Feldon In response to questions about the future of EverQuest II, Afista posted this official response:
Daybreak and Columbus Nova management teams are working together closely to evaluate the situation and will make adjustments if needed
This post lends credence to the trickle of rumors I’ve been hearing.
any of those rumor you can talk about???
Not yet.
Fair enough. Actual, serious question though. I was about to purchase a good amount of SC. Should I hold off?
I was about to buy the expansion and all access. I’ll wait to see what will happen before further investment in this game….
please keep us in the loop, as most of us are nuts at this point wondering whats going to happen.
If you cannot or will not talk about the rumors you have heard there is no reason to tell your reading public you have heard rumors at all. The last line of your post is not needed.
Ominous…
That sounds ominous, I hope it’s not bad news 🙁
Buying a company is usually only done for a few reasons:
1: Remove competition and acquire customers – This is not Columbus Nova’s reason since they didn’t compete with SOE to begin with. This would be more of a Blizzard or Trion move.
2: Technology/patents – This could be one of their motives but only if they were able to use this with existing projects of their own or believe that something like Landmark/EQN will give huge returns. This is certainly a possibility but it’s likely that older projects will be seen as a distraction to getting the main desired product to market as quickly as possible.
3: Breakup and resell – Sometimes the value of the pieces is worth more than the whole. Also, if Sony wasn’t really shopping out SOE, CN might believe they can find buyers that will be willing to offer them much more than they paid.
4: Acqhire – When you buy a company you also buy the skills of the people of that company and retask them onto other projects that you feel will have a higher return. Certainly game development is a complicated field so they have a lot of programming/network talent at their disposal.
5: Restructure – This is done if the company that is being bought has been mismanaged or not effective at turning a profit. This would usually entail complete replacement of the upper management (not keeping Smed/Smokejumper/Windstalker around) and a change of how business is done (start milking the customer base with pay-to-win schemes and other quick money methods).
An investment company does not care about single digit returns. They could get those from other, far safer places. Investment companies want growth…large growth. None of these sound very positive for EQ2. It’s a 10+ year old title that is profitable but probably nowhere near the scale that CN wants.
The most positive option is #2 where we might see EQNext sooner rather than later. That however does not bode well for EQ2 unless they go the #5 route and also feel there would be enough benefit to keeping the current customer base happy until they can transition us over to EQN (not likely since the customer base for EQ2 is a drop in the bucket for what they’ll want to have for EQNext).
Unfortunately the more likely options are #3 and/or #4 if CN is concerned about profit which is usually what good investment companies do.
Great analysis. There is also the “Restructure and Resell” which is basically #5 and partially #3.
Having actually clicked through and read the relevant section of that thread, Afista’s reply is in direct response to the following concern of a poster : “I am just worried about all the Employees and Smed and the Dev and all that were before the change”.
It’s still a bit gnomic but it would appear that the phrase “will make adjustments if needed” would be most likely to refer to staffing levels and/or specific posts/individuals rather than the games themselves. I don’t think many reading this would be surprised to see some restructuring and downsizing as a result of the acquisition.
As for the potential break-up and selling off of the assets of SOE, were that to happen I can’t say I’d be all that distressed to see EQ2 bought by another games company. Whether there’s a games company out there that would want to buy it, or whether it would be commercially feasible to split up the EQ trademarks, is another matter entirely.
If there aren’t enough staff to run the game, isn’t that kind of the same thing as affecting the game?
Also I’ll just add that right now, the EQ2 team is at the absolute minimum staffing levels needed to release the amount of content it does now. The team is 21, plus 5 shared between it and EQ. There were over 50 people on the EQ2 team with Kunark.
Can be 2 things. Investment or …
SOEBREAK doesn’t have a deep line of IPs to be broken up and sold individually – you basically have “eq1/2/n” Planetside2, and H1Z1.
You’d be more likely to see a monetizing of those names – EQlite on the IPad / planetside sidescroller on your android device.This is what I’d call a worst case scenario.
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/ferrin-currency-in-aom.557575/
Enigma said:
Kander, Today at 6:43 PM:
They are planing out thru April for patches. Doesn’t sound like much is gonna change, unless Smed gets a severance package – and he’s already weathered like 4 name changes/shuffles to our addiction
Anything they have planned out through April has been in the works for some time now. Anything that would affect things already in the works will come as a surprise to the people currently working on EQ2. It will be more interesting to see if they talk about more distant plans in a concrete way. Having worked in a similar situation (different industry but similar kind of take over) I can say that it is most likely the devs, customer service people, anybody below Smed and Georgeson (possibly Holly) are privy to the long term plans My experience leaves me very skeptical about the future but we will have to wait and see.
In the face of uncertainty as an employee, all you can do is post as if nothing will change. You can’t draw any conclusions from it.
I think EQ and Eq2 (which I love) will be scrapped and resources focused on Next.
H1zI and Planetfall 2 won’t last long either.
It’s been a good run but even EQ2 isn’t EQ2 anymore – expansions are a bunch of islands with ‘greatest hits’ lore areas (luclin, tov etc) thrown in in instances.
A far cry from ROK and the like.
Despite the devastating staffing cuts to EQ and EQ2, they remain sufficiently profitable to support Smedley’s extravagant cash burn rate in trying to get another game off the ground. EQ and EQ2 paid for 3 failed attempts to get EQNext launched, The Agency, and FreeRealms which never made its $40 million back.
If EQ2 were staffed up by 50%, we’d see Kunark sized expansions again, if not bigger, and the customerbase would start growing again, while still turning a profit. Staffing is not EQ2’s biggest expense by far. It’s executive waste.
I liked freerealms as a fill in distraction…. It had the right feel, but the community was flat out scary. Kids do mean things to each other indeed. I’m just sad to see it on the list of failed projects (though I know it was.)
Smed sold it as WoW for tweens but they undershot the target market by about 4 years. The game wasn’t as sophisticated as its players. So then they revamped it and it could be mastered by a determined 6 year old. Yes it attracted a wider audience as a distraction, but the core audience was pre-teens with no disposable income?
SOE burns cash like it’s nothing.
Well I can see the thinking with ToonTown being “big”. For certain definitions of big. Get them hooked to the brand and the company young and all.
Thanks for the heads up and info Feldon.
Thank you Feldon, for all you do. You are my go-to place for information and updates on EQ2, the only game I am currently playing, and I really do look forward to being able to play for many more years to come. I have tried the others, but my home is EQ2.
But, that said…
My sub renews for 1 year the beginning of March. While I am really trying to hard to stay off the sky is falling train, I just don’t think I am comfortable right now handing over $119 and then seeing what happens (especially since I am not so sure I would get a refund of unused time). Once the dust settles, I would reconsider renewing, but need to know what is happening first.
I am also spending my SC. Seems like as a good a time as any to take advantage of the Heroic Characters on a few of my many toons to see the sights at the higher levels. I promise to practice before subjecting anyone to my high level inexperience!
Oooo..what does this button do!??!
I think about the great folks we have met and the hard work they put into the game we enjoy. I do hope the best for all of them as things move forward.
I’d go month to month
I Am paying in krono till the dust settles. Not about to do anything big till then.
Doing this as well. Just came back to start burning through some of my krono stash, just in case the worst happens…
Month to month would work. I am still having a great time. And still can’t beat it dollar for dollar for entertainment value. 🙂
My thoughts, are Smed is gone. Smokejumper I don’t think so as he is the king of micro-transactions. The rest, as much as I give respect to what they do. There has been to much of “what I think is right … goes” by the developers. Kandar likes his trash
+1 to this. Way too arrogant of a lead Dev has left us in a cycle of progression blocking via broken content and we’re supposed to expect it as the norm now.
The rumors are that they are about to start making staff cuts which may or may not result in the demise of eq2. I don’t have to sit here and tease “inside info” to be confident of that. Eq2 is a small community and there are plenty of players in game who have at least a peripheral view of what is going on at soe/ daybreak. Also, it’s the completely logical conclusion based on the current events. I really hope eq2 survives because I think AOM is the best expansion they have created in a long while and has me looking forward to what is next. The current dev team seems very responsive and passionate given their small numbers and it felt like they were really hitting their stride.
Anyone play Guild Wars 2? Is it a good alternative?
It’s ok. Solo and group play is pretty good. No raiding to speak of, just zerg public events. The voice overs are horrendous imo, especially the Char (cat people). I didn’t craft much but it seems to be pretty good. The Realm vs Realm pvp was pretty much unplayable when I in, total roaming zergs with super lag and LONG runs back after a death. The “frequent content updates” are very small and mostly consist of solo quest line additions. There are some varied and really fun combos you can play with the different classes/weapon combos though, enjoyed that part very much. There is NO holy trinity at all, aggro/hate is fairly random and self healing and CC is pretty important. Overall it’s ok, I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10.
If you are a raider I would say try RIFT if you haven’t already.
It’s a nice game to play from time to time, but it lacks the depth that EQ2 provides.
It’s not an alternative, just another game.
I just started playing it, it’s cool so far.
I have little doubt that we will see layoffs, the only question is where and how much. Sadly EQ2 couldn’t really afford to lose a lot of those we already did, much less more.
I’ve tried must of the EQ killer mmo since Rift but I only play eq2 now. There are no alternatives of you like what eq2 offers. Everything else feels small and dumbed down to me.
As for the fate of EQ2 is really a matter of efficiency (profit). You don’t buy in to a company that has the golden goose because you want roasted bird for dinner.
EQ2 makes money and they’ll just be wondering whether in needs more or less investment to increase profit margins. They’ll also have to consider their exit strategy. If it was running at a razor thin margin is be more worried.
EQN is now being funded by Landmark, so it’s no longer bleeding EQ2 for cash as it was. I’m not sure where EQ sits however.
Is love to see the game economics as entities… as well the new owners.
When subscriptions are “all access” the game that is generating the income is obscured. So which game(s) are profitable and which are loss makers?
Krono are also a bit problematic, if Player A buys 50 kronos and sells them all in game in EQ2 but plays PS2 a lot more how do you split the revenue? Particularly if their buyers only play EQ2 or play a mix of EQ and EQ2.
btw this is of academic interest to me (perhaps with a touch of schadenfreude) as I have stopped playing any SOE/DB games.
The only reason to sell Krono is to acquire in-game currency. I don’t understand why anyone would sell Krono (let alone FIFTY) in one game if they play more of another and (unless I’m mistaken) the only games that you can buy/sell Krono are EQ and EQ2. With the going rate of Krono about 2k on my EQ2 server, why would anyone want 100,000 plat, (which is also localized on the server you sell them on) if they mostly play Planetside 2? I’m guessing most people are selling Krono in the games they play the most.
Also, they can track the micro-transaction spending habits of people in every game they have. It might not be a guarantee of which game is most “profitable” but it’s a good indicator, at the very least, of which game may be more of a money earner . . .
And so it begins…Brasse is gone.
As others have said feldon, keep us in the know, you have done alot for us EQ2 players and I for one am extremely grateful to you and your team at EQ2wire for all you have done for me
+1