EQ - Worst game design feature yet

[Araxen]

TLC(Trivial Loot Code)...alts are the life blood of MMO's that want to stick around for years. I always thought twinking was something that should be allowed as they keep your playerbase playing the game longer over time with alts.

[Slick Willey]

Originally Posted by Bongk

are you practicing shill speak for Raph or do you honestly believe that load of crap you just posted?

Since we are now arbitrarily deciding who can enter dungeons based on things that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual game, how about for the next wow dungeon anyone from California cannot enter. Because, you know, they didnt take any content away from you or anything.

Doesn't her boyfriend/spouse work for SOE? I seem to remember this from the Freerealms thread.

[Aaubert]

the thing that all the WoWers of this board can be thankful for is that this will be universally stomped on by the playerbase, and hopefully Blizz will decide its not worth the headache to introduce it as a money-making model.

And to cuppy, or anyone who thinks that this isn't "taking away" from the rest of the populace, because its "all new content." Do you think that SOE hired new zone designers, bought new servers, and spent absolutely no effort, whatsoever, to make this happen? Do you really believe that the energy spent on this could not have been spent actually making the game better for the non-cardplayers? If you do, you're naive. If you don't, then theres my problem.

[Agraza]

Originally Posted by Thengel

Of course it still warrants criticism, and has little to do with WOW. You missed the part where it was Agraza and his "LOL Sony sux Blizz rocks!" troll that brought WoW into this thread at all.

I'm a troll? I guess I'm the one that is making baseless accusations and refusing to back them up. Doesn't your bandwagon have anywhere else to go? Do you type M$ when referring to Microsoft too?

SOE is a bad company. We can't even begin to address the quality or quantity of their content when every creation is tainted by their desire to nickel and dime their few remaining customers. EQPlayers.com and hollow adventure packs were early indicators of how terrible this game would become.

Anyways, back to your namecalling. It is the pinnacle of debate after all.

[AladainAF]

Although the Legends of Norrath digital trading card game can be played completely separately from EverQuest, the two games have a lot of ties to each other beyond just lore. The former can be launched from within the latter game.

Hasn't this been broken for over a year now? Yeah yeah, I know.

[Neric]

Initially EQ had very few true design failures. In fact everything that was called a flaw back in the days could have also been called a feature. Actually the only bad thing I can think about is race/class exp penalties. That was obviously terrible.

The real failures came when they tried to fix what they thought was broken...

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Araxen

TLC(Trivial Loot Code)...alts are the life blood of MMO's that want to stick around for years. I always thought twinking was something that should be allowed as they keep your playerbase playing the game longer over time with alts.

The anti-twinking mindset with all MMO's now and modern developers really frustrates me. There's very little logic to it and it comes down to developers being pussies. I swear every problem with modern MMO's is that developers are "afraid". "Omg if we allow people to twink, newer players will get intimidated, feel unfair and quit!!"

Bullshit. Twinking keeps players around, and is alot of fun. Fuck, at least half a dozen times the reason I came back to Everquest was to twink.

[kasey]

Originally Posted by Aaubert

And to cuppy, or anyone who thinks that this isn't "taking away" from the rest of the populace, because its "all new content." Do you think that SOE hired new zone designers, bought new servers, and spent absolutely no effort, whatsoever, to make this happen? Do you really believe that the energy spent on this could not have been spent actually making the game better for the non-cardplayers? If you do, you're naive. If you don't, then theres my problem.

The "energy spent on this" is determined by how rewarding their effort will be. It could be that they are drifting into micro-pay territory because this decade old game doesn't pay itself nearly as good as it did in 99. Call me crazy =p May be the other option would not have been "another cool thing i get for free but instead i am forced to pay" but rather they would have started firing devs which essentially means Legends is paying your content! Omg

[Lourdin]

Originally Posted by kasey

Legends is paying your content! Omg

Your missing the point. The general concession is we don't want to be paying for Legends to generate our content because if we have no intention of playing Legends and paying for the cards, we are never going to see the content.

So what is the benefit to me as a gamer having Legends pay for content I will never even have the potential to see? Let me answer that for you, none.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Goliath

Twinking keeps players around, and is alot of fun. Fuck, at least half a dozen times the reason I came back to Everquest was to twink.

I don't see any disadvantages of twinking either and even if there were some, it didn't matter. Twinking was possible at the peak of EQ and it didn't hurt, so why should it hurt in any other scenario? In other words, while twinking was an option EQ had 400k subscriptions. Once the game shifted towards NO DROP items, the subscription numbers went down. Reason or coincidence?

Actually when the game became boring, I logged on one of my twinks. Twinks keep people playing (and paying) even if there is nothing left to explore. Twinks are free bonus content...

[Braen]

I kinda think of it like this, if I don't pay for an expansion, then I can't access the content that people that do pay for the expansion can access. You still have a chance to get the loot card with the 5 free boosters you get from logging onto LoN once a month. You don't even have to play the damn game. Just log in, open the boosters, see if you got a loot card, go back to EQ. That is FREE!

You choose not to pay to get cards to increase the chance to go to this new dungeon, so you don't get to go. If it was me, if I WAS paying for LoN cards and I spent say $100 and I still didn't get the loot card, I would be MORE pissed off.

No one is asking you to pay to get this new dungeon. It's a bonus for people that play LoN. I don't see why people are so pissed off about it.

I, personally, don't pay for LoN, I just play with my 5 free boosters a month. Most of the time it is just log in see if I got a loot card and don't log in for another month. it's a fun diversion but nothing I will ever pay for as I have already wasted tons of money on a card game back during Urza's Saga in M:TG.

[tomodachi]

Originally Posted by Lourdin

Your missing the point. The general concession is we don't want to be paying for Legends to generate our content because if we have no intention of playing Legends and paying for the cards, we are never going to see the content.

So what is the benefit to me as a gamer having Legends pay for content I will never even have the potential to see? Let me answer that for you, none.

Quite bluntly, this is Sony. If you haven't been paying attention to all the underhanded things they've been doing the past few years, you deserve to suffer from continuing to subscribe to their games.

Sony proper has done enough on its own ( intentional root kit installations on their customer's PCs, making PS3's useless after an online update and then forcing owners to pay money to have it fixed, etc. ). SoE, specifically, has a long list of past shenanigans that should have encouraged you to leave long ago.

Several broken or unfinished expansions in EQ...
Several broken or unfinished games when released...
Pushing boxed sales over downloads with non-trivial bonus items...
Star Wars Galaxies: NGE...
Monetizing individual features on their iteration of Magelo...
Between expansion 'adventure packs' in EQ2...
The Introduction of Station Cash... Purchasable XP Potions...
The move to Micro-payments...
...and now the LoN thing.

Some developers out there truly develop games that they want to play. You can see it in the game, and in the morale of the company. SoE, through no real fault of the grunts writing code, develops for profit above and beyond all else. If they can find a way to liberate another dollar from you, their track record suggests they will do everything in their power to do so.

The amount of sympathy that goes out to SoE subscribers each time something like this happens is akin to the amount of sympathy I have for those poor sods who build along the Mississippi and are surprised every 3-4 years when their house is under water. You know the past, you know the future; don't whine when it happens.

(Note: 'You' is not referring to Lourdin specifically, but anyone who would subscribe to any of SoE's products and then be surprised when Smedley comes up with another way to screw them over.)

[Phoenix]

Wtf are you bringing in shit that has nothing to do with SOE into this thread for? You think its SOE's fault the developers of the PS3 fucked a firmware update? Christ if youre gonna bitch make it logical. You might as well bring up Blizzard making you pay for faction transfers or releasing Starcraft 2 as 3 games instead of 1 or their bullshit unreleased content.

[tomodachi]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Wtf are you bringing in shit that has nothing to do with SOE into this thread for? You think its SOE's fault the developers of the PS3 fucked a firmware update? Christ if youre gonna bitch make it logical. You might as well bring up Blizzard making you pay for faction transfers or releasing Starcraft 2 as 3 games instead of 1 or their bullshit unreleased content.

Look up what the S in SOE stands for.
Then consider who Smedley reports to.
Sony sets goals for him to achieve, he then sets SOE's priorities.

[Thengel]

Originally Posted by Agraza

I'm a troll? I guess I'm the one that is making baseless accusations and refusing to back them up. Doesn't your bandwagon have anywhere else to go? Do you type M$ when referring to Microsoft too?

SOE is a bad company. We can't even begin to address the quality or quantity of their content when every creation is tainted by their desire to nickel and dime their few remaining customers. EQPlayers.com and hollow adventure packs were early indicators of how terrible this game would become.

Anyways, back to your namecalling. It is the pinnacle of debate after all.

Are you a troll? Generally, maybe not. I didn't call you one, either.

However, is:

Originally Posted by Agraza

Woop woop, that's the sound of the space police: Meet CCP's "Permaband" - Massively was way more interesting.

We need the little studios like SOE to experiment and innovate. Then when they do something smart in a bad way a good developer like Blizzard can fix it.

Others already said it, but whatever. If you're still paying for one of their products then you're the fool. You're culpable for their bad design by paying for it.

a troll? Fuck yes it is. I'd say something about bandwagons or M$ but those insults have already been used.

On the actual topic, how do they even make money doing this? Are people even going to spend enough money on the cards to pay the devs to create the content - so you can experience it once? It kinda seems like it would have bad returns, in addition to pissing everyone off. Seems like a lose-lose to me.