Smedley says EQII players aren't WoW players, but may see their own Cataclysm

It's absolutely no surprise to anyone that MMO companies pay attention to what the others are doing. Turbine looked at free-to-play models and took a chance that has paid off. Cryptic is now testing the waters. Even Sony Online Entertainment has done this with Free Realms and EverQuest II. And of course, everyone watches what Blizzard is doing. After all, with 12 million subscribers, there are things to be learned from the champion MMO company. Now, with World of Warcraft's new expansion on the horizon, SOE's president, John Smedley, offered up some of his opinions to Kotaku -- opinions on Cataclysm and on how Blizzard's decisions relate to SOE's own future plans for EverQuest II.

According to the posted statements, not only have the heads at SOE been considering a worldwide reboot like Cataclysm, but the news is that it is something they've considered for "many years." Beyond this surprise (after all, there was already a cataclysmic event in Norrath's lore -- players just didn't get to play that part as it fell between EverQuest and EverQuest II) was the even larger surprise that came with Smedley's assertion that EverQuest II players are not World of Warcraft players. "We have five years of World of Warcraft experience behind us to know that people that play EverQuest II don't play World of Warcraft. We don't see big dips in concurrency. We see a tiny drop for awhile."

For the rest of the interview, head over to Kotaku and check it out in its entirety. It's definitely interesting reading.

Reader Comments (23)

Look at Smed bragging about ripping off stuff from Blizzard. How that guy keeps his job after turning the number one mmorpg company into the laughing stock of the industry is amazing.

@smg77 What did SoE steal from Blizzard? "Cataclysm"? Because yeah, EQ did that long ago....anything else? Count the things "blizzard" stole from EQ... um yeah and they aren't a laughing stock if you look at their bank account. Heck, Blizzard stole almost it's entire lore wholesale from Warhammer...

@Celestian

And Warhammer lore bears no resemblance to Lord of the Rings (the book btw)?

@smg77

I DO keep wondering how how SOE games would be if Mr. Smedley retired. They have a LOT of ALMOST very good games.

And this website makes my eyes hurt!

More marketing, good idea.
Do a reset of all the wondeful content in EQ2 that no one plays anymore, good idea.
Maybe do a rebalancing of the classes and maybe even a dungeonfinder, good idea.
The last stuff designed for EQ2 has been cheap and uninspiring, a total remake of the old EQ2 zones would be awesome.

@Sigtyr

/signed

yo smed! wheres our Matrix Online reboot?

"The reason I respect Blizzard so much is that they don't make massive mistakes," he said, talking about the risk of making massive changes to a massive game.

"We've been reluctant to do that in the past but the size of their user base means that more risk could make their game potentially larger."

But it didn't stop them from CU/NGEing SWG and Free Realms.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/freerealms.com/

I okayed EQ2 at launch and for a few years after - EQ2 constantly ripped off WoW ideas all the while denying it. Even stupid crap like voice emotes (remember the big deal they made about it during DoF?). Nothing new here.

@TheGreatMachine ...played. not sure how I got to 'okayed'. Pity we didnt' get an edit function in the site overhaul, what a missed opp.)

@TheGreatMachine

Really? Using voice emotes is a rip off? I've played MMOs longer than most people on here. Seeing the evolution of each generations of mmos since MUDs. Meridian. Ultima Online. Using voice emotes is something that is a natural progression toward making a game more immersion. Try cherry picking something else they "stole".

Blizzard stole nothing. They laid down the ground work for Warcraft to even become who they are. They just had more room to branch out. If anything. Warcraft stole from Ultima and Everquest.

Keep in mind this is coming from someone that has played both games and still does. I do not favor either more than the other. Both have their faults. EQ needs to take the direction of Cata rebooted quests and make them more useful, immersive and fun. The quests in EQ are shit. Pure shit. Not all but most. Just thrown in. I welcome a change and I welcome them stealing at least the rebooted content approach from Warcraft.

TL;DR say what you want but make your points on more relevant material.

@placebonation lol way to overreact

battlegrounds, changing overhead zones to be predominantly solo, while dungeons are the place for heroic, increased use of pop-culture reference in quests, etc etc I think the most obvious thing was how the progression was dumbed down to match wow.

I'm not really a fan of wow, I played EQ2 a lot more but it was pretty obvious the game was trying to ape wow.

All I read from all these comments is "wah wah Blizzard is the big company and I wanna rebel against them because I wanna be the minority. They stole everything ever made be any MMO company and their MMO sucks!"

GG. WoW is still top dog, and will be for quite a while.

I have played all the latest MMOs and have been an MMOer for close to 12 years now.

Nothing has touched what Blizzard has done with WoW.

Nothing.

@(Unverified)

Honestly, I think you're lying about the past 12 years part. Everything in WoW is tweaked from some other game. They made improvements that would appeal to a broader base but yeah, nothing's original. Sorry dude.

The thing that pisses me off about most WoW players is that they don't know much about games except for WoW. Nothing in that game is original, sorry. If you guys had played the genre before WoW came out you'd know that. Most of you should STFU. WoW is the joke of the MMO community and it's players are the least respected.

@Arcaria I agree. They have a nice, profitable business model and a game that can be played by smashing your face against the keyboard. It works for them, which says what about 12 million people? People love easy stuff...wether you're playing it, or ripping the concept off of someone else.

There are what? 15 million MMO players and 12 million play WoW. WoW isn't a joke in the MMO community. WoW is just disliked by those other 3 million who don't play WoW. (Or did play WoW and were addicted for a couple years before moving on)

I have played EVE and LoTRo as well as WoW. I also really enjoyed Tabula Rasa before it went under. I recently tried the free EQX and I have enjoyed it....except the chat. Everyone talks about how bad WoW’s chat is but EQ's chat is by far the worst. All it is; is EQ players talking trash about WoW. If I wanted to talk about WoW I would be logged into WoW. The funny thing is I never see WoW players trashing other games in chat. They are too busy enjoying playing WoW instead of obsessing over other games I guess.

@Marz
WoW players always bring up the sub numbers which are very largely boosted by Asian players by the way but nonetheless they are still very big and the game's in good financial shape.

Justin Bieber is #1 in sales with his My Life 2.0 album. Would you consider the people that are buying his album to be the "music community"? Of course not, they're the bubble gum teens and the same can be said for WoW. Their sub numbers are higher than all the numbers of the games before it combined. That say's that most WoW players never played the old games. They think that WoW invented everything and then when they try out one of the new games they're obnoxious about how such and such was "stole from WoW" and then 3 minutes later bitching that "they should do it like WoW' when something's different.

Of course, most of the people who visit this site don't fit in with that. You're more informed but I highly doubt this site has 15 million users.

@Arcaria
While I understand your point about Justin Bieber, The Beatles have sold more albums than any other rock band and I would consider people that listened to the Beatles to be part of the music community.

Being popular doesn't mean bad or good to be honest. Which is true for WoW, but I believe you should find a game you enjoy playing and for many WoW is that game.

An interesting thing I have found is WoW let people create add-ons for the game and many of the new things WoW has implemented has come from the more successful add-ons.

I really have no interest in the ramblings of a man that tanked a Star Wars and Matrix game within the course of a year.

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Smedley says EQII players aren't WoW players, but may see their own Cataclysm

Reader Comments (23)

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 2:26PM smg77 said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 3:38PM Celestian said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 11:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 11:48PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 3:17PM Sigtyr said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 4:15PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Dec 3rd 2010 9:42PM Jack Pipsam said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 12:47AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 1:16AM TheGreatMachine said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 1:19AM TheGreatMachine said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 4:55AM placebonation said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 7:46AM TheGreatMachine said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 8:48AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 2:11PM Arcaria said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 2:08PM Arcaria said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 5:49PM demosthenes73 said

Posted: Dec 5th 2010 3:49PM Marz said

Posted: Dec 5th 2010 7:15PM Arcaria said

Posted: Dec 6th 2010 1:14AM Marz said

Posted: Dec 4th 2010 5:46PM demosthenes73 said

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