SOE now Daybreak, bought by Columbus Nova, going.... "indie?"

[WayAbvPar]

Convenience was too much to bear?

[Malakili]

Yeah, the argument was it both trivialized content and limited the options for endgame player interaction with the world because they'd do the "run, drop in, run off" thing unless all activities happened in a cave. .

I've always been of the opinion that the best way to make content worth doing is actually making it fun.  If players are trying to skip your content, maybe your content sucks.

[sam, an eggplant]

I guess my argument would be something like-- would you have quit the game forever if they left flying in?

Also, the argument isn't about flying during leveling, it's about flying at maximum level.

[Xanthippe]

Flying mounts wouldn't keep me in WoW now. As with every expansion, I just stopped playing it one day.

Even if they added flying mounts for max_level, I doubt that would prevent anyone from quitting or make anyone want to play.

[sam, an eggplant]

It would have prevented me from quitting WoW permanently. I don't stay subscribed regardless, but I often re-sub for a month or so with each new patch.

I didn't mean that it would have prevented you from quitting, anyway. I meant exactly what I said-- if they kept flying, would that have triggered you to quit? It triggered me.

[Malakili]

It triggered me.

This is the kind of thing I expect really.  There's a million reasons that add up to someone quitting WoW, but there are also a lot of reasons to hang in there with the monthly sub because you are still getting value out of it.  So something seemingly small like this can be a thing that makes people who are just hanging on finally say "alright, forget it."

[Typhon]

It made the decision to not go back for the expansion easy.  I mained a druid.  I always felt jumping off the side of a cliff and shiting into bird form in the air was just awesome, was one of my favorite parts of the game.  I despise not being able to fly during the leveling period of an expansion - it very significantly reduces the power of my character for what are to me arbitrary reasons.

I just hate everything about the concept and reasoning behind, "we're cutting off your wings so you can read our quest text".

[Malakili]

I always felt jumping off the side of a cliff and shiting into bird form in the air was just awesome, was one of my favorite parts of the game.

Yeah, there was a time when a comment like this would be enough to nudge me into a resub.  I mean, granted, that was when Wrath of the Lich King was out, but still...

You know, it's kind of funny, I'll always consider all the stuff after my first quit "new."  I quit for the first time near the end of burning crusade, came back for wrath, quit, came back for a little bit cataclysm, and then that was it.  Still, anything post-Burning Crusade still somehow gets sorted in my mind as "the new stuff." 

[Draegan]

I always felt jumping off the side of a cliff and shiting into bird form in the air was just awesome, was one of my favorite parts of the game.

Yeah, there was a time when a comment like this would be enough to nudge me into a resub.  I mean, granted, that was when Wrath of the Lich King was out, but still...

You know, it's kind of funny, I'll always consider all the stuff after my first quit "new."  I quit for the first time near the end of burning crusade, came back for wrath, quit, came back for a little bit cataclysm, and then that was it.  Still, anything post-Burning Crusade still somehow gets sorted in my mind as "the new stuff." 

I played regularly up through the beginning of WOTLK. Never played again until recently. Lots of good stuff in that game until you get to raiding. Raiding is god awful these days. LFR is the worst kind of content I've ever seen.

[sam, an eggplant]

Yeah, the leveling stuff is still great, it falls apart at the endgame. But really that applies to every MMO.

[Malakili]

The thing is, the content was never really what kept me in WoW.  First it was the chance to play this long standing RTS series I loved at the level of one character.  (Don't underestimate how big a draw that was for a lot of us at the beginning).  Then it was the friends I made/guilds I joined.  Now most of those people have moved on, and just going back to a generic MMORPG isn't particularly enticing.  The Warcraft part of it doesn't appeal to me that much anymore, the gameplay is stale, and the social part has disintegrated.

Frankly, that is one of the reasons I don't really play MMOs anymore to begin with, I can't be bothered to build a whole new social group for the nth time anymore, and the groups i do game with would rather just play Diablo 3 or Elite or various other things.  I'd play the right MMORPG if the stars aligned, but I don't feel very invested in it anymore.  For years I kept frantically searching for the next thing that would draw me totally in, but it was a fools errand.

[Ralence]

Not sure if this deserves it's own thread or not,  but there's a giant flaming turd crashing into Daybreak offices currently.

They decided to launch a new "progression"  server on Wednesday.   All sorts of nasty bugs and messes,  including characters being created as level 50s, level 1s equipped with full level 85 gear etc.

Server brought down,  Thursday all day beta testing up and down,  server wiped,  relaunched at 6p PST last night.   Currently "capacity is over 4000" for the server,  with thousands screaming and yelling on the forums.

GMs are manually kicking people who are AFK out of game to make room for others.   It's an old school disaster.

Classic experience indeed!

[Malakili]

What game are we talking about?

[Trippy]

EverQuest.

[Chimpy]

I don't know how anyone could expect anything "new" in EverQuest to work as intended at this point after Daybreak chopped so many heads from the people who were at SOE.

EverQuest only had a tiny team of developers and CS staff before the change in ownership. There was shit that was literally  broken in their most recent expansion that took a couple of months to fix and were obvious enough that they should not have ever made it into the live game. I can imagine that it is many times worse now.

[Surlyboi]

I still blame Meemers. Oh, and...Split Prexus!

[Venkman]

Yeah, the argument was it both trivialized content and limited the options for endgame player interaction with the world because they'd do the "run, drop in, run off" thing unless all activities happened in a cave. .

I've always been of the opinion that the best way to make content worth doing is actually making it fun.  If players are trying to skip your content, maybe your content sucks.

This. But I've wondered how long flying could remain in WoW stuff. The whole UI just isn't designed for three dimensional game play, and after ten years, their development pipeline can't be allowed to change that much. They're in sustain-what-we-have mode, not attract-millions-of-new-users mode.

Back on EQ1 a lot of my nostalgia and social connections came from fighting the game and the company that made it, not really having fun in it, especially when looked at through the lens of all of the MMOs and other games (and platforms) that have come since. I can understand the nostalgia play on P99 and all that. But man, I'd need to unwind almot 1/3 of my life to go back to the kind of gamer that got attracted to EQ1 in the first place.

[Xanthippe]

Back on EQ1 a lot of my nostalgia and social connections came from fighting the game and the company that made it, not really having fun in it, especially when looked at through the lens of all of the MMOs and other games (and platforms) that have come since. I can understand the nostalgia play on P99 and all that. But man, I'd need to unwind almot 1/3 of my life to go back to the kind of gamer that got attracted to EQ1 in the first place.

That's how I feel about playing old Bookshelf games like Acquire or play-by-mail games like Flying Buffalo's Starweb. My nostalgia doesn't extend to actually wanting to play those games now - but at the time, they were excellent. Life has changed way too much to be able to play those now.

[sam, an eggplant]

Since this is kinda the WoW thread now (who cares about Everquest?), Blizzard just officially announced that flying would be gone forever, on the friday before a long holiday weekend, and the playerbase is going nuts. I haven't seen this sort of massively negative reaction since the real ID kerfuffle a couple years ago.

The writing was on the wall about it for some time now, obviously, but I guess some people held out hope.

[Trippy]

This is already being discussed in the most recent WoW thread:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23791.1610

[sam, an eggplant]

Ahh yes the subforum, thanks.

[Surlyboi]

Back to your ghetto.

[Draegan]

Yeah, the leveling stuff is still great, it falls apart at the endgame. But really that applies to every MMO.

I wouldn't even call the leveling stuff that great.

[taolurker]

So, in case you guys missed this little bit of internet drama... Daybreak CEO John Smedley decided yesterday to start a twitter tirade against the hacker in Finland case that was semi-news (hacker slap on wrist in Finland, no jail and only "monitored" internet, lizardsquad member). This combined maybe with his stance against H1Z1 cheating and making waves with the responders to his twitter, today games company wide are experiencing a possible DDOS attack.

News article:
Daybreak CEO John Smedley Threatens Convicted Harasser

[schild]

John, John, John 

[taolurker]

Seriously the twitter response are like gifts that keep on giving while digging him further

Twitter Conversation with replies

[Malakili]

I was wondering why I couldn't log into Planetside 2.

[taolurker]

I honestly had thought was less about a DDOS than about Comic Con, but it does make for some interesting CEO indiscretion/interaction. If I were Columbus Nova/investor I might now be looking for someone less boisterous and confrontational.

[Ginaz]

Can't say I blame him for being upset.  It was a bullshit sentence and the kid got off light.  The proverbial slap on the wrist.  This kid cost Smed's company quite a bit of money so he should at least be able to sue him and/or his parents but I highly doubt he would get anywhere doing so.  That being said, Smed should really have kept his mouth shut and kept his thoughts private.

[Bzalthek]

It's a whole lot more than that.  His plane was grounded with a bomb threat.  His families info was posted and they were getting harrassing phone calls.  Credit card applications were filed out in his name, and he had to constantly deal with the police and the fallout that can cause your credit score.  Fictitious tax forms were filed under his name.

He's handling it a lot better than any of us would.  But considering how little it takes us to go apeshit with our communal Asperger's, that's not saying much.

[Lantyssa]

Smed's obviously trying to be Trump's VP pick.

[Ginaz]

Smed's obviously trying to be Trump's VP pick.

Why would you say that?

[Lantyssa]

Because a CEO is going off on Twitter about how a 17 year-old is going to "get his" after his judicial system handed down a sentence he didn't approve of?

a) It makes him sound like a whiny baby.

b) He's the CEO of a company--it reflects horribly upon the company.

c) Despite his best efforts to run the company into the ground (or is it a second since I guess he succeeded the first time?), he's still got more power than some teenager in Finland ever will.  Mostly he's just going to win sympathy for the kid while making himself look like a jerk that deserved what he got.  Besides being counter-productive, it's unseemly.

[Jimbo]

They are still attacking the serves at Daybreak. The kid and the group did some pretty hateful things and caused a lot of damage. He may be a dick, but illegal ways of attacking a company is pretty crappy way to get revenge. Not only that but cheating on a game is pretty shitty, whether is cards or computers, still a shitty way to play.

[MahrinSkel]

You're overthinking it. Trolls flock to the sound of the squeals, Smed squealed and now they're milking the lulz. I understand why he was pissed, but human weaknesses like anger displayed on the internet are chum for the sharks, the higher your profile the bigger the feeding frenzy.

--Dave