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Is EQNext Vaporware?
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If EQN follows the same path, it will be awesome. The people that care will stay and help build EQN just like the Landmark fans have. In the end we will have a better game and the QQ people will not be around to break it because they wont want to pay the gate price to get in. As always, your getting it wrong!
You don't seem to be able to differentiate between the two very different situations.
The Agency was a PC/Console project being created by a branch of the company with a totally different team, design, goal, yadda yadda. They closed down Seattle, Denver, Austin along with much if not all of the work each was focusing on. While if any of them had something of huge potential I'm assuming they would of transferred the teams/projects back to San Diego, but from what I can tell, The Agency in particular wasn't really anything special. Certainly wasn't tied to the Everquest franchise nor had the potential to push the company forward as a whole, not to say EQN will do that either.
I might be missing something, but I see little to no similarities between EQN and The Agency situation. Now if CN was to close down the EQN team or something more final, sure, but clearly not there.
Very correct that when it comes to actual EQN specifics, it is verbal minus whatever old content they've shown/talked about.
But the idea that they need to have starting cities completely as a representation of their non-vaporware status is silly. Cities are simply time, nothing magical about them. Pretty sure cities are one of the least look forward to aspects of any game. "Freeport was the best part of EQ!" said no one.
While I didn't follow The Agency as it looks pretty crappy honestly, I can't find much info on it announcing a bunch of details, having a playable basic version to the public, laying off a bunch of the team, using untested tech, cutting way back on communication for a time, but still staying a live.
I see a team/studio closed down and the projects attached to them in a much larger company wide cut back. The ownership change now is similar in that aspect, but after the dust settled, EQN and a team still remains...
In reality, the All-Access Pass wasn't very well thought out. I think this program was introduced to lure returning players. I don't know how well that worked. For me, an active EQ1 player, it allowed be to try EQ2 for some time. I took advantage of that, as I wanted to experience that game before its (and EQ1's) eventual death, long before CN entered the picture.
Ultimately, the All-Access Pass simply combines all their game revenue into one big pile. I'm wondering how they distribute that income between their various products for the purposes of accounting. Some accountant must have had nightmares over how to allocate that revenue -- does their allocation method take into account which games the player plays (by log-ins or time played), what in-game items are purchased from the store, or just divided into equal game categories. If I had thought about it at the time, I might have considered investing in an antacid manufacturer. Another fiscal opportunity missed.
Any EQ:N product that we see in the future will probably use another payment method.
Sorry for the thread-jack. Now back to the usual mess...
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The communications blackout, the leaders leaving the project, SOE reassuring the project was still being worked on and not vaporware. All of which happened long before the studio was closed or the game cancelled. Meanwhile the team was platooned out during that time to other higher priority projects which pretty much ended development of the game. There are similarities there with EQN and they also cast a shadow of doubt on any claims they make now about a project being worked on. Point being that The Agency was dead long before it was made official and well after SOE said it was still being worked on.
As for your question, yes I thought The Agency was a good concept and looked forward to it, but you are right in that it ended up being nothing special. SOE has a way of overselling and under delivering as can be seen in their efforts over the last decade or so. Which speaks a good deal towards their capabilities more than shifting blame to players.
As for starting cities, somewhere the point is lost. It isn’t that they are desired areas by players, but they are essential areas for the game. It is the first place a player logs into, the first quests, first exposure to mechanics, first training, tutorial, etc. Everything begins there. Even the playable races are there as NPCs and some of the playable races are not even done yet. If those are not done, then you can bet that everything beyond them isn’t either.
While no one may have said the starting zones were the best part of an MMO, there are more than enough people who have quit without getting past those areas to show just how important first impressions are.
I don’t think starting areas are little more than time as you put it or as if this is a resource that this team has a wealth of anymore. Time seems like the one resource this project is rapidly running out of and the lack of just starting cities or even races shows how far behind this project really is
Speaking of time, wasn’t this supposed to be “The Year of EQN!”…. Whatever that meant.
Edit: paragraphs...
You have no arguments at all while i presented evidence of problems all across the board. One just needs to go to the website to see how there is no news about EQ:N and just Fluff about Landmark and their Mobile game.
The Video had 5 Mintues of EQ:N info at the beginning which was someone saying: "We still work on it and we do internal test today" the rest of the 1 hour was Landmark
As always, you have no arguments, just an opinion!
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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13:20 to 15:20, with emphasis on the 15:00 mark.
Turns out that wasnt true. This patch was delayed, because they just split the code base into 2 games now. All development will be on EQN and maybe Landmark will get updates if it helps and can be ported over.
Good and bad news.
The good is that EQN is finally a separate project.
The bad is that Landmark really was EQN up to this point.
Hopefully EQN's development does not follow that path or it to will have 100 or whatever players...not going to stay up long.
EQN hasn't had a "communication blackout" but they have directed conversations on what they want/need fans to be in the know about. Not what they initially said would happen, but unlike some never to be seen products, they've haven't just turned off the radio for months/years.
"Leaders" didn't leave the project, they were let go, two of the three of which I have no idea what they even did. Those actually hands on in particular areas building the game are still there.
Take a look at the industry, all companies have issues and always have. There is no way to predict anything.
Anything is possible, but saying something will go left or right is just a matter of opinion and nothing more.
Hopefully people have common sense and can look at things somewhat objectively, but in the end unless someone is investing heavily in stock or something, doesn't matter much.
If EQN did get canceled, anyone still paying attention would move on and find something else to complain about or hype up, business as usual.
Until that time, it is an open story.
Personally just wouldn't put myself up there to corrected down the road. Someone that calls EQN vapor or canceled could be proven wrong making their opinion exactly what it was, theirs and nothing more. I on the other hand take the wait and see approach. If it happens, it happens. I'm not trying to predict the future.
I agree on SOE not delivering since pretty much the launch of EQ and then again with SWG. Beyond that, been one rocky launch after another followed by one poor decision leading to fans leaving and games closing.
But it is an ever changing company like everything else. The folks behind EQN seem capable, but really aren't proven one way or the other. In that way, they are like an indie. Sadly doesn't seem to be a real creative leader at the helm, but I have no clue what the leads actually do so could be. But it is not the same team or even company beyond a technicality that was behind The Agency.
As far as the cities, I'm hoping they go with few to one for it to start. The cram as much crap into a space for people to burn through or use as a AH hub system needs to die. Unfortunately, I'm assuming that they will probably end up cater to the masses and EQN will be much like everything else just with some fancy tech dropped on top.
Keep in mind I'm in the camp that doesn't think EQN is vaproware and will release something. Though if someone asked me to convince them that EQN wasn't vaporware, I couldn't. There is just too much information to suggest that it just might be.
Also, I agree with you about the number of starting cites. Less is more, especially for the long run.
As for the blackout, think for a moment about what the developers have said/shown in the last year. What can you honesstly say based only on that information? The game is still being worked on, they are having trouble with many concepts and systems and there is a new race model.
Compare that to 2-3 years ago when they were ramping up the hype and media train. Could not shut up about the game. What changed?
I get what you are saying, but to me it is apples to oranges. Both fruit, but not the same thing.
Just see no point in trying to convince/prove one way or another. People should use the things in their head to figure it out for themselves. Nothing that is said is likely to change that anyway.
2-3 years ago we were given exactly what you say, hype. Most of the big features were entirely conceptual. They have many components of a standard mmo in some form or another. Might need a ton of art/content/work, but they aren't some start up that can't figure out how to get a character to run straight or whatever. Problem I see is they were just getting going on the basics at the start, yet Dave sold it like it was all a sure thing, that smile....
To me, they not only have the task of making all the aspects of a traditional cookie cutter mmo which takes several years, but on top of that trying to work with Voxels and then some how creating and implementing "next-gen" AI.
That is a very tall order that I don't believe any other similar product has tried to attempt.
You have the personal baggage of The Agency shut down, I do not. However, I am still very skeptical that EQN will end up being worth my time or what they initially hyped. As of now, they have no proof that they can pull it off. But then again, they could, so as I said it is wait and see. I have zero reason to doubt them, it does nothing for me personally. It works or it doesn't, the product will speak for itself.
I'll keep answering the super important question though: "Is EQN Vaporware" - Yes, No, Maybe, Does it matter?
because the way blizzard handled Titan and runs their company so closely mimics SOE that the expectations should be the same? This is what I mean about trying to treat everything as if they are the same in order to dismiss the problems here.
I pointed out a valid reason to question claims by SOE about what is and isn't vaporware or whatever, then you try to compare that to Blizzard cancelling a project they were tight lipped about as if they are mirror images that lead to the same conclusion?
There may be more reason that SOE (doubt it was daves call) started hyping the game than people give credit for. It isn't like they decided to scrap the previous designs and ran out on stage to demo their new ideas the same day. It was probably in the works for a good while and they thought it was far enough along to start releasing information. The fact that they are now back peddling and not talking about much of anything is one good reason threads like this exist.
Sorry, I thought I was over the cancellation of The Agency, but seems it still haunts me. /sarcasm
As for why post here when it will not change anything. I think that is just more dismissive talk, but I'll bite. Perhaps people just enjoy talking about mmo topics, much like sports teams or whatever? Applying your logic, no one should really post anything here, because it will not have any effect.
Then again, Daybreak just specifically addressed the topic of this thread several times and as recently as this week in their EQN podcast. So perhaps your assumption that discussions here have no effect just isn't true.
Just find it so silly when people try to sway others on the internet with baseless "facts," which are really just their opinions.
As I've said before, if it wasn't for the critics, this place would be all but dead long ago. The actual "updates" or positive posts get little to no response because they are boring, but say the sky is falling and people come out of the wood works to chime in. Humans are drama addicts.
You are right and I was being a smart ass about Blizzard, but just pointing out that "Vaporware" happens even at the top level. Doubt many saw Overwatch coming out of that. EQN still has a ways to go before I'd start calling it anything but "in development."
Blizzard has a good history of producing hits, but they aren't perfect and by the millions upon millions of fans that have left their games, clearly they aren't doing everything right.
SOE on the other hand has attempted a lot over the years, existing in the shadows of Blizzard and because of that probably has taken too many risks which hasn't paid off. They've tried to branch out and have had some decent success with non-mmorpg's that I don't believe people give much credit for.
Sure The Agency was canceled, but then they've had DCUO, H1Z1, PS2, Landmark. Are any of them massive hits? Not so much, but it isn't like they've canceled one project after another while in development.
Too lazy to check, but if they've only canceled one game over the last 16 years or so, I don't see that as a pattern. More likely pattern is they'll end up closing current games that aren't turning a profit which is something else.
You are picking one game out of a long list and going "see they did it once, they can do it again." Of course that is true, but it is just as accurate to go "They've released X number of games so it is likely EQN will release as well."
All just a matter of personal perspective, none of which has any real impact on what will happen.
Going back to Blizzard, I do see a similarity there. Blizzard canceled one project but it surely isn't their pattern. No reason to assume anything upcoming will follow Titan. SOE/DB might not be a hugely successful company, but more times than not they seem to get a product out the door one way or another.
while SOE doesn't have a history of repeated vaporware projects, they certainly have a steady history of poor releases, abandonment and shutting down games..
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
While I still believe each project has the chance to stand on its own, history does tend to repeat itself. That said, the current company has been doing okay with the current library and the EQN team does seem to at least have decent ideas and has some ability to put at least the basics together.
What will matter is if they have the talent/support to see the ideas through and get them out the door in a reasonable time in a way that will get fans to stick around and throw money at them.