No more almost impossible to obtain crap please

[Alhanelem]

Without the impossible to obtain crap we get the whiners saying content is to easy.

There's nothing hard about this for the people that are ready for it. It's just a colossal waste of time. After the first 100 pandy warden kills, I'm sure you'll be sick of it. You've proven yourself after the first two or three, the rest are just to make it take a long time.

[Lafaiel]

I think that time could have been spent developing things for all players instead of a select few.

This is something I notice about a lot of asian game developers, they do this because it seems to be a mentality they have, to be honest most of us might not like wow very much, but if it were to be released in places like korea and japan thier respective mmo's markets would be decimated by it.

[Rohelius]

The afterglows are for people on disability that get a check every month and don't do anything all day but get fat and sit in front of the computer.

Its This guy that is going to own one of the 99 stage 2 weapons as he looks right now.

and This is how hes gonna end up.

And its all worth it because its for this.

[Unleashhell]

Are you daft, or just ignorant of business's in general?

It has NOTHING to do with the age of the product. Consumers have a demand, you supply that demand and thus create a revenue stream. You continue to provide that supply for as long as there's enough demand to warrant a profit. Not providing that supply will lead to the demand going elsewhere and thus less profits for you.

They still sell monopoly and risk, those are both much older then 10yrs and they still make money. They sell those games because there is a demand that is profitable to supply. The original Everquest is still going, their still supplying that demand and making and profit off it. It makes no sense not to supply the demand of a 10yr old game.

Now let me school you about product development, cause I actually do some of this for a living.

The highest cost sink isn't in the maintenance of the game, but the initial development to go from concept to design to the actual key pounding of code. MMO's don't make profits in their first year or so due to this fact. It costs tons of money to develop the original game mechanics, design the artwork, assign the various mechanics and so forth. Create all the models and animations, build your server side software, work out the bugs in your backend databases.

Now all of these are sunk costs, their costs you can't immediately pass onto the consumer as it would price your product out of the market and you must accept them as an investment in the future of your product. After the first couple of years you'll end up making the original investment back and then your operating on pure profit from that point on. Any money left over after maintenance and operations expense's can be spent on product development and pocketed as profit.

Starting over again, aka making a new MMO, means you must start back at year one sunk costs all over again. Discontinuing or failing to maintain and develop for a product that is already banking you tons of money is a very very bad business decision. Especially if your doing it to develop a "new" MMO from scratch, which will just cost you more money. This is why Blizzard didn't make "WoW 2" and instead decided to further develop the original WoW. In the long run it costs them less to develop and expand on their original product then it does to sink money into a "new" product and hope people go for their bait. When they made EQ2 they though all the players would jump over, and while some did most did not. This was a very harsh lesson that needed to be learned. Players do not like switching MMO's like they do cars and they do not develop a brand loyalty to MMO's like they do. Each and every MMO is treated like a separate product and has a separate player base. No matter what it's name is or who developed it.

I'm well aware how business works. All you are doing is trying to justify how you think SE should run their business. And you are missing the point that they are not going to put 100% of the original man power into a 10+ year old product. Do you actually think Blizzard will not make WoW 2? They will, just like every other game has either an entirely new game in a franchise or a sequel of some kind.

What you don't seem to realize is that the next gen gamer will have an interest in future releases of any MMO or any game for that matter. Do you actually think some 16-22 year old is gonna say oh hey let me play this 10+ year old game with outdated graphics and game mechanics. No they aren't interested in it. They want the newest more current technology. That is where the money will be because they can hook that gamer into that more recent product for 5+ years if its an MMO, just like we got hooked into FF11 8-10 years ago. Otherwise we wouldn't even have FF14 cause according to the way you are looking at things you think a business should just put all the manpower they got into a 10 year old product and completely rule out new potential customers. New customers and next gen gamers don't want old products. They want new products.

As for profits, they go into new products. They go into research, development, planning, writing, graphic artists etc. If any business just took profits and did nothing but support old outdated products their business would fail because consumers would move onto better more up to date products. Sorry but if I was 18 again I sure as hell wouldn't even have the slightest interest in a 10+ year old MMO when there are more up to date graphically superior products out there. And if this is what you do for a living I feel sad for the company that hired you. With your logic you would have more overhead in payroll making a ridiculously large employee base for every project you ever work on. That sure makes great business sense... Your employees need to work on more projects to help keep your company in business.

[Alhanelem]

Thanks for the business economics lesson. Back to talking about not adding pointless, irrelevant, impossible things to the game when no one will accomplish them.

[Dragoy]

I always saw the Relics and the Mythics something that was only designed for those who like to manipulate and use people for their own gains, cheat (buy Gil and bot for Gil and so on), and such.
No, I'm not saying everyone who did it are like that but that's not even the point. I don't understand why make items they do not intend to be obtained by most players.

Currently, excluding the new 99 trials, Relics are mostly easier for a small group of friends working together. If you can get 100 currency pieces a night between four people for example, you can get one person the currency for a relic in less then two months, or two people's currency in three. Basically even with two days off a week and a bit of cushion for vacations and such, you can get a group their relics in a year. In my opinion, that is obtainable for players who are between "casual" and "hardcore" while still rewarding teamwork, which is incredibly hard to do with a loot system.

The problem I mainly see with the afterglow trails is they are based on loot and not kills - basically, it rewards that greedy manipulation you talk about.

Twenty kills for the 99 weapon stats and two thousand for the afterglow would be a bit more fair for teamwork - the thing this game is supposed to be all about more then any other MMO - then having to fetch some stupid item a thousand times.

Perhaps I may be wrong, but a legendarily hard quest like that would probably be more acceptable to players if it rewarded teamwork rather then greed. Am I right?

Very true.
I was largely thinking of ye olde Dynamis time basically when writing what I wrote.
They are definitely much more accessible now (level 75 Relics), and I am very much interested to see the renovations on the Aht Urhgan content, and if they will do anything similar to the Mythic stuff.

That said, one might fondle with the thought that these new trials are basically the new level 75 Relic/Mythic content.

And yes, I agree with that too, that it is quite funky how they create content that more or/and less require more players to do, yet they usually don't really reward but one person (at a time), depending a lot of the people doing it of course (how they decide to distribute the rewards which doesn't really work with Voidwatch though I imagine, which might have been an attempt out of this pattern orrr maybe it was just about messing around).

[saevel]

So you are daft, thought so.

This pretty much sums up your ignorance

Do you actually think Blizzard will not make WoW 2? They will, just like every other game has either an entirely new game in a franchise or a sequel of some kind.

Blizzard has already said no WoW 2, instead they remade the game in Cataclysm. Soon they are doing another major overhaul that is completely discarding the current talent trees and replacing them with an entirely different system.

Instead of trying to create a ~new~ game, they are instead turning their ~old~ game into something new. That is how you make money in MMO's, as proven by Blizzard's WoW being the biggest MMO in the world despite being "old" by gaming standards and having constant competition.

As for profits, they go into new products. They go into research, development, planning, writing, graphic artists etc. If any business just took profits and did nothing but support old outdated products their business would fail because consumers would move onto better more up to date products. Sorry but if I was 18 again I sure as hell wouldn't even have the slightest interest in a 10+ year old MMO when there are more up to date graphically superior products out there. And if this is what you do for a living I feel sad for the company that hired you. With your logic you would have more overhead in payroll making a ridiculously large employee base for every project you ever work on. That sure makes great business sense... Your employees need to work on more projects to help keep your company in business.

You have no idea how a business works, your just pulling stuff out of your fifth point of contact.

As of now this discussion is over. Your no longer capable of actual debate and instead are trying to defend SE's decision to pull R&D money from FFXI and put it into FFXIV even though it's already a failed product. FFXIV is a failed product, it has failed to pay back it's original development and launch cost and was a huge money sink for it's developer and producer. Their having to create a third MMO from FFXIV just to try to make back their original investment.

/add ignore list.

[Runespider]

Blizzard has already said no WoW 2, instead they remade the game in Cataclysm. Soon they are doing another major overhaul that is completely discarding the current talent trees and replacing them with an entirely different system.

Instead of trying to create a ~new~ game, they are instead turning their ~old~ game into something new. That is how you make money in MMO's, as proven by Blizzard's WoW being the biggest MMO in the world despite being "old" by gaming standards and having constant competition.

This is why Blizzard make so much money, they can refrain from "exciting" things that would be stupid bsuiness ideas. Making WoW 2 would kill WoW and WoW 2 would probably flop too. Square don't get this, they would of made far far more money revitalising FFXI full force than continuing to throw money at a game everyone hates, and one that has a minimal chance to get even half the success FFXI had.

The really stupid part is that FFXIV flopping made a lot of players come back to FFXI, but they aren't capitalising on it at all lol

[saevel]

This is why Blizzard make so much money, they can refrain from "exciting" things that would be stupid bsuiness ideas. Making WoW 2 would kill WoW and WoW 2 would probably flop too. Square don't get this, they would of made far far more money revitalising FFXI full force than continuing to throw money at a game everyone hates, and one that has a minimal chance to get even half the success FFXI had.

The really stupid part is that FFXIV flopping made a lot of players come back to FFXI, but they aren't capitalising on it at all lol

I've played tons of MMO's over the years, and honestly I can't think of a single one where the sequel made more then the original. EQ2 didn't make anywhere near the money that the first EQ did, neither did Lineage. Lineage II eventually got to be decent enough, but still wasn't nearly the smash in SK that the first one was. Squaresoft really should of done market research before making a new product. They should of instead put that money in revamping FFXI's game engine to modern standards, creating an entire new continent. Create new quest lines and content, upping level caps and adding more variety of gear. Revamp the augment system, including hunt registry and the Aug weapons. Lots they could of one but instead the bleed the game dry a few years during WoTG while they make FFXIV. Then further bleed it after FFXIV fails as predicted.

[Crysten]

What you don't seem to realize is that the next gen gamer will have an interest in future releases of any MMO or any game for that matter. Do you actually think some 16-22 year old is gonna say oh hey let me play this 10+ year old game with outdated graphics and game mechanics. No they aren't interested in it. They want the newest more current technology.

You forget about the thousands of people still playing this game and expecting somewhat better service for the money than we're getting currently, so no, I don't think you understand how business works. XI is currently long-tailing and SE should be doing their damnedest to keep us interested and continuing to support the game financially.

So what's the best way of doing that? Wasting already scarce resources to design trials and objectives that they only indend to see a minute fraction of the playerbase achieve instead of actually developing worthwhile, fresh new content (...wait, what?).

None of the content currently planned for us is fresh in the slightest. All we have coming is simply either cut and paste work (Legion), or "new" versions of stuff we already did until we were blue in the face 3 years ago (Nyzul, Limbus, possible Salvage revamps).

What would you rather see? Afterglow trials or potential new missions, storylines or unique endgame events? The Dev team apparently wants to see (a very small percentage of) people doing the former, which boggles the bloody mind.