Home › Game Forums › Everquest
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
EverQuest subscribers around the Scars of Velious era
EQ nostalgia setting in as it always does, I found myself watching the old Scars of Velious trailer. Seconds into the trailer we see "The Moment 700,000 Fans Have Been Waiting For". Would anyone care to confirm whether this is actually stating there were approximately 700,000 subscribers at this time and just how accurate this number is?
Comments
Highest recorded Western World player base was 550.000 before WoW came out.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Most likely they were citing box sales. Brad said sometime before he left SOE that EQ had sold roughly 1 million copies.
He mentioned the box sales in a forum discussion because the subscriber attrition rate was so high. Half of the subscribers quit after level 20 and he was curious to know why.
It was around this time that SOE also stopped showing the exact number of players logged on each server. A couple years later they stopped mentioning their subscriptions totals in press releases. They didn't want players using empirical evidence to support their gameplay complaints on the message boards.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
I don't know how accurate that is about half the subscribers quiting after level 20 but it's intersting if he did say that. I wish I had been involved in that discussion but I didn't hang around on the forums a lot at that time.
My theory for it would be that it was due mostly to the depopulation of lower level areas on the older servers. If you played on one of the older servers (most servers) you will remember that by the Velious era the lower level areas were already mostly dead. Most of the people you would see were alts who were either being power leveled by a high level character or they were alts who were twinked to the teeth. In either case they weren't interested in grouping with anyone, especially not with a true new player who they didn't need and who they would see as just an experience leech. I do remember pointing out the problem with twinking and power leveling on the forums for exactly this reason.
So new players on all but the newest servers found themselves more or less forced to solo in a group based game. Small wonder if they didn't last long. The truth is that EQ sucked as a single player game. Without lots of other people to group with and lots of other people around to bring the world to life the game just sucked.
I remember when they stopped showing the numbers of players on the servers although I don't remember exactly when it happened. But I remember thinking it was a clear sign that the game was beginning to go into decline.
I remember the 1st night that EQ had 100k people on at one time. It was shortly after the Luclin launch when they were still showing server populations. They made a global announcement that 101k users were currently online. At the time, this was one hell of a feat. LOL.
Now, we can only hope that there are 100k subscribers....lol
My chars have been wandering around Verious a lot recently since my chanter decided to complete the Cloak quest, now a apprentice smith, doesn't seem that I can use my usual short cuts except for some item gathering.
Errandf of Combined/Druzzel ro/Xie
well, tbh, 100,000 online at once is still very respectable
Highest recorded Western World player base was 550.000 before WoW came out.
^ That would be correct, it peaked in 2004 before WoW came out. Velious era was a good time for EQ1, but the subscription numbers were fairly even in 2000 when Velious was out. It pretty much stayed fairly even throughout Luclin and didn't spike again after PoP expansion.
That figure was most likely number of retail boxes sold, which was quite impressive back in the days.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO