Friday, January 31, 2003

EQ Expansion Fatigue

Expansion fatigue is the idea that too many expansions, in too short of a time frame leaves your customers without the time required to become comfortable with the changes in their virtual world that occur with each expansion.

As a result, the average customer begins to feel overwhelmed by the rapidly increasing quantity of content (that is expanding faster then they can chew through it) -- which can leave one feeling a bit daunted, or feeling like you're running on a treadmill, getting nowhere but further behind. After all, if you can't chew through the content that you already have and become comfortable with it - why buy the next expansion or the one after that? It also makes the average customer begin to feel that there is weight behind the rumors that the company producing the title only cares about revenues, not whether the customers are enjoying the game.

I forget all of the key dates in EQ's history, but the cycle has sped up (used to be one expansion per year, which gave the population plenty of time to experience it, grow comfortable with it, etc., even if they only played a few hours per week). However, this last expansion, LoY comes out only 4-5 months after PoP, which was only 9 months after SoL. The average EQ player was just getting into places like the Grey, Scarlet Desert, and Umbral Plains (the last zones before you hit the top level zones in SoL) about 9 months after SoL came out.

Sure, the uber guilds and folks that play 80+ hours per week were well and done with places like Vex Thal, Ssra Temple, Sanctus Seru - but the rest of us were still trying to keep our heads above water with the massive shifts in game content when SoL was released and later when the Bazaar feature finally went live. Then comes PoP, which is geared towards the folks 55+, again with broad ramifications for the rest of the environment (insta-portals, all old-world spells being purchasable, multiple tiers of new zones, new equipment that put old equipment to shame, new AA skills to be figured out, new levels (61-65) and new spells for the 61+ crowd. Plus the raid window and the dozens of other small changes made during last fall.

That's a lot of new information and changes within a short amount of time (the past 6 months). Then, before you can catch your breath and get comfortable with the lay of the new world - they release yet another expansion only 4 months after PoP went live (LoY). Again, with even more new features (LFG window, larger bank space, spells, AA abilities, zones, equipment, froglok playable race)... when most folks are still struggling to come to grips with the changes of the past 6 months.

Ever heard the phrase "learn to pace yourself"? How about "stop the world, I want to get off"? Hmmm, I choose to get off here thank-you-very-much and currently have no plans to purchase LoY (actually, I haven't even logged in to play since early-December).

posted by Wuphon's at 12:19 PM