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Everquest + Minecraft -- My theory
Vhayne
Member UncommonPosts: 632
Ok think about it. EQN was in development for a while, then they scrapped what they had "because it too familiar and too much like the other games".
About that same time supposedly, Minecraft became HUGE! I know personally, 2+ years ago when I started to play it I realized what an incredible experience it was, and what kind of potential it had. It's the first time in MANY years I was thrilled and excited about a new thing --- fully destructible enviroments! But with a purpose! 
I'm not talking about the "building" aspects here. I'm talking specifically about the role-playing and survival (the sandbox rpg) that Minecraft offers.
It was incredible. Being able to start with absolutely nothing, then go whack some trees and make tools, so you could make weapons and armor, and get more materials to make better stuff. Then exploring (really exploring) caves in mountainsides that went DEEP underground, and you could dig through, or dig yourself out. Being able to simply just dig a very deep hole straight down if you wanted, and it open up into a gigantic cavern full of juicy minerals and "dangerous" mobs.
It was great, but very short lived unfortunately. Once you crafted yourself a bunch of diamond stuff it was pretty much game over.
BUT.....
Consider it as an MMO, with incredible graphics and the depth that Everquest has to offer. Would that not be something so terribly exciting that it "blows everything else at E3 out of the water"? I'd say Minecraft is the worlds largest sandbox at the moment. So isn't it fair to guess that EQN will be something similar?
Just a theory.
Comments
With their recent purchase from last year - I am hoping for something similar.
BUT I'm keeping my excitement tempered until Aug 2nd. Like I said before, the only thing I'm hyped for right now is hearing what they have to say about this game at SOE Live.
It might have.
I started playing it when it just went from Alpha to Beta I think. Like Dec of 2010 if I remember correctly.
I remember, not to long ago, playing the beta for salem. It was billed as something similar to this (at least from what I read), where people had to work together to build towns and cities and to make stuff to survive. Once the settlements grew you could trade and do all sorts of stuff.
It also had 100% permadeath PvP and just permadeath in general. The game was pretty dreadful (not because of the permadeath...didn't last that long to die, it was bad for for many other reasons).
Now if they are using the lore of Norath, how would one implement a system like this or like minecraft when you have established a history already of people who have come before, instead of creating your own?
What about Wurm, Notch's game before minecraft that was the same basic concept but way more complex and realistic? Probably a better comparison.
Would be very cool IMO.
Then again we all know Minecraft gets very dull after a short while if there's no conflict.
Yeah , but I think they will just be making EQ1 with the ability to create player made content to avoid the boredom that comes when you beat all the content in a game .
I think that MINECRAFT's success and SWTOR's failure as well as EVE reaching 400K subs(now 500K) are what made the decision.
Also keep in mind that EQ2 has been a development hotbed. SOEMote, Dungeon Maker, Heros Forge as well as their fully decoratable guild halls and player housing.
All they have to do is give us tools to actually build the houses and towns and fences, EQ2 already has the rest.
They are iterating on it in EQ as well.
I wouldn't doubt that they have not just PVE and PVP servers but different modes. One I am fond of is survival mode and I do not know if this is the same thing but I would like to see a Siege Mode where wave after wave of enemy NPC invade and we have to fight them off, either in Freeport or Neriak or Qeynos or even in our own little player built towns and outposts.
Night falls and those damned Orcs come and try to steal our beer!
Just being said that nobody made MMORPG version of Minecraft is baffling.
But,
Everquest has legacy, and they have to continue it. Minecraft without blocks is not that cool (and we seen many tried at "minecraft without blocks" none of them had any sucess)
So moving to minecraft gameplay and style would be really distant from EQ style.
I am afraid it wont happen.
8 bit blocks is a novelty indeed but EQ2 has shown that not only is building something people love to do, in their Guild Halls, Houses and Dungeons they make, but it is very profitable, like the $60 I spent on a Cherry Grove furniture set for my house in EQ2.
Think outside the blocks.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but devs have said 100000000x that this is not EQ1 or EQ2. The safe bet is that before they restarted on EQN, it was probably looking like EQ3 with the best features of EQ1/EQ2 just in a new game with new items/zones/etc. And they smartly realized that has no substance in the MMORPG market today. They are going a new route that is getting praise and very well may shift the MMORPG market much like they did with Everquest 1.
I'll say it that EQN is not going to be anymore sandbox than ArcheAge is and that game is a sandpark with a very interactive world. People getting hung up on what Smed calls a sandbox, you not going to have a Wurm Online or A tail In The Desert sandbox imo.
Personally i think you need to look at AA rather than the two full sandbox games i mentioned.
We know EQN is not going to be some big skill based system and the game has classes for a start.
And sorry to burst your bubble but no where have they said the game is going to be based around PVP, in fact Smed has already said that the game will be very familiar to EQ vets.
Sounds like there is a bit of EQ in the soup doesn't it.
PAX East
"But is it a risk to make an MMO that's so different from what players are familiar with? Georgeson acknowledges that it's a risk, but he's very confident that his team is on the right track. He said that the unfamiliar is going to be OK because the ideas are so cool that players will want to stick around to find out about them. At the same time, SOE is trying to make the game more intuitive. The longer a game's out, the harder it is for new players to jump into the game easily. With EQ Next, SOE is making sure to take care of accessibility now, not later.
When we spoke about the franchise as a whole, Georgeson reminded me that both EQ and EQII have been around for 14 and nine years respectively, and as far as he's concerned, there's no reason to ever turn the games off. He's not worried about EQ Next cannibalizing the two titles because it's such a different game from its siblings and because the fans are so loyal to their respective games. Both communities have developed deep, familial relationships with SOE over the years, and he expects that to continue for many years to come."
Georgeson literally used the word unfamiliar, the polar opposite of you saying familiar. How coincidential
He said the world will be familiar, he didn't mention anything about game play or features.
i really hope they have boats we can build and huge oceans to explore Underwater and above water...with more then 1 monster in the oceans haha maybe even raid monsters deep ocean
I miss the Plane of Water ....we had soo much fun in there killing that huge octopus boss when it was new
Have they even said there will be classes ?? could be just Races that do different things
I cant wait to hear more info EQ 1 vet played since day 1
You can have building as an addon to an MMO...
But if you make it the core, then you are wrong, the core of MMo should be adventures and battles.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
SOE Live October 2012
Smed.
You mentioned last night that EQ Next will look like nothing we've ever seen. Will EQ Next still have the familiar feel to it that EQ fans are used to? How do you strike the balance between innovation and still staying true to the franchise?
I also said in there that it will still be very familiar to you, but what I meant by that statement is that we're changing what an MMO is. MMO means something now, and it means the same thing to everybody because it's the same game. EverQuest, WoW, SWTOR all use the same core loot gameplay, which is kill stuff, get reward, get loot, level up. Very few games have broken out of that mold. One or two have.EVE Online is a great example; it's not standard level-based gameplay, although I'm not saying we're going to a big skill-based system. You're still going to recognize the roleplaying game heritage in it. InEverQuest Next, the world itself is a part of the game. What is the world in these other games? It's a simple backdrop. It's nothing. We are changing that greatly. We're changing what AI is in these games to a degree that we're going to bring life to the world. That to us is the essence of the change that we're making.
At GDC last week, you also talked about how quickly traditional MMO content is consumed and how that plays into your decision to adopt a philosophy toward emergent gameplay. The question comes up about how that affects the future of raid content -- something that takes a lot of time to design and is usually played by only a portion of the community. What are your thoughts on that?
This is a very interesting question. I think it's at the core of why what we're doing is sustainable. I'll go right to the heart of the matter. You get to the point where we make an expansion, and when I say we, I mean the entire MMO community. You make your expansion, the real hardcore players consume it in a month, and they're doing the raids over and over and over until the next round of live content that we put in. Typically, three or four times a year, we as MMO companies put new endgame in there to keep the raiders happy.
We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that. We're not talking about the end of raids, the end of this incredibly high-level content. We're talking about changing the nature of the world around it so that there's a lot more to do "in between" expansions. A good example, but a very narrow example, is battlegrounds in WoW or EQII, where players get bored doing it over and over again. But imagine the entire world as part of the interaction. Imagine seasons changing. Imagine if you're a Druid and you need to literally seek out reagents for your spells or worship your deity in a glade somewhere off in the wilderness, but you don't know where. Or image forests growing back after they're burned to the ground by invading forces. What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it.
So it seems that the main take on Smed's EQN is not to actually chance the main essence of what EQ is but to make the world more interactive, i living breathing world. All of the key elements are still there, classes, raids and all the other things you would expect from this epic IP.
Again, EQN will be very familiar to EQ players.
That would work for me. As long as they didn't totally change everything about the game a couple of years into it.
Why not make building a core part of the game, in addition to adventure and battle? Would it be so bad to stray from the norm? Or are players just a bit tentative about unknown gameplay?
I agree, some of the features AA has will have tom be in EQN or it's behind it's main rival, even Vanguard has some great features.