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Any News on When We Might See Beta?
MyTabbycat
Member UncommonPosts: 316
I've been keeping an eye on this but haven't really heard much news about it other than Landmark this and Landmark that.
I'm just wondering if Sony has hinted at when they may start doing beta testing for EQN.
Comments
Probably as soon as
(A) Landmark beta players create enough content for EQN
and
(B) SOE can figure how much to chanrge players to beta test EQN
Really not sure where Bill Murphy gets the idea that the game will be out this year. Hell they just now got monsters into LAndmark which is like the beta for the EQN beta
My guess would be:
We had Landmark Alpha at the beginning of 2014.
Now H1Z1 early access is coming at the beginning of 2015.
Maybe EQ Next will have its turn around January 2016.
sounds reasonable to me... i think h1z1 is now in the focus and will be pushed... but i assume starting mid 2015 sony will start releasing more updates (classes, videso etc....) to tease for an early access end 2015
All we know is the early access is this year and things that go into EQN will go into Landmark if they fit into that style of game. EQN was stated to be near 60% done last SOE Live.. I am expecting early access to be released at this years event. We are supposed to get more EQN info this month and next month.
H1Z1 is a completely different genre so I doubt it will have anything to do with EQNs timeline.
That's what i'm thinking.
Though I think it's going to depend on how long it takes them to get the AI sorted out and implemented. Supposedly they had a basic version of it during the last play demo, but we didn't get to see it in action because of dev hacks.
So assuming it is early 2016, that gives them roughly a year to implement / test the AI, finish adding the combat components, add any additional interactive elements (i.e. the switch system they were showing off), and to finish up adding all the environmental elements they've been working on / taking from landmark.
Not a small amount of tasks by any means, but given a year's timespan it is doable, assuming no major blowups happen.
What staff? I know of 2 people who left themselves. Both were not programmers, but a Community Manager and a Branch Manager. Dave is still there, he cut off his ponytail, so maybe you do not recognize him anymore?
Wasn't talking about the EQNext team, but SoE in general.
In 2014, SoE cost Sony a lot of money. Since Sony is restructuring, it's entirely possible, the studio at one point gets canned. They can't sustain those kind of losses for very long.
The reason EQNext seems to be taking ages to get anywhere, is probably because of SoE's dire financial status.
Atm SoE is a deadweight division, they aren't turning a profit and they had to can multiple MMO and scale back and can projects, Sony isn't going to put up with that for very long.
Good find, and I agree.. I think SOE isn't as stable as many want to believe.. More and more players are leaving the PC market and moving towards tablet and console gaming.. Even EA sports was making some major changes this past year.. I"m not sure what direction they plan on going.. I think most of us know that EQN is "years" away from ever going live, and I do think it's a good chance that it never sees the light of day.. Or we'll see some half assed version in an attempt to recover lost revenue..
That's all well and good except for the fact that PS2, H1Z1, EQLM and EQN will all be coming out on the PS4 at some point.
Also, R&D / development / pre-production doesn't make money. SOE's life depends on this lineup of games succeeding and with all the money already invested I don't see them pulling the plug before launch. If they launch EQN and it tanks because they couldn't deliver on promises I can see most of SOE being gutted but not before. They are in a very similar situation to square between FFXIV and FFXIV:ARR launch.
bill got the idea from 2014 soe live when they said its 60% finished... i agree though i think 2016 spring/summer is a more accurate estimate
It would be unfortunate if SoE did dissolve. Take EQN/Landmark out of the picture and what is left in the way of forward thinking, fresh MMOs?
/crickets
I have seen the old sites where I used to go to when I played Everquest the original with a lot of negativity against EQ Next. I think the old Everquest players are heavily lobbying against this game and may be it will have no impact but I am still wondering if all this rumbling can be wholly ignored.
Well since they are marketing to another player base that is the console one and younger audience it will not matter but I am not too sure what the higher brass thinks of all this and if they do pull the plug what reason will be given. Personally I dislike the combat direction and secretly hoping it does fail so that I get my type of combat but that would be selfish since it would only ruin the genre and not good for it overall.
I agree with this. Blizzard for example just tanked about 50 mil in R&D and turned the result of that into a fancy tf2 clone.
EQ people know how to make good games, especially good in some peoples' eyes, at least a passing grade to others. I can't see EQN failing so hard the gaming sector of Sony folds. I wish they'd get on the ball and manifest something better to show than bunny hop pvp on ramps and trap doors, though. It's like their pr people are having multiple aneurysms.
That might be so, but when I watch Livestreams on twitch and visit the forums, all the devs are present. Furthermore, SOE owns/works together with Voxelfarm and Storybricks. Two companies that develop the engine for Landmark & EQN.SOE was one of the first companies to invest in voxels. The R&D is covered well imo.
I disagree. I think EQ Next's fate will depend much on Landmark's and H1Z1's success. If SOE feels that both Landmark and H1Z1 have failed and they can't fix them, I think they won't release a third game using same engine.
H1Z1 is baed on the Planetside 2 engine.
EQN is based on a newly developed engine by SOE + Voxelfarm + Storybricks. Basicly Landmark is the development of EQN. They saw the potential of the new developers tools and turned these tools into a game ..... Everquest Next : Landmark. Then they realised "players" were building also stuff that wasn't related to the EQ Franchise, so they dropped the Everquest Next part of the title.
EQN is also using the Planetside 2 engine (+Voxelfarm, Storybricks has nothing to do with the game engine).
The EQNext engine is the Planetside 2 Engine.
The programmer for it is Steven Klug, or "SKlug". He was a programmer for EQ1 before this project.
Frankly I don't think he has the experience to develop an engine, while the EQEngine is "ok", it's not great. Bad animations, low res textures, bad global illumination. He's not a guy used to develop engines, he's more used to supporting existing engines.
I don't think that SoE currently has the people to make the graphics go far beyond what WoW currently does. The choice to make WoW type graphics was more a limitation of their engine than it was a design choice I think.
How EQ does animations is simply someone modelling a model and some frame by frame interpolatons, that then appear on the screen. EQNext does the same thing, and it shows how badly it looks in EQLandmark's combat. There's no advanced motion capturing, there's no advanced rigging, how SoE does animations stems from the time of Quake, not from 2014, Quantic Dream is how animations are done in 2014, not how SoE does it.
In one way I think it's a limited budget, but it's also a severe lack of talent, they have no idea how to do advanced character animations.
I see R&D as the life blood of a companies future earnings.
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https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
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The issues with money at SoE, can be seen throughout the years.
Especially, motion capturing and engine development, SoE lost a great deal of talent.
These were the decent EQ running animations during Luclin in 2001.
These were the horrible EQ animations from characters from 2006:
The problem is that those people who didn't know what they were doing in 2006, are now working on EQNext. The people who knew what they were doing in 2001, are not working for SoE anymore.
That's why people are complaining about the EQLandmark animations that are horrendous.
They have neither the money for a decent motion capture studio, nor the talent who can make decent animations by hand, nor a person who can write the engine to support it.
Do you just pull stuff out of your ass. Show me where the PC gaming market is somehow dwindling, and show me the data that they're going to consoles or tablets... Guess what, you can't. Why? becuase NONE of the data supports that.
There might be some argument made that a large portion of the specifically MMO playerbase might be moving to tablets or mobile shit, but even then i would be suspect.
"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
Can i ask how old you are?
EQ1 was the first game to ever come out that REQUIRED the use of a 3d card. There weren't many games prior to that did anything in 3d. Mostly it was quake, unreal, etc. 3d engines were crap in general back then. This was also the first MMO engine, servers/computers weren't capable of rendering high end textures/animations when you had 60 people on screen, etc. It would hose even the baddest ass of computers. Thats why EQ had lower rest textures, and poor shadows, etc etc.
You can't look at history through the lens of a modern day and make comparison, you have to account for the time frame it was released.
That being said, i dont neccesarily disagree with you, just your reasoning.
"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
Beta starts w/e the Landmark players make the game for us.
Maybe I'm blind or have low standards, but I don't find Landmark/EQN animations to be terrible. Are they top of the line? Probably not, but they look good enough to me, also factoring in they most likely aren't 100% finished. Showing animations from 8+ years ago and implying that the devs behind them couldn't have improved a tad bit in that time is a bit much for me to accept. Like the art style, I think it is rather subjective. Never had an issue with PS2 animations or the engine in general. So far Landmarks and the little seen of EQN look good as well. I think the stances and certain poses are a bit off, but no way I think Luclin models/animations look better then the current ones. Luclin were my fav EQ models btw
Edit: Your post above about the devs not being able to go beyond WoW graphics is a bit confusing as well. Have you actually seen Landmark/EQN? Maybe I'm misreading what you are typing, but looking at WOD (a finished product) and the updated race models for WoW compared to EQN/LM is development, there is no contest. LM models are supposed to get an update fairly soon. Toss in SOEmote and the range of emotion they are trying to express, again, not sure how you think SOE isn't up to the task.