EQ 'Next'

[Engels]

I want to get excited by this, just a little bit, and then I remember the years I spent in Norrath and still, to this day, throw up a bit in my mouth.

[Paelos]

If it doesn't have tab-targetting, I will play it. I want to encourage every developer possible to move away from that model.

[Draegan]

If it doesn't have tab-targetting, I will play it. I want to encourage every developer possible to move away from that model.

Yes please. More soft-targeting combat systems please. I'm happy to hear that Wildstar has something similar to this.

[Trippy]

If it doesn't have tab-targetting, I will play it. I want to encourage every developer possible to move away from that model.

Did somebody imply twitch?

[Shatter]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

[Typhon]

If it doesn't have tab-targetting, I will play it. I want to encourage every developer possible to move away from that model.

Did somebody imply twitch?

It's posts like this that make me wish there was a way to indicate that it made me giggle (actually giggle!) for an inordinate amount of time (without actually posting a useless message about how I'm a giggling child)

[WayAbvPar]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

I honestly miss trains. That was some hilarious shit.

[Nebu]

A sooper sekrit preview screenshot!

[Merusk]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

I honestly miss trains. That was some hilarious shit.

I miss them only for the ability to powerlevel the fuck out of noobs with a few druid damage shields.

[Trippy]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

I honestly miss trains. That was some hilarious shit.

Trains were great practice for the CC classes.

[Rasix]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

I honestly miss trains. That was some hilarious shit.

Trains were great practice for the CC classes.

As a monk, they were great opportunities to go get something to eat or use the bathroom.  Then you get back to a screen full of "can u drag my corpse to zone line plz?"

[Falconeer]

How can you not miss everything from this? Are you heartless or what?

[Phred]

I better be able to train people at zone lines...just sayin

I honestly miss trains. That was some hilarious shit.

Trains were great practice for the CC classes.

I still remember back in beta when me and 2 other bards had ppl train every gnoll in blackburrow to the courtyard and we had them all mezzed with the bards aoe mez song. Man it took SOE less than a day to nerf the fuck out of that song. It went from one of the most powerful to the most useless song ever. (the reason you needed 3 bards was interupts, if a couple of gnolls resisted the song they'd hit you and sure as shit stun you for enough time that you'd miss a pulse. A bard who missed a pulse of the mez song was a dead bard)

[WayAbvPar]

I LOVED playing my enchanter. Ah, the days when there was a bit of skill to playing these games instead of just facerolling the keyboard.

[Paelos]

I want a collector's edition with a wizard hat and rose colored spectacles.

[Rasix]

I LOVED playing my enchanter. Ah, the days when there was a bit of skill to playing these games instead of just facerolling the keyboard.

EQ really wasn't mechanically or conceptually more difficult to play than WoW or similar titles.  It just took a longer time investment and the whole thing was new.  We all sucked at MMO and there were less spoilers on the internet.

[Trippy]

Playing a Bard was. Enchanter could be tricky too if you were getting beat on and having your spells interrupted.

[Rasix]

Bard I'll give you.  That shit didn't look fun.  

Most enchanters I played with were barely literate and still managed to get along.  Weren't their roles in a lot of encounters pretty simplified?  If you can't charm something, what are you going to do the entire time?

edit:  
I'll add, my knowledge of EQ doesn't go too far past Velious, but at the time I was playing, many classes just weren't that difficult to play at all.  I mainly just pulled/dps'd/dragged corpses for a shitty 2nd tier raid guild.

[Merusk]

Mezzing crowds wasn't skill so much as knowing "don't cast if shit's hitting you"

Kiting and song twisting was about the extent of "skill" in EQ.  The rest was just time investment.

[Trippy]

Most enchanters I played with were barely literate and still managed to get along.  Weren't their roles in a lot of encounters pretty simplified?  If you can't charm something, what are you going to do the entire time?

The better the group the less for an Enchanter to do unless the group was pulling multiple mobs at once (more efficient than single pulling). Most groups (or the groups near yours) weren't that competent, though, which gave a CC class plenty of things to do (in EQ-relative terms), and why CC was usually considered part of the EQ "Holy Trinity".

[Nebu]

What I liked about EQ was the feeling of risk in the dungeons.  If you screwed up on spawn timers there was a very real possibility that you had a long corpse recovery (aka time sink) ahead.  The tension that this created early on really added to the atmosphere, particularly when you were one of the first groups in a new area.  Take the risk deep in a dungeon, get rewarded with good loot. 

[Cadaverine]

Take the risk deep in a dungeon, get rewarded with good loota cloth cap. 

Maybe if you sat around farming for hours on end you'd eventually get something decent.  Or, as was often the case, sit around farming for hours, only to have some bastard(s) steal the spawn when it finally popped.

[Falconeer]

What I liked about EQ was the feeling of risk in the dungeons.  If you screwed up on spawn timers there was a very real possibility that you had a long corpse recovery (aka time sink) ahead.  The tension that this created early on really added to the atmosphere, particularly when you were one of the first groups in a new area.  Take the risk deep in a dungeon, get rewarded with good loot. 

Agree so wholeheartedly. And laugh all you want, folks (not necessarily you Nebu), but that's exactly why I am loving Wizardry Online.

[palmer_eldritch]

Most enchanters I played with were barely literate and still managed to get along.  Weren't their roles in a lot of encounters pretty simplified?  If you can't charm something, what are you going to do the entire time?

The better the group the less for an Enchanter to do unless the group was pulling multiple mobs at once (more efficient than single pulling). Most groups (or the groups near yours) weren't that competent, though, which gave a CC class plenty of things to do (in EQ-relative terms), and why CC was usually considered part of the EQ "Holy Trinity".

Playing an enchanter was pretty hard. If you were camping a room in a dungeon it was usual to have multiple mobs aggrod at once and your role was to make sure the group only had to fight one at a time. Charm was rarely used tbh as it was too unpredictable, except as an emergency CC spell when the real ones were on timers. You had a limited number of CC spells so you had to remember which ones you'd cast on which mobs and actually keep a timer going for each spell in your head so you knew which one needed refreshing next. You needed really good reflexes to catch a new mob when it spawned or came round on patrol. It wasn't the warrior's job to stop the pops killing the cleric, it was yours. I actually don't think I could do it now I am older and slower.

That's how it was in vanilla EQ anyway - I played to max level in the basic game and didn't really play any of the expansions.

[Merusk]

Hey who left these pink glasses just lying here. Don't you know those things are dangerous?

[palmer_eldritch]

Edit: Never mind that

I present this short film as evidence that SOE has finally worked out how to make the EQ2 engine create beautiful graphics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zas9mzFaHxQ

[Draegan]

Looks like they upgraded from plastic to 2006.

[Merusk]

Looks like they upgraded from plastic to 2006.

I think that's a little much to assume.  The engine produced nice environments, even at launch.  We didn't see skin textures and NPCs beyond the mount, though.

[HaemishM]

What parts of EQ2 was that? And was the mount a rideable mount like a horse only flying? When did they add those?

[palmer_eldritch]

What parts of EQ2 was that? And was the mount a rideable mount like a horse only flying? When did they add those?

The mount is controlled manually. They added flying mounts with Destiny of Velious, the 2011 expansion.

The zones you saw there were mainly from the most recent expansions, the newest being Chains of Eternity (the first zones with lots of blue and orange - it's meant to be a alternate plane of reality or the afterlife), then Destiny of Velious (area with spiky trees, area with big dwarf statues, the tower), then Sentinel's Fate, which came out in 2010 (floaty islands). Then a couple of shots of older zones, and back to Sentinel's Fate to land by the waterfall. The first couple of seconds are me flying around our guild hall.

[Draegan]

Looks like they upgraded from plastic to 2006.

I think that's a little much to assume.  The engine produced nice environments, even at launch.  We didn't see skin textures and NPCs beyond the mount, though.

Its a matter of opinion obviously, but I thought the environments were awful any time I played the game.

[Merusk]

Well now you're talking texture design/ modeler skill vs. engine capabilities. They were terrible on both fronts but the engine was doing great things with specularity and material rendering for non-player objects.  Forests were convincing and wood looked like wood, cloth moved in a convincing manner (for '04).  Pity it was a waste on what it was given to render.

Also: Recent screenshots I found on Google Image seem to indicate that PCs are still as sallow and plastic-looking as ever.

[Sky]

The normal mapping (or whatever shader magic), the lighting, the shadows, all phenomenal in EQ2 right from the start. I still think it's the best in that department.

[Ginaz]

Looks like they upgraded from plastic to 2006.

I think that's a little much to assume.  The engine produced nice environments, even at launch.  We didn't see skin textures and NPCs beyond the mount, though.

Its a matter of opinion obviously, but I thought the environments were awful any time I played the game.

Same here.  I thought it all looked like shit, even with the modern PC I had in 2009.  I had all the graphic options turned on and up and I still thought WoW looked better.  In fact, from my vague recollections, it didn't look much better than Vanguard.

[palmer_eldritch]

The early zones looked horrible, and still do. They may have had an amazing game engine but it took them years to work out how to make good use of it.