EverQuest Next Redefines Next-Gen MMOs

bliebblob

Plushy wrangler, die-curious
Sep 9, 2009
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recurve6 said:
I hope they actually pull through with these ideas, though there are plenty of problems I can already think of, like players making dicks out of earth.
Olrod said:
It sounds like a heaven for trolls and griefers.

Seriously, do these people even PLAY online games?
The way I see it, you can give an mmo community just about anything and someone will turn it into a griefing tool. The only way to 100% grief-proof an mmo is by not making one in the first place. Obviously that's absurd so all developers can do is the next best thing: sabotage griefing methods as they appear, rather than trying to preemptively out-think a community of up to 10 million people. Or alternatively: just make the griefing a part of the game, like EVE did.

OT: the way the camera got blocked when the golem thing punched the building was a reaaally iffy note to end on. But at least it wasn't yet another montage of a bunch of people running at a dragon so I give em props.
Also: maybe this is just me but don't advertisers realize that showing off these kinds of high-level graphics and physics (for an mmo anyway) in a pc game is very much a double edged sword? Yes it nice stuff, but is it nice enough for a significant portion of your target audience to pony up yet another couple of hundred dollars for hardware upgrades?
 

AuronFtw

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Nov 29, 2010
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And then we realize that SOE is doing everquest:plus another one and promptly lose interest. They lost the market to WoW because their second game was absolute tripe on a bike, and that was after a really strong first MMO gen performance. I doubt they've figured out how to video games since then.

That said, any MMO that still revolves around kill 10 rats as its primary timesink is just going to fail in this day and age. We're sick of killing 10 rats, spend a bit more time making the quests not blow ass and people will like your game more.
 

Winnosh

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Sep 23, 2010
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All of my yes. One thing I don't get is why people are focusing on the changeable landscape when that is easily the least important part of the info.

Player settlements. Npcs that roam the land and respond to player interactions. All I need is for players to be allowed to kill and loot from eachother and perform raids on player created towns and I'm all there.



These are the things that have been missing from mmos since WoW turned the genre into a casual filled grind fest.
 

masticina

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Jan 19, 2011
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I don't belief it! "has to be repaired brick for brick"

I heard such promises before and I will say it simple I haven't seen such level of detail in games. And definitely not in MMO's

This is not Minecraft where blocks can be removed, this is an MMO where there is allot of attention on enemies and powers and the likes. I mean these promises we heard before "plant an acorn and it will grow into a tree", yeah that promise.

It is not something I see happening! No.. that would be ALLOT of data send to players. It would make the game harder to play on lower bandwidth connections. And before you go at me for saying this.. in america there are enough backwater areas where you are happy to get half decent connections.

So to me all these words said are hollow promises. Nice to have yes but I don't see how it is going to work. Hell even on my pretty darn decent internet connection it doesn't sounds like it would work. This is like promising a kids camp that there won't be mosquito's, no poison ivy, no sneezies in the air. I am saying you are lying!

AuronFtw said:
And then we realize that SOE is doing everquest:plus another one and promptly lose interest. They lost the market to WoW because their second game was absolute tripe on a bike, and that was after a really strong first MMO gen performance. I doubt they've figured out how to video games since then.

That said, any MMO that still revolves around kill 10 rats as its primary timesink is just going to fail in this day and age. We're sick of killing 10 rats, spend a bit more time making the quests not blow ass and people will like your game more.
Games that actually have very well written stories tend to be bound to a story line. Guess what in MMO's that doesn't work so you always.. always because you need more content. End up with killing 10 rats, grats, brats, frats, gnats or whatever. It is filler, and filler is part of MMO's. Because a MMO without filler is a very short game!

People expect to be able to go out and get gold, experience points etc. And if you only get that from story missions it will be quite limited. But you ask lets write more stories then offer more worthy content that isn't just a copy of something we already did. Do you know how long it takes to write a book?

Look I will be simple here yes MMO's exist that try to tone down on the kill 10 x. BUT it is like creamy filler that is part of MMO's.
 

Pedro The Hutt

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Apr 1, 2009
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It's not so much original as stealing ideas from the best competitors out there, ranging from GW2 to WildStar to Minecraft and mixing it all up, if it does it well, all the more credit to them, but I can also easily see this falling flat on its face.

Not every game SOE has made has been solid gold (ie. Star Wars Galaxies).
 

Psychobabble

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Aug 3, 2013
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As much as I'd love to lose myself to the hype I have to agree with Masticina's dose of reality. We have heard these promises before. And all of these "innovations" are pointless if A: the technology can't pull them off, and B: pointless if the game world itself is just another scripted endlessly repeating themepark. Sure the iron golem showing up and wrecking your shit sounds amazing, unless he does so in a set pattern, on a set schedule, like the cross town bus. Then this "dynamic event" just becomes dull routine.

And destroyable landscape sounds great until you stop and think that unless these damages can reset on their own, servers with low populations, or even just servers in the wee hours of the morning, will be vast wastelands of demolished buildings. Which brings a couple of issues to mind. If a game facility becomes unusable until players rebuild it, that will not fly well with the new breed of convenience gamers the industry has spawned these past few years. And on the flip side, if nothing is actually lost by these tragic events, then all they are is eye candy that does little to promote an interactive game world.

So a little song, a little dance, Batman's head on a lance. Sure whatever Joker, we've heard it all before. Don't waste our time again until you actually manage to pull it off. The hype train is arriving on track 5, but I shan't be boarding this time as I've taken that old train ride to nowhereville way too many times before.
 

Vaccine

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Feb 13, 2010
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masticina said:
I don't belief it! "has to be repaired brick for brick"

I heard such promises before and I will say it simple I haven't seen such level of detail in games. And definitely not in MMO's
It'll be some sort of "smart-system" where everything is made of a pre-configured build sets and they all fall apart in a specific way but because there's so many combinations it always "looks" different.

It's just stupid buzzwords for the developers.
 

masticina

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Jan 19, 2011
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Vaccine said:
masticina said:
I don't belief it! "has to be repaired brick for brick"

I heard such promises before and I will say it simple I haven't seen such level of detail in games. And definitely not in MMO's
It'll be some sort of "smart-system" where everything is made of a pre-configured build sets and they all fall apart in a specific way but because there's so many combinations it always "looks" different.

It's just stupid buzzwords for the developers.
Yeah you are right it has to be. Buzzwords are cheap I tell you!

I don't mind some .. half pre configured system like that. But don't call it "Stone for stone" lets just say it that way. Hell of the gamesave of skyrim already can blow out of proportion ...
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
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/incoming meandering thoughts.

Ok... Ill say it. After being jaded off MMOs I am genuinely intrigued. As for the response. Its typical "hone in on one phrase whilst oblivious to another"and to be expected really.

Example:
SOE's ambitious revamping of the classic MMO world, EverQuest Next, aims to provide a huge voxel-based realm with fully destructible environments, advanced high-level AI, and a hefty emphasis on player agency in shaping and protecting each server's unique landscape.
The "lock" point was obviously Voxel / Fully destructible environments. Secondly would be the AI.So given that has gotten the focus of attention out of the phrase, remove them to see what was deemed not as important.

SOE's ... EverQuest Next, aims to provide a ... realm ... and a hefty emphasis on player agency in shaping and protecting each server's unique landscape.
And there you go. In a "reveal" like this, obviously destructible environments are going to be heavily presented if for no other reason the visual mechanic behind it would be one of the easiest things to draw peoples attention. What you are not seeing is other functional sub and tertiary systems at play that will give players motivation to maintain reasonable and practical levels of alteration. It might be cool to say, turn the center of the Iksar capital into a tadpole spawning pool, but in doing so it will likely yeild no player benefit to do so. No one would be put out. NPCs would simply move to more viable land.

Then there is what I suspect will be a major background system in how this will work. Geological regeneration. Lets say you max a guild worth of wizards and necro's out with the sole purpose of creating your own Hole of Paineel. Awesome. You created a hole that if you fall will kill you almost definitely. However, once you and your guild of mana batteries has gotten bored and moved onto other things, the world continues on. Weather patterns emerge over time. Rain slowly fills the thing until your hole is now just a really deep pool. And with rain it also allows for other geological processes such as erosion. So over time your pool keeps getting muddier and muddier until it moves through stages of swamp, bog, quicksand, mud pit, eventually to the point that within say a RL month the land has settled in and covered the hole over. And that is just if the geology is allowed to run its course and is not impacted by either PCs or NPCs who might instead simply build a structure over it like say a bridge.

Now granted what I just described is most likely an overly ambitious example of how such would work and in its complexity is not really all that likely. Honestly SOE is likely working on something that basically achieves the same with greater simplicity (even if it is counter immersive to the idea) but the point is, the statement even suggests that SOE has that intent to maintain certain levels of playable integrity. So while some things might be scar able those scars will likely fade with time, others might be destructible. Such destruction will lend itself to rebuilding. Others still might be essentially impervious.

What we need to do is not get ahead of ourselves because there may well be what SOE calls X feature Y feature Z feature. We have no idea how they are going to present those based on this nugget. That is for good or ill. No hopes should be raised, but at the same time, no negative assumptions should be made on how these intended mechanics will be presented just yet.

But honestly, Ive been waiting for details on EQN for something like 2-3 years now it seems and honestly I had zero expectation because of being MMO jaded after like 50-100 different MMOs over like a decade and a half worth of experience. However I confess at least from this one tiny glimmer of info it has at least piqued my curiosity at the potential this may indeed have. Ive said many times that right now MMOs are in a failed state. That we need some manner of new advents that can allow the genre to move forward again. Many are trying to do just that. Just like ToR with its emphasis on story, Or GW2 with its more "dynamic" content. This may well be another advent in the making.

And as it was suggested SOE got knocked off its throne by WoW and it was questioned how is taking elements of a bunch of different things and putting them together supposed to help them do anything against WoW? Just remember exactly HOW WoW managed to Unseat Everquest. They copied all the good stuff from EQ, EQII and other MMOs that worked well, and streamlined the package into something low spec'd to make it highly accessible. In other words, taking elements of a bunch of different things and putting them together effectively. So If WoW is in fact the example to follow, then this may be a case of SoE Copying WoW in the right way instead of how others have by simply trying to be clones. It worked for WoW. There is no reason why this cannot work for SoE.

None the less... It piqued my interest enough to actually desire to see more. That in and of itself is a good sign.
 

Morsomk_v1legacy

RUMBA RUMBA RUMBA RUMBA RUMBA
Jan 30, 2013
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Ohh, interesting. Let's see if SOE actually manages to make most of these features work and make them fun as well. I would love to mess around in EQN if that were to happen.
 

Eric the Orange

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Apr 29, 2008
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I see such a high potential for griefing in this game. While I may not play it, I'll be interested to see how it turns out.
 

Chessrook44

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"Fully destructable" and "Permanent" translates to "In less than a month every building will be levelled, every tree will be gone, every cliff destroyed, and every scrap of the ground either cratered or GONE" in my book. I only give that long because the players will need that time to get their characters up to level.
 

Marowit

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sounds simply fantastic, unfortunately my CPU just burst into flames at the mere aspect of having to run this game. so I had to post from my phone.

allowing players to determine the fate of a server sounds pretty sweet though.
 

LordMonty

Badgerlord
Jul 2, 2008
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Could be good, but its a way off. Lets hope it turns out to be at least fresh when tis released.
 

rapidoud

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Aeshi said:
So basically instead of "Yet-another WoW knockoff", it's "Yet another Minecraft knockoff?"

Because that's the impression I'm getting (I don't even think it'd be the first MMO to have such a thing in the first place anyway)
Minecraft itself is a knockoff which is irony.

Games with good voxel depth (of which MC does not have) are a relatively new thing. There's been games with terrain deformation loads of times (Perimeter like 10 years ago, some other shooter where you raise/lower terrain etc), but to implement into an MMO standard seems like it hasn't been done before AFAIK, at least with an RPG formula.
 

Charli

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Nov 23, 2008
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These ideas are great but my computer is already heaving at the very thought of playing on something like that, online with other people, with all that amount going on...

This sounds great but... sounds heavy on computer requirements, I'll be interested to see how they can swing this.
 

Moktor

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Feb 3, 2011
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While I like the concepts, the art has me wondering. It looks like every other FTP WoW clone, I watched the reveal and some of the art literally looks stolen from Blizzard. I am interested, but I will hold final judgment until I see my Iksar.
 

Leaper

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Jun 3, 2009
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Kind of off-topic, but I find it weird that they say "voxel-based" as some sort of general term. I'm sure many people who work with/study computer graphics don't have a firm grasp of voxels (unless they work on something that specifically uses voxels for one purpose or another), not to mention random people on the internet.
 

martyrdrebel27

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Seventh Actuality said:
Is the Escapist is outsourcing their articles to Sony's PR department now? This post feels like it was written by someone who has completely missed every MMO of the last decade.
I've been thinking this since the xbone announcement. It seems like every chance they get, they troll the xbone, its getting pretty annoying. I know its not the same thing you were saying, but its just weird how up sony's ass escapist seems to be lately.
 

Ishal

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Oct 30, 2012
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bliebblob said:
recurve6 said:
I hope they actually pull through with these ideas, though there are plenty of problems I can already think of, like players making dicks out of earth.
Olrod said:
It sounds like a heaven for trolls and griefers.

Seriously, do these people even PLAY online games?
The way I see it, you can give an mmo community just about anything and someone will turn it into a griefing tool. The only way to 100% grief-proof an mmo is by not making one in the first place. Obviously that's absurd so all developers can do is the next best thing: sabotage griefing methods as they appear, rather than trying to preemptively out-think a community of up to 10 million people. Or alternatively: just make the griefing a part of the game, like EVE did.

OT: the way the camera got blocked when the golem thing punched the building was a reaaally iffy note to end on. But at least it wasn't yet another montage of a bunch of people running at a dragon so I give em props.
Also: maybe this is just me but don't advertisers realize that showing off these kinds of high-level graphics and physics (for an mmo anyway) in a pc game is very much a double edged sword? Yes it nice stuff, but is it nice enough for a significant portion of your target audience to pony up yet another couple of hundred dollars for hardware upgrades?
The MMO crowd will do that though, that is what you might not understand. I've played 4 or 5 MMO's in my life so far, and been to countless forums about the MMO's I've never gotten into. Many MMO players only play MMO's, to them its not even gaming anymore. It's getting together with the guild you've played with for years to do a raid on a tuesday night for a few hours. That has more in common with a bowling or golfing league than a videogame. They'll pay for it so they can keep playing.

The MMO community are a bunch of content locusts anyway. Play the game, devour all its content, be angry on the forums with the rest of the players, mass exodus to the new game with new content. Repeat.