I've disliked EQ since the whole SoE takeover of Verant. IMO it truly killed The Vision and turned EQ into nothing more than a soulless cash mill for Sony Incorporated. Everquest lost its spirit. GM and game support was slashed to the bone. Monthly rates were hiked and a premium server was added as a huge slap in the face to all of us loyal customers that USED to get all that support and content without paying $50 a month. SoE saw dollar signs and immediately changed the focus of Everquest into making them in more and larger amounts. They pushed (and continue to push)their customers hard to see what they will tolerate giving up and how much they will tolerate paying.
As you can guess, I'm not planning on staying with EQ much longer. Most of my friends in this game have already moved on to bigger and better things. I'm personally holding out for DDO and/or Vanguard.
All these MMORPGs are teaching SoE a very hard lesson. Years of sneering disdain for the very people that kept them in business are coming back tenfold as players leave EQ in droves for the many options now becoming available. Sadly, SoE doesn't seem to be learning from this at all. Dragons of Norrath proved this very clearly. The guild hall and corpse summoning should never have been included in (yet another) expansion, but should have been offered to all freely. Expansions should be for content only, not long overdue improvements or bug fixes. But this assured the maximum revenue for SoE, so that's what they did, as usual.
Now SoE is planning to raise the monthly fee...after closing up half the game servers.
And yet ANOTHER expansion will have to be paid for if folk want more improvements to the game. Forgive me if it looks like a very ugly pattern is forming. It begins to smell to me like SoE has a very simple strategy now: squeeze the remaining players for every last penny they can get, then let EQ die. Has anyone noticed that even after the server merges, it's getting harder and harder to find groups? I'm seeing the number of people in PoK drop to the levels they were just before the merge. Are we going to have more merges? Will EQ be eventually rendered down into a single premium server? Definitely, because only the most hardcore fanbois will remain after so much abuse.
A new game, made by the original makers of EQ--who still actually remember and believe in The Vision--is sounding pretty damn good to me. :)
Vanguard Enters Beta
The highly anticipated new MMORPG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has entered its first, early phase of beta testing. You can learn more about it at the official site. While we don't yet have a site for the game, we do have a forum where you can discuss it at this link, so fee free to post your questions and observations.
