Might be off topic

[Rooster95]

It sounds more like you're disenchanted with the game than anything else to me. yeah, things have changed a lot in the years that it's been around, and it is by far easier now than ever before. i just returned to the game after a close to three year break, and in less than 3 months, i'm already one of the top on my server for my class. And i'm not a high end raider. Some people like this, others do not, but thats all a matter of opinion. bottom line though, is that as long as they make more in profits than it takes them to keep the game going .... It won't go anywhere.

You mentioned that there are only around 3000 to 5000 active accounts left (just guessing, i know). That means that the subscriptions alone pull in from $44,970 to $74,950 a month. Why stop getting that? It's easy money for them.

 

[SiegeTank]

3000-5000 active accounts?

Interesting question, that...

There are 14 servers.

At any given time there must be at least 200 traders in the Bazaar. Each one represents one account, right? That's 2800 active accounts right there.

Now at prime times in my experience there are 25-75 people in each of most of the HoT zones, so that's gotta be another 300-400 accounts running per server at the same time, for a total of 4200-5600 accounts right there.

Combining those, we're up to 7000-8400 accounts, and that's being pretty conservative since I'm not even counting zones outside HoT and surely there must be at least another 100 players not hanging out in HoT. (PoK alone and the GL are good for another 50 or more minimum, most nights.)

Yeah, yeah, some of my analysis can be challenged, like Zek and FV have fewer players online but I think I'm being pretty darn conservative in most of these estimates, anyway. (Would be interesting to have a well-flagged toon travel through most zones in one night and do a head count, for sure.)

That's around 10,000 accounts actively in the game at a busy time. How many more are still logging in regularly but not on any given "busy time." Call them semi-regulars. Maybe another 2,000 as a wild guess?

So I'm estimating there are AT LEAST 12,000 active EQ accounts. Bearing in mind that these are all estimated "statistics" and, like Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

 

[SiegeTank]

Of course, since probably everyone boxes these days, those 12,000 active accounts represent---oh, say---a few hundred actual human beings?

 

[everquest45]

Lets keep in mind all the things you all said starting with active accounts.

U must be a populated server...servers that havent had a server marger in a while like ZEK (PVP) only have up near 100 if they are lucky in the bazaar. And that server only has 2 active raiding guilds...one of which dosent hit max numbers unless most of everyone boxes on it so thats nearly 200 accounts for that WHOLE server.

So number flux from server to server now if ur on Drinal, that server has somewhere near a max of 400 active players...and u cant assume EVERYONE who runs a trader, opens a WHOLE new account if anything the trader is on a ALT account...its what I use to do during raids and over night run trader with main logged off. So again youre numbers arent as good as u think. There isnt 13000 active accounts for EQ lol. There is a reason sony took down the number of players actively playing on each server many years ago u would be dissapointed if u saw the numbers...WoW really killed EQ. (for those who played longer then afew years would remember where the server status is when u log in use to be the number of active players pre server where the DOWN or UP or CRASHED is currently displayed).

 

[everquest45]

And sony wouldnt mind shuting down EQ if they lost afew servers that are low populated, and with all the emu servers that are free to play with better GMs watching active hackers that would attact the anti hacker corwd of people and u know how most people feel about the GMs in EQ as it is. Few and far between is one ever found...right? lol Anyhow from my understanding there are emu servers that are getting upto speed and releasing UF expasion for use.

With the number of server margers that happened in the last 2 to 3 years is because of mega drop off in number of players suspended/ban or just loss of interest...as for a comment i read about "Im a new player" or "Im just returning" in most cases its usually just someone boxing an alt or making a new toon because they were busted GKing or something wit there old toons. Im not saying that new or older players dont come back but ive found about over half the time that toon was made on a new account due to there old toon being ban...dont let yourself be fooled...or hey it might be someone who had a bad rep just saying they are a new toon to get a fresh start.

 

[Vesryn]

Lets keep in mind all the things you all said starting with active accounts.

U must be a populated server...servers that havent had a server marger in a while like ZEK (PVP) only have up near 100 if they are lucky in the bazaar. And that server only has 2 active raiding guilds...one of which dosent hit max numbers unless most of everyone boxes on it so thats nearly 200 accounts for that WHOLE server.

So number flux from server to server now if ur on Drinal, that server has somewhere near a max of 400 active players...and u cant assume EVERYONE who runs a trader, opens a WHOLE new account if anything the trader is on a ALT account...its what I use to do during raids and over night run trader with main logged off. So again youre numbers arent as good as u think. There isnt 13000 active accounts for EQ lol. There is a reason sony took down the number of players actively playing on each server many years ago u would be dissapointed if u saw the numbers...WoW really killed EQ. (for those who played longer then afew years would remember where the server status is when u log in use to be the number of active players pre server where the DOWN or UP or CRASHED is currently displayed).

No offense to you pvp server people, but using Zek as a basis to say theres hardly anyone playing is pretty horrible, every single regular server out there has far far more people. I tend to agree more with Siege, I'd even go out on a limb and say he's underestimating the amount.

Seriously, EQ isn't gonna end anytime soon, irregardless of what some random gm says. They wouldn't even say something like that to begin with. I think you might have misunderstood what the guy said. If anything, theres more people came back right now since HOT came out, in my experience, probably due to easy mode loots.

 

[devestator]

Sorry everquest45, there are to many holes in at least half of what you say to credit anything you say with a grain of truth.

Your character had a virus?? How does a character get a virus lol... If one of their servers did happen to get a virus (unlikely) it would effect the entire server, not one character.

A GM dev, and most devs being interns. Hardly. Most of the devs for EQ have been with EQ for at least a few years. True I don't think any of the original devs are still around, but they aren't interns. Not saying they don't have interns over at SoE doing some work maybing doing some GM work. But a GM is not a dev most of the time. It would be rare for a dev to appear in the production environment game as a GM unless it was necessary to check something out that could not be reproduced in a test environment. As said before, most GMs don't really have a clue what is going on development wise with EQ.

3000 to 5000 active accounts, if that were true we'd be down to 2 to 3 servers not 14. The EQ servers are made to handle 1500 to 2500 accounts per server. You have to remember that not everyone plays at the same time as you. By your english I'm guessing you are not from America which means you play outside of prime time most likely. I think even the guess of 12000 is kind of low but it's a much better guess than 3000 to 5000. So lets just be extra modest and say 10,000 ative accounts, thats 150,000 dollars per month for Sony. And I'd be willing to be you more than 50% of that is pure profits for the game. While 75,000 dollars isn't a huge sum of money for a giant cooperation like Sony, it is still profit.

4-5 failed progression servers? As far as I know there have only ever been 2 progression servers. The Sleeper and The Combine. The Sleeper was merged into The Combine because after the initial newness of it went away the population dropped off.

As for your whining about gear. I think it's perfectly fine that group gear in HoT is better than raid gear in SoD. You can't expect people who do not have time to raid to never get an oppurtunity at the good gear. And HoT raid gear is better than the HoT group gear. The idea is if you are a raider you keep raiding to keep getting hte new raid gear. You do not suddenly say oh I'm just going to stay in my SoD raid gear for the next 5 expansions and expect to be ok. Raiders already have a leg up on the casual gamers because generally if they are wearing 1 previous expansion raid gear, it's as good as the group gear in the newest expansion. Meaning they can blaze through the group content faster than the casual players that have to gear up for in, then start raiding for their gear upgrades.

I could go on and poke more holes in the stuff you say but meh, whats the point. You obviously are determine eq is going to end sooner than later. You are also probably one of the people wearing a tin foil hat and getting ready to lay in your grave in 2012. Not much can be done to get people like that to see reality.

 

[beherenow]

In support of what everquest45 is saying, it would make sense that sony would plan to shut down eq in about a year or two so that they could have some vacation time before the world ends in 2012.

 

[Villageidiot]

I'm pretty sure the "virus" he is referring to is the Nasty Dot from a UF raid that didn't fade on death of someone , Then they went into GL and that Dot would infect the people around you every few seconds.

Thus creating a "virus" in the GL killing everyone repeatedly.

 

[Sum1]

I'm pretty sure the "virus" he is referring to is the Nasty Dot from a UF raid that didn't fade on death of someone , Then they went into GL and that Dot would infect the people around you every few seconds.

Thus creating a "virus" in the GL killing everyone repeatedly.

What raid is that?

So far the OP hasn't said anything convincing me that he's not an idiot.

 

[Villageidiot]

I'm pretty sure the "virus" he is referring to is the Nasty Dot from a UF raid that didn't fade on death of someone , Then they went into GL and that Dot would infect the people around you every few seconds.

Thus creating a "virus" in the GL killing everyone repeatedly.

What raid is that?

So far the OP hasn't said anything convincing me that he's not an idiot.

It's one of the Brell's Temple raids, there is a spider that infects people around him every few seconds with a nasty DoT. Then those infected will infect others. etc....

As long as everyone piles on top of the spider to kill it and a pally is around to splash, your golden.

Well thats how we did it.

 

[SiegeTank]

...and u cant assume EVERYONE who runs a trader, opens a WHOLE new account if anything the trader is on a ALT account...its what I use to do during raids and over night run trader with main logged off. .

I didn't assume that at all! What I'm saying is on most servers if you log on at "prime time" (evenings US) you can count 200 traders in the Bazaar, 50-100 toons in PoK/GL, 300-500 playing in HoT zones and maybe another 100 actively playing in non-HoT zones. That's about 650-900 characters ALL ON AT THE SAME TIME so each represents an account. Multiple that by 14 servers and you get between 10-12,000 active accounts.

I didn't even consider toons on raids, of which there must be several raids running most nights on every server, in addition to the above estimates. Yeah, when raids are running this cuts back on the HoT population. But I've been hanging out grouping in the Grounds and the House first floor zones for a number of days now and those zones have between 50-75 players each regardless of how many guilds are raiding.

When you THINK about it, 3000 active accounts is a ridiculously low number. That's a little over 200 PER server. C'mon, most servers have more than 200 traders ALONE standing in the Bazaar on any random night...

 

[Anon456]

3000 to 5000 active accounts, if that were true we'd be down to 2 to 3 servers not 14. The EQ servers are made to handle 1500 to 2500 accounts per server. You have to remember that not everyone plays at the same time as you. By your english I'm guessing you are not from America which means you play outside of prime time most likely. I think even the guess of 12000 is kind of low but it's a much better guess than 3000 to 5000. So lets just be extra modest and say 10,000 ative accounts, thats 150,000 dollars per month for Sony. And I'd be willing to be you more than 50% of that is pure profits for the game. While 75,000 dollars isn't a huge sum of money for a giant cooperation like Sony, it is still profit.

The best information that I could find, was that in 2004 there were 450,000 active accounts for Everquest alone. No information relating to subscriptions was available past this. While I do believe that there are nowhere near that many active accounts today, it probably still goes close to 100,000. EQ isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[Haterofall]

My buddy said that as of last he heard which was in 2009, EQ had 100k+ active accounts. I'd take a guess it's still there or higher with HoT.

 

[Sum1]

I'm pretty sure the "virus" he is referring to is the Nasty Dot from a UF raid that didn't fade on death of someone , Then they went into GL and that Dot would infect the people around you every few seconds.

Thus creating a "virus" in the GL killing everyone repeatedly.

What raid is that?

So far the OP hasn't said anything convincing me that he's not an idiot.

It's one of the Brell's Temple raids, there is a spider that infects people around him every few seconds with a nasty DoT. Then those infected will infect others. etc....

As long as everyone piles on top of the spider to kill it and a pally is around to splash, your golden.

Well thats how we did it.

rofl, that raid? How the fuck would you bring that back to the lobby?

... more importantly ... does that still work? Because I'll totally do it.

 

[Fry]

EverQuest is not going anywhere anytime soon barring some huge exodus of the player base.

Look at the EQ Mac server, maybe 150 active people, they just cut the customer service and it still makes them money.

As other people have said, LoN, station cash, ect, I don't see them shutting it down anytime soon. I could see them stop releasing expansions when it's either not profitable to do so, or when they focus on EQ3.

They also still have that free to play card up their sleeves like they did with EQ2 and other MMORPG's have done successfully.

 

[fenzurdapanzer]

Seems that this poster gets alot of comments posted on his topics, but none of his topics are really that good. Hes the post gravedigger too =/

 

[Chase369]

Everyone here makes good points. But here it is...if EQ wasnt hurting so bad, there wouldnt be LoN card game...if EQ wasnt hurting so bad, the station store wouldnt be here...IF EQ wasnt hurting so bad they wouldnt have ever made buy / making home and cash whoring the fuck out of it to rake what they can out of the EQ players. Coming up with retarded buy a bed from station store its better! or buy LoN cards to get a Hide out house once collecting all 3 parts from LoN or some shit.

If every business exec / owner shared your way of thinking, businesses wouldnt expand,grow and continue to make more and more money. The list of things youve stated has nothing to do with EQ dieing imho. They have thought of new ways to make money, which is smart.

I wouldnt bet a paycheck that EQ is NOT gonna die in a year or 2. Nor will I bet that EQ is gonna live for another 10 years. But discussions like these help make up other peoples minds about hanging up EQ and moving on. I personally dont think topics like this are productive or help the EQ community in anyway shape or form. But hey, everyone is in titled to their own opinions.

All in all, I really dont think a "GM Dev" would say such things. I know if I was employed by a company I wouldnt start rumors that could get my ass fired.

 

[abraham234]

I'm pretty sure the "virus" he is referring to is the Nasty Dot from a UF raid that didn't fade on death of someone , Then they went into GL and that Dot would infect the people around you every few seconds.

Thus creating a "virus" in the GL killing everyone repeatedly.

What raid is that?

So far the OP hasn't said anything convincing me that he's not an idiot.

It's one of the Brell's Temple raids, there is a spider that infects people around him every few seconds with a nasty DoT. Then those infected will infect others. etc....

As long as everyone piles on top of the spider to kill it and a pally is around to splash, your golden.

Well thats how we did it.

rofl, that raid? How the fuck would you bring that back to the lobby?

... more importantly ... does that still work? Because I'll totally do it.

2 raids BT and event 6 in convorteum. but more event 6 since the sisters did a DT and someone had gated which in turn give everyone in the guild lobby it then some people zoned into the bazaa and give the traders and some people also loged off with it and it was like this for 2 days lol

 

[Sum1]

holy shit that's awesome lol