HoC Chat 11/29 @ 8PM EST

[Elyssanda]

Give us back the top 10 problems list, and DON cultural would be #'s 1 & 2. #1 the disparity between the class drops, ie MDS vs coarse silk, and #2 the disparity between racial drops.

I could squeeze all that into one item, so we'd have room for another.

So bring back the top 5 even...

[Nolrog]

So bring back the top 5 even...

OK. So what 5 items would you like on the list? I'll put it together and send it on (or at the very least, use them for weekly questions.) I don't expect to see Fix cultural as all 5 either.

[Liwsa]

I find it funny that they can create what 4 new expansions since DON but they can't sem to find the time to fix the cultural issues.

Yes, we have heard it is different departments that work on them but how long do you get strung along before you say screw it. I think it is time they fix some of the broken crap and the cultural issue is broken crap.

I don't think it is unreasonable for PAYING customers to want something that has been broken for 2 years fixed in a timely manner.

This post is not directed in any way at Ngreth. All of us that do tradeskills appreciate all the stuff he has gotten in for us. It is meant for his bosses that assign the priorities.

[Tanker]

*sigh*

This comes up every so often, here's the deal.

Expansions make money... I know it seems obvious, but you should really hold that in your soul when you think about what Ngreth, etc. spend time on.

Each expansion, designers have to do a series of things, usually involving at least a full zone of content: mob creation and placement, scripting, and quests. This is NON-trivial, and can take a month+. Before that, there's the meetings discussing content themes and progressions. After that (and during) there's the other responsibilities they have, either itemization of multiple tiers, spells, AA's, and whatever designer-time is needed for new features (like evolving items... that took a TON of time). Some designers have to do TWO zones, or you'd only get 8 or so with each expansion. All that, including the zone content, probably takes about 3-4 months. Then there's beta, which is 4-6 weeks, during which they run testers through their content (usually at odd work-hours, since that when you-all play) and fix the bugs, as well as make changes based on feedback (they DO!). So, that's about 4 to 5 1/2 months out of either a 5 or 7 month expansion.

The other time? Well, for one, designers DO get vacation time, you know, just like normal employees everywhere. Then they get to spend that last couple weeks fixing/adding stuff to content that's already there (and SOLD already). Know how many people get to fix the cultural stuff? One. Know how many weeks it'd take one guy to do it? More than the 3 he gets, and doing it halfway wouldn't exactly work for you or the game, would it?

Essentially, for large projects, Ngreth has to get that project designated his "expansion feature"... and not many people are gonna buy an expansion box because it says "Finally fixed cultural armor drops", now are they? In fact, you wouldn't like them to make you buy the expansion to fix it, either, would you?

CAN they do it, essentially for free? Sure... but it's not really in their best interests. It requires them to put aside what's good for SOE (and possibly the game as a whole) to do something nice for tradeskillers. It's happened in the past, and may again, but I wouldn't get irate that it doesn't. It's probably not the best thing for the game that Ngreth work on it right now... (feel free to correct me on that, big guy).

Hope this helps assuage your frustration, though it didn't work for me when I was a player.

[KyrosKrane]

Expansions make money... I know it seems obvious, but you should really hold that in your soul when you think about what Ngreth, etc. spend time on.

I think that is what irritates people, Tanker. Not that Sony makes money, of course, but rather that they make money off new content at the expense of old content.

Let me throw out a few numbers, to put this in the context of the player.

Last I heard, EQ had about 400,000 active accounts. Each account pays between $8-15 a month, depending on which plan you get. I'll use $10 per account to simplify the math. Each month, Sony gets $4,000,000 in revenue, or $48,000,000 annually in revenue.

On average, Sony releases two expansions a year with a retail price of about $30. I don't know how many accounts actually buy every expansion, but let's be generous and assume that all of them do. That means Sony gets $30 x 2 expansions x 400,000 accounts = $24,000,000 per year. Since they've now switched to purely online sales, they keep that entire revenue, but in the past, they had to share that revenue with retailers and distributors.

Now granted, the monthly fees have to pay for things like servers, bandwidth, and technical staff. And I know that a company has many other expenses, ranging from the mundane (office rent) to the arcane. But, from a player perspective, it's distressing to see all the attention being paid to new content when the bulk of the revenue comes from monthly fees -- in other words, Sony takes in more money annually from existing content than from new content. In my example, the monthly fees are double the revenue from expansions, but in reality it's probably closer to three times, since the average monthly fee is higher and not all accounts will buy each expansion.

From the player perspective, it would appear that unless a problem with an expansion's content is caught during beta or immediately after release, it's very hard indeed to get that problem fixed. Threads on broken content litter Sony's boards and most fan-run boards. When taken in the context of the numbers above, it's hard for an outsider to see how Sony justifies their priority of making new content over fixing older content.

Now again, I'm not a Sony employee, let alone management. But it would appear to me, as an outsider, that Sony has a vested interest in keeping its existing players happy. EQ is essentially no longer being marketed at retail, which means that most new players will have to come from word of mouth referrals. Those will only happen if players are satisfied, and for the most part I imagine we are. We just each have our own pet peeves that we would like to see fixed, be it tradeskill drops, customer service, or whatever.

[Elyssanda]

*sigh*

This comes up every so often, here's the deal.

Expansions make money... I know it seems obvious, but you should really hold that in your soul when you think about what Ngreth, etc. spend time on.
CAN they do it, essentially for free? Sure... but it's not really in their best interests.
Hope this helps assuage your frustration, though it didn't work for me when I was a player.

Except for the fact that this IS content we've already paid for. So essentially they've asked us to pay for a product when it is broken. And the fact that they are unwilling to get it fixed in a timely order.
Would you go to Mikasa and pay for a $2000 set of broken dishes and not want them to fix it? Or how about buying a new car with the driveshaft missing?
If some other type of company tried to pull this kind of marketing, you bet there would be a class action suit where at a minimum people would demand their cash back at the least, and I can honestly say they'd probably demand more than that for frustration factors, time lost, etc.

[yiadara]

well, many additional gems and lacquered or imbued gems will be getting stack size increases this patch, thanks to Ngreth.

did this happen ? i didnt notice any difference especially with imbued emeralds grr how i wish so many more things would stack. All i want for Christmas is tradeskill items that stack, or another Blacksmithing store baught path to 300 . hehe , My soul for stackable molds and sickle parts ..

[KyrosKrane]

I noticed that blue diamonds and jacinths now stack nicely, as do pale and shimmering nihilite. =)

[Tanker]

You're accounts number is pretty far off by now, Kyros. That "Last you heard" must've been sometime before "Gates of Discord", but your relationship between monthly income vs. expansion income is close to true, with the caveat that nearly all have historically sold through to nearly all subscribers, eventually.

EverQuest has traditionally been the cash cow of SOE. It may not seem fair to players (and maybe it isn't), but SOE has never come close to using the income for EQ to pay solely for EQ-related expenses. 4-5 years of EQ II development? Paid for by EQ. Planetside? paid by EQ. 4 years of Sovereign dev (ya, you might have heard of that one)? paid by EQ. 3 years of SWG development? Ok, Lucas paid for most of that. Anyway, aside from EQ II, these games barely pay for themselves nowadays, let alone recoup back dev expenses. Are there other projects making some money now? A few, but there's also at least 3 major games in development that I know of that are just a drain on funds, currently. Where does that money come from? EQ and EQ II.

Even if they had the money to add more devs to the project (and they kind of do, as there are several "holes" on the EQ dev team right now, what with recent departures), finding quality designer staff is no easy thing. If you're well-respected in the EQ community, I'd send a resume in. (see caveat below)

Is the dev team and SOE interested in keeping players happy? Yes, of course. Can/Will they do EVERYTHING possible to do that? Or course not, they don't have the time/people for that. That's why priorities exist.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of this is new data for you all, just a frustrating restatement, so I'll stop. If Mikasa sold you chipped china (CHIPPED, not "broken", EQ is FAR from "broken", calling EQ broken because the one thing you're interested in is is like saying that china is broken because "on the back, some of the maker's lettering is smudged"), you'd want it fixed/replaced/money back, but it's apples and oranges. Software is different, the fact you still play tells me so.

Ok, enough of being the SOE apologist. Have fun, guys.

[Caveat: I did not just promise you a job. I don't work for SOE anymore, and I didn't do the hiring when I did. I just hear they've got some staffing problems.]

[Maevenniia]

imbued emeralds indeed do stack to 100, but the game won't do it for you. If you had 5 stacks of 20 before, you still do, until you go consolidate your stacks

[Ursawraith]

Ah man! now I need to spend another week cleaning my bank again

[KyrosKrane]

Eh, you're right about the subscriber count. It looks like I was way off base on that; Mmogchart.com reports 200,000 accounts as of May 2005, and I don't think it would have gone up since then -- maybe down.

I wasn't trying to be snippy or rude, and I apologize if I came across that way. I've said this elsewhere, but my objections are mostly to the profit-first-all-else-be-****ed thinking that modern business practices force upon corporations. If there's a tradeoff to be made between higher profits and happier customers, the stock market demands that the company always seek higher profits.

I guess my wish is that Sony re-invests into Everquest. No other game on the market, NONE, has the richness, depth, and variety that Everquest does. I honestly believe that if Sony were to redouble its investment into Everquest, including more old-world revamps, a full rewrite of the EQ client, increased customer support, and more developers working on the game, they would be able to grow the game again, instead of the decline it's seeing now. As you said, it's frustrating to be on the outside, wondering why the Sony bosses decide as they do.

[Tanker]

I wasn't trying to be snippy or rude, and I apologize if I came across that way.

No worries, man. I'm pretty sure I'd have to search fairly hard to find someone who thinks you're "snippy and rude".

[yiadara]

imbued emeralds indeed do stack to 100, but the game won't do it for you. If you had 5 stacks of 20 before, you still do, until you go consolidate your stacks

ahh will check tonight . i know the dust doesnt man o man please can ya stack the dust and temper past 20 . hehe ahh another one on my Xmas list celestial essence past 20 too please hehe

[Elyssanda]

Except for the fact that this IS content we've already paid for. So essentially they've asked us to pay for a product when it is broken. And the fact that they are unwilling to get it fixed in a timely order.
Would you go to Mikasa and pay for a $2000 set of broken dishes and not want them to fix it? Or how about buying a new car with the driveshaft missing?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of this is new data for you all, just a frustrating restatement, so I'll stop. If Mikasa sold you chipped china (CHIPPED, not "broken", EQ is FAR from "broken", calling EQ broken because the one thing you're interested in is is like saying that china is broken because "on the back, some of the maker's lettering is smudged"), you'd want it fixed/replaced/money back, but it's apples and oranges. Software is different, the fact you still play tells me so.
Ok, enough of being the SOE apologist. Have fun, guys.

Tanker, nothing against you. and this is not directed at YOU per se.. but the fact that you dismissed the analogy without addressing the fact that it is an analogy on what is wrong is exactly what SOE has done with this.
Want one a little closer to Home for Sony?
How about selling Laptops with Battery problems? Hey NP.. rest of the computer is fine.. it's just a battery issue.

DON Came out and was TOUTED as having MAJOR Tradeskill bells and whistles. the fact is. the bells are clapperless and the whistles are chipped and it has NOT been fixed even though it IS content we paid for. And while Ngreth would LIKE to go fix it, he is one man in a corporation that is basically saying, "tough luck, we have your cash and to bad if everything is not working as intended. Fair has no sway in our business world."

And that last sentence unfortunately is what way to many of the corporations of the wolrd feel, but that's a totally different soapbox.