EQ 'Next'

[Falconeer]

I think they specifically said they are going for lion more than tiger, and that's a big difference. And ***while I don't like the style of that character and I agree it's extreme***, it's a little less ridiculous when you look at pictures of some real lions, instead of just the ones you have in your head.

But I am really not defending the style. What I've seen so far is very disappointing to me. I am sure I'll be able to come up with some beautiful characters at creation, I just don't like the general at style. Also, that Kerran is totally ruined by the stupid armour. I would love to see some with much less gear.

[Spiff]

The big problem with GW2 lack vertically progression is they neglected horizontally progression and only now finally getting around to it.

Their talent point system was awful and still is.

Very much this.
Small skill-bars is something I like, fast progression and a fairly flat powercurve: also good, but there has to be some depth somewhere.
I have to be able to experiment and build my own character; the talent tree should have been where that came in, but it didn't.
There was no branching there, half of the talents were pointless and to be avoided, which left most classes with about 2 different ways to distribute their points.

This is something TSW, although far from perfect, did a lot better.

[Surlyboi]

More than anything, I want to know when this takes place. Before EQ? Thousands of years after 2? When?

[Merusk]

The same universe as J.J. Abram's Star Trek.

The new thing in branding is to just reboot a franchise and ignore its past.

[Typhon]

I really really really want this game to be successful because I want someone to say, 'hey, voxel games can be successful ... Magic Carpet reboot?'.  HELL YES I WANT A MAGIC CARPET REBOOT!

[Bzalthek]

More than anything, I want to know when this takes place. Before EQ? Thousands of years after 2? When?

They're rebooting the timeline.  Qeynos has jut been founded.  All other cities don't (apparently).  There are 8 Seraphs which are worshipped and there is a notable lack of gods like Innoruuk and the Zeks.  Dark Elves exists and the provided lore indicates they were like a special forces branch of elves, and got trapped in the plane of Hate (presumably).

EQ and EQ2 doesn't exist in this iteration and it looks like they're rebooting it before the curse hit the Ogres et al (When Rallos Zek executed the Rathe Council) and if Innoruuk really did twist the Dark Elves in this version, then he hasn't revealed himself to the masses.

[HaemishM]

So finally get caught up on this thread, having watched about half the video and some of the landmark part of the video.

I have to say, I'm actually mildly interested now, which is a lot better than the LOLSOELOL feeling I had before. This could be good. I don't think it will be because LOLSOE - let's face it, they could fuck up a slam dunk property like Star Wars or DC Comics, and this is a shitton more risky and difficult than those properties. This is actual innovation - if it works. Somehow I think the most interesting parts of this will end up on the cutting room floor squealing in their own viscera like aborted children because SOE is generally that fucking bad at innovation.

I dug the art style on the human wizard chick. Mustafa, the Kerran Lion King... not so much.

[Merusk]

That's the thing that I'm pondering.  Is everyone OK with the cartoony human, or is it that the Kerran is SO BAD the masses are ignoring the human that they'd be raging about instead.

I dig the look, but I also dig WoW & Torchlight's cartoony look and know they have lots of haters here.

[Kitsune]

The only thing that bugged me about the human was the fact that she had a boob window in her dress.  Way to be classy!  I didn't mind her Disney face, that neither helped nor hurt my opinion.

[Threash]

That's the thing that I'm pondering.  Is everyone OK with the cartoony human, or is it that the Kerran is SO BAD the masses are ignoring the human that they'd be raging about instead.

I dig the look, but I also dig WoW & Torchlight's cartoony look and know they have lots of haters here.

I thought the human was perfect.

[palmer_eldritch]

The only thing that bugged me about the human was the fact that she had a boob window in her dress.  Way to be classy!  I didn't mind her Disney face, that neither helped nor hurt my opinion.

Yeah. One of the points they stress in one of the panels (can't remember which one, sorry) is that you will be able to choose how your character dresses, and the dev speaking specifically says something about not forcing female avatars to dress in a revealing way. So they seem at least to be aware that some players prefer their female characters to be classy.

[Numtini]

The human looks like my character from There.com and that includes all the making faces stuff.

Edit to say that yes I'm perfectly happy with the cartoony look there. She looks like a normal person.

[Kitsune]

Scantily-clad female avatars have only really bugged me when it's ludicrous.  If some wizard woman wants to show cleavage with her robes, hey, whatever, not like a blouse would've stopped a crossbow bolt in any event.  It's things like female paladins in plate armor sports bras with bare midriffs that really gravitate my palm straight to my face.  Because the stomach definitely isn't an important part that a professional soldier would want to protect with armor or anything.   

[Mrbloodworth]

The only thing that bugged me about the human was the fact that she had a boob window in her dress.  Way to be classy!  I didn't mind her Disney face, that neither helped nor hurt my opinion.

Yeah. One of the points they stress in one of the panels (can't remember which one, sorry) is that you will be able to choose how your character dresses, and the dev speaking specifically says something about not forcing female avatars to dress in a revealing way. So they seem at least to be aware that some players prefer their female characters to be classy.

AFAIK, all items have a "set type", you can switch to any of the visuals for that set type with out changing the stats. Likely those different looks are made by crafters. Also, apparently different materials have different properties.

[Ingmar]

Cat dude doesn't bother me any more than, say, the charr in GW2, which is what it immediately made me think of. I'm not likely to play one, if I find myself playing this, but it wouldn't bother me to see it around.

I have nothing invested in prior versions of EQ cat people, though.

[Kageru]

The char at least look a bit brutal and believably proportioned. The EQ Next character models looked like plastic disney action figures, they even moved with that exaggerated cartoon physics.

[Falconeer]

A video I consider "strange" about the people working on EQ Next and their workplace.

[01101010]

A video I consider "strange" about the people working on EQ Next and their workplace.

Guess they leave out the part that those people have not left that building in all those years. 

[Quinton]

The character models seemed fine to me (I'm not likely to play cat-people races, but hey, whatever).  They seemed cartoony in a different way than WoW.  I don't hate the WoW art style, but it doesn't do much for me.  I like that the world looked a bit less cartoony.

I applaud the decoupling of stats and gear, so that you don't have to make a choice between gear that looks decent and gear that has the stats you want or need.  This seems to be a trend in newer games, and one I'm very much in favor of.

[Stormwaltz]

This is puzzling me. I dislike the art style of WoW and the style of Wildstar, both because they're too cartoony.

But this I don't mind so far, though I've outright said the human reminds me of Belle (and also Elizabeth from Bioshock). What's different here? I don't understand my own reaction.

[Margalis]

I applaud the decoupling of stats and gear, so that you don't have to make a choice between gear that looks decent and gear that has the stats you want or need.  This seems to be a trend in newer games, and one I'm very much in favor of.

I get why people like this but I think it's incredibly dumb to have what you are visibly wearing completely unrelated to what you are mechanically wearing. So a guy in heavy plate male is actually wearing a silk robe and has low defense and a naked guy is actually wearing a giant iron barrel and is invincible?

Stuff like color customization and such I'm all for, but it just seems strange to me to have armor based on plate mail that doesn't serve as plate mail.

[Bzalthek]

They're just giving you visual options.  They showed in the video different visualizations for the same piece of armor, but it was obvious that she was wearing plate.  Heavy plate silk robe is... where do you think this shit up?

[Quinton]

I wouldn't mind having some limitations on the mixing and matching (maybe constrain it to cloth/leather/mail/etc), but I do really appreciated being able to wear pants if I don't want my (virtual) ass hanging out, or whatever...

[Surlyboi]

A video I consider "strange" about the people working on EQ Next and their workplace.

Guess they leave out the part that those people have not left that building in all those years. 

Smells like cat ass, piss bottles and poopsocks.

[Chockonuts]

This is puzzling me. I dislike the art style of WoW and the style of Wildstar, both because they're too cartoony.

But this I don't mind so far, though I've outright said the human reminds me of Belle (and also Elizabeth from Bioshock). What's different here? I don't understand my own reaction.

If you were checking out the SOEmote visuals, that endears a bit more personality to that Belle character than just a plain old stuck on cartoon face. When you can see the actual facial contortions rather than "Scowl Face #3" as a permanent choice in character creation, it's worlds better.

It made it seem more alive rather than a comic book toon. At least that's why I liked it better.

[tmp]

This is puzzling me. I dislike the art style of WoW and the style of Wildstar, both because they're too cartoony.

But this I don't mind so far, though I've outright said the human reminds me of Belle (and also Elizabeth from Bioshock). What's different here? I don't understand my own reaction.

Maybe it's the more natural/realistic appearance of the surrounding world and the lighting that soften the 'cartoon' impression to the point where it becomes acceptable? Both are very exaggerated in WoW and Wildstar.

[Margalis]

They're just giving you visual options.  They showed in the video different visualizations for the same piece of armor, but it was obvious that she was wearing plate.  Heavy plate silk robe is... where do you think this shit up?

I was speaking about the general trend of having appearance equipment and stat equipment be different (AKA "appearance tab"), not how it works in EQ Next in particular. Customization is fine within reason.

[Koyasha]

I applaud the decoupling of stats and gear, so that you don't have to make a choice between gear that looks decent and gear that has the stats you want or need.  This seems to be a trend in newer games, and one I'm very much in favor of.

I get why people like this but I think it's incredibly dumb to have what you are visibly wearing completely unrelated to what you are mechanically wearing. So a guy in heavy plate male is actually wearing a silk robe and has low defense and a naked guy is actually wearing a giant iron barrel and is invincible?

Stuff like color customization and such I'm all for, but it just seems strange to me to have armor based on plate mail that doesn't serve as plate mail.

City of Heroes is my favorite game as far as appearance goes.  Another one I particularly liked was Phantasy Star Universe.  These two games have in common the fact that what your character looks like has absolutely no bearing on her effectiveness in combat or anything else.

And why not?  Especially in a magical setting.  As far back as I've been playing RPG's, pen and paper games have had stuff that lets you change your appearance regardless of what you're actually wearing.  Want to wear plate but look like you're wearing a finely tailored suit or ballroom gown, you can get glamered platemail or wear a circlet of disguise or any one of several options to make what you look like completely different than the physical properties of what you're wearing.  In most pen and paper RPG's I've played, we handwave the details of a character's appearance to 'however the player chooses to describe it' regardless of the mechanical statistics of the armor.  At most, people have made a couple jokes if in a particular instance someone feel their character's style is best served by having traditional 'barely there' barbarian loincloth or fantasy bikini plate, but after chuckling and snickering about it a bit, we get on with the game and everyone accepts that the character is dressed the way the player described it.

There's no reason to be restricted to wearing certain appearances just because that would be practical, especially when the setting itself can quite feasibly explain why appearance and reality don't always match up.

[Sjofn]

The cat dude didn't bother me in a vacuum but I am anticipating being highly annoyed when the females are revealed to be half as wide and hourglassy and shit.

[Mrbloodworth]

I applaud the decoupling of stats and gear, so that you don't have to make a choice between gear that looks decent and gear that has the stats you want or need.  This seems to be a trend in newer games, and one I'm very much in favor of.

I get why people like this but I think it's incredibly dumb to have what you are visibly wearing completely unrelated to what you are mechanically wearing. So a guy in heavy plate male is actually wearing a silk robe and has low defense and a naked guy is actually wearing a giant iron barrel and is invincible?

Stuff like color customization and such I'm all for, but it just seems strange to me to have armor based on plate mail that doesn't serve as plate mail.

No, that's where the sets come in. You can not swap plate with a silk robe. They said this directly. You can swap plate within the plate set, that has more or less plate/chain-mail, or different amounts of coverage, racial styles  ETC..

[Merusk]

It sounds like the exact system I'd been asking for *for a decade* now.  Find the armor model, let any piece use it.  Awesome.

[Sky]

[Miasma]

Retreating badger should really be the mascot for all new mmos.

[kaid]

More than anything, I want to know when this takes place. Before EQ? Thousands of years after 2? When?

Alternate timeline that starts at the founding of qeynos or shortly thereafter.

[Simond]