One thing I never understood about EQ was that it was never advertised. I saw a movie trailer ad once in a movie theater, way back in 2000 and it was awesome and then everything went "radio dark". Total silence.
EQ was such a magical product and no one outside of EQ ever heard of it. Players only came into EQ by word of mouth. If they would have advertised, I suspect a lot more people would have known about EQ.
Social media buzz is the big way now, but it needs to be a deliberate push not word of mouth. I often wondered if SOE was trying to let EQ die a natural death (and it refused). For 16 years, I never ever once ever saw a single advertisement for EQ anywhere. I don't know how you get new customers when you keep your product secret.
So, please make a concerted effort to get the word out (when the time is right) and really promote this product. Remember, a lot of the target customers left EQ and have nothing to fill that spot. But, they walked away from MMORPG's and games altogether. Many don't even look at game websites anymore or read about games. They are truly orphan customers and you need to go fishing to find them.
It was advertised, the problem is half the time they did it (i remember at least two commericals), they did it poorly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr-FkWsvEcg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e3xh-i6eTs (never saw this one)
There were was also one years ago with a bunch of people getting together to "slay the dragon" ala a the guild episode.
This has been moved to Off-Topic as it doesn't relate to General Pantheon but instead talks about EQ advertising and touches on media "suggestions" for Pantheon. We have a Communications Director, Marketing/PR Specialist, CM team and Advisors, so while I appreciate the thought behind this post, it really isn't required, we have professionals dedicated to helping us market the game and our business.
Please be mindful of posting in the correct subforum, as you run the risk of having your thread moved or removed for breaching forum guidelines.
Awesome point!! However, I think that marketing is way tougher than most us non-business people know. I also think that effective marketing takes a lot of resources and LOTZ of money. I am guessing what happened to EQ2- the company had a cap and a timeline to start bringing in pure profit. (Milk the cow)? They probably balanced out how long it was going to take to start making profit, and how much they were spending to keep it up at the time. The numbers did not match up too well...i am guessing. .... Too afraid to take a chance on investing in more marketing i suppose.
PS- I am glad to hear that Pantheon has taken this seriously. I know i would not like to be the one making marketing decisions....LOL!
My two cents. Over the last few years I have been actively searching for my next mmo. Every few weeks I would despair over the direction of eq next and search the net for some sign of any game that is even still planning on using the tank/healer/dps system let alone utility crowd control and pulling (I feared to even dream of such things), and I could find nothing. I had literally given up.
The point is that I had never even heard of this. I would have pledged much sooner had I known. So how many people like me want this game but have no idea it is even being developed?
I think the recent hype over the live stream has had a huge impact in the idea getting out. I just hope it continues in that direction of information. Hopefully the fans can help spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and such things.
