Quote:
Originally Posted by boogerific
My meaning is right on the money (pun intended  ), not just in the ballpark. Just take a look at corporate history.
Giving people GM commands is on Live would be foolhardy for SOE, as it would speed up gameplay and players would have too little to do to stay interested. People would get to the high-end too fast, vastly reducing the length of time that players would pay monthlies. Profits would bottom out and the stockholders would be out for corporate blood. Giving everyone on Live GM commands is nowhere near the same as what I said.
The cold, hard fact is that corporations like SOE exist for profit. There's no better way for them to keep their stockholders at bay than to keep the gameplay slow. The slower it is, the longer people pay the monthlies, period. And monthlies are the name of the game, not the comparable pittance they make from one-time client sales.
While the development team at SOE might be more concerned that SOE corporate about keeping the game interesting, they are not (and never have been since SOE took over) in control of the big picture. The real death of EQ will come when there aren't enough players out there to sustain the corporate appetite. At that point the developers will be put on other projects or leave.
Remember when they did the big server merges? That was not done to make the game more interesting, balanced, or more social. The sole reason was to maximize profit. They were intent on upping the ratio of players to servers. Profit is the reason for SOE's existence. Take away the profit and see how long Sony (the parent corporation) lets SOE keep EQ around. There are no noble causes there. |
I didn't say give everyone GM commands on live, I was referring to EMU. Also remember that SoE, OWNS PlayStation, SWG, EQ2, PlanetSide, etc.. You really think they care about the pennies they make on EQ?
Exactly, which doesn't necessarily mean that SoE would loose money, they have over 50 thousand idiots buying electronic cards that took a dev 5 minutes to make at 10 bucks a pop for their new card game, I mean Legends of Norrath.
The point is, and what you were close to, is people leave. That means the game dies, as it looses its value when there aren't "masses" playing. Then you have several hundred people thats left wanting reimbursements, free server moves, etc, which will eventually make SoE LOOSE money. At about now, I'm not even sure that EQ is making SoE money at all for several reasons but the primary one is, well there is about as much players on one SoE EQ server as there is one of our most populated servers. That is pretty sad actually. You have to remember that it takes someone boxing toons and PLing about 1 month or less to get a toon from 1 to 75 now in Live. It takes even less to get him 1K aa's. Again the EXP rate is not so low to keep you there, its to control the development of the game, believe it or not.
Besides that, I'm a very old-school EQ player. I remember the days where boats were your primary means of travel, I remember the days you would get the message in your client that had about 1/10th of the screen viewable "Saving character data." like every 30 seconds. I believe in getting into a game like EQ, taking your time, doing the quests, learning your race/class, and using the game for what it was intended; to QUEST. Now a days, its like the entire damn community, here and on live has gone exp whores. If there is no EXP its not an interesting server. That is not true. For those of us that likes sitting back and having a bit of fun progressing in a game, find that kind of experience rates rather intriguing. I also appreciate it as I have more time to prepare underdeveloped zones =).