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Smedley: "EverQuest Next will be the world's largest sandbox-style MMO ever made"
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I loved SWG, if EQ Next is anything like SWG-PreCU then im IN!!
It won't be.
"Sandbox style game" is being used strictly as a marketing term, and it can mean different things to different people (and thus why it is a good marketing term). Which is exactly why Smed used it: to drum up hype.
What EQN will most likely be is another level based, quest driven, themepark, albeit more non-linear than the offerings of late.
It may be large, it may be non-linear, but it will have a long way to go before it is approaching anything sandbox. And SOE has none of the people that made the previous generation of sandbox games, except a few hold overers that wrecked SWG and are not talented enough to work anywhere else.
And as to anything approaching the level of sandboxishness of SWG, good effin luck. No Koster, no way.
No one should have high expectations for EQN at all.
Your name says it all. Im not nearly as fargone as you probabally are, so i still have hope.
Nothing wrong with hope, and I'll be the first one to I admit I am wrong, if I am (but I doubt it).
That said, blind optimism is probably not warranted in regards to a company/Smed with such a terrible history of over-promising and under-delivering.
they did create eq...which was a great game until raiding took over...you have to give them a little credit.
Which was almost 15 years ago. (And you did bring up the fact that SOE ruins all of their games eventually, which is a fact.)
And most all of the people that made it are long gone, and everything SOE has touched for the last 5-7 years has been lousy.
As has their F2P conversions.
I have heard from people playing PS2 that that game is "decent" but it is not released yet and no one knows what the cash shop and F2P restrictions will look like. And more importantly in regards to EQN, PS2 is not even an MMO so much as a larger FPS game.
None of which means anything in regards to making a "sandbox style" MMO.
This thread has something like 80 pages and is still very much alive. Are there any other threads on this forum that have this much activity. That alone shows you what people thought of SOEs games. Whether you liked them or hate them, you cannot ignore them. They are front and center, and they know how to make games and business models.
There are plenty of people who will gladly give SOE their gaming money. Whether they played EQ or EQ2 or both. Even SWG ex players will gladly give SOE gaming money to play a sandbox type game.
When I first found out about EQ Next, I thought "why bother". EQ2 was made and remade shortly after relases and is a pretty successful game. There is no way EQ Next could be anything but an updated version of EQ2. Now Smedley goes and pulls the plug on the project because he knew there was no way it could be anything but an updated version or EQ2.
That has me very much intrigued. The guy actually knows why players did not flock to EQ2 as they did EQ1, and he knows why everyone left SWG.
They could have a big time game on their hands if they make a stable, SWG like gaming experience in the EQ world and focus on sandbox elements. Big time game.
my ideas for eqnext advancement (until we have a forum, this is the forum)
My idea of advancement is a 4 line model. In traditional mmos you have a single level. My idea expands this to 4, and we move away from the hard levels and instead call them lines where players can invest xp.
Each line has a specific focus that is ingrained into the lore of the game. The lines are Race, Class, Deity, Survival. All lines would have a minor time based component (30%) and an earned based component (70%).
Race:
The race line has is primarily interested in your physical and mental base stats, a number of passive racial abilities and some activatable abilities.
Improving this line would enable you to improve on basic stats such as strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity etc, and would also have selected resistances that could be improved (based on the race). Passive abilities which could be invested in would include things like infravision, health and mana regeneration, and other abilities unique or common to the races of eqnext. Activatable abilities would include things like the racial bash or sneak, dodge or jump which could be invested in.
Class/job:
The class line would be very familiar to original eq (by design to promote familiarity for old eq vets) and would have all the things you knew and loved about eq for any given class. This would include your spells, special class abilities and anything else class related. I would keep this similar to old eq1 on purpose as i think it would give a certain feel to it. The only difference would be that instead of levels you have to invest your exp into the different lines that the classes had.
Deity:
The deity line would be the main controller for death penalty and pvp. Unline the other lines the death penalty can increase and decrease (increase by staying alive and decrease by dying). You would still be able to invest the xp to unlock abilities in this line and they would stay unlocked once you earn them, but you could only use them when you had enough " god love" in your deity meter. Thus if you unlocked a rank 7 skill, you could use the skill as long as your deity meter was at rank 7 or above. You can only lose xp from dying from the deity line. No other line is affected. PVP works the same way but the penalty is greatly reduced. The deity abilities are all centered around the specific norrath god you choose, and each rank has a number of skills to choose from that range from things like exp loss reduction to planar backpacks (unlootable) to soubbind items, to offensive, protection and defensive god abilities. This gives players a small ability to tailor the game to their liking in terms of pvp and death penalty rules. Note that if you choose all the protections you have to give up some other abilities so if your fully protected you wont have much or any offensive god based powers.
Survival
The survival line is the same for all players and includes things like direction sesning/compass, mapping, remote viewing magic, foraging, first aid, homehates, binding and other simple magics. As a player you stil have to invest to unlock the skills.
Changing class
Your choice for race and deity is final when you start the game. You can however change classes or jobs. What classes or jobs you can choose is dependant on your race and deity. For instance if your a dwarf and choose brell, you cannot ever be a shadowknight or necromancer. Each race/deity would have a number of choices but no race/deity could choose all the classes. This would be to give your character alot of longevity.
When you change classes your original class doesnt dissapear. You can still use all the abilities of the old class at 50% strength (you wouldnt forget them), but you would also be limited in this regard by your choices of weapons and armor. So you wouldnt be doing much meteor storming in platemail and a huge axe.
All the jobs or classes you accumulate become available at the same reduction, but on your character you are limited in your skill bar to 14 abilities on your combat bar so you could not have access to unlimited skills. Your non combat bar would also have 14 abilities.
with so much to work on i would be it would take years to learn it all and provide near endless progression.
Anyhow , thats what id like to see.
Planetside is a mmo
It just isn't a rpg
AWESOME post!
I solo'ed to max level in Everquest. It was actually quite easy.
the truth is that in original eq you could solo well with any caster class. Most melee classes couldnt solo as well (bards and shadowknights could). Eq gave you options though. Warriors were the worst if i remember correctly.
For instance i played a cleric, which wasnt a really strong soloer..unless you were soloing undead. If you were soloing a ghoul you were more powerful than a wizard. I know i could solo if i wanted well into Kunark. Not that i needed to, but it was there.
most games these days are so shallow they dont even bother with different kinds of mobs, resistances, factions, or anything that made it interesting. Streamlined into suck.
thats the essence i want to get back to. Not raids and not levels. The good stuff that made eq great.
I soloed a rogue using a combination of poisons, clickies, and the intimidation skill.
I was deeply involved in the poison making skill in EQ, loved it, most people never even knew it existed.
But I agree, (early) EQ had options, tactics, different approaches in which you could engage norrath, hell, the developers of EQ didn't even expect people to create camps and pull mobs...
One of the key things that separate EQ and modern MMORPGs is the toughness of a single mob which directly effects the flow of the game. Instead of killing a lot of mobs in a short amount of time, you focused on one mob at a time. Anymore than one, even for a group in a dungeon, could spell disaster which is why crowd control was so important.
As for levels, I like levels. Levels have been apart of the RPG genre since the first D&D pen and paper RPG.
Yep, a lot of what happened with Everquest's metagame was completely unexpected. Verant created a world and let the players figure out what to do in it. Camping a spawn and pulling mobs was the path to least resistance for leveling so it became standard. The boss mob at the end of the dungeon was just a really powerful mob and it was up to the players to figure out a way to bring it down. The developers never designed them with a pre-planned way to beat it.
Funny - I enjoy even reminiscing about EQ. I really hope whatever they end up releasing can suck us back in
Agreed here. Haven't put much input in to this thread in particular, but when I do make a post I find myself going back to countless stories about EQ that I hope EQN can bring back. Love reading the stories too, keep em coming.
Played: EQ1 (10 Years), Guild Wars, Rift, TERA
Tried: EQ2, Vanguard, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Runes of Magic and countless others...
Currently Playing: GW2
Nytlok Sylas
80 Sylvari Ranger
Possible Braid McQuaid involvement in EQN. I had to delete my source info to keep it protected tho.
nt
I have gone back to EQ2 in preparation for EQN. I really have high hopes for this game being a sandbox with some theme park elements couched within the open/random world.
wish list:
-Complex crafting that depends on resource quality.
-Player Housing at least like in EQ2, but preferably like SWG. (with empty houses being capable of decaying into mob infested ruins that players can demolish)
-Backpacks that actually hold stuff
-Randomized Mobs and events in the landscape.
-Combat moves that do not require me to target something attackable.
-Specialized skills like trap discovery/deactivation, porting, etc. that give characters some exclusivity in groups.
-PvP that affects the world in some way.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
fuck it.
They'll beat that out of you in time.
Honestly, I wish I could believe in this but I've seen this kind of crap too many times. This is just the latest spin to put on the hype for a new game to get people all worked up so lots of them will rush to buy it when it releases. And look how well it's already working.
But I do wish I could believe it so I could have something to at least look forward too. Even if it was just an improved version of EQ with better class balance and a different endgame I would be glad to play it. But I doubt if it will even be that good. Even if it they do manage to make a game which might otherwise be good I'm positive they'll ruin it with their cash shop.
My spidey-sense-bullshit-detector has been tingling since I first read those quotes from Smedley and so far my BS detector has never failed me concerning MMOs. Maybe I'll be proven wrong about this but you have to remember that Smedley is trying to sell something to you. He's a used car salesman and you would be well advised to distrust him at least a little.
screenshots?
Looks like ill be resubbing to EQ1 in january.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche