The Spirit Realm

- Doesn't include World of Warcraft, Runescape, Lineage or Lineage II (their scale makes everyone else look flat - http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html





More info at http://mmogchart.com

Blizzard recently released a press release saying they broke 10 million subscribers. You can read about it here:

http://www.blizzard.com/press/080122.shtml

As far as reasoning goes, *shrug*. There's alot of things that you can blame, but even though I'm tempted to lay the blame at SoE's feet, I have to say that the biggest reason probably has to do with Blizzard's reputation and the fact that it's Warcraft. Also, once a MMO hits a certain critical mass, it just keeps on growing due to the compounding population effect (aka "all my friends are playing WoW I should too!") WoW has become more than a runaway success that Blizzard did not anticipate (they estimated ~400-500k subscribers), it has become a fad.

I remember reading at one point on the site that it claimed EQ lost over 50% of its population during the OoW era.

Based on that chart, it certainly seems EQ took a nosedive around OoW.

I played WoW into the mid-20's on a couple of characters. Every group I was ever in amounted to little more than everyone targetting the mob and burning it down. There was little more to it than that, no strategy, no tactics, just everyone doing whatever it was their particular class did to do damage, and doing it as fast as they could. It was boooooring - like killing nothing but green mobs in EQ, but getting xp heaped on you for doing it. Of course, there was little reason for me to even *need* to group, which was just as well, as more often than not the groups were half comprised of meely-mouthed, l33t-speaking little twerps with no concept of doing anything that didn't provide a direct and immediate benefit to themselves.

Then there was the fact that the game basically leads you around by the nose, throwing quest after quest after quest at you, funnelling you along a direct progression and migratory path. I love questing in EQ, but there is most certainly such a thing as too much of a good thing. Well, it wasn't the sheer number of the quests - moreso the shallow nature of them. Everyone of a particular race pretty much did all the same quests. It was just boring.

All that was bad enough, but what I disliked most was the limited selection of classes. Also, and feel free to call me crazy, it just isn't that important to me that every class is completely balanced with every other. I'm fine with only certain classes getting ports or certain highly sought-after buffs or rezzes or being the best healer/tank/DPS/etc. It's what makes them unique. If I don't like always having to beg for a particular ability I my class doesn't have, I know I can just roll up one that does and play that instead. The game shouldn't be about what my class doesn't have. It should be about what it *does* have - you know, the reason I chose it to begin with.

Sure, I'm biased, but IMO EQ has still done it better than any other game to date, warts and all

Edit: One more thing - the dance moves that they gave WoW characters was funny for all of 30 seconds. Now it's just more of the sophomoric crap that's infesting MMORPG design philosophy these days.

Sounds kind of like what you would experience if you rolled an EQ char and went 1-20 through BB/CB-PC back when everyone leveled there no Felstaff?