EQ 'Next'

[kaid]

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.

The keran was a bit more cartoony than the human but I honestly like that look for keran a LOT more than I liked the eq1/eq2 version. Probably better they go a bit more stylized as that tends to hold up better over the long term appearance wise than going for super realistic.

I have to say having sitting in the panels I came away a LOT more impressed than I expected. I was expecting eq2.5 this time with more guildwars but this actually does look like they are making the attempt to jump at least engine wise to the next gen platform. If they can get their voxel stuff running well on most peoples computers it allows for some incredible stuff that simply has not been possible up to this point. PVP areas where you can actually blow up the landscape should be hella impressive.

[Mrbloodworth]

Too many graphics.

[kaid]

Ok... So we get the EQ next Landmark program next Feburary? Then a year and a half later we get the game? Provided we have made enough assets for them? I confuzzled on the whole thing.

Eq landmark in theory goes live this "winter" I think initally it is not even so much just to have people creating assets for eqnext but just as a huge stress/bug/beta test of their procedural world generation engine and the content creation tools. If you think about it eq landmark is pretty much eq next without NPCs or combat engine. Given how huge of a change to the game engine this is having a really nice robust test for it is a good idea with the additional bonus of getting to see what people can create with the tools which can make adding stuff for eqnext even faster/easier.

I think how long until eqnext itself comes out kinda depends how well the eq landmark works out. The landmark thing is a huge test bed for them for spawning basically new continents of content at whim with their procedural engine tools. This should go a long way to find out the real world usability/limits of their engine.

[Bzalthek]

Plus Landmark is supposed to be the EQN crafting system.  Having that fleshed out completely along with getting people used to it will be one less headache to worry about come launch.

[Falconeer]

Smed said "this year" for Landmark, not "this Winter". Although I am sure he's lying, as other Devs actually said "Winter".

[tmp]

Their beta signup page says it's "scheduled to launch this winter" so there's that.

[kaid]

Plus Landmark is supposed to be the EQN crafting system.  Having that fleshed out completely along with getting people used to it will be one less headache to worry about come launch.

Yup knock the bugs out of it get people used to using the tools so they can really start cranking out high quality stuff and allows for a good amount of "stuff" TM to be available day 1 and given how awesome some folks are at this kind of thing it is very likely some people will create stuff as good or better than the SOE artists and will wind up with their stuff incorporated with eqnext day 1 which is a hell of an interesting thing if you think about it. This is stuff some people have been clamoring for for years.

[kaid]

Smed said "this year" for Landmark, not "this Winter". Although I am sure he's lying, as other Devs actually said "Winter".

I went to all the eqnext/landmark panels at the soe live thing they were kinda wobbling between this year and/winter as eq landmark release. I was getting the feel they want it to be this year but if not it should be early next year jan/feb type time frame.

[Falconeer]

The keran was a bit more cartoony than the human but I honestly like that look for keran a LOT more than I liked the eq1/eq2 version. Probably better they go a bit more stylized as that tends to hold up better over the long term appearance wise than going for super realistic.

Personally, I really liked Kerrans in EQ2.

[Fordel]

God does EQ2 look like utter ass.

[Merusk]

Yeah. The entire engine just made ALL the wrong assumptions at just the right time.

[Paelos]

That's the problem with "realistic" graphic texture decisions. They don't age as well like cartoony ones.

[Soln]

Are Ratonga in?

[Fordel]

That's the problem with "realistic" graphic texture decisions. They don't age as well like cartoony ones.

It's not even just that, everything. The models, the lighting/shadows, the cohesiveness between all the different elements. That screenshot looks like some highschool kids 3D modeling art project.

That cat person is a human person with a cat head too.

[kildorn]

That's the problem with "realistic" graphic texture decisions. They don't age as well like cartoony ones.

It's not even just that, everything. The models, the lighting/shadows, the cohesiveness between all the different elements. That screenshot looks like some highschool kids 3D modeling art project.

That cat person is a human person with a cat head too.

What bugs me is the random really high quality texture work randomly in the middle of it. It sort of screams that they could do so much better.. but just didn't.

[Ingmar]

The scary part is you can't even see the shiny plastic skin in that particular shot so it could look even worse.

[Merusk]

That cat person is a human person with a cat head too.

This is a fundamental problem with ALL of EQ2's models.  They are human bodies inflated or elongated at joints, with different heads attached.  It was a decision they made day 1 to reduce armor modeling.  Everything just scales to the uni-body.  It was a selling point in 2002 when video cards had limited memory.

 If I remember the pitch it was; "We can have so many more armors than EQ1 because we don't have to model more than one variant for each race.  Meaning instead of one armor taking 3 slots in the memory you'll get 3 different armor visuals!"  IIRC the "ultra high end" cards of 2002 had a whopping 512MB of memory and couldn't use PC memory.

Much like their engine being designed around single-core processors getting ever faster past the 2.5ghz point this was an "oops" as memory got really cheap really quick.

[kaid]

That cat person is a human person with a cat head too.

This is a fundamental problem with ALL of EQ2's models.  They are human bodies inflated or elongated at joints, with different heads attached.  It was a decision they made day 1 to reduce armor modeling.  Everything just scales to the uni-body.  It was a selling point in 2002 when video cards had limited memory.

 If I remember the pitch it was; "We can have so many more armors than EQ1 because we don't have to model more than one variant for each race.  Meaning instead of one armor taking 3 slots in the memory you'll get 3 different armor visuals!"  IIRC the "ultra high end" cards of 2002 had a whopping 512MB of memory and couldn't use PC memory.

Much like their engine being designed around single-core processors getting ever faster past the 2.5ghz point this was an "oops" as memory got really cheap really quick.

Some things in eq2 looked pretty darnn good but I was never super happy with most of the character models I much prefer them going a bit more stylized because after seeing them aim for "realistic" in eq2 it probably will work better for them in the long run. It is easier to pick apart something that is obviously trying for realism and failing than it is for something that is clearly going for an artistic style. I honestly really liked the human model they were showing great facial animations and looked very nice if a bit stylized. The keran I actually liked quite a bit even though it was more "cartoony" Much better than plastic cat head on a human body

[tmp]

That cat person is a human person with a cat head too.

Just because people want to play tigers, doesn't mean they don't want some tits and child-bearing hips to stare at

[Fordel]

It's even horrible by those benchmarks!

Would not yiff.

[palmer_eldritch]

Are Ratonga in?

They haven't said but there's a poll on the official site asking whether they should be in, which I'm guessing means they will be.

[Falconeer]

I think that screenshot looks really good for 2004, but I guess we disagreed back then and nothing changed nine years later. Light, especially, was crazy for a MMO back then. But hey...

[01101010]

Are Ratonga in?

They haven't said but there's a poll on the official site asking whether they should be in, which I'm guessing means they will be.

Frogloks? 

[Fordel]

I think that screenshot looks really good for 2004, but I guess we disagreed back then and nothing changed nine years later. Light, especially, was crazy for a MMO back then. But hey...

Your opinion is wrong. 

[Ingmar]

I think that screenshot looks really good for 2004, but I guess we disagreed back then and nothing changed nine years later. Light, especially, was crazy for a MMO back then. But hey...

I wasn't posting here yet in 2004, so you'll have to take my word that I took a complete dump all over how that game looked back then too. 

[Stormwaltz]

This is a fundamental problem with ALL of EQ2's models.  They are human bodies inflated or elongated at joints, with different heads attached.  It was a decision they made day 1 to reduce armor modeling.  Everything just scales to the uni-body.  It was a selling point in 2002 when video cards had limited memory.

Eh, well, that's probably part of it. I expect another part is that if you don't have to adapt one armor model for six different bodies, you can budget the art time saved to make more varieties of armor.

EDIT: Also, I think that LotRO's "realistic" landscape graphics still look better than most modern MMGs. YMMV.

[Margalis]

EQ2 had a very weird engine. It was supposed to be very scalable up but not down, it didn't run particularly well and the lighting was weird - also the textures and models were all over the place. A lot of the non-humans were just human bodies with different heads, but then the rat guy was a pretty well-done rat-guy with a genuine rat body. It was capable of looking good but it was incredibly inconsistent.

That screenshot above uses high-res textures and normal maps and stuff but the geometry is all right angles, it uses like one texture in the entire scene and that texture depicts rectangles, and the lighting is also extremely soft and flat. There's also no attention paid to things like how the wall and ceiling come together, so it ends up being less than the sum of it's parts. I suspect the production pipeline, lighting and material setup in EQ2 was unwieldy to use in practice.

[Ingmar]

This is a fundamental problem with ALL of EQ2's models.  They are human bodies inflated or elongated at joints, with different heads attached.  It was a decision they made day 1 to reduce armor modeling.  Everything just scales to the uni-body.  It was a selling point in 2002 when video cards had limited memory.

Eh, well, that's probably part of it. I expect another part is that if you don't have to adapt one armor model for six different bodies, you can budget the art time saved to make more varieties of armor.

EDIT: Also, I think that LotRO's "realistic" landscape graphics still look better than most modern MMGs. YMMV.

LOTRO still looks great - as long as you aren't moving. The pop-in issues with it were really starting to bug me last time I played.

[Simond]

EQ2 had a very weird engine. It was supposed to be very scalable up but not down, it didn't run particularly well and the lighting was weird - also the textures and models were all over the place. A lot of the non-humans were just human bodies with different heads, but then the rat guy was a pretty well-done rat-guy with a genuine rat body. It was capable of looking good but it was incredibly inconsistent.

That screenshot above uses high-res textures and normal maps and stuff but the geometry is all right angles, it uses like one texture in the entire scene and that texture depicts rectangles, and the lighting is also extremely soft and flat. There's also no attention paid to things like how the wall and ceiling come together, so it ends up being less than the sum of it's parts. I suspect the production pipeline, lighting and material setup in EQ2 was unwieldy to use in practice.

EQ2's engine sucks because SOE utterly fucked up their prediction of how PC architecture would develop over the next few years. It was designed under the assumption of ever-faster single-core processors (which would then drag the speed of RAM, graphics cards, etc. along with them).

Hell, it took them a fair few years to hack adequate multicore support in to EQ2.

[Mrbloodworth]

This is a fundamental problem with ALL of EQ2's models.  They are human bodies inflated or elongated at joints, with different heads attached.  It was a decision they made day 1 to reduce armor modeling.  Everything just scales to the uni-body.  It was a selling point in 2002 when video cards had limited memory.

Eh, well, that's probably part of it. I expect another part is that if you don't have to adapt one armor model for six different bodies, you can budget the art time saved to make more varieties of armor.

EDIT: Also, I think that LotRO's "realistic" landscape graphics still look better than most modern MMGs. YMMV.

Skeletal nodes/animation savings too. But to be honest, uni-models for characters is kinda common. 

[Kageru]

EQ2 looked dreadful at the time, I remember being shocked by it. They clearly thought they had a hot engine but it didn't come together well in game. Though SoE have never been that great at world building.

I could easily believe, as Margalis suggests, that this was as much about the tools and production process as the underlying engine.

[Fordel]

I believe whose ever job it was to go "This all looks like shit, make it not look like shit" is blind and/or utterly apathetic.

[Rendakor]

Some people like myself just don't like cartoony/stylized graphics. One of the reasons I played EQ2 at its launch and not WoW (initially) was the art style. EQ2 hasn't aged well but I don't share the hate that's all over this thread.

[Margalis]

IMO the animation was the worst part of EQ2 graphically, at the time I thought the graphics themselves were pretty decent. But I did play as the rat dude, who was like the best character model in the game.

[Fordel]

Even brand new, EQ2 looked like shit. It was not a improvement in like virtually any regard, even in the realistic category of graphics.