EQ 'Next'

[Xanthippe]

WoW's graphics are, quite frankly, fun.  That is a great thing about WoW-  it doesn't take itself too seriously.  Are the graphics dated now?  Sure, but I'm sure they'll get a little spruce up with Cataclysm. 

Not only do WoW's graphics not bother me, I love them.  I think Nagrand is beautiful, in an old Disney way (Sleeping Beauty, not Lion King).

Cartoony doesn't bother me, as long as the environment feels rich.

I'm not crazy about how big my characters' feet are or ridiculous shoulder pads.  Ridiculous weapons, on the other hand, are fun.

EQ2's graphics remind me a little of Lord of the Ring Online.  They're both pretty but they look like paintings.  Flat.  WoW seems to have more depth somehow, which is weird because they are more cartoony.  Aion,  I thought, avoided this somehow.

[Ingmar]

I'm a fan of both WoW and LotRO's graphics - LotRO's character models and animations are not really great but the environments are fantastic. WoW's fit the game perfectly and don't get into the uncanny valley horrible zone which I appreciate a lot.

EQ2 not so much, I always felt like it looked really plastic, especially the character models. WoW was more cartoony but EQ2 was still somehow more 'fake'.

[Soln]

wasn't part of the problem with EQ2 also the fact they paired up photorealistic animals with poorly rendered fantasy mobs that just ended up looking odd?   True about all the texture and shader issues, but I thought it was also this giant lack of design guidance that also killed the experience.  And yes about LotRO -- beautiful landscapes but dull character details.  Same issue.  WoW if anything is at least 100% consistent.

[ghost]

Aion bugs me because there is too much goddamn teal for my tastes.  It looks great, but it's also pretty monotone, meaning it all looks similar. 

WoW has it down because of the variety in the look of the different locations and the great variety of the different character choices, e.g you can be a Tauren or an elf or whatever suits your fancy.

I played a little EQ2, but I really tried it after it was in its prime, graphically.  The character creation variability is putrid and the overall feel is that they just pulled out some stock graphics for their races and went with it.  Froglocks?  Really? 

[Mrbloodworth]

EQ2's particle system is amazing. Per vertex attachments!

EDIT: Well it was, looks like they changed the system recently :/

[ghost]

EQ2's particle system is amazing. Per vertex attachments!

EDIT: Well it was, looks like they changed the system recently :/

"Animated roots and chains coming out of the ground have been replaced with a glowing yellow effect on the target’s feet. Ice comet has been replaced by a few wisps of blue light."

Damn that sounds awesome. 

[Numtini]

I really don't like the over the top "warcrafty" looks of WoW. But hey, it's a warcraft game! Be kind of stupid if it didn't have those graphics. It's the particular look though, not that it's cartoony. I like Free Realms looks just find and they're cartoony.

In general, I found early EQ2's graphics dull. And then there were the huge issues with their miscalculation about the future of technology--gambling on 10ghz CPUs and little to no advancement in GPUs. Later expansions the graphics in EQ2 really came together for me, but I also custom built a machine around the oddities of their CPU demands so I could see them.

LOTRO's graphics are beautiful, but the avatars are, to me, very lifeless. Also rather flat, in a literal sense, it just doesn't feel three dimensional.

In terms of WoW's lightneartedness, I could use fewer pop culture jokes. A lot fewer. Fewer poop jokes as well.

[Ingmar]

Well, you know, this is their first time changing something the people they have left like too late to make an overall difference for the game. I'm sure they've learned their lesson now.

[Lantyssa]

There were things I loved and hated about both WoW's and EQ2's graphics, at least the Asian revamp characters.  My Arasai is still one of my favorite looking characters across games.

[Count Nerfedalot]

"Animated roots and chains coming out of the ground have been replaced with a glowing yellow effect on the target’s feet. Ice comet has been replaced by a few wisps of blue light."

Damn that sounds awesome. 

 

It's got to be Smedley.  Surely nobody else on God's green earth is THAT stupid? 

[Grimwell]

Well, if they are going to open up a free to play EQ2 server, it makes sense to simplify the graphics and try to make the game run better for more people... it may not amaze people with the pure awesome of the effects... but when I was there most people turned off the effects for performance anyway...

[Numtini]

Wouldn't it make more sense to just set the defaults to be super low instead of taking them away from everyone? Or do players react better to being given no options than more.

[Modern Angel]

Right. Just "Sorry, turning off the spells" is dumb. ESPECIALLY if you're a hardcore EQ2 player who might have dropped big bucks on a machine just for this game.

[Kageru]

You assume they care. It's pretty obvious they consider EQ2 to be at best moribund and at worst in an irreversible decline. They'll focus their efforts on EQ_sort_of_free and see if that grows the population to something they consider interesting and then make a decision on whether or not to continue investing effort into it. After all, both are probably just stop-gaps while they focus future development on EQ3.

[Modern Angel]

Oh, I don't assume that at all. I'm just saying it's stupid.

The horrible payment model and sequestering the free from pay servers was nonsensical until the announcement. It's pretty clear post-EQ3 news drop that they see EQ2's only future on the free servers with a residual rump on the pay. It's cold as ice but given the EQ-EQ2 cannibalization it makes a certain crude sense.

[Shatter]

Well, if they are going to open up a free to play EQ2 server, it makes sense to simplify the graphics and try to make the game run better for more people... it may not amaze people with the pure awesome of the effects... but when I was there most people were forced to turn off the effects to get mediocre performance anyway...

Fixed

[Mrbloodworth]

Quite sure a good chunk of it had to do with the particle system being on the CPU instead of GPU as well. However some of the old particle FX and system abilities were amazing, still would be.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Well, you know, this is their first time changing something the people they have left like too late to make an overall difference for the game. I'm sure they've learned their lesson now.

The people who learned anything are gone.  The remainder got promoted to positions where they can make the same kinds of stupid decisions and dictate them down to multiple dev teams instead of just one.

[Sky]

I'm obviously a fan of EQ2, but I agree with the Count on that one. I'm sure there are still some talented people around, but they're not the people that made it the game I enjoyed. For every cool thing I hear about, I hear a dozen head-scratchers. Haven't played in well over a year and no urge to go back.

As far as graphics, obviously WoW wins in style, but EQ2's tech was pretty awesome. I really liked the amount of detail in the models, there just wasn't anything in that league for years. Once you're used to playing with those kind of facial details and stuff like finger articulation, it's shocking to see something like WoW, such a big step backwards, tech-wise. Obviously the LCD is going to like the low-poly, low texture stuff, it runs on cheap computers very well. I'm just not interested in playing what the LCD is playing. You don't need an authenticator for EQ2.

Anyway, anyone with half a neuron just made a profile for raiding, grouping, soloing. I raided maybe a dozen times but had a raid profile, ffs. Who cares about performance when you can click a button to adjust it on the fly? I'm on the side of putting in more graphical options than anyone can ever run, so everyone can tailor their experience to their own machine. GTA4 was pretty good for this, ignoring people who think they can always crank graphics to max for every game.

[Modern Angel]

I subbed to EQ2 for a month. It runs better. It looks so fucking awful. It just looks like the art team didn't give a shit. Somehow, being able to turn things more or less all the way up has made it look WORSE than before to me.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I subbed to EQ2 for a month. It runs better. It looks so fucking awful. It just looks like the art team didn't give a shit. Somehow, being able to turn things more or less all the way up has made it look WORSE than before to me.

I had a computer that could run EQ2 just fine when I played it and having a better pc doesn't help because shit Art just looks worse with all the effects turned on.

[Sky]

Fuck yeah, EQ2 sucked so bad let's go post in the EQ3 thread about how it sucks.

I love f13.

[Kageru]

It's going to be like the SWTOR thread. Since all they've really announced is some concept art and a bunch of good intentions what else are we going to talk about?

That said I remember thinking EQ2 was a graphical downgrade from EQ1 (after the character model update). It had a lot more polygons but just looked so muddy for armor textures and so plastic for skin.

[Modern Angel]

Fuck yeah, EQ2 sucked so bad let's go post in the EQ3 thread about how it sucks.

I love f13.

You're misreading me here, guy. I actually like EQ2. It's just ugly. And we were talking art styles in MMOs, generally, and EQ2 v WoW v EQ3 specifically.

[palmer_eldritch]

Dave Georgeson, SOE's director of development for the EverQuest franchise, on how EQ Next is going to be something completely new.

"When we started working on Everquest Next, before I was involved in it, they were essentially honing the MMO model, the MMO model that we all know and love ... and we realised after a year or so of development that that really wasn't going to hit it  out of the park

"... so we threw it all away. That was about a year and a half ago . . .

"... we kind of tore down everything about the MMOs, and we picked and picked and picked at it until we found pillars that we thought were something that people would kind of lose their mind about. That they would look at and go, 'they're doing what?'"

See the whole thing in this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt-MEgLXKXs (it seems to make a lot more sense when you hear him say it too)

The game will be revealed at EQ Live - their fan fair event - on August 1.

[Typhon]

I hope they make a good game, because I like playing good games, but when they got to the part where he said, "we share all our knowledge across all our MMOs" I just closed out the video.

[01101010]

I hope they make a good game, because I like playing good games, but when they got to the part where he said, "we share all our knowledge across all our MMOs" I just closed out the video.

Pillars man.... it's all about Pillars.

I need that meme with the guy from the History Channel's ancient aliens.

[Draegan]

I laughed when he said everyone comes back to EQ2 when they try other things.

[Pennilenko]

This game will likely be a pay to win grindy cock puncher.

[Paelos]

This game will likely be a pay to win grindy cock puncher.

That's 3 pillars right there.

[UnSub]

This game will likely be a pay to win grindy cock puncher.

That's 3 pillars right there.

Now, if only they had a fourth pillar...

[Hawkbit]

As jaded as I am, I'm going to let myself get a little bit excited for this.  Cautiously optimistic.

[luckton]

I have my doubts as to how exactly they're going to innovate more than what's already at the table for MMOs these days.  I mean, we 'are' talking about EQ/SoE here...any 'innovation' would simply be taking features and stuffs that are already in or are being planned to be rolled out in other MMOs and applying them to Norrath.  I'm sure after nearly 10 years of live-time, there's enough of those that they could bundle together into a new product and slap the EQ logo on the box.

But maybe I'm just jaded 

[Numtini]

Last I heard it was a sandbox, which in SOE terms I assumed was going to mean it was a world with no game whatsoever.

[Mrbloodworth]

AFAIK, this will be based on the same engine as Planetside2, just with out the 500+ people in your view stuff.

So any manner of combat is possible.