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This game needs to succeed
vayte
Member Posts: 11
The mmo market is becoming not only saturated but rather linear as well. Swtor tried something new by emphasizing story. We all know how that story ends... Now we have EQN which has promised to innovate and yet again many of us find ourselves with much anticipation for not only this game, but the future of mmos.
Avatar pushed the limit of not only technology, but a movies budget as well. If avatar would have failed many studios would of used it as an example to say no to big budget, risky films. Obviously we know that was not the case and the industry is better because it was such a huge success.
If everquest fails, I feel it will be detrimental to mmos of the future. But if we have another avatar on our hands, not only will soe prosper but the mmo genre will realize that money and risk can pay off and they won't keep remaking the same garbage.
There is a lot more on the line than just soe or everquest
Avatar pushed the limit of not only technology, but a movies budget as well. If avatar would have failed many studios would of used it as an example to say no to big budget, risky films. Obviously we know that was not the case and the industry is better because it was such a huge success.
If everquest fails, I feel it will be detrimental to mmos of the future. But if we have another avatar on our hands, not only will soe prosper but the mmo genre will realize that money and risk can pay off and they won't keep remaking the same garbage.
There is a lot more on the line than just soe or everquest
MMO experience: SWG, Fury, Planetside 1&2, AoC, Warhammer, Wow, Vanguard, Firefall, SWTOR, Guild Wars 1&2, D&L, and more I can't remember
Comments
If EQN fails then it's because they failed to design it right and justly fails. Like Neverwinter.
There are other games in development that are using the same core mechanics as EQN so it's not like EQN is an all or nothing thing. The age of big name companies being the only ones capable of doing a quality MMO is past... well hopefully, time will tell.
OMG Avatar!!!!!!!!
Please show me where "unobtanium" sits on the periodic table of the elements and explain why hokey spiritualism made it into what was touted as a SciFi movie.
Please, please, please let EQ NEXT be an incoherent pastiche of disconnected themes. As to SWTOR and story telling, telling boring stories in a boring way was why that part of the game failed.
I hope EQNEXT succedes as a game, I want it to and hope to play it for years to come.
I'm not sure comparing EQN to one of the most overrated and subpar sci-fi movies of all time is wise.
We've seen all style and no substance before.
EQN only deserves to succeed if it's a good game that keeps people engaged.It doesn't deserve to succeed if it is trying something different,it doesn't deserve to succeed if it's sandbox or FFA PVP or come other agenda one segment of the community is pushing.
If the game isn't fun and engaging or only appeals to a small niche that can't support it's cost to make and ongoing costs to run then it deserves to fail.
Free to play. Does that scare anyone else away besides me?
Sub base is like going on a date with your girlfriend and knowing your going to get laid afterwards.
F2P is like taking a girl on a date, things start to get hot and heavy and then she turns to you and says "I'm going to change into something more comfortable, why don't you leave $200 on the nightstand"
It being f2p does scare me a bit -how they design the game to influence CS use, the community, how and how often they add content, etc. It's a slippery slope.
SWTOR was no different than any other theme park clone - they all have their little signature move kind of like wrestlers but ultimately they are all the same. SWTOR story, RIFT rifts, Wildstar path system, etc etc. And the 1 good thing about SWTOR was the story, so it's unfortunate that the rest of the game was trash because for those of us who do like story, "story" in general is now lumped in with SWTOR as being a bad idea for an mmo.
But EQNext doesn't seem at all to be about just having their new spin or signature move plopped on top of the same themepark model. At least not based on any talk I've heard from anybody, whether that be devs, people from this site or TTH who saw it, people from Storybricks who have commented on it. And I highly doubt they are all lying, because it's not like we aren't going to find out come reveal time.
indeed can they pull off good expansions on a ftp model or are the expansions paid for very worrying but i think soe may be able to do it if they can resist makeing everything cool /powerful casher only
acceptable stuff in cash shop to me, armor doodads, costumes, small exp potions mounts as long as there are in game mounts just as good bought with plat, houseing decorations convinence items perhaps like a item that say summons a sammich and drink
as for the expansions i have a idea make 1 or 2 zones that people ftp can go to in the expansion if they like what they see they gotta buy it to go to the rest and use the features anywhere else
Avatar was basically a story designed for escapism, the idea of leaving our world behind...Heck the beginning quote basically talks about how when you dream, eventually you need to wake up or something like that. Same idea basically, story could be shiet but most people watched it for the world and the 3d.
On topic: I feel that if EQN hits the right notes, then yeah it would be great if it succeeds. From the sounds of it, they understand all the problems of current mmos and don't really like the way they are in general. I don't really care if the game sucks or is boring, I just want something that hasn't really been done before. (GW2 was the same idea but ultimately, was just a shiny coat of painting over an old door)
We, nor any other developers, have any idea what core mechanics are in EQN....hence the black box.
I'll be disappointed if EQN fails, but it won't be the end of the world.
I give games their fair shot in beta, and I'll try out ArcheAge, Blade&Soul if it ever localizes, Wildstar, ESO, and Destiny.
Really intrigued by Destiny. No, I don't care if PC people dont like it. I'm a GAMER, I get every next gen console and have a gaming computer.
I disagree with the "saturated" part, I think there is plenty of room for more high quality MMOGs.
I also think you over-emphasize the importance of this MMOG for the genre for many of the people who play them, but you are pretty much right as far as I personally am concerned. If EQ Next isn't what I want it to be, I good well quit the genre for good.
Frankly, I don't have a tremendous amount of hope that it will deliver what I want; it already sounds to me like they are trying to please too many types of players. I plan on giving it a chance though.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
I know right WoD is going to rule them all. I wonder if theyll keep the part about a player having to turn you to a vampire.
LOL indeed, indeed. Well said.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Bioware announced they were following the Blizzard model - a year before the game launched
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/02/10/bioware-wow-is-the-touchstone-for-the-old-republic/
"It [World of Warcraft] is a touchstone. It has established standards, it's established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it.
And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb," Zeschuk said.
EQ2 fan sites
I think this is one of the problems of MMOGs today. There is litle heart to the games, because heart takes commitment to a vision, and publishers wanting to make big bux are always looking at ways to avoid offending some particular type of player so he either doesn't want to play or quits. "Fun and engaging" isn't an absolute, quantifiable thing, it isn't the same for everyone, and no game should be made to appeal to some theoretical idea of a gamer that doesn't actually exist in the real world.
We ended up with a bunch of MMOGs that are like McD's Big Macs - not bad, exactly, but not really good either. Certainly not inspiring!
An MMOG that won't garner enough players to keep itself afloat is probably a bad one anyway, it really doesn't take that many players to keep one going. A couple hundred thousand still means a profit. The industry seems to like for us to believe they need more, and use that as an excuse to go F2P, but the fact is, games like LotRO were profitable before they went F2P. Turbine didn't need more players to keep the game afloat, Turbine decided to go for more cash over keeping the game quality as high as it could be. But then, that's how LotRO was made, so no surprise there.
I would respect a publisher a lot more if it allowed the developer team to create something it really had its collected heart behind, even if I personally didn't enjoy the game. Darkfall, for example - it fulfilled a vision, but I didn't play it because I never have been able to get into PvP, and it was a(n) FFA PvP game. I wanted to subscribe because I wanted to give a dev team with that much heart my money; I didn't because I'm not wealthy enough to go around paying for games I won't play.
Borderlands is a game that doesn't apologize for itself; it has in it characters, humor, and play that might actually offend some people (and does). Borderlands though is made with that heart I'm talking about, and it shows. I happen to love it, but I would still think of it as a good game even if I didn't. Bioshock is another example of a game with heart, one that is, in my opinion, a very good game, but it's one that doesn't particularly flip my switch either. In both cases, 2K allowed the dev team to make what it wanted to make and it paid off in that the games played well and were original and memorable - and made them a nice chunk of change, too.
No one could accuse Borderlands or Bioshock of being "Big Macs".
This brings me to my problem with EQ Next at this point - I want a really sandbox style game, but it is also labeled as "F2P" here on MMORPG, and I don't see most "free" players wanting to put forth the effort a real sandbox game takes. Already it seems to me that SOE is trying to please too diverse a community. I want a game that is serious about allowing people to RP enough to police the servers and keep them clear of names like "Ipwnnoobs". (I saw someone in EQII flagged as RP the other day - and his name was "Evercrackk". WTF? How is that an RP friendly name by any stretch of the imagination?)
I consider EQII to be a technically superior game to WoW, but at least WoW doesn't much pretend it is anything but what it is. EQII, on the other hand, is a game that is supposedly more serious, one that takes more effort and is more into the lore and RP aspect, but it still allows the same kind of terrible names. When I think of that, all my excitement for what EQ Next could be drains away.
So; heart is key to making a great game. That means having a vision, and sticking to your vision, and being confident enough in the quality of what you create to let the bottom line worry about itself. That means you are more likely going to speak to a particular audience instead of everyone - one that agrees with your sense of what a good game is about, your style and presentation and the game play itself. However, it also means you can attract a far bigger and more loyal audience than your best hopes would allow for because you took a risk and created something really special.
I'm not looking for a game that appeals to both the serious MMOG player that wants depth and challenge and the "casual" player. That is a recipe for a game that inspires no one. I'm looking for a game in which the dev team says "This is what we are enthusiastic about, this is the vision we want to fulfill, and if it means we lose millions of casual dollars, well, we'll take that risk". I'd even wish for a game dedicated to the "casual" player instead of one that pretends it is anything else. Millions of people love Bioshock, I'm not one of them, but I sure respect Irrational for making that game series and 2K for risking the development money required to make it. They did the same with Borderlands, and it paid off big for them. If you come to the BL forums you'll see many people don't like various things about the game, it has too much style and heart for everyone to like everything about it, but far more people love it than don't. The risk paid off, and Borderlands has made Gearbox and 2K good money - and that is far from over, as long as the dev team remains inspired.
So, yeah, it only deserves to succeed if it a good game, but it won't be if it doesn't risk being one that only appeals to a small number of people.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Yeah, and they broke just about every rule. In fact, outside of the general outline of WoW, quest hubs, dungeons, raids, gear progression, they kind of missed everything else and made a colossal pile of poop. People always boil WoW down to those few things but ignore it's depth and variety of quest content, the vastness of the game world which is populated and despite being 10 years old now feels full of life and open, and so many things to do, so many things to collect. And of course the smooth engine.
Anyway, the reason so many WoW clones fell flat on their faces was because they only looked at WoW superficially and felt that copying a few broader aspects would make them just as successful.
There will be a subscription option so no need to worry.
Exactly; Bioware made a game based on a formula game idea from a formula movie, and that's why we don't think of SWTOR as a great MMOG. They failed to realize that Star Wars was massively successful because it was more than the sum of its parts, and the same is true of WoW. The formulas do not account for their successes. We have many forgotten formula movies to prove that, thousands that no one remembers, only a very few that people still think about, and now the MMOG industry is learning the same truth. Formula in and of itself is a bad idea.
Personally, I couldn't bring myself to play SWTOR because I just couldn't stand the idea of gaming in as broken a universe as the one Star Wars is based in. Reading about the classes and game play was totally uninspiring, too. I think they were mind-numbingly blind to the truth of the matter, and that is you can't carry off a movie like Star Wars without game-changing acting talent - which is impossible to have on an MMOG (at least at our current level of technology).
I enjoyed the Star Wars movies, but they were never what I'd call great movies. I suggest that they didn't prove that formula works as much as they proved that formula doesn't necessarily doom a movie and relegate it to the "totally forgetful" pile. Bioware deserves the scorn they got for trying to follow a formula to a "get rich quick" idea. They are making money, and it is very good money, only paling in the light of the Big Success that pales all other MMOGs, but in my opinion they sold themselves out to make that money and they don't even deserve what they are getting.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Having a "subscription option" doesn't stop the game from catering to the kind of player that messes up my experience. It doesn't stop the game from having stuff in it that requires you to spend more money on it if you want it - even if you do have a subscription. I wouldn't mind some of those mounts bought with "Station Cash" in EQII if there was a way I could acquire them through game play, but there simply is no way to do it.
Granted, the kind of player that would go around flagged as "Roleplaying" with a name like "Evercrack" always existed, but they were far fewer back in the day, and the F2P model brings a way of thinking about game play that is antithetical to what I want. Whether it's solo play or group play, you get what you earn, not what you pay for using real money from outside the game, and not what you can do in 15 minutes of time in which you have one hand on the keyboard, the other holding a sandwich, while watching your favorite sitcom (and all the while complaining about how you don['t have time to spend on a game and shouldn't be penalized for "having a real life"). F2P caters to very, very casual players that have no sense of commitment to the game and no respect for those that do.
If that's what SOE wants for EQ Next, fine, I'm not saying they are wrong for going for the "casual" dollar over mine, but right now what I'm thinking is I'm going to have plenty of time to get caught up on all those Andre Norton novels I've missed reading over the last 4 decades. The kind of books, I might add, that got me into playing Everquest in the first place.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall