[Megathread] Everquest Next

[lakisa]

you think they didn't thought about it? mobs will probably have super jumps like players.

[Newbryn]

For a game I had no initial interest in I like what I see so far.

[Vespian]

All this world-detruction shizzle. It's got to be instanced right? Because 3 minutes after launch, the entire newbie zone will be gone. Forever.

[Remilia]

There'll be zones that can't be griefed and eventually the place gets 'regenerated'.

[Dabrix32]

Does Destructible World mean we can go all Sleepers Tomb on everything so it never happens again? That would be awesome.

[Fencers]

Does Destructible World mean we can go all Sleepers Tomb on everything so it never happens again? That would be awesome.

They said some events will only happen once. And it will vary by server.

Such as, on server A the players helped build the city. All is well. The city now exists on that server. Yay.

On server B, players built the city somewhat but a band of goblins came along. They destroyed it due to players not repelling the attack. The city will never exist on that server.

Obviously, things might happen that present an opportunity to destroy or rebuild a city in each of those cases. But the idea is that the events last months, vary and permanently effect the geography of the world per server.

[N B K]

it seems ambitious. I might give it a shot eventually.

To be honest, WoW needs something innovative to refresh the MMO Scene. EQN and EQNL look pretty innovative to me. Minecraft in Norrath? Sounds like fun!

The only thing that is going to refresh WoW is WoW 2 lol. I almost feel sorry for Blizzard b/c SOE just took a huge dump on their lawn. Blizzard has NOTHING to say about "Titan" and the only thing Blizzard has to offer @ Blizzcon for MMO's is THE NEXT WOW XPAC.

I'm enjoying the fact that SOE is coming out with a new EQ. It takes me back to my roots of MMO gaming. Now only if Richard Garriot would get the ability to make UO2 I'd be super happy.

Don't get me wrong I loved WoW when it came out but it's not even a shadow of the game it used to be. People question the choices that Blizzard makes and Blizzard pretty much responds now, "Look here you little brats, this is how it's gonna be! NO Rogues can't have Combo Points that attach to the character and not the mob! We don't care if other classes can do it!"

And on the other hand, SOE has made some questionable choices, but now they are coming forth and extending their hands like, "Hey we know we fucked up in the past but we want to make it up to you. Here's our awesome idea, we want your help making it."

Blizzard is too busy rolling around in the sub fee's of 7 million people and 15 dollar hats.

[Height]

Personally, I'm not worried at all about destructable environments. I'm pretty sure after betas and making certain restrictions on it it'll be a non issue. I'm more worried about how they will pull combat off. I'm hoping the intelligent ai has a way to make it more orderly than guild wars II was. Guild wars II combat alone was fun, but with other people it just felt like a mess.

[APKMNPVE]

I hope they keep some updated fun SWG leveling/progression things that worked pre w/e ruined it mixed with EQ that isn't like WoW for EQN

[obake1]

Does Destructible World mean we can go all Sleepers Tomb on everything so it never happens again? That would be awesome.

The massive drama that ensued when the top guild woke the Sleeper on our server before anyone else could farm the warders…hope none of that repeats itself EQN.

[Faroth]

Totally agree. Listening to whiners on the forums is the worst type of design decision. All they should be listened to is for quality of life changes and not game design decisions because the grand majority don't know what the hell they are talking about anyways.

It's a matter of reading constructive feedback and then weighing it against their vision of the game. I think it's important they maintain and keep working towards their vision, but take player feedback into consideration; not gospel.

- - - Updated - - -

What REALLY impressed me was during one of the Q&As, someone asked about griefing and they responded "We don't want to design a game that allows you to grief other players."

Some asked "What if we're good, but someone in our guild likes killing merchants and stealing their stuff and killing guards. Can they not participate in content with us?" And they sort of replied "Well, we don't want to lock people out of content, but.....you made a choice, your friend made a choice. The characters have to deal with the consequences of their actions."

Another comment that shot my respect up was regards to exploits/griefing, etc was essentially "We're going into uncharted territory with a lot of what we're doing. We're not going to get it all right and there are going to be things we miss, but we promise you when they're found, we will work quickly to get them fixed and corrected."

[Arrowstormen]

Another comment that shot my respect up was regards to exploits/griefing, etc was essentially "We're going into uncharted territory with a lot of what we're doing. We're not going to get it all right and there are going to be things we miss, but we promise you when they're found, we will work quickly to get them fixed and corrected."

I hope that phase is mostly during alpha and beta :S

[Jaundiced]

In the old days of EQ, things never came easy. There were no in game maps, but only coordinates to guide you. Certain zones you had to go through to reach where you wanted to exp, but some adjacent zones were extremely dangerous or way above your level. Time also mattered in EQ for certain zones, as a few zones, you don't want to be out wandering at night or you'd very likely die from mobs that spawned only then. Traveling around was a big deal as only the rich had mounts and you'd have to bum a movement speed/levitate buff from someone if you didn't have it yourself. A lot of places were really dangerous without being invis'ed. I remember I'd reach certain zones and I wouldn't leave it until I out leveled it because it was really risky to get to. Dying meant you had to run back to your corpse naked and you definitely did not want to die alone without anyone around or you would have some serious problems if your body was in a bad zone. If you couldn't get to it yourself, you paid a necro to summon your body at the zone line or your gear rots if you don't recover it within 7 days. If all of these things were prevalent in today's MMOs, I suspect it'd turn a lot of people off, as a majority of people are used to just easy access to everything and not suffer any extreme consequences due to reckless play or whatever.

Factions were one of the biggest time sinks in EQ though. Some of the factions I grinded solo, then tanked it due to killing raid bosses, then grinded back up again to do quests were quite painful to do. I honestly never wanted to grind anything again after those experiences, which is why I never grinded Insane in WoW, even though that doesn't compare to some of the factions I did in EQ. That is one thing I hope they never bring back...is grinding factions for insane amount of hours. That is not fun in any way to sit in one spot and kill mobs for months.

This quote brought back so many memories.. I remember playing on my dwarf warrior, twinked out. I was headed to a dungeon near the place where the dark race lived (Eredar I think?). Anyways, on the way there, you have to pass by this place called "The Hole". it is literally that, a Hole so deep you actually zone into another place if you fall in. There's a part where it gets pretty tricky if you aren't paying attention, and you can slip off the side of the path you're on.

Well, that's pretty much what happened. I looked away for maybe a second with auto run on, and off I went. I felt my heart jump up to my throat as I was watching my character plummet into the darkness. Falling falling, finally a loading screen. Loads up, still falling into darkness, hoping I would land in water. No such luck, I smashed into the ground below, dying instantly, or so I thought. I was actually 1 shot by something down there before I even hit the ground. For a brief moment after dying, before the loading screen kicked in and I was sent back to my soulbound location (In BUTCHER BLOCK MOUNTAINS, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAM WORLD, because I couldn't find a priest to bind my soul to the nearest major city), I caught a glimpse of about 15 skeletons and some other ghostly looking creatures huddled around my corpse. Turns out, everything in "The Hole" is about 30 levels higher than the surrounding areas. Why? I have no idea. Either way, as soon as I zoned in while falling, I aggro'd just about everything down there.

5 days later, I managed coordinate with a high level necro and druid to summon my body to the only safe spot in the whole instance and port us out. It took forever to find someone because the only way to get to a safe spot within "The Hole" required someone with a key to move a special hidden fucking boulder that blocked the only way in other than falling.

That was my first impression of an MMO.

[Faroth]

I hope that phase is mostly during alpha and beta :S

Hehe, I agree, but I felt the way they responded showed a little humility from the development team that was on stage.

[Deleted]

I hope that phase is mostly during alpha and beta :S

We shall see. Even if they miss some things or some other things just don't work, the amount of new, crazy and old idea's that no modern MMO would use is pretty impressive. I want the game to be good, because it looks very impressive so far and apart from the whole ProSieben thing, SOE is a pretty okay company.

But even if it fails, the amount of stuff they are innovating... I mean seriously, barely any single player games offer destructible environments, even those are very limited. Also, I don't know a single game apart from minecraft and its like that offer fully destructible terrain. If it works out, I feel like it will be a pretty big staple of a lot of games in the future, depending on how easy/hard and cheap/costly it is to actually implement.

Like the whole, shops closing for the night, and needing torches/light sources in dark areas. Modern MMO's wouldn't dare have that kind of stuff because it would cause a few people to whine on the forums and threaten to quit because it's inconvenient for them. Sure, it will be annoying sometimes, but it adds flavor to the game, compared to how streamlined games are nowadays.

[Remilia]

Hard to / costly is my guess. It is CPU intensive, though given how little the CPUs are used in games these days in comparison to GPU for games, it is more or less a good thing for programmers to do this.

[Vespian]

I hope that phase is mostly during alpha and beta :S

Most likely not just during beta phases. You can't simulate months and months of time with the full amount of players you will have after you sold your game. You just can't. The only things you can get right by inviting a percentage to your beta's, are the general gameplay, the general quests, possibly some dungeons, possibly some raids, but unless BETA lasts a year, you probably won't iron out those small glitches or exploits that might be in the game.

Not to mention that patches will always have a chance of actually opening up new exploits.

So my guess is, they know they're doing new things. They know there's people that have the knowledge to abuse pretty much anything, as long as they get an opening, but they don't know who they are, so they can't stop them from playing the game and they can't stop them from exploiting. They can only plug the holes.

They realized it, they are upfront about it and they are actually apologizing in advance, because they know how IT works. You make 3 excellent new features, odds are that something is broken. It's how the world works. Only politicians believe in getting it right the first time. That doesn't exist when actual technique is applied.

[obake1]

This quote brought back so many memories.. I remember playing on my dwarf warrior, twinked out. I was headed to a dungeon near the place where the dark race lived (Eredar I think?). Anyways, on the way there, you have to pass by this place called "The Hole". it is literally that, a Hole so deep you actually zone into another place if you fall in. There's a part where it gets pretty tricky if you aren't paying attention, and you can slip off the side of the path you're on.

Well, that's pretty much what happened. I looked away for maybe a second with auto run on, and off I went. I felt my heart jump up to my throat as I was watching my character plummet into the darkness. Falling falling, finally a loading screen. Loads up, still falling into darkness, hoping I would land in water. No such luck, I smashed into the ground below, dying instantly, or so I thought. I was actually 1 shot by something down there before I even hit the ground. For a brief moment after dying, before the loading screen kicked in and I was sent back to my soulbound location (In BUTCHER BLOCK MOUNTAINS, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAM WORLD, because I couldn't find a priest to bind my soul to the nearest major city), I caught a glimpse of about 15 skeletons and some other ghostly looking creatures huddled around my corpse. Turns out, everything in "The Hole" is about 30 levels higher than the surrounding areas. Why? I have no idea. Either way, as soon as I zoned in while falling, I aggro'd just about everything down there.

5 days later, I managed coordinate with a high level necro and druid to summon my body to the only safe spot in the whole instance and port us out. It took forever to find someone because the only way to get to a safe spot within "The Hole" required someone with a key to move a special hidden fucking boulder that blocked the only way in other than falling.

That was my first impression of an MMO.

Ah, I remember that. Instead of that though, I cheesed it and use shrink pots (as a barbarian) and sit/stand repeatedly to wedge myself through the little boulder door. Howling Stones was another particularly scary zone if you ventured into the wings…plenty of trap holes in the ground where it looked like normal carpets (falling through means you probably will die to whatever is down there), mobs running at low health and training the entire wing on you if they gated, fake walls, doors hidden behind fake walls, etc.

If anything, I hope they bring these kinds of features and the sense of danger when exploring zones. That was the biggest point for me in playing EQ in the first several expansions. The danger involved in doing everything alone or in a small group. The risk vs reward. I would often stay in the very safe zones regardless if the exp was bad, only because they had easy escapes and CR wouldn’t be a nightmare in the event I died.

Every MMO past EQ, I felt no need to approach anything with caution because the information was readily available on a fan site or the punishment for dying is negligible.

[xuros]

This quote brought back so many memories.. I remember playing on my dwarf warrior, twinked out. I was headed to a dungeon near the place where the dark race lived (Eredar I think?). Anyways, on the way there, you have to pass by this place called "The Hole". it is literally that, a Hole so deep you actually zone into another place if you fall in. There's a part where it gets pretty tricky if you aren't paying attention, and you can slip off the side of the path you're on.

Well, that's pretty much what happened. I looked away for maybe a second with auto run on, and off I went. I felt my heart jump up to my throat as I was watching my character plummet into the darkness. Falling falling, finally a loading screen. Loads up, still falling into darkness, hoping I would land in water. No such luck, I smashed into the ground below, dying instantly, or so I thought. I was actually 1 shot by something down there before I even hit the ground. For a brief moment after dying, before the loading screen kicked in and I was sent back to my soulbound location (In BUTCHER BLOCK MOUNTAINS, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAM WORLD, because I couldn't find a priest to bind my soul to the nearest major city), I caught a glimpse of about 15 skeletons and some other ghostly looking creatures huddled around my corpse. Turns out, everything in "The Hole" is about 30 levels higher than the surrounding areas. Why? I have no idea. Either way, as soon as I zoned in while falling, I aggro'd just about everything down there.

5 days later, I managed coordinate with a high level necro and druid to summon my body to the only safe spot in the whole instance and port us out. It took forever to find someone because the only way to get to a safe spot within "The Hole" required someone with a key to move a special hidden fucking boulder that blocked the only way in other than falling.

That was my first impression of an MMO.

Didint need a key, just crouch move crouch move crouch move lol.

Lost my very first corpse in feydark. I strayed from the path and a orc clobbered me somewhere. Didnt know about macroing /loc to a key and hitting it before i died so i could reclaim it.

[Jadeon77]

After watching the keynote, and all the panels I can say I went from
throwing my money at the screen to anxiously waiting for more news,
to now being concerned that maybe I did put all my eggs in one basket
with respect to my hopes for this game. I know the team can not
satisfy every single EQ Fanboy(me) to 100% on what they want to see
in EQ Next, and they have definitely introduced some amazing concepts
and ideas. The cornerstones that were mentioned in the keynote (holy
grails) are interesting section to disect. Destructable World,
Emergent AI, Permanent Decisions, and Multi-Classing all have very
interesting reprecussions in an mmo world, lets look at them from an
Everquest Universe perspective.

Destructable Voxel world YES PLEASE! Finally someone got smart and did this, and
it only took the mass fan appeal of minecraft, an indie title, to
wake the big dogs up to the idea. Thats great couldn't be more
pleased to see this happening. The three tiered world was also a
fantastic concept and I greatly look forward to exploring it and all
of it's vastness. Permanent Change I more or less group in with this
one as they are heavily tied together and I feel the players
influence on the world is a HUGE step forward for mmos.

Emergent AI oh my God yes! Thank you, finally a game where the ai may
actually be intelligent and challenging this is fantastic. This
announcement and the description of it gave me butterflies, as AI is
my field of study and work. Why games have not been persuing this
path for some time has always baffled me. This was one of the major
selling points for me.

Unfortunately outside of the voxel world, and the new AI (both of which I am
extremely happy about), most of the other cornerstones discussed here
already exist in many games. Multi-classing (see RIFT FFXIV
Neverwinter, and other up coming games like Arche Age and Wildstar)
is the latest MMO-Fad and it has had limited success at best. The
best case for multi-classing being Rift currently. Not saying it
doesn't have a future but it's not a future that (IN MY OPINION) has
much of a place within the EQ Universe, at least not in the way it's
been explained at this point. The fantastic part about Everquest was
the diversity of the classes, the weakness inherent to each that had
to be offset by the strengths of another to create dynamic and
successful groups. Furthermore the sheer amount of knowledge and
learning it took to truly master each class with the intricacies of
all of their abilities was astounding. Mastering a class no longer
means researching your spells understanding them fully and knowing
when it may be better to use a downgraded version to conserve mana or
choosing one of your 5 different nuke lines because of an enemies
resistances. Instead we have 8 “amazing” abilities, and we can
change them to suite our needs at any time and always enter a battle
with optimal setups so long as we have farmed up the "classes"
that would be "optimal" for it.

A Life of Consequence effects have existed since EQ1, they were at that time referred to as
factions, they also existed in EQ2 they have now been happily renamed
to Life Consequences and shined up for marketing but I do feel are a
very vital move for the EQNext world and hopefully they are far more
rigid (like in EQ1) and far reaching. I would expect to see
something along the lines of going and grabbing certain classes that
fall under a certain diety or faction makes you ineligible to recieve
classes that fall under an enemy faction/diety. An example being a
player should never have both a paladin style class and a shadow
knight class. The ability to gain both in an of itself reflects just
how little these "consequences" impact the actual game .

I understand we will probably never see a game from a major company
again like EQ1 in terms of challenge and I'm sure I will recieve 250k
QQ kids(and adults) flaming me here that if EQ1 was so great go back
to it (I still play it daily never cut my subscription, also play EQ2
and project 1999) because after playing every other MMO thats come
out since EQ1 there is a reason they keep failing but developers keep
trying to rehash the same models, and the same systems. I won't even
begin to go into the horridness of the character faces that were
displayed in the unveilling. Compared to the effort and capability
that Sony showed in it's landscapes, whoever designed those faces and
had the idea that these should be put in place should be fired.
While I know this post seems (and probably is) very negative I still
actually have high hopes for EQ Next and I will buy it and give it a
chance. All I am voicing are my opinions on things that could be
changed now whlie we are still fairly early in the development cycle
to make it the new reigning king of mmos and possibly usher in a
golden age, or a new standard for mmo developers to attempt to meet
and maintain for the next 10 years. The wow-era of games needs to
end, and while this is Sandbox it still has very strong echo's of wow
style business decisions behind game mechanics rather than having the
best interest of the players in mind.