EQ followed camping to recover the original “Vision”. It just doesn’t work vs a giant like WoW. Would you rather kill the same mob for hours or quest and dungeon crawl through a deep cavern only to end up fighting a HUGE statue that summons minions to aid him? Yeah, get the point now? It is simple design failure. Don’t focus only on raiding and give the “Noobies” a chance to feel as if they accomplished something.

Now TSS EQ’s new expansions gives that a chance…

You’re totally off the mark on EQ1/2. I’m still in an endgamish raiding guild in EQ1, and we’re currently suffering from overpopulation due to returning players pushing us way over the cap for instance limits. From what I’ve seen, the pull for leaving has been from WoW, with a slight hit from CoH. We’ve had one person leave for EQ2. From what I’ve heard within the community, if EQ1 goes down, nearly no one I’ve talked to will play another SoE game. People don’t play EQ1 for the cutting edge gameplay, they play it for the social structure, the familiarity and because they already have so much time invested. They play it because that’s what their friends do, and because it’s nice being able to log on and see 60 people you know in the guild and another 30 online from your friends list. They play it because they have a solid main character, a cleric bot and access to a friend’s shaman when they need it. They play it because they have 600 DKP in the bank. People that don’t have these connections and this sort of base mostly already left for WoW.

Unless SoE gives the equivalent of thousands of hours of time in EQ2 character development and transfers servers (or at least guilds) intact, there’s no reason for people to move there instead of to WoW. Even if they do, they’ll lose most of their players. If EQ1 closed down, I’m pretty sure no one from my guild would switch to EQ2. We’d all move to WoW, which has all the shinies of EQ2, a dozen or two old guild members (many still active on the guild boards) and none of SoE’s shameful customer service legacy.

Your example of SWG is poor. SoE has developed a reputation for shaking up the status quo, but only because they made SWG into a ghost town and doubled the population in EVE[1]. Generally, the less involved SoE is in the game world, the happier the players are.

What they should do is update the world and story of EQ1 with the tech from EQ2, and close EQ2 down. There’s no reason for EQ2 to not go the path of AC2.

That said, they’ll probably try what you suggested. Once they do, expect massive layoffs within a year, as most of their customer base leaves for greener pastures.

[1] Speaking of which, Jeff, Tyler and I are playing now. Come join us!

Actually, that would be cool. If Everquest changed signifigantly, I could see that as a great reason to keep it alive. With the now-smaller populations per server, perhaps they could attempt to incorporate more RP aspects back into the game. Do some server consolidation, and then make an effort to have live events and scripted events running most of the time.

While my argument is ’shut down EQ’, my intent is ‘do something different’. The company is already getting a rep for shaking up the status quo (Planetside, SWG). It would be nice if they poured some of that newfound spirit into their original baby.

Needing cash to pay off the debt used to acquire the company, new management was tempted to milk the value of famous brands through excessive line extensions and other short-terms tactics … Brand names, those icons of mass consumption, are themselves being consumed by their owners, who have apparently taken to heart the ad industry’s message of immediate gratification.

This langauge, while talking about ad usage for retail stores, applies just as well to game publishers. The sequelitis currently plaguing the games industry as a whole is a direct result of this. Mario’s 100th game won’t be a spiritual successor to the original Super Mario Bros., it will be ‘Mario Tennis 3′ or ‘Mario Party 12′.

In order to make your product pop and, less cynically, offer your customers the full brunt of your support, you need to focus. EQ has had its day in the sun. Why not start the shutdown with grace and dignity now, and save yourself from the torch weilding mobs later?