EverQuest: "Identity Crisis"
Posted: Tuesday April 5th, 2005
by
When news came down that many of the EQ (non-pvp) servers were going to be paired off and merged [ more info ] , I honestly thought it was an April Fools joke. But, as time slipped by and I couldn't get anyone to respond to my request for confirmation, it became evident that they were busying themselves with something. That's when realization set in that it was probably all going down after all.
So, the main concern for most people is the fact that some names are going to overlap. Some folks are going to end up with the dreaded X on the end of their names. So, I couldn't resist to examine the possibility of Vhah running into another version of himself, and the conflict that would likely ensue. It'd likely continue like that for about 3 months until one of them passed out for lack of Honey Mead.
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Now, from a community standpoint, we have to look at what this likely means for EQ. EQ is not reporting a significant loss of player numbers, but merging servers indicates a lack of concurrent players during peak hours.
We can surmise that folks are off playing other things, but, thus far, are unwilling to relinquish their EQ characters. So, for another year or so, I suspect the subscription numbers will stay relatively unchanged. And, hell, if the new crop of MMOGs keep petering out after 6 months like they have been, the EQ number may just stay high as people default back to the game they played for years before the young guns came out and emptied their clips in record time.
In my opinion, despite its success, EQ has been mismanaged, as has SWG, Planetside, and EQ2. That leaves a very definate finger of blame we could point. If I was running SOE, I'd have a fleet of consultants in there right now figuring out how to recapture past glory.
But, maybe past glory doesn't extend from the game itself but from the people that were working on the game at the time. Maybe, since those people are all massed together at Sigil, we'll see another game come out that doesn't recapture any past glory BUT starts producing a glory all it's own. Maybe Vanguard will be the answer we're all looking for when we ask "how do I get my old EQ back?".
Only time will tell.
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