Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Melithea]

Could a EQ game even survive anymore?

Everquest and Everquest 2 both survive to this day, sort of.

It's really hard to find recent and accurate numbers, but from a little investigating EQ active subscription numbers look something like this.

2004: 550,000
2007: 175,000
2010: 100,000
2014: ???

By way of comparison, FFXI had 350,000 in 2010 and XIV: ARR currently has more subscriptions than EQ ever had. Now, I'm all for ARR becoming more fun, but people saying that they miss EQ and if ARR doesn't return to the days of EQ it's going to DIE~! really need to realize that EQ was a different game from a different time, and if we're talking from a purely financial/subscription perspective, SE sure as hell doesn't need to take any advice from Everquest.

By the way, people have suggested skillchains and stuff like that be brought back. Maybe not in this thread, but people have been asking for things like that here and there since launch. I don't remember if there was ever an official answer, but this strikes me as the perfect example of the kind of solution that it might be a really good idea to throw back out there and blow it up until it can't be ignored.