EQ 'Next'

[Mrbloodworth]

Freeport was so great. Both the tone and the art really matched up well for the lore.

I also noticed after f2p there had been a lot of downgrades visually.

Most certainly. Also, correct me if I am wrong here. But I had the collectors edition in the tin, I believe that came with Higher resolution textures. I could be mistaken, this was before games like this were delivered VIA the internet ( outside of patching ).

EQ2s contemporaries were GW WoW and CoH, and I would put it a distant third behind WoW and GW.  And i never played CoH so i can't even rule on that one.

GW was heavily instanced, not open. And I think its only recently Wow got Stencil shadows.  I understand as far as looks, opinion will fall in the realm of subjective. But Technique, those games were not even in league. Especially with things like how light effected the chasing on armor.

EQ2 did have a feel of playing in a barbie world, from the characters and world, but I thought that always worked for it. But areas like Nektulos forest and Freeport gave such a different feeling of immersion and solidity. Quite stunning. Obviously if you lean toward those other two titles in terms of the style, that's valid too.

I think what really taints EQ2 memory is the horsepower and huge amount of settings. I can imagine not many people played it at its full glory, they can today, but that's today.

[Numtini]

I think WoW and GW1 both had great graphics. However, GW1 was not an MMO and was largely on rails. Don't forget that. It was however many people in a group (six? eight?) and a very constrained area in which they were allowed to move. I think if you were to go back and look that you'd find that COH's graphics weren't exactly as great as you remember. They were very accessible though and had a great diversity.

I never got the hate on for EQ2's graphics and once they'd moved some things to the GPU and let you use both processors, it wasn't bad at all. I get what people are saying, but I think it's become somewhat of a "thing" to bash their graphics and they really aren't all that bad.

[Sky]

The performance for single-cpu was awful. But the cpu shadows were so much better than the gpu shadows. Maybe not as realistic, but they were really quite awesome. Especially where you could have shadows cast by off-screen objects (part of why it was a performance hog, and they probably removed that despite the immersion hit).

[Mrbloodworth]

The lighting, I recall being in a few dank and dark places and having dynamic lighting and shadow casting... Its was stunning. No contemporary had this. Also, how may people ran with the cloth physics active?

[Abelian75]

For my part, I'm honestly not trying to bash EQ2 just for kicks.  I know people who worked on that game that make some gorgeous stuff, and I think SOE's other games generally look great.  The reason I remark on it so readily is precisely because it looks so bad to me (like, it's the only game I can think of that I've repeatedly been unable to enjoy because of the way it looked), yet individual models and engine features on their own look good to great.  It just all clashes or something so, so badly.  It's not like I'm ripping on the art, or denying that individual screenshots look great.  It's more like I'm remarking on how all that stuff is good in isolation, yet somehow the final product in action manages to look terrible.  Which somehow is worse than if the individual parts just looked bad to begin with.

[Bzalthek]

I really likes the terrain and cityscapes in EQ2.  I loved certain mechanics and added fluff like the collectibles (I am fucking adhd for sparkly ground thingies!).  But the character models and animation was pretty bad, and since I'm usually looking at my stiff, waxy toon, it became aggravating.  Add in most people I knew stopped logging in, and it being a fairly group intensive game, and most people you run into being mouth breathing cock knobblers... yeah.  I come back and play the free to play every once in a while but level 30-35 appears to be my threshhold.

[Sky]

That's why I rolled a stiff, waxy Erudite :) It actually looked pretty nice in the engine, alabaster white with white runes...no hair...

The people...ahh. The horror of trying to harvest level appropriate materials, fighting through mobs while max level characters on flying carpets hoover everything up past the grey mobs...

My wizard did make it into the 70s, iirc. Root n nuke ftw.

[Surlyboi]

I got my ranger to 78, but the people still playing all have max level characters and finding a group below 90 is well nigh impossible.

[Numtini]

I got my ranger to 78, but the people still playing all have max level characters and finding a group below 90 is well nigh impossible.

Unless they've changed something, there's not much to do at 90 either because to play the content meant for 90s, you have to subscribe to stay geared adequately.

[Strazos]

On rogues, I don't remember DPS being a thing so much. It was all about mitigation, the holy trinity of tank, healer, and CC.

Rogue stuff

All correct. I played a Rogue exclusively. My issue is just that the class was largely superfluous - other classes could do damage, do corpse runs...that's about it for a rogue, because you couldn't solo for shit, or farm. You didn't really have any other particularly useful utility skills. Poison was pointless.

However, I could occasionally do neat tricks, like survive complete raid wipes using perfect stealth and other such things where I just don't die...but it doesn't help me gear up that much. Really didn't help that the LDoN dungeons I needed were not the popular ones.

[Margalis]

Rogues in MMOs are kind of weird, in the end they're just DPS dudes and MMOs don't have much in the way of stealth, traps, chests to unlock or other things you might imagine a rogue doing. DDO is the only MMO I can think of where a thief/rogue made real sense.

[Zetor]

How about the BWL suppression room? 

[Falconeer]

Rogues are useful in Wizardry Online. Only class that can safely (more or less) open the loot chests without killing the whole party.

[Mrbloodworth]

I would imagine in a system where movement is a real thing now, that they may be more interesting abilities you can get from rouge classes. Invisible wall cling anyone? 

[Pennilenko]

Rogues are useful in Wizardry Online. Only class that can safely (more or less) open the loot chests without killing the whole party.

How is that game? Does SOE nickle and dime you to have fun?

[Count Nerfedalot]

EQ2 has always lacked the extreme polish of WoW. This is just as true of the graphics as anything else. Blizzard went to great effort to take all the different art assets and standardize them with a unified style, with the same degree of details, etc. The overall style was 'cartoony' which was a big barrier to me, but it was an extremely and consistently well done cartoon. It all felt like a cohesive world. 

EQ2, not so much. Model quality, textures, animations, styles, etc. were all over the map. If the plastic-looking people were in a plastic-looking world with appropriate animations and constent quality and style across the board, it might have worked better. But Sony chose to forego the several extra months of polish it would have taken to take all those pieces and harmonize them, and the result definitely suffers for the lack. And unlike WoW which, like the looks or not, at least you could get used to and ignore over time, EQ2 keeps slapping you in the face with another new inconsistency everywhere you turn, which wears on you even more over time rather than less.

[Falconeer]

Rogues are useful in Wizardry Online. Only class that can safely (more or less) open the loot chests without killing the whole party.

How is that game? Does SOE nickle and dime you to have fun?

The game is just a walk through memory lane for old timers who grew up on horribly looking games, play with their friends, and can still enjoy a slightly more active and up to date combat system (every button press is a swing, that is all, but feels satisfying). I would say it is a terrible game, for fairness, but if you like me have a certain love for vintage and have a dedicated group of friends who meet in person every two weeks specifically it, as in old lan parties, then the game offers something we can't find in anything else. *Party driven dunegon crawling with action combat (and a haunting chance of permadeath)*. As I said, I'd love to play a similar but better game with my friends but no one has been able to point me to anything with these characteristics.

Not sure about the money aspect. We are admittedly very low, level 9 and cleared the first 4 dungeons over about five gaming sessions, so the fact that we never felt any need to spend money on it doesn't say much.

[Mrbloodworth]

On starting areas: Where will people start in game? For EverQuest Next Landmark, Franchise Director Dave Georgeson explained, there will be different starting areas to help spread the population out. But for EQ Next, new players will be dropped in the area of the current Rallying Call. This is so new players can become a part of the action immediately, as well well as be among other players. Imagine if the game's first Rallying Call were to build Qeynos, but after a year we had moved along to Halas and Qeynos was populated by very angry dragons. Talk about the ultimate newbie trap! Dropping a new player there would not be very beneficial to retention.

On getting involved in the game: On top of starting where the action is, different systems allow and encourage you to participate, even from the get-go. Producer Terry Michaels stated, "One of the things that we really want is for players to contribute immediately." Georgeson noted that this includes participating in Rallying Calls regardless of where you are physically, or even knowing that you are actually contributing! Folks who chose to wander on the other side of the world instead of hang out at a particular event site (say, building Halas) can still be helping it along by a chain of events initiated by the choices they make. Rallying Call progression can also be triggered by a number of events, not just one. With different events triggering on each server, the history and story of how things came to be will definitely vary from world to world.

On the stylized graphics: Dave Georgeson said,

    "I like the stylized [approach] because basically what it does is it set us up to have a 15- or 20-year-old game because we can just keep upping the graphics levels with better physics, better lighting, better all that stuff, but keep that look. It will last a long time that way. Plus, we can exploit the IP in different ways too. If somebody decided [he] wanted to do a comic book or animated series, or something like that, that look would really work with the other stuff."

In the lore panel, devs talked about using the lore in other medium, so could Georgeson have been hinting at specific plans in the works?

On EQ Next Landmark vs. EQ Next: While having two separate hit games would be great with Georgeson, he said, "We're serious about Landmark being the gateway to EverQuest Next. We really want it to be the vehicle by which everybody gets to help us build that next big virtual world."

On seafaring transportation: While sitting with Creative Director Jeff Butler, Sr. Art Director Rosie Rappaport, and Sr. Global Brand Manager Omeed Dariani, I posed a question they had not prepared for in all the upcoming panels: I asked about intercontinental travel, especially ships. Dariana commented, "Could we confirm ship battles?" "No." was the extremely swift reply from Butler, who did confirm that there are boats. Were they just pulling my leg with the battle comment in the spirit of the jovial mood, or did something slip out that shouldn't have? In time, we will know.

On crafting and economy: "We're really serious about making this an economy that matters for players," Georgeson emphasized to me. "We want to set up a system in which crafters are really important, that all the players will eventually come to crafters and talk to them." More details soon, please!


On the ramifications of personal choice: Here's another interesting tidbit about how personal choice affects the player. We already know that past actions can affect what's available to you, but the game will also guide you to those activities that you've demonstrated that you prefer to participate in. Georgeson revealed:

    "We have this book called a Rohsong, and it has all kinds of tips and hints in it. We know what you've done in the past. We know that you've done a bunch of crafting or done a bunch of exploring or done a bunch of combat. And what we're going to do through the Rohsong is give you tips and hints on how to get to more of the stuff that you have already shown us that you like to play. We'll be guiding you into areas of the world where you might find that stuff."

So an in-game book that players access during their travels? There's so much that can be done with this!

On combat: Will combat be tab-targeting or what? There was no definitive answer, but Georgeson did say that if you swing a weapon, it will hit whatever is in the arc of the swing -- landscape included. He also said, "We're not going to build a game that supports one-button macroing."

On tiers: While trying to get a handle on the new concepts of EverQuest Next, some folks latched onto the term tiers as a substitute for levels. Georgeson, however, explained that the two are not just interchangeable terms for the same idea. Tier doesn't equate to power level -- it means capability. Higher tiers mean that players have a handle on how the game is played, from how to do combat to how to manipulate their skills to make various builds. It also means that they have a more robust selection of skills, giving them more flexibility to deal with situations. Unlocking tiers is a matter of demonstrating you know what's going on in the game. And moving up tiers is not going to be a laborious process: Georgeson stated, "Unlocking them is a matter of days and weeks, not years."

On the intelligence of AI: Storybricks Co-AI Lead Dave Mark noted that the AI can be turned up or down, making some mobs more intelligent and others less so. Along those same lines, during the Q&A sessions, devs emphasized that the really big boss fights are not necessarily going to be against stronger mobs, but they will be smarter mobs. The boss will be harder to fight because it will more rapidly react to the actions of players, who must then adjust their tactics mid-fight.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/17/the-tattered-notebook-quips-quotes-and-eq-next-tidbits-from-s/



SOemote test

[Nebu]

Is it bad when the emote/web cam testing looks more fun than the entire game?

[Sky]

That tech is pretty cool. Completely useless to me, but I'm sure the social mmo folks will be loving it.

[Merusk]

That tech is pretty cool. Completely useless to me, but I'm sure the social mmoErotic RP folks will be loving it.

Show me your "O" face.

 

[Abelian75]

Oh dear god.

[Sky]

 

[shiznitz]

/em remove blouse

[kaid]

That tech is pretty cool. Completely useless to me, but I'm sure the social mmo folks will be loving it.

It is also nice for those who like to make machinema stuff in games and given those guys are pretty good advertisement for your games giving some cookies to let those guys make nifty stuff is not a bad plan.

[Sky]

giving some cookies to let those guys make nifty stuff is not a bad plan.

Are we still talking about 

[Bzalthek]

Yes Sky.  Yes they are.

[kaid]

Rogues in MMOs are kind of weird, in the end they're just DPS dudes and MMOs don't have much in the way of stealth, traps, chests to unlock or other things you might imagine a rogue doing. DDO is the only MMO I can think of where a thief/rogue made real sense.

Yes this was one of the biggest successes of DDO the thieves actually used their non combat skills often in dungeons in ways that made total sense. Pretty much every other MMO you should just lable them assassins and be done with it as that is pretty much their role they have nothing to do with thieving and everything to do with murdering.

[Sky]

UO had a great thief build, I played one on Siege Perilous (and Atlantic before that)...no combat skills at all. I could spend all day in the dungeon looting and robbing things (and people). The biggest problem I had with UO's thief class was the wizard spell Unlock (and to a lesser extent reveal). Magic was just way too OP in that game, even when they extended it out to 2 or 3 skills to be effective. Two single spells that negated entire GM skill lines.

Still, playing a thief in that game was some of the most fun and exciting gameplay in any mmo.

Not talking the shitty snatchers at the bank or any of the other various ways people gamed the system. It's really too bad that is what most people remember about UO's thieves. The game really gave the tools to play a mastermind thief, I had stalked and looted several guilds by putting in the time to learn their habits, mark out weak members and either sneak into their halls or swipe the keyring. Got AoD's keyring from one of their blue Ladies while she was muling stuff from their reds on Bucs Den. Hilarious watching them try to catch an unarmed and stranded thief..and I still got away.

Also very picky, didn't clean people out. Just a few choice items I could take with me. Then drop a bag with the original keys and a book telling them how I robbed them and that I didn't make copies of the keys.

Obviously this system is not something the general public could be trusted with :) So few would actually roleplay the class like that, in several years of playing UO I never ran across another rp thief.

[Mrbloodworth]

I think the issue with being a true "Thief" has to do with the persistence and shared nature of a MMO. Fall right in line with the issues that arise when everyone is "the chosen one".

[Sky]

How so? I sat pretty well in the ecosystem of a dungeon on Siege Perilous. I was extremely vulnerable to both pc and npc, with my only defense being able to hide and hope the npcs would 'protect' me. But with really smart playing, I could also be quite effective. I thought it was a pretty balanced setup, with way more exposure to risk than my 7xGM tank mage on Atlantic (which was also way more boring to play).

[Mrbloodworth]

Oh, I wasn't talking about your scenario, but more of the current sensibilities. There is always this invisible wall created so that experiences and effects can not impact others. Impacting others, even in the case of you picked the lock and bob did not, is kinda key to any "thief" like play. Also, the static nature of most worlds and the resetting also detract from "thief" play.

[Sky]

Oh, yeah, agreed. And as awesome as those experiences were, modern me would not have time for them. Copious amounts of weed, free time and night shifts make for good mmo players.

[WayAbvPar]

One of my favorite MMO memories (documented in the runaway bestseller MMOGs for Dummies, by the esteemed Scott Jennings) was as a thief in Shadowbane. Followed a bunch of enemies while stealthed, then snuck in, stole a siege hammer from one of them, and led them on a merry chase into the teeth of an ambush. Laughed so hard I was weeping 

[Threash]

Shadowbane did thieving right, a dedicated anti stealth class and thieving mechanics that both require skill was genius.  I miss the games thieves/assassins/scouts would play at the edges of battles.  Leading a scout on a merry chase until he was isolated and turning my thief into a killing machine with wererat was incredibly fun.