f13.net

I don't quite see a thread on this so I thought I would take a stab at it. 

Premise:  WoW has expanded the market but will suffer from retention problems.  Given the absolute size of its subscriber base, even small retention problems will create opportunities for other games who pick up these players.

Opportunity:  EQ2 should be positioning itself to pick up players now bored of WoW, rather than try to emulate the game and compete with its subscriber base directly.

From here we can talk about what the value proposition of the EQ2 is and what it should be, in reference to WoW.

WOW Value Proposition

1.  Low system requirements / minimal lag for large encounters
2.  Class /talent system
3.  Ease of use (UI, Quests, Crafting you name it)
4.  Art (gear, cities, races, zones)
5.  PvP, even for carebears

EQ2 Value Proposition:  Release and Now

Release                                         Now                       
1.  Polygon Count.                            Still
2.  Voice Overs for quests                  marginal
3.  Demanding combat/ leveling          disappearing (WoW-ization)
4.  Character Creation Options            marginal
5.  Class choices                                marginal - improving
6.                                                   community

At release what we thought might have been points of value have a different assessment today.  For example, while voiceovers were a key marketing point during release, today I think we would all agree that players now see this as a marginal contributor to the gameplay experience.  During release character creation was believed to be important, and today we recognize it still is but see EQ2 execution on this point as marginal.  During release EQ2 never highlighted its player community, but today I think many of us would see it as more mature than WoW - and a point of value.

A departing WoW player will likely look for the following in a game - which EQ2 should aim to provide or highlight:

1.  More challenging combats
2.  Smaller & more intimate raids
3.  A mature player community (present)
4.  A meaningful death penalty  (present)

These players will expect many of the other benefits wow currently provides in addition to those I note above.  I have no doubt that most on f13 disagree with some elements I depict here - but this is just my persepective.

Conclusion.  Copy the successful elements of WoW - but differentiate on those points departing players new to the genre will value in looking for their next game.

Have to argue with the meaningful death penalty. The last softening basically removed it. No shard recovery of any kind and debt is minimal, vanishing after less than 48 hours logged off.

This has been a premise since pre-launch.  It's been a year and I'm still waiting for the massive die-off and retention problems so many "in the know" have been predicting.   Rather than anticipate this huge, sudden loss of retention, you'd be better served going with the 'standard' MMO churn % and scooping-up those players.

At one time I think it was mentioned that MMOs experience approx a 20% turnover rate. At the numbers WoW is turning, that's still 300k accounts in the US alone.


No.  This was the case when WoW first launched.  The "H4rdc0r3" mmo vets I knew abandoned WoW because it was "too easy" and 'nothing means anything.'   Given that the game kept growing, I'm going to say they were and still are the minority of players out there.  If you're wanting to dine on WoW's scraps, you need to know it's players and understand them.

The people I see leaving WoW right now have 3 main gripes.

1)  Raiding for gear.  They hate it, and it sucks.  "Smaller" raids suck as much as large raids.  Farming for gear in in 5-man Dire Maul groups or 15 man UBRS groups or 40-Man Molten Core groups just plain sucks.  They'd rather see long, involved quests that can be chunked-out to the same time invested than the "Well this is my 400th run of Lucifron, I finally have enough DKP to get that uber mace piece.... If it drops." of raiding.

2) PvP is a grind-a-thon that doesn't measure skill as much as time invested.

3) Farming.  If it's not 'Chineese farmers ruined the economy.' It's that you have to kill 10,000 foozles to get enough faction/ gold / items to do the next thing.  Content cock blocks,  as it were.

There has been no mention of 'death has no meaning.' "Combat isn't Challenging" in months. Combat is as it is.. 'challenging' is in the boss fights (hey the same as single player games!) and the rest is yard trash to farm or hone skills on.  Death doesn't need to have a 'meaning' because the loss is enough of a kick to the ego and halts progress enough to irritate anyone.

I think the churn is what people are talking about, in that they expect the game to have a lot of churn, perhaps even higher than average.  I don't think anyone is seriously expecting a sudden, huge drop off in subscribers.  Given the nature of the business, of course, no company will post any useful numbers...  But I bet they'd be interesting to compare between games.  Especially the meta-data such as churn rate, return sub rate, etc.

Alkiera

Perhaps not now, but at launch and as far as 3-4 months in there were still people saying, "Yep, any day now those numbers are going to bottom.. Any Day..."  Some, like McQuaid, have retracted, somewhat, most have just ignored that they even said it in the first place.

 
Someday, after a game has closed it's doors, perhaps.  I dobut we'll ever see it, though, even as useful as it'd be.

A game with 4.5 mil subscribers either has to

a) have a lower-than-usual churn rate
b) add hundreds of thousands of new players over this "20% churn period" to maintain sub levels
c) see a huge drop in sub numbers.

I find B unlikely and C we just haven't seen.  Keep in mind that Blizzard hasn't even released a paid expansion yet.  Also of interest is the large number of players with multiple level 60s.  Faced with the choice between picking up EQ2 or just playing WoW all over again, players seem to choose WoW - bad sign.

Personally, my attitude towards EQ2 has been the same as the attitude I held for SWG:  I'll play consider it when the word-of-mouth indicates that the game has reached a genuine release-point, where the game can actually judged, so I know what I'm buying.  It never happened with SWG, and by most accounts they are still re-thinking the basic premise of EQ2.  Every morning I check f13 pretty much expecting to hear about the EQ2 NGE that will make things "all better."

Of course it also doesn't help that the servers are apparently pretty empty and that the graphics look really bad while still managing to be too much for my machine.  Oh, and I hate class progression.  Oh, and the lack of pvp.