The state of the EQ Union

[Sourdough35]

Lotta things on my mind, but strangely enough, I have a rather newbieish question to open with.
When using databases, if I run the 6.0 velious DB that's so widely used, will it more or less resemble to content of the live EQ servers? What i mean is, how complete a database of actual EQ quests, items, exp rates, etc... is on the database? Is a lot of stuff missing, or after 4 or so years has it all been collected and added to the database? Uncompressed, the thing is like 120 megs, so I assume there's a ton of content on there, I'm just wondering if it reflects the completeness of the EQ live worlds.

Secondly, I think a lot about how the eq1 live community is set up right now, and the state it's in. Tons of people have long since migrated to eq2, or world of warcraft, or other games. I've already heard about server consolidation on the part of SOE to make up for some of the more sparesely populated realms and i'm sure this reflects a general downward trend of the eq lifecycle.

With the 9th expansion coming out tomorrow, I'm sure we can all agree that eq will at some point in the not so distant future, be a done deal. I'm sure it doesn't mean that the servers will go down, see ya later, adios, but I do think that the game as a whole is entering the end of it's evolution.

This is a bizarre time then, because we've never really seen an online game last as long, with fresh new content as EQ, and we've never seen a payforplay online service in it's twilight years. So it brings up an interesting question. What's going to happen when the community begins to dwindle down to a substantial few? I imagine because this is a pay service, such a question is akin to asking "what happens when people stop using telephones?" or other such queries. I'm sure that, as long as there are people paying for service, there will be at least one EQ server maintained by SOE. However, this brings up another question. What has SOE to say about the prospects of offline play? I think we're getting to the point where the user base of everquest has reached it's critical mass, and probably won't be expanding much more. At this point, it might be in SOE's best interest to explore alternative methods of profit, including hitting the "offline" demographic, which i'm sure is a buttload of people. They could go a ton of directions with this too. Obviously, the community on these forums has seen it is possible to emulate servers and PLAY offline, but with an official sanction from SOE, the company could take it in so many directions. Think about adding NPCs that roam the countryside like players, whom considering the player is at an appropriate level, could join into a "party" much like other typical single player RPGs. The AI schemes for these things probably wouldn't have to be complicated, nor would it be time consuming to make a database of several hundred randomized "npcs" of varying skill levels, with randomly spawned ones roaming whichever zone the offline player happens to be cruising through at the moment.

The possibilites for offline play, I think could attract a huge audience for whom everquest is less about a community, and more about the single largest adventuring environment in computer history. This is a world that has a history, politics, mythology, and a TON of geography and secrets to discover. That remains true whether or not we play it with 400,000 other actual human beings.

So all this is essentially one long rant in the pursuit of anyone's opinion about all this. Could such things be achieved in the emulation community? Has anyone heard any buzz from SOE regarding something like this? Is it even REALISTIC to conclude that everquest is nearing the end of it's expansion cycle? Am i NUTS? What do ya'll think?

[Cailin]

As long as there are people who will pay for EverQuest, it's going to stay online. That's just a fact of business, as SOE will continue to develop new and engaging content to ensure that they can moving on up in the corporate world against their competitors. Sure, it doesn't look as pretty as the newest MMORPGs, but it sure does have a very loyal following - 400,000 strong still. That's nothing to bat an eyelash at!

Also, EQ is certainly not the game that has stayed up for the longest. The first graphical MUD - called Baram (in Korea, or Nexus in North America; http://baram.nexon.co.kr or http://www.nexustk.com) just passed the ten year mark. I believe that Baram's been online for 11 years now. Yet, Nexon (the developer and publisher) continues to have a very loyal following to that game as well - with about 100,000 subscribers. Nexus itself is holding 4,000 accounts. Or something like that. Mind you, this is in Korea, where people would have gang fights in real life over things that happened in Lineage. Neither of these games are as popular as EQ is - there's a reason it's called "The Most Successful Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Roleplaying Game Ever!"

Though you might notice as time draws on, the quality and originality of these expansion packs is likely to drop. They'll still charge the same amount, and the same people will continue to buy them. To the die-hard fans - all of them, and there are a lot of 'em (just look at how many people pay for EverQuest Legends) - won't care if they've done the same quest over and over. Nor will they care when they go on their Epic 17.0 quest in 2012. People play games because they like to, and EQ has a unique way of keeping players coming back for more. Even if it is cliche, and the same stuff, over and over again, year after year.

But let's take this a step further. Let's say that there are 400,000 active accounts for EQ, each paying... $13.95 per month to access the service. Doing some quick math that's $5,580,000 per month revenue to SOE - or $66,960,000 in revenue per annum (and that's just access fees). And that's to use maybe 150kbps of data transfer and no more than 3mb of server space. If anything, SOE can even widen their profit margin by consolodating servers as to eliminate the fees associated with running one of them. I can't see any possible way - from a business perspective - to lose $66,960,000 in annual revenue. That's too much, and it would probably have SOE shut down most of its services. There is no denying it, EQ is a huge cash cow for Sony.

MMORPG players have a very well-known history of sticking with a game for months and even years at a time even though the game itself sucks. Or the customer service sucks. Or whatever. But players are attached to the game itself and the community and that desire to keep in touch with their friends that they meet through the game. That's why EQ continues to be successful. If everyone in EQ decided to jump to EQ2, then the friends of those people would make the jump too. It's a typical social networking scenario. MMORPGs' content is covered under copyright and such, and also every company's probably got a stack of patents just for the game itself. EQ is no exception. In the free market, one cannot jump to another company to play the same game because that other company cannot exist. This isn't like when you're dissatisfied with the gas company you're buying your gas from (in that case, you just go to another company, right?).

So as I said, EQ will continue to be online as long as there are people out there who will pay for it. Even if there are 2,000 accounts worldwide, there will still be one or two people working on the game. These games are never really written with an ending in sight. That's the beauty, and the curse, of the MMORPG.