Just because official servers are not full, that doesn’t mean there’s no player base. I have several friends that rented a private server because officials are full of performance issues.
I personally play on single player again, nothing compares to the performance i get there while fighting.
Pve has juice now, it’s not a grinding game anymore unless you love to grind unnecessary. I am about to finish a session with “Only” 2 thralls and i intent to keep them alive too. So if people want to have 100 thralls, so be it, but let’s not hide behind necessities that actually don’t exist. We populate bases only because we love it, not because we need it.
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I believe my memory of those days are a bit more clear. Almost none of the original EQ team was moved to work on EQ2. If any moved off the EQ1 project its because they found work elsewhere or retired. Everquest 1 continued a steady development cycle for well the next 20 years, having the largest shakeup when Sony Online Entertainment became Daybreak.
And it was SOE that developed both games during that time frame, Verant had been defunct for a number of years by that point.
As for WoW taking the spot light, it was well deserved. It ran better on more PCs at the time than either EQ or EQ2. It had a stylized art style that allowed more character customization as well as more unique armor options. It was also built upon a better known IP (Warcraft 3 was incredibly popular).
I get that you might have some less than ideal memories of guildies leaving and breaking up across a few games when you thought there was still gas in the tank. But EQ2 was a pretty important milestone in MMORPG history. Its biggest mistake in the beginning was the average person couldn’t run it well. When you have a choice between a 1998 engine game, a game that runs at under 20fps on decent hardware, or a stylized game that runs at 60fps on most systems. What do you think is going to be successful?
But none of this applies to CE though. There is no competing IP. Dune won’t compete with CE anymore than Secret World does.
Games don’t really compete with one another unless they release around the same time. As players have game libraries. You can enjoy more than one game. Unless of course there is very similar games to the point where one is objectively better and not just different here and there.
Heck even in your analogy with EQ and EQ2 doesn’t really apply since both games still put out paid expansions every year and are actively developed.
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Nor should they. They are different games entirely. Dune is an mmo and there are those of us who it simply doesn’t tick any boxes for. Anyone who jumps from CE to Dune is equally vulnerable to jumping ship to other games, like Palworld, Satisfactory, Rust, take your pick. The behind the scenes work for Dune would come in for CE2, not CE. Unless it’s a Conan openworld sandbox game with mods… I know I’m not going anywhere else.
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Were at end of a Season, I kinda expect low numbers. Also new Surv games out right now. If your done with Season Pass… your gonna move on.
Thats how it works.
Next Season… and hopfully a working update on Day 1. Pop will pop off… and repeat itself as normal.
I’m Not playing CE Right now… Cause Palworld and NMS Update got me playing that. And I’m done with Season Stuff, waiting on them to undo Combat Changes…give or take Survery results…
Dragons Dogma II is 26? 27thish give or take time of drop. And thats gonna steal me for abit.
Other games to play right now… and Season is been out for abit.
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We don’t even know when the next chapter is going to come out. They initially announced that Age of War will get a chapter 4, but no information on the release date whatsoever.
I’m not sure if it is getting delayed, but they should have released some sort of information for chapter 4 already.
It has almost been 3 months since chapter 3 was released.
Well, a lot of people asked for them to release at a pace that allows them to be thorough, perhaps they do listen despite the forum’s popular consensus. If that’s what’s happening and it still generates the forum rhee, maybe they are damned if they do, damned if they don’t and they really should just focus on fastest time to money… just how I see it.
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Here’s a novel idea: if that’s what’s happening, they could also communicate about it, which is another thing that a lot of people keep asking them to do.
Maybe the “forum rhee” comes from not having any information about the release date, rather than from disagreement about something you’re personally speculating about? 
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100% need to communicate this if that is the case and the people will rhee regardless but at least it’s informed rhee.
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True. But to play devils (or Funcom’s) advocate for a moment - one of the other complaints that we have always had is that updates stick to arbitrary release dates (often that weren’t even publicised) and are released in flawed state because they ‘had to release on that date’. Maybe fixing bugs or the combat issues are taking an unclear amount of time and they don’t want to commit to a date if they’re not sure the fixes will be ready 
Release fast and on a fixed schedule - complaints for not completing everything in time
Release on a slow ‘when ready’ schedule - complaints about no new content
Announce release date to stave of complaints based on option 2 - we’re back to option 1
Don’t announce release date - we’re still at option 2.
Best I can think of for them to communicate (and you know I’ve always been an advocate for more communication from Funcom) is just to make a vague statement - ‘we’re working on chapter 4, but want it to be right, so we don’t have a date for it yet’ - and honestly, that’d probably go down like a lead balloon (plus we know from experience that some people would find a way to interpret that as a firm announcement of a fixed date and then grab the pitchforks as soon as said date passes).
Yeah, I guess that’s about the best we can hope for, lol.
(But it is easy to see why Funcom mostly doesn’t choose to communicate that much - if they’ll get the same result whether they communicate or not, they might as well put the communication time into something else…)
But having been away awhile it’s sad to see Ignasi and AndyB don’t seem to be posting anymore, and the community team seem to be pretty much exclusively dealing with bug reports now. It’s cool that Dennis and Umboris both dropped into threads to provide more insight, but it’s also easy to see how some of the reponses they wind up with make it seem not worth their time. (Obviously, they received positive reponses as well, but there’s generally enough vitriol from the negative that you can understand it having an impact.)
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Ya unfortunately they’re going to get negative responses no matter what they do. But if they took the time like they used to like in their previously frequent blog posts there’d be so much less speculation.
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The only thing Dune and Conan have in common is sand and sandstorms
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As far as I am concerned prefer Funcom to fix patch or return to previous renditions before releasing any thing new not dieing for something new just don’t want to die do to dysfunctional game mechanics. And yes I may be back on the Forum. Make Your own Luck Exiles.
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I’m not having any issue with Thralls. I honestly don’t get what everyone is on about with them.
As for literally everything else… game is a mess.
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I understand the desire to be fair, but Funcom’s track record has worn thin the line between being fair and being an apologist.
Oversimplification. The problem with releasing fast and on a fixed schedule is that Funcom established expectations based on a deception: the Age of Sorcery was the first Age, and as such it was developed in a timeframe that does not fit into the release cadence they committed to. As time went on, it became evident that they couldn’t maintain the same content quantity and quality with that release cadence.
In short, they overpromised and underdelivered. That’s where the complaints come from.
Again, overpromising and underdelivering will get you that. If you’re on a slow, “when ready” schedule, you’ll get some grumbles when your “when ready” schedule goes becomes too slow. If, on the other hand, you commit to a fixed schedule and then fail to maintain your commitment, you’ll hear a lot more complaining.
“Either we commit to a date or stay silent” is a false dichotomy.
That’s far from the best they could do when it comes to communication. In fact, that’s the kind of crap one resorts to when one has a track record of failing to meet the expectations one sets.
Could they do better? For sure. Here’s one idea: write a development blog. It doesn’t have to go into great detail, it just has to be published on a regular basis (once a month would be enough) and offer some substance.
That would not only keep the players engaged and supportive, it would also cut down on pointless, divisive speculation about what they’re really doing.
Of course they are. A freaking deity of your choice could appear tomorrow and cure all diseases and solve world hunger, and there would be negative responses to that.
The goal isn’t to have no negative responses whatsoever. The goal is to continually improve.
They should worry less about negative responses and more about doing the right thing. Or at least doing better.
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True. But nonetheless I feel that I can see possible reasons for some of their actions. They’ve certainly burned a lot of trust, but while I can still see potential positives (within the bounds of corporate greed) I’m still likely to try to point them out. (Though I’m also not inclined to argue that those are the only reasonable interpretations).
Absolutely, but then that’s the nature of a simplified summary…
They did indeed, and that certainly accounts for some of the complaints (perhaps most) - but remember also how soon the calls for new content came after Siptah, and there was no implied release schedule with that. I think we’d still be seeing a fair proportion of the same complaints however AoS had been handled (though it would certainly have been an improvement if there had been better planing ahead for how the schedule could realistically work, rather than the mess we have now).
Quite simply, yes. I’ve always supported the idea that it would be preferable to have no release ‘schedule’ and instead have updates when they are ready. (One of the things that I’ve always felt the FunPimps get right with 7days - plenty of other issues there, but ‘we’ll update when we damn well want to’ does seem more stable.) Funcom resists this idea and always has, I’ve no idea why - possibly it’s something to do with corporate culture/being beholden to shareholders - possibly it’s just a bad idea that they always stick to
It is, but my next point was the option of ‘vague communication’ which was intended to open the dichotomy back up (don’t get too hung up on the crappy little bullet point list, that’s more of a bad TLDR for my usual rambling text…)
Hey, I said it was the best I could think of, lol
A much better suggestion. Even remaining vague, that could still be used to build good will and excitement. (Thinking about it now you’ve suggested it - Mark Rosewater, the lead designer on MtG has had a personal blog for years now, which may be a part of how he seems to stay relatively immune to a lot of the bile that WotC/Hasbro receives/earns.)
And might finally put to rest some old myths, while reassuring some elements of the community that their concerns are at least being heard.
Plus a blog has the added advantage that doesn’t exist on the occasions someone like Dennis comments on the Forums - what’s being communicated doesn’t immediately get drowned out under a load of extra noise, and would be more easily available to anyone that wants to find it.
Yeah, a monthly dev blog would be a great start (add in a commitment to not commiting to schedules and we’d really be on a roll 
)
They should, and I can only hope that they will (hope’s a fine thing, but not very solid…), however, it is also a very human thing to feel the impact of those negative responses. Funcom, of course, is a corporate entity and should be beyond feelings, but the people actually doing the work aren’t. I can understand how facing vitriol for doing one thing, then doing what you thought was wanted and facing vitriol again can lead to the individuals preferring to focus on other aspects of their job… Even if we understand that the vitriol will come no matter what, a degree of avoidance becomes natural.
But the dev blog idea is a really solid one. (Sure it doesn’t solve everything - and the failings of the past will likely mean it would take a while before it had any meaningful impact - trust, once broken, can be hard to regain.) But that feels like something that we should really be campaigning for - a steady release of (necessarily vague) information, instead of a steady release schedule for content that can’t be kept up could be exactly what this game/community needs most.
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I doubt serious the assumption is far wrong. Just because we don’t have those numbers doesn’t mean they are good.
Ya, not the brag you seem to think it is.
Ring of elysium has been out of development for quite a while. Nothing new going on there. A BR with season passes, and daily challenges, that recycle. Still has a server up, still has a hundred or so players. It’s one of many such zombie games owned by, guess who?
Conan isn’t going any where as long as people are playing there will be a server up. It may simply be the battle passes recycling as well as the bazaar. But it will still be going long after the development is over.
I doubt seriously that will be a funcom decision to make.
The medical industry would, dare I say it, crucify him.
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If you want to flitter around paying $60-70 per game for less than a dozen hours played each. By all means. You do you. I just happen to enjoy games from a time period before games were released in unfinished states, before microtransactions, and during a time when the focus was on fun gameplay. Very hard to find all three of those things in a modern game.
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Me? Spend more then $20 on a game 
I remember. People always do that. It’s not just Siptah, it was the DLCs before, too. It’s easily explained by two factors.
One is just human nature. Have you ever finished reading a book series and felt sad that it’s done? Or binge-watched a new season of the show as soon as it came out, finished it in a couple of days, and felt you wanted to watch more?
The other factor is just statistics. When there’s a release, more people flock to the game. More players means more complaints in general.
That’s why I believe that this statement, regardless of how true it might be, is based on a flawed premise:
Besides, my problem with AoS isn’t that it was bad, it’s that it was way better than what they can actually do on a release cadence they committed to. It’s like taking three days to prepare everything for a truly spectacular party and then promising to throw a party just like that every day.
I wouldn’t say “always”. Before the “age of the Ages”, they used to release without any fixed schedule or promises. Sure, we would get a cultural DLC approximately twice a year, but even that wasn’t a promise, not even an implied one. And the base game updates just came whenever they felt ready to release them.
Perhaps we should say that Funcent has always resisted that idea
My apologies. I don’t usually blame the fact that English is my second language, but in this case it was that. I had a brain fart and processed the slight syntactic ambiguity the wrong way 
Ay, there’s the rub. I empathize with everything you wrote in that paragraph, I truly do. But you can only go so long trying to shield the people from the criticism of the structure they’re in before you decide that enough’s enough and that your good intentions are turning you into an enabler.
The difference is that you’re still not at that inflection point and I’ve left it behind me months ago, when I stopped playing and rediscovered how fun video games can be by playing games that aren’t being chronically mishandled
My sympathy goes to the people working for Funcom, but that sympathy won’t stop me from giving their employer all the criticism it deserves. And believe me, that vitriol you mentioned wouldn’t be such a big problem if the outcomes of those people’s work weren’t so bad, thanks to the organization they work for.
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