EverQuest Next

If EQ 1 were put into an updated engine and made seemless (No loading into zones) I'd have no issue with it at all. It would be just as frustrating and awesome as it was when I started playing it in 2001 and for the life of me I don't understand why they haven't done that. What it is now is a mess of new old and older ideas from one zone to another in the same engine that makes it harder to even play the game than necessary. I loaded up Lons last year and could hardly walk without going wtf???? I would go back to everquest in a heart beat if they'd update the graphics and engine. The lore, story, and game was fine. The world just moved passed the graphics and engine. People want to have a reason to update their computers to see their games in awesome resolution and faster play. EQ looks and plays the same on a Pent II as it does on an i7 and fuck that.

I'm glad you have so much fun playing on the p99 server Torrin, but the rest of us would rather not have to put up with the old graphics and seriously crappy engine in comparison to the more modern yet far to easy games.

I will say I've been enjoying playing Rift of late. While there are way to many quests... you do not breeze through the levels. I do wish companies would stop making multi classing though. I'm sick of hybreds and other classes that can go from dps to healing to tanking with a click of a button. That was what was great about eq. You rolled your toon, you played your toon, if you didn't like what your toon could do. You rerolled. You didn't whine to the devs that you couldn't dps as great as a class whose job was to dps when you had the option to heal as well. You fucking did what your class fucking did well. Not cry about it. To me that is what killed WoW for me. Mages/Locks/Rogs/Hunters were dps. No respec made them able to really do anything else other than make dpsing easier for a situation. Yet Pallys/Druids/Wars/Priests/Shaman could spec to dps/tank/heal/support/ It got to the point that it was like why bother? It was never like that in EQ. You were either gonna be dps/support/tank/heal and not some mishmash of all 4 in every class.

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Originally Posted by Andaas

Elid: I say get approval from the top brass to run a $2 million dollar Kickstarter campaign and see what happens. ;)

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Oh, and you call it EverQuest: Beginnings (or Begins). That will make everyone realize it's a reboot and people will fall all over themselves to give you $$$$.

And yes, I'd like a royalty when you use that name.

Or maybe.. Everquest: Zero.

I was a huge fan of the graphics in Vanguard and was upset that game went nowhere fast. I'm definitely on the anti-cartoonish boat. I hope they get this right.

I'd actually prefer somewhere in the middle. I'd prefer less stylized, but not hyper-realistic either. They look and feel they're going for is for VERY specific reasons, and with the NPC interaction systems they have in place, it should make for a very engaging experience, and feel kind of like you're IN a pixar world, instead of just watching a movie. At least that's the impression I'm getting.

I considered :Zero also; but that would get shortened to EQZ... and then everyone will think it's a zombie apocalypse version of Norrath.

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Originally Posted by Andaas

I still can't fathom interest beyond 40-50 thousand players, and that's an aggressive estimate;

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You're falling into the same trap I hear on rerolled all the time. You're basically saying 'I wouldn't play that game so nobody would.'

EverQuest was nicknamed 'EverCrack'. How does WoW existing stop making EQ fun? Does modern WoW make classic WoW unfun too? I suppose every game right now is boring, we just don't know it yet. LoL? What a snoozefest man.

If hard games don't sell, then why does EVE have more subs than ever after 10 years? EVE has more subs than EQ2 ever did and tied EQ1's record high at over half a million subscriptions-- this during the f2p rage that is currently plaguing the industry. The trend shows no signs of declining, either. If WoWifying your game is required to sell it, then why did EQ2 bomb so hard?

There is currently a need for a game with forced cooperation/grouping, no instancing, large raids, resource management/downtime, long levels, hard class roles, non-formulaic loot, quests without exp, dark nights/weather/atmosphere, etc. You'd be a fool to not make that and instead make WoW clone #34719.

I *would* play that game though. I'm just saying that there will be far more drive-by players who play for 2-3 weeks.

But what I'd *really* like to play is something that breaks ground like EQ did in '99 (the Quake+RPG concept added into the early MMO) - so for today, it would probably need along the lines of what EQN is attempting (ever-changing world; simulated living AI that modifies it's behavior based on repeated player activity, etc.); that is also hard/difficult (e.g., requires grouping).

Nobody will make that game though - so my only hope is that someone can make that game and release realms that include varied difficulty tiers. There can be the WoW "My First MMO" tier, where there are no death penalties except running back to your corpse for a small repair impact with an open world that is mostly soloable. Then provide at least one additional difficulty, such as an original EQ style tier (experience loss on death; respawn naked on death, must recover body to regain items; most open world enemies will beat you to within a hair of death, if not outright kill you without some skill/plan. Possibly even a 3rd difficulty taking EQ style to a perma-death level (you die, you lose everything).

It wouldn't really require too much additional effort - simply tune the game to the EQ difficulty and add a general -25% (HP/Damage output) to all enemies in the WoW version and change the death penalty rules.

Hell, you can even monetize the game providing the WoW difficulty as your F2P version with hard progression gates; allowing the EQ difficulty to be the intended experience for players who buy into a monthly subscription.

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Originally Posted by Torrid

There is currently a need for a game with forced cooperation/grouping, no instancing, large raids, resource management/downtime, long levels, hard class roles, non-formulaic loot, quests without exp, dark nights/weather/atmosphere, etc. You'd be a fool to not make that and instead make WoW clone #34719.

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This.
As to F2P being a plague, you should see the blowback on the temerity and eqmac boards. F2P and the PC hack have turned al'Kabor into a server overrun by hackers trainers and griefers on level 1 throwaway accounts, as well as huge box armies.

I truly miss the challenge that EQ was , if this offers that I'm sure there will be like minded people that will play. However does that make it a money maker which at the end of the day all that's what contrlos what is produced who knows

My opinion is, a niche game with 100k subs, that came in with a low budget, with a small team, can not only be profitable, but VERY profitable, and fun to play. The asian MMO people have been doing that for awhile. You build a lot of small games, and if one gains a following, you develop the shit out of it to try and grab a bigger audience. The end result is you don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars and HOPE you did the right thing.

I liken it to walking into a casino with your entire life savings, and putting it on 1 number on the Roulette table. You MIGHT win, but more likely you're just going to go broke in a hurry.

Why don't we just do a kickstarter and make the fucking game ourselves? Hoss has more coders and developers in it than any other guild I've ever known.

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Originally Posted by Elidroth

My opinion is, a niche game with 100k subs, that came in with a low budget, with a small team, can not only be profitable, but VERY profitable,

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Why can't they fucking promote you some more.

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Originally Posted by Lonskils

Why don't we just do a kickstarter and make the fucking game ourselves? Hoss has more coders and developers in it than any other guild I've ever known.

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Give me some goddamn models with textures and animations and I'm all in.

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Originally Posted by Lothbah

This.
As to F2P being a plague, you should see the blowback on the temerity and eqmac boards. F2P and the PC hack have turned al'Kabor into a server overrun by hackers trainers and griefers on level 1 throwaway accounts, as well as huge box armies.

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It brought me too, so it can't be all bad!

Most of the griefing seemed to be against Malignant anyway. And supposedly Gaeldar has a rich daddy so subs won't stop him :highly_amused: Shakerpaging the entire zone of PoValor is the bigger problem if you ask me. They should disable it in just that zone somehow. Then they'll have to earn their bots instead of getting 46-60 in 90 minutes.

I need to finish my videos before they ban PC hack users.

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Originally Posted by Torrid

Why can't they fucking promote you some more.



Give me some goddamn models with textures and animations and I'm all in.

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Yeah.. art assets would be a HUGE pain in the ass. People also need to be in the same place to have any cohesion in design and development of the project. You just can't do a project in this scope via message board posting.

As for me running a game? Who knows. As I said, there are a few people here who want to pitch something like an MMO Dark Souls in the EQ universe. We'll see.

If the project goal is to create a classic EQ clone though, then the design is already pretty much finalized. The server side of things has already been duplicated in multiple projects. (p99, eqc) Middleware solutions could be used to greatly accelerate client development. (i.e. Unity, or Ogre3D for the MIT license)

Open sourcing games is much more troublesome than other kinds of software because determining which are the best solutions is entirely subjective, but if you just set out to clone an existing game, then that problem goes away.

Plus with white board and mass meeting and collaboration software, you could be sitting miles apart and still talk to each other as if you were in the same office. I once recorded an entire album with 4 other people doing their parts and uploading the parts to a collaboration cloud folder and mixing it down. You do not have to be sitting in the same damn room as someone to bounce ideas.

We would need an engine and models to start with and go from there. I don't want to clone it, I want to make the game at it's core the clone, but I want a better engine and models.

I agree that online collaboration has improved a ton over the past few years, though I still think developing a game with a remote team would create a lot of challenges.

OK.. I'll be blunt then.

There is a small group of us here at SOE that is currently putting together a pitch doc for an unapologetic, hardcore game set in the EQ universe. At this phase, nobody knows we're doing it outside of the people involved, but the ultimate goal is to take it to Smed and convince him to give us a team to actually make it happen. The INTENT is a niche game, not a mass appeal, easy mode game. If it happens to take off into big numbers, that's awesome, but we want to make something that is small budget, so 100k or less players is still profitable.

Our reasoning is pretty simple. Demon's Souls, and Dark Souls have shown in very good sales numbers, that not everyone wants things in a simple, casual, easy game to play. There still very much is a desire for a challenging game.

ALL HAIL SKIRT :abnormal: