SOE Unveils In-Game EverQuest TCG 55
Sony Online Entertainment this week stated they'd have a 'new announcement' on Friday at their annual Fan Faire player event. SOE President John Smedley addressed the assembled players, revealing an in-game trading card game that's to be rolled out to players of EverQuest and EverQuest 2 sometime before the end of the month. The game was developed by the SOE-Denver studio, the same folks who made online TCGs out of Pirates! and Stargate. Gamespot reports: "All current EQ and EQ2 players will initially receive a starter deck, and additional booster packs can be purchased with real-world cash. However, those wishing not to spend any extra money will be happy to know that booster packs can also be acquired as loot off of boss mobs in both games, and the game will be free of charge to play. Of further note, the game will feature loot cards that can be redeemed for in-game items for players' characters. SOE plans to offer substantial support for the product, including in-game tournaments, card trading, a unique user interface, and deck-building functionality."
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The Spoils (Score:2)
play The Spoils instead
Actually, that's the whole problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it does need more players. Badly. And, no, not enough people play it. World Of Warcraft is currently at around 20 times more subscribers than EQ1 at its peak, and rising. (Whereas by definition EQ1 went downwards after the peak.) And EQ2 actually peaked lower than EQ1, and even giving away the base game didn't save it.
EQ2 actually had to merge pairs of servers into a single server pretty quickly, because the populations on each was ridiculously low. It was starting to get the reputation of being, I quote loosely from memory, "like Morrowind, except you occasionally see another player." Of course, Sony's PR hacks worded it like it was some great innovation to improve gameplay experience... which technically it was, but only because it reduced a _problem_ they were having.
Add the fact that WoW subscriptions are slightly more expensive, and you're looking at Blizzard making some 25 times more money than EQ1 at its peak. And, you know, EQ1 used to be called a money printing license.
Add to that a bit of hubris too. Sony used to own the MMO market, and now they went to being an also-ran, fighting to keep a single-digit market share percentage. I'm betting that a lot of people at Sony took that as an insult.
From a more pragmatic thing, there's the image and word-of-mouth factor too. At one point Sony used to be _the_ name in MMOs and EQ was almost a synonim for MMOs. Anyone you knew who was playing an MMO, chances are they played EQ. That's free marketting. Nowadays, if you think "MMO", you think "WoW". And if you hear of someone who plays any Sony MMO, you don't ask, "how much does it cost?", you ask, "why?" (Planetside almost bombed, Matrix Online was a major dud, EQ2 we already discussed, and SWG managed to allienate even its die-hard fanboys without bringing any new customers in the process.)
Heck, even if you talk to someone who's sick and tired of WoW, chances are they won't say, "I'm gonna try EQ2 then", they'll say something like, "I'm gonna try LOTRO, 'cause it's like WoW with a Tolkien theme."
Add to that the awful lot of bad PR that Sony managed to get itself into lately, and you can see how it would only amplify the existing problems.
Basically, Sony has all the reasons to fight for more players, and you could watch them getting in a panic to copy WoW ever since it got launched and their EQ2 barely survived. There are a lot of disjointed, poorly planned, uninspired changes that their games went through precisely to try to copy WoW. The history of the last couple of years at Sony has been almost 100% trying to play catch with WoW.
The problem is that they don't have any designer who even understands _why_ WoW did well, or what actually worked. So they're taking random guesses, managing at most to annoy the players whose characters just got massively changed, but not quite to hit the mark. Or come even within 1 mile of it. It's like watching a (piss-poor) cook trying to copy someone else's dish that sells better, and going, "Oh, they used salt too. I get it! People love salt. I'll put 10 times more salt in mine!" But I digress.
On the bright side, this sounds like the kind of a change which, if done even half-way sane, at least doesn't mess anyone's existing character or annoy the existing players in any other way. Then again, it's Sony. I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to screw up even this.
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you must be new to EQ. they have always been screwing up, there never used to be a real alternative for players, now there is WoW
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Well, actually I'm no expert (OT) (Score:2)
Pretty much it all started with a MUD I was playing on. They used to have the regular weaponry and armour mis-conception, namely 10 pound rapiers, 30 po
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I've played many MMOs and the one I keep coming back to is EQ2. The devs have performed and astonishing turnaround for a game that was at best mediocre at launch and have turned it into the most polished and content filled game out there.
Where SOE are not doing it justice is in promotion and distribution of EQ2. Boxed copies of the game are virtually impossible to find in Europe.
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Honestly, I don't see
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Hehe... I remember when the instances came. I hadn't tried WoW.
I was quite confused. "Wait what? So everyone gets their own dungeon so the M won't be so massive in MORPG? You get to buy stuff with these things you call points. You know, we used to have a form of currency already. You know, platinum, why not use that to buy new stuff?"
Now that I have picked up WoW habit, I see that the instances were desperate attempt t
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I agree for the most part with everything he says about EQ. For someone who played extensively pre-velious and then post PoP, GoD, OOW, he's got it right.
BTW I played on test server and leveled 75, almost got into end game OOW, but burned out and quit...
MMO's are all about how long you can go without food, water, or a job, until you burn out and have to resupp
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1. I guess in the same way that anyone else needs more customers. Greed is a powerful driving force of capitalism. Plus, honestly, even when you invest your money in a corporation, you expect it to make as much more money as physically possible if it can, not to aim for a barely-survivable niche. Sony
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So although I didn't originally want to get into that, I'll go now and add that AFAIK Sony is the only one who pulls that kind of crap.
That said, it seems to me like you're fixated on "yeah, but it didn't fail". Yeah, technically it didn't get canceled, if that's what you mean. Never said otherwise.
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On the contrary *many* successful business aim to fill a niche market and are highly profitable providing for that niche market.You might say that the entire Super Luxury Car line is based on this premise.
The changes could simply indicate a flexible company that is willing to adapt to what it sees the market wants. Which is not an easy thing to figure out to begin with:what people want. If you listen to people they all say they want something different than WoW, something di
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And let's talk another thing: Sony doesn't even look like it can decide on a niche. They went through several major changes and switched direction in mid-flight every few months. Sorry, that doesn't tell me that they had a vision or concept and were successful in implementing it. From where I stand, the only "vision" they have is trying desperately to find that random change which will get them more market share. That's it. There is virtually no artistic or game design concept left that they didn't randomly change once or twice already, in their endless quest to copy WoW without even understanding what they're copying.
Holy god...apparently any change SOE makes to EQ2 is a attempt to copy WoW. How about you give us some examples?
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Good games aren't as successful as they should be because SOE is attached (even if they have 0 say in programming/gameplay).
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Actually, it does need more players. Badly.
What facts are you basing your assumption on? WoW is a freak occurance in the world of MMO's. If you ignore the sub numbers of WoW, EQ2 and some other games such as LOTRO are a complete success. Just because WoW has "20 times more subscribers" that also means that they have 20x the operating costs and possibly 20 times the employees needed to maintain the game (200+ GMs the last time I checked). There is more to factor in when determining the profit of a company then just the number of it's subs.
The problem is that they don't have any designer who even understands _why_ WoW did well, or what actually worked.
So t
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Any game that REQUIRES groups for progression also therefore requires enough players that have the inclination, abilities and time to get together and make a group to progress. As your world gets bigger and the number of levels increase you dilute your player base to the point that people are unable to get a group and therefore unable to progress and therefore drop out of the game from frustration.
e.g. me.
I play WoW because some days
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Not quite true. A large part of those 9 million subscriptions are in China specifically. Chinese players do not pay $13-15/month as Western players do. So, yes, WoW is bigger and certainly more profitable, but not quite to the factor you stated.
Some clarification from an MMO developer.
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TCG go well with MMORPGS (Score:2)
actually pretty cool... (Score:1)
It's kind of sad state of SOE. They have such a small base that they probably couldn't get anybody to produce a physical card set for them.
Instead they just try to detract from the actual game to keep people playing instead of trying out the massive breadth of MMOs available to them.
Like Animal Crossing NES games (Score:2)
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Really, I think it is as much an indictment of the state of fantasy MMOs today as on SoE itself. I suspect this exact game wou
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Amen.
The MMORPG market has been downright pathetic ever since EQ1 was a success. Before EQ, you could see people experimenting and trying different styles of gameplay. UO in particular was a truly unique and interesting experience for a while after it opened. Today though, the difference between EQ and WoW is cosmetics and a refinement of
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Any MUD that calls itself an RPI is immediately suspect.
so sad (Score:1, Funny)
To be honest (Score:2)
This further weakens the barrier between RL wealth and in-game property, and sadly, bolsters the posit
First thought to come to my mind (Score:1)
But that's the thing. For a lot of people, possessing an all powerful avatar kind of wipes the mind blank as to how they got there. Perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I feel like this is a cheap attempt to win over current MMO players....no risk of being banned after all.
ugh (Score:2)
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What's fair is that what you get in the game depends on what you do in the game, not on how much money you pay outside the game. As someone with pretty limited time, I do find it frustrating that people I play with one week are so many levels above me the next week that I can't group with them again. But they
Fantastic!! (Score:1)
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Just closed ADOM for the night.... (Score:1)
I played EQ, DAoC, etc. And after awhile, they stopped being fun. ADOM hasn't stopped being fun. And, if anything, it's MORE addictive than EQ et al ever was.
Isn't that what a game is supposed to be about?
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Antithematic (Score:2)
It's supposed to be a fantasy game - CCG's are pretty starkly unfantasy.
What next, Coke ads? Nike armour? Toyota mounts?
Talk about ruining the illusion. Even WoW keeps a better grip (barely).
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Having said that, even the keycode entry things being in-game is a small but glaring distraction.
They should be available at the logon screen and appear, I don't know, through the in-game mail or something. So we don't have to run by the "Buy lots of boosters for the WoW-CCG" guys in BB.
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When they do implement this, hopefully they try and make it mesh. It would make sense that people in Norrath would have games they like to play, after all they have a
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But "booster packs" and things dropping off fantasy monsters? Come on!
WoW does have the darkmoon cards that you can collect and turn in to make a darkmoon deck, but it's not a game, just a neat epic trinket.
If the game wasn't like a CCG so much as just a card game of some kind, and fantasy themed, it could work out allright. But
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