if The Bazaar service. Alot of us like the service but the population sucks. What plans are thier for this? WIll LG be opened on eq2x and Bazaar given free copy over or?</blockquote>The Bazaar is the thorniest issue of all. Not just for legal reasons (of which there are several), but also because merging players from Bazaar into other servers violates the "if you play here, you have to *earn what you own*" mentality of the regular Live servers.We're still discussing The Bazaar for those reasons.(We have the same issues with Vox. We'll deal with those issues when we get closer to the merge and figure out what you folks want to see happen.)</blockquote>You know....there are plenty of people who play on The Bazaar that "earn" what we own. </blockquote>I think he meant it more as a way to describe the mentality of those that say they hate all things RMT, and those that would declare they'd quit the moment a person from The Bazaar is merged with them, not necessarily saying that HE believes that. Since Livegamer is one player to another, obviously somebody has to earn it first. On top of that for every person that buys something that means somebody else out there earned something and no longer has it.

Tommara

09-28-2010, 01:52 AM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote>(Tiny trivia fun fact: A large majority of the accounts playing EQ2X beta have never created had an EQII character created on their account. So we *are* seeing new players come to the franchise to give it a try. This bodes well for population on both services after we start advertising.)</blockquote>Um, I tried the EQ2X beta with a non-EQII live account. I doubt if I am the only one.

Tommara

09-28-2010, 02:10 AM

adolf102

09-29-2010, 08:10 AM

And I was just reading Smokes interview on massively.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.massively.com/2010/09/28/eqiis-georgeson-on-lotro-comparisons-class-manifestos-and-mor/" target="_blank">http://www.massively.com/2010/09/28...festos-and-mor/</a>and he says: One of the typical problems with an MMO is that your early zones get so empty and stale because there's never anybody there, but there's so many people checking out the game on a regular basis that they fill in the gaps. There's still about the same percentage of people that come in and play, but so many new people are coming in to check out the game, it's just been really fun. How I understand here you admit "new people coming to check the game out" is "really fun" and at the same time you cut out all of those "new people" that provide "real fun" to Live servers.It really feels like you don't give a thing about old time subscribers and our long term fun. Pitty.

isest

09-29-2010, 09:09 AM

<cite>adolf102 wrote:</cite><blockquote>And I was just reading Smokes interview on massively.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.massively.com/2010/09/28/eqiis-georgeson-on-lotro-comparisons-class-manifestos-and-mor/" target="_blank">http://www.massively.com/2010/09/28...festos-and-mor/</a>and he says: One of the typical problems with an MMO is that your early zones get so empty and stale because there's never anybody there, but there's so many people checking out the game on a regular basis that they fill in the gaps. There's still about the same percentage of people that come in and play, but so many new people are coming in to check out the game, it's just been really fun. How I understand here you admit "new people coming to check the game out" is "really fun" and at the same time you cut out all of those "new people" that provide "real fun" to Live servers.It really feels like you don't give a thing about old time subscribers and our long term fun. Pitty.</blockquote>Yes that bothered me as well "New folks coming to check the game out" and none of thhose new folks on live. What does that tell you. Im sure that eventually they will make a desision live vs extended. So whoever is doing the best is where they are going to go. Does anybody really think there going to keep 2 seperate games open?

Nakaru-Nitepaw

09-29-2010, 09:54 AM

<cite>Tommara wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE could fix that by selling items on SC to make raiding easier. You can already buy 100% health and power potions. Don't know what the re-use timer is like for them. Hopefully it takes a long time before they can be re-used, but that could be changed.Even with a long re-use timer, some raiding guilds will require them.</blockquote>I think that might fall in line with those things people don't want on the live servers. Now on EQ2X i have no issues with having stuff like this, or even class oriented buffs put in items on SC. I'm sure tortoise shell and time compression would go like hotcakes.isest wrote:<blockquote>Yes that bothered me as well "New folks coming to check the game out" and none of thhose new folks on live. What does that tell you. Im sure that eventually they will make a desision live vs extended. So whoever is doing the best is where they are going to go. Does anybody really think there going to keep 2 seperate games open? </blockquote>It bothers me too. It's all about the "new" people. Rather they stay or not is something to talk about later. As for people who played long ago, what would draw them back? If it ever comes down to eq2live vs eq2x i hope SOE at least is loyal to the fan base of this game that started from the beginning. In stead of focusing on "new players". It leaves a bad taste in my mouth as to if they even want to focus on or might have something against the older players. To that i have to say, if not for the older players, this game would not even be here, and would not be as good as it is now. If not for the feedback, suggestions, bug reports, dedication, and money.

isest

09-29-2010, 12:22 PM

<cite>Eschia@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Tommara wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE could fix that by selling items on SC to make raiding easier. You can already buy 100% health and power potions. Don't know what the re-use timer is like for them. Hopefully it takes a long time before they can be re-used, but that could be changed.Even with a long re-use timer, some raiding guilds will require them.</blockquote>I think that might fall in line with those things people don't want on the live servers. Now on EQ2X i have no issues with having stuff like this, or even class oriented buffs put in items on SC. I'm sure tortoise shell and time compression would go like hotcakes.isest wrote:<blockquote>Yes that bothered me as well "New folks coming to check the game out" and none of thhose new folks on live. What does that tell you. Im sure that eventually they will make a desision live vs extended. So whoever is doing the best is where they are going to go. Does anybody really think there going to keep 2 seperate games open? </blockquote>It bothers me too. It's all about the "new" people. Rather they stay or not is something to talk about later. As for people who played long ago, what would draw them back? If it ever comes down to eq2live vs eq2x i hope SOE at least is loyal to the fan base of this game that started from the beginning. In stead of focusing on "new players". It leaves a bad taste in my mouth as to if they even want to focus on or might have something against the older players. To that i have to say, if not for the older players, this game would not even be here, and would not be as good as it is now. If not for the feedback, suggestions, bug reports, dedication, and money.</blockquote>Yes its kind of like my 5.5 years worth of mine and my wifes accounts don't mean anything. While we been here and supported this game the entire time, now it is like ok thanks you get nothing. So yes I feel the same way a very bad taste in my mouth, and worried about the future of live.

ozbatovski

10-21-2010, 01:09 PM

Fellas, please read Ripchords' good post here to understand the problem better: <a href="http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-my-full-story-about-server-merge-long.html#post1518455" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-...tml#post1518455</a> And SOE please reply to this thread: <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?&topic_id=488996" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=488996</a> And I have sadly canceled my account and will not renew till a solution comes.

MurFalad

10-21-2010, 01:48 PM

<cite>ozbatovski wrote:</cite><blockquote>Fellas, please read Ripchords' good post here to understand the problem better: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-my-full-story-about-server-merge-long.html#post1518455" target="_blank">http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-...tml#post1518455</a> And SOE please reply to this thread: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?&topic_id=488996" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=488996</a> And I have sadly canceled my account and will not renew till a solution comes.</blockquote>I went over there and read through the extremely long post, and it can be condensed down to"Why wasn't Vox merged"Utterly bored here of reading such posts, the answer is simple and SOE have said it several times, its because they have a contract with another company (Livegamer). You can cry, moan, jump up and down as much as you like but until SOE are clear that legally they can do a merge they're not going to do a thing as otherwise they risk being sued.I honestly believe the possible protests some players who are dogmatically opposed to former Livegamer players joining their server is not an issue here, if it was then they'd have come out and said the population doesn't want it by now. Personally I'm opposed to RMT (although Livegamer isn't the RMT I dislike), but having former livegamer players on my server makes zero difference to my game apart from more people to play with.And seeing that SOE have said they want to do a merge and the worst possible outcome that could come out of this (apart from being sued for $100,000's of dollars for breach of contract) would be everyone on Vox leaving I'm sure they're rather keen to do whatever they can to keep players subbed, which for Vox means a server merge (as they indiacted the population was too low).

Neskonlith

10-21-2010, 02:20 PM

<cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally I'm opposed to RMT (although Livegamer isn't the RMT I dislike), but having former livegamer players on my server makes zero difference to my game apart from more people to play with.</blockquote>I suppose using RMT as a blanket term to describe both the legal and illegal transactions will lead to confusion for many.I oppose the illegal RMT of plat-buying that happens everyday on regular servers, but I have no issue with the players who legally use official services - in one case, players are cheating the agreed upon rules, while in the other case players are openly using approved services that are available to all.

Vortexelemental

10-21-2010, 02:21 PM

<cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ozbatovski wrote:</cite><blockquote>Fellas, please read Ripchords' good post here to understand the problem better: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-my-full-story-about-server-merge-long.html#post1518455" target="_blank">http://www.eq2flames.com/vox/71336-...tml#post1518455</a> And SOE please reply to this thread: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?&topic_id=488996" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=488996</a> And I have sadly canceled my account and will not renew till a solution comes.</blockquote>I went over there and read through the extremely long post, and it can be condensed down to"Why wasn't Vox merged"Utterly bored here of reading such posts, the answer is simple and SOE have said it several times, its because they have a contract with another company (Livegamer). You can cry, moan, jump up and down as much as you like but until SOE are clear that legally they can do a merge they're not going to do a thing as otherwise they risk being sued.I honestly believe the possible protests some players who are dogmatically opposed to former Livegamer players joining their server is not an issue here, if it was then they'd have come out and said the population doesn't want it by now. Personally I'm opposed to RMT (although Livegamer isn't the RMT I dislike), but having former livegamer players on my server makes zero difference to my game apart from more people to play with.And seeing that SOE have said they want to do a merge and the worst possible outcome that could come out of this (apart from being sued for $100,000's of dollars for breach of contract) would be everyone on Vox leaving I'm sure they're rather keen to do whatever they can to keep players subbed, which for Vox means a server merge (as they indiacted the population was too low).</blockquote>Why won't they tell us when this contract ends and what they intend to do after though?

PlaneCrazy

10-21-2010, 04:52 PM

mysticalone

10-21-2010, 05:23 PM

eq2x is not the same game as eq2 you pay for combat arts etc etc.I tried it and it was horrible and I have seen a few people subscribe to regular eq2 as a result of trying eq2x. It seems to me there is flow between the two. Some people just played regular eq2 because that was what was presented. Some people try the eq2x because as a free trial that is what is basically presented. I dont like the presence of eq2x because it leads me to believe the next rendition of eq (eq next or whatever its been dubbed) will have the same model. I found eq2x to be horrible and would not play eq next if it was the same. Am I in a majority? does it make sense to sacrifice my loyalty for someone elses? I dont know I have no clue how many people realy pay and play eq2x if its a lot I would say SOE made the right decision (from a business standpoint) if its not that much of a difference then meh. We shall see what happens in the future and it will indicate what new games look like. I have seen clone wars adventures and how it works and its clear they are slowly developing a new structure for their games. What that will look like in the end is anyones guessOne thing is clear though since i absolutely hated the fact that I could not make my spells or loot them etc and had to pay for broker tokens among other things I will not be playing that version of eq2 or any future versions if they come out looking like that lol.

Yimway

10-21-2010, 05:29 PM

<cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is no realistic route for new players to arrive in EQ2LIVE at present. What new players used to come to live, for example our family of accounts, are now diverted to EQ2X. This still isn't addressed, at all.</blockquote>This has been my primary concern since SJ's model for EQ2X was announced. It is in my opinion the most significant concern from the EQ2Live playerbase.We are basically placed into a stagnent pool and left in a state of steady population decay.I canceled my accounts a few weeks into this debacle to express my concerns with the lack of communications on what incentives would exist to play on live. Comments were made at Fanfaire that this was marketing's job and they would communicate on the issue 'soon(tm)'.Well, to be honest, my subs all run out of time in the next week. It's been 2 and a half months and no communication has happened, I have no expectation that anything will actually be done about this concern.My convictions remain where they were when I made the decision to cancel, I see no indication that a reasonable Live product offering will be made alongside the eq2x offering. I see no reason to believe any of the influx of new players brought in from an EQ2X marketing push will result in new players on *my* server. I have no reasonable expectation that new players will continue to choose *my* server even at abysmal rate they did before F2P was announced. I have no reasonable expectation that a F2P marketing push will somehow bleed over into EQ2Live as SJ seemed to allude to.As such, in a few days I'll post my tidy farewells in OOC and go to playing another game's alpha full time and leave the EQ2 community behind. I'm of course bitterly disappointed that reason has not prevailed on this issue, and it pains me to leave dear friends behind here in this community. Never the less, reading between the lines and looking at everything that has been said and not said, I lack any faith in a reasonable result from SoE.Ultimately I know, if SJ even reads this feedback, he'll just lump me into that pile of bitter naysayers (the veterans that have contributed significantly to the current state of this game) and my concerns will ultimately continue to go in one ear and out the other.It pains me to see how SoE has gone from being the best at listening to, engaging with, and reacting to their player community, and moved on to this act of 'father knows best' and sweeping our concerns under the rug.

PlaneCrazy

10-21-2010, 06:56 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>snowline wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is no realistic route for new players to arrive in EQ2LIVE at present. What new players used to come to live, for example our family of accounts, are now diverted to EQ2X. This still isn't addressed, at all.</blockquote>This has been my primary concern since SJ's model for EQ2X was announced. It is in my opinion the most significant concern from the EQ2Live playerbase.We are basically placed into a stagnent pool and left in a state of steady population decay.I canceled my accounts a few weeks into this debacle to express my concerns with the lack of communications on what incentives would exist to play on live. Comments were made at Fanfaire that this was marketing's job and they would communicate on the issue 'soon(tm)'.Well, to be honest, my subs all run out of time in the next week. It's been 2 and a half months and no communication has happened, I have no expectation that anything will actually be done about this concern.My convictions remain where they were when I made the decision to cancel, I see no indication that a reasonable Live product offering will be made alongside the eq2x offering. I see no reason to believe any of the influx of new players brought in from an EQ2X marketing push will result in new players on *my* server. I have no reasonable expectation that new players will continue to choose *my* server even at abysmal rate they did before F2P was announced. I have no reasonable expectation that a F2P marketing push will somehow bleed over into EQ2Live as SJ seemed to allude to.As such, in a few days I'll post my tidy farewells in OOC and go to playing another game's alpha full time and leave the EQ2 community behind. I'm of course bitterly disappointed that reason has not prevailed on this issue, and it pains me to leave dear friends behind here in this community. Never the less, reading between the lines and looking at everything that has been said and not said, I lack any faith in a reasonable result from SoE.Ultimately I know, if SJ even reads this feedback, he'll just lump me into that pile of bitter naysayers (the veterans that have contributed significantly to the current state of this game) and my concerns will ultimately continue to go in one ear and out the other.It pains me to see how SoE has gone from being the best at listening to, engaging with, and reacting to their player community, and moved on to this act of 'father knows best' and sweeping our concerns under the rug.</blockquote>For what it's worth, it might be worthwhile to check back here once a month or so. The one thing I am hoping for is that the EQ2x model actually fails in the long run. Even though it seems to be a success right now, you have to remember the target population over there.... they can be as fickle as cats and as flighty as a flock of sparrows. So when bumps in the road happen or when content seems a little slow to be released, SOE might just find half the population of Freeport just vanished, while those of us over on Live here tend to be a bit more forgiving and committed to the long run.

Yimway

10-22-2010, 02:06 PM

Lalen

12-08-2010, 09:38 PM

<cite>SmokeJumper wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Smokejumper,You speak of advertising for EQ2X...What of advertising for EQ2?This has been sorely lacking ever since launch.The only tv commercial I've ever seen, I think, was for EQ2 Online...the one with four people who fight a dragon and lose.I've seen advertising for Free Realms, still do.Please, consider advertising for the live servers of EQ2.</blockquote>If it was up to me, we'd take a ton o'cash and dump it into advertising for this game. I strongly believe this is one of the best MMOs in existence and we can do great things with more hype.But it ain't up to me. I lobby as I can, but just so you're aware, I'm in charge of the dev team, and nominally the business as a whole. I work with all the departments, including Marketing, however I'm not in charge of any team's budget except the dev team's. The Marketing team tries to use their money wisely for what they think will make the best splash for the buck. They hope to make such a splash real soon.</blockquote>SmokeJumper,I'm actually rather concerned that SOE may be doing the same with EQII now as they did with EQI when EQII first came out -- total neglect much like the step-child that is put in a closet and never allowed to get out to see other people or even let friends and family know it exists. Is this something we can expect with all these irons in the fire or am I just reading into this a bit too much?BTW your honest answers you have provided in these forums are very much appreciated (by me at least) and is something I am not use to as a former EQI lifer turned EQII =P Over there, all you get there is intentional avoidance of questions; though I believe if they were as honest as you, the player base there now would be 0 or close to it lol (My question about 8 months ago, "Of all the years of EQ, how come EQI has NEVER been advertised on TV post Luclin?" Dev Answer, "We didn't need to". To say they still aren't needing to advertise to keep it alive is a severe lack of appreciation for what EQ use to be =( )