[Opinion] EQ Next - Game Changers/Breakers

[Cheeb]

With the official announcement of EverQuest Next just a few weeks away the game has been coming up a lot at work lately. Since myself and a couple coworkers play on the P99 server I thought it would be fun to bring our most recent conversation to the boards.

We started talking about what would be some game changers (positive) and some game breakers (negative) in terms of features included in EverQuest Next. Changers would be categorized as something that isn't currently in the P99 era of EQ that you wouldn't mind seeing incorporated in EQN. Breakers would be features that you most associate with the P99 era of EQ that, if they weren't re-imagined in EQN, would keep you from purchasing the game.

Here is my list, I would love to see what you guys think!

Changers:
*Non instanced player housing
*Race/Faction based PvP system
*Robust and rewarding crafting system

Breakers:
*Instanced zones
*Class based characters (no one class fits all)
*Smaller server/community sizes

Sound off!

-Cheeb

[Gaffin Deeppockets]

Aggro meter.

[August]

I don't understand the hate towards instanced zones. Just because WoW instanticized the dungeons doesn't mean that it was a bad idea.

I mean, look at the way we (or at least, I) play P1999. I look for zones that are not that populated so I can get a group / get decent EXP. I skipped unrest almost entirely this leveling up path because often times there were too many people. And, if I had a group, some 6 people, that was awesome. Usually, though, I was wishing that we were the ONLY group in the zone so we could have more pulls. Sure, the higher level camp is there and that's fine, as long as they don't pull from us.

This extrapolates into the end game as well. We have a bunch of 'hardcore' raiders out there who want to slay dragons, and we all can't. Well, if things were instanced, we certainly could.

Instances that were difficult, and that produced loot on a weekly cadence, allows for a healthy server size without the need to grief each other and the necessity of a RnF board that plagues this forum. Do I think that being able to teleport and get assigned to random people from a pool of 50,000 is a good idea? No.

But, then again, if you want EQNext to be a success, and I'm going to assume you do, you are going to need subscriber bases reaching into the millions (hopefully). When talking about how to fit all those people in there - do you make 1000 servers with 1000 people each in them? That's way too many servers! And the bad ones get vacant and waste those peoples time. You need consolidation - you need higher numbers to have a community thrive if there are multiples. P1999 works because this is only 1 private server - not a brand new MMO catering to the multitudes.

The answer to this is instancing. Instance the dungeons because let's face it, at level 10 there will be thousands of people all wanting to go do those dungeons. Can you imagine 100 people in a dungeon like unrest? Can you imagine 1000? And if you don't instance, what is the answer? Make the dungeon HUGE!! But then the dungeon becomes out of scale for your world, with so many camps. You won't be able to memorize the layout or kill the choice rare because there'd have to be so MANY of them - enough to maybe satisfy 200-300 people at any given time.

The alternative to that, if you don't instance, is to make the WORLD huge - make everyone so spread out that we don't have this problem. Instancing gives us virtual real estate without the cost of spreading out the world to it's limits.

If I was going to redo it, I would certainly do instancing, with the following caveats:

24 hour timer on any instance - you go in, you're locked to it for 24 hours, no massive clears & reclears
No teleportation to instance - you have to find it.
No dungeon finder - you have to find your group.
Death = bind point, naked, none of this pansy spawning at the ent and walking back in.
Drops are not guaranteed - loot tables exist, but the item you want / any item doesn't necessarily have to drop.

I added the last one because the problem with instancing is item bloat. In WoW, everything is bind on pickup or bind on equip - very few things don't bind! Trading items is one of the best things about EQ to me, and I'd like to keep that going forward. If you want to keep items rare, then there needs to be thresholds to how many of X item can drop in a given day. This is already done by the laws enforcing p1999 (spawn rate, loot table, etc) and can be done in a more sophisticated way in the present day. THis way, FBSS are still awesome, they drop just as frequently, and are still tradeable. Giving everyone a FBSS per run sucks - and that's why instancing sucked in WoW - you are no longer special, just another toon.

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't like you anymore Tom.

Saying nice things about instancing. Get a load of this guy! :p

They may help fix a problem, but god damn they ruin my immersion! :(

[Rooj]

An instance typically means a repetitive linear dungeon with little to no exploration. Even though trains are annoying, I'd still rather have trains than instances. Your experience in an open world dungeon is normally somewhat different every time, unlike the usual instance. I think it's neat to run into other players that you may or may not know in open dungeons. The lack of exploration in instances seems to be the main reason that EQ type players dislike instances. Compare a dungeon like Lower Guk to Hellfire Citadel for example... I mean come on.

[August]

I don't like you anymore Tom.

Saying nice things about instancing. Get a load of this guy! :p

They may help fix a problem, but god damn they ruin my immersion! :(

Eh, it's just the truth and most people don't realize it. Everyone hates it when a zone is packed and you're not getting mobs. The only upside is that the item camps are 'hard' to get into and you have a forced rarity of item. If you can emulate that while enabling everyone to enjoy leveling, then you have the right idea.

I absolutely loved WoW instancing back in the day. BRD took a solid 3-4 hours and gave me purpose to my grind session without relying on quests - a true dungeon crawling experience. Often times in EQ you get to a camp and just sit there and that's fine and all, but doing something with purpose can be way more rewarding.

SoE realized this w/ LDoN. WoW popularized this and is the most popular MMO to date. Instancing was integral to that success, because everyone could do Wailing Caverns, everybody thought it was somewhat hard, and everyone thought it was fun. A lot of what Classic EQ brought to the table was a lack of technological innovation. You just can't support a large playerbase without instances. The only reason EQ lasted as long as it did with as high subs as it did is because the world spread out so bad and the top end content was so hard, whether it was the content itself or the keying process, that not a lot of people had contention in the top end. I remember raiding VT while other guilds were in PoP, others in eles, and others in Time. I remember climbing that ladder and thinking how much it would suck if there was fierce competition - there just wasn't because the world had gotten so huge and stratified.

A new game, with the appropriate amount of players, can't survive uninstanced. It just really can't. GW2 tackled this problem by having phasing instances so zones could expand and contract based on how many people were using them - everything was an instanced zone. I didn't like that method because you didn't really get to know people that way. I want a persistent world, that has dungeons that are instances, that's all. I just hope it gets done right.

[August]

An instance typically means a repetitive linear dungeon with little to no exploration. Even though trains are annoying, I'd still rather have trains than instances. Your experience in an open world dungeon is normally somewhat different every time, unlike the usual instance. I think it's neat to run into other players that you may or may not know in open dungeons. The lack of exploration in instances seems to be the main reason that EQ type players dislike instances. Compare a dungeon like Lower Guk to Hellfire Citadel for example... I mean come on.

You're speaking to an instance type that I don't want. Once TBC rolled out the instances in WoW started becoming very linear.

WHy don't you compare Lower Guk to say, Blackrock Depths. Blackrock Depths was huge - way more spawns compared to lguk. It was difficult to do (at appropriate level) and the rewards varied.

The only difference is that mobs don't RESPAWN. I find it funny that you will complain about a 'competitive linear dungeon' and then sit in the same spot for 4 hours killing the 11 spawns your group can claim. While I agree the TBC and onward dungeons are far too linear for my taste, I think a lot of the old world WoW instancing was done properly and doesn't deserve a bad rap at all. If you added true respawns, they would outclass anything in classic EQ by a mile.

[Rooj]

Blackrock Depths sucked. And have you ever gotten lost in a WoW instance? I haven't.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

What I most love about instanced gameplay, is that it is like you and the pug you assembled in 10 minutes over the ww channels have an entire server to yourself. Then you get totally immersed and bam, 40 minutes later yer done and locked out till the next day, and able to settle in for whatever is on TV.

That is how you design a deep, involving game.

[Tecmos Deception]

Everyone hates it when a zone is packed and you're not getting mobs.

Well sure. But that's why there is more than one place to go at any level on EQ, and why a new MMO with a modern take on these old mechanics could plan for overcrowded zones.

I... hmm. I feel like you're talking about apples and oranges here. Talking about unrest being busy and so we need instances? OF COURSE unrest is busy. It's a tiny-ass zone with an amazing XP mod that everyone is told to go to if they don't want to be in MM. Couple that with the fact that even untwinked players on p99 have amazing gear compared to untwinked players on live and that twinked players would have made live-kunark-era 60s jelly and... well... yeah, of course unrest is too busy.

But a new MMO doing a modern take on the old EQ mechanics wouldn't need to be like that. There'd be many ways to fix the problems of non-instancing without all the negatives of instancing.


Speaking of negatives of instancing, I think Rooj captured most of my sentiment on the subject:

An instance typically means a repetitive linear dungeon with little to no exploration. Even though trains are annoying, I'd still rather have trains than instances. Your experience in an open world dungeon is normally somewhat different every time, unlike the usual instance. I think it's neat to run into other players that you may or may not know in open dungeons. The lack of exploration in instances seems to be the main reason that EQ type players dislike instances.

[Tecmos Deception]

The only difference is that mobs don't RESPAWN. I find it funny that you will complain about a 'competitive linear dungeon' and then sit in the same spot for 4 hours killing the 11 spawns your group can claim.

Again, I say that you're talking about the old take on old mechanics when that is definitely not exactly how things would be re-done in a modern MMO. There's no reason that a non-instanced dungeon needs to be so static; that's just how it was done ages ago when EQ was created.

[Tecmos Deception]

I want a persistent world, that has dungeons that are instances, that's all. I just hope it gets done right.

I suppose there is also no reason that a game would need to have ONLY instanced dungeons or ONLY non-instanced dungeons.

/shrug

[stormlord]

With the official announcement of EverQuest Next just a few weeks away the game has been coming up a lot at work lately. Since myself and a couple coworkers play on the P99 server I thought it would be fun to bring our most recent conversation to the boards.

We started talking about what would be some game changers (positive) and some game breakers (negative) in terms of features included in EverQuest Next. Changers would be categorized as something that isn't currently in the P99 era of EQ that you wouldn't mind seeing incorporated in EQN. Breakers would be features that you most associate with the P99 era of EQ that, if they weren't re-imagined in EQN, would keep you from purchasing the game.

Here is my list, I would love to see what you guys think!

Changers:
*Non instanced player housing
*Race/Faction based PvP system
*Robust and rewarding crafting system

Breakers:
*Instanced zones
*Class based characters (no one class fits all)
*Smaller server/community sizes

Sound off!

-Cheeb
Wurm Online is the closest thing IMHO to old school EQ in a sandbox. While Wurm Online doesn't have strong NPC scripts (lore/quests) and lots of factions and lots of story and complex dungeons, it does have players that do their own thing and join together and make their own stories. The mechanics are similar too. Literally, there're corpse runs. There's no in-game map. Gaining skills is slow. Monsters aggro and can train you. Terrain can be dangerous if you run on steep areas. Etc. The harshness is one of the major reasons I've liked it so much. It's massively better than anything I've played so far. Way better than EQ1, in terms of its impact on me. The only downside is that the skills are undeveloped and so the result is a lot of grinding. But then again making something like Wurm Online is a massive undertaking. Imperfection is just part of the business.

Immersion. When I made my ranger in surefall glades I remember wandering around in the dark. I remember danger. I remember everything being new. That feeling hit me with Wurm Online, and it was bigger. God, I sit here and type and I don't think it's getting through. Wurm Online is tough and a lot of people won't like it. Classic EQ was tough too, but people only played it because there wasn't much else available. But some players like it when things are tough. I'm one of them. But Wurm Online is freeform. Things just happen. Trees and creatures move around. Players change things. On the pvp servers, players have wars. Wurm Online is so much more than the punishment people associate with games like that. No pain, no gain, though.

If you haven't tried Wurm Online and any of what I said appeals to you, TRY IT! This is especially true if it's not the nostalgia that attracts you to classic EQ but the unforgiving gameplay mechanics. There's too much for me to say in this small post. I could go down a long list of s***, seriously. Let me just shorten and say beautiful moments happen in Wurm Online and none of them are preplanned. They emerge from the unplanned sandbox environment. For example, I played a ranger in EQ1 and play something similar in Wurm Online. When I made my first house I was unaware that there was a (rare) Willow tree a few steps away. Willow trees are good wood for bows. Man, I can't go over all the things that have hit me like a ton of bricks with that game. The immersion is like nothing else. When I am in that world, it's another world, not a game. It's special.

(btw, i made my house in august 2012. I last logged out in late april and that tree was STILL there. keep in mind that you can kill trees by chopping up the stump. wurm online is persistent open-world sandbox.)

The problem is you can't compare EQN to classic EQ. It will be NOTHING like classic EQ. It'll have more in common with the newest MMO's. That means virtually nothing in common with old school EQ. So when I see this thread, I just shake my head. EQ Next is not EQ, it's more like the newest Star Trek movies. They're pluggin into the sandbox stuff in minecraft and freerealms and second life and adding it their re-envisioned EQ.

EQN is EQN. Take it for what it's. Don't compare it to EQ because it's like apples and oranges.

[Kiwaukee]

The developers mentioned something during the Everquest Series panel at E3 that I thought was very interesting, and could possibly be a hint at their stance on instanced content.

They mentioned that EQ2 was moving to a system where there is open world competition for bosses, but there are also instanced "practice arenas" where guilds can hone their skills against avatars of the bosses for lesser rewards. You'll still want to compete for the open world boss, but if you don't get it, you'll still have content.

I can see the same type of thing for instanced zones. Have the open world camps for the good loot, and instanced zones as back up for those who want competition free experience camps.

EDIT: The devs have also mentioned that EQN will be a "do what you want" kind of character experience, so I'm assuming you'll be able to level off of crafting and possibly other forms of gameplay, like diplomacy, trade, or even farming (crops, not loot... /puke).

[Rhuma7]

I would like EQN to basically be a new fresh MMO with Everquest 1 classes/mechanics with un-instanced dungeons/leveling areas and instanced end-game raids.

Slow enough leveling to make friends and learn your class. Items that are rare enough to give meaning/rewarding feeling when acquiring them. I also feel there should be world-dropped items, so while grinding out the levels and making friends you have a very slim chance of getting a very nice item for your level range.

Death penalty can be bad but EQ really needed to have more availability to rez and corpse summoning spells much earlier than when they were given to classes.

EDIT: I dont really want them to reinvent the wheel but to give a breath of fresh air to the Everquest franchise with a few fixes to some of the mistakes they made over the years and give the fans that made them a success in the first place something to come back to and enjoy playing a new MMO.

[Cheeb]

Instanced zones ruin the community IMO. I can remember very few player names from my time playing WoW because everyone was just a body. People really didn't need to talk to each other, after a while it felt like everyone was the same just with different letters above their characters head.

I can remember countless people that I played with in the first few EQ expansions due to the smaller numbers per server and the fact that you'd have to actually go to the zone you wanted to hunt in and try and get a group together or join one that was already going.

I know EQN won't be anything like EQ was or is currently. The way people play MMO's these days isn't remotely close to how we played them 10-15 years ago. I'm just curious, if it was up to you, what would you add and what can you not live without?

[Tecmos Deception]

I'd like to see an MMO that puts the RP back into MMORPG.

I'm not talking about people writing up elaborate backstories to their characters or speaking in ye olde english or whatnot. No no. I'm talking about removing the focus on esport PvP and PvE, about taking the some of the harsh reality aspects from PNP RPGs and from survival horror games and weaving them into an MMO.

On p99 you park your dwarf cleric and your ogre shaman and your iksar monk in tube room for 3 weeks at a time, logging in one at a time as needed to get the pixels from king. Your characters are living in a wet, slimy, damp, dark 10x10 room with a goo waterfall in it, right around the corner from their enemies. There's no RP there!

I want to see characters who are soft-capped on playtime because the characters need rest, because the characters don't get much rest when they are sleeping on slimy stone floors in the bottom of a dungeon with their enemies patrolling just feet away. I want characters to stay ingame when offline, obeying scripts from the player, etc. I want druids to plant trees that grow into a forest, gear to decay (but that not be a OMG HORRIBLE thing because it is designed to decay and be repaired and replaced and that's no big thing), weight (and volume, omg) limits to exist and be meaningful, PvP actions to have reprecussions with NPCs and PCs alike, etc.


Might be asking for a bit much for this decade, but god knows no MMO is going to convince me to spend a dime on it until a lot of these sorts of things are put into one.

[t0lkien]

I don't understand the hate towards instanced zones. Just because WoW instanticized the dungeons doesn't mean that it was a bad idea.

This has been talked about elsewhere infinitum and those who don't understand are never going to I don't think. What we are talking about are two fundamentally different game experiences and preferences. Instances change the game from open world to something else. You won't have the frantic spawn competitions you have in EQ, you won't have a contiguous game world. The game experience and the game world is fractured. For many of us, it gamifies things in a bad way. The implications are deep and far reaching and impact every aspect of the gameplay in one way or another (including the community and the economy by the way).

If you like instancing, good for you. But these are two different types of game. I can tell you I hate instancing with a passion and won't play a game that implements it for very long. Instancing is a bad (I would say lazy) tech solution to a tech problem that overrides core gameplay, which is always a bad idea. Gameplay is king. Forcing core aspects of the game in a direction because of tech imperatives just means you didn't think hard enough about the problem, and is an example of why coders should never drive design. True open world is one of the reasons I'm on p99, and one of the reasons why even a 14 year old game is still better than those released in the past few years.

As for EQN, I don't hold out any hope for it. They have already abandoned the original idea of upgrading Classic EQ, thrown everything out, and come up with "novel ideas" that are going to "push the genre" further. For anyone who has been around games for any length of time, that rhetoric is the mark of death. You watch, it's going to be a steaming pile of mediocrity - again. SoE can't make great games. They are the ones who fubared the original EQ after strong arming it from Verant.

So for me it's back to p99 until someone manages to put out a game that isn't polluted by mercenary, clueless business heads and politically, career, security motivated "company men" designers. For an example of what such designers do to great games, see Diable 3.

[Vondra]

I never saw item camps as being a big problem, that people couldn't get things.

On live classic, there were many things I never did loot off the corpse myself. But people traded and sold back then (more trading on my server) just as they do now.

It's not like "Oh i'm screwed, there's a line waiting to camp x" was a big deal. At least not when it came to tradeable dungeon loot.

[Kiwaukee]

I envision an open-world setting with NPCs that change with the playerbase, sort of like Guild Wars 2 did with the dynamic event system.

When players camp the shit out of the frogloks in Guk, they adapt and move to another nearby location. When a big raid boss is taken down, his underlings flee the dungeon briefly and infiltrate nearby areas.

Stuff like that keeps the world instance free, but at the same time allows for dynamic content that breaks up the monotony and forces players to adapt, rather than sitting in a tunnel for 2 months.

[stormlord]

I never saw item camps as being a big problem, that people couldn't get things.

On live classic, there were many things I never did loot off the corpse myself. But people traded and sold back then (more trading on my server) just as they do now.

It's not like "Oh i'm screwed, there's a line waiting to camp x" was a big deal. At least not when it came to tradeable dungeon loot.
Gotta admit camping sucked bad. I didn't like it then and still don't. This is one of the reasons my character was gimp somewhat on live. I could never farm/camp stuff. God didn't make me to camp. So I just ran around and killed stuff in different zones. I researched quests/items that weren't too much camping to do.

Odd thing is, I liked not having the in-game map. Liked corpse runs. Liked trains. Etc.

I believe every problem needs several answers. Eq1 wasn't always good at giving you options, but then again, it depends who you ask. Some people would want a button they can click to get their corpse straight away (without penalty). They'd consider that an option. Others would consider the summon corpse spell an option or a corpse rod or a secret entrance in a dungeon to get to your corpse faster. The difference is hte first person doesn't want to have any part with corpse runs. If they have to do more than click a button, they'll quit. So for a company to give them an "option" means they have to essentially make corpse runs purposeless.

[August]

Honestly, you're setting yourself up for failure if you think that a big box SOE MMO is not going to have instancing.

Please describe how you would accommodate 1 million+ subscriptions w/o the virtual real estate provided by instancing. All popular or near popular MMOs contain instanced dungeons, or even instanced zones at large.

The scale of gameplay cannot be contained to static zones that crash if there are 150+ people in them. The population is just too spread out. With the prevalent technology we have all information about the game will be catalogued and readily available within days of its discovery. If people have to wait to get to a singular spawn that only occurs once every 30 minutes, they will rightfully think that is bad game design.

I absolutely think there is a place for static zones and a server community. I just don't see why an instance is evil - given the circumstances I described. A bundled adventure that you have to form a group for yourself, that has to be traveled to. It doesn't mean there can't be zones like unrest, it just means that there can't ONLY be zones like unrest.

How many unrest zones do you need for a server whose population is 30,000?

[Tecmos Deception]

Please describe how you would accommodate 1 million+ subscriptions w/o the virtual real estate provided by instancing.

It's not like I get paid [whatever big-shot MMO designers get paid] to design brilliant MMOs! But I'd like to think that the people who DO design games for a living would be able to come up with something. Of course, I'm pretty pessimistic, so I don't actually think that.

I think I'd be more willing to see instances that aren't specific to a single group though. A "1 instance per group" type of instancing just damages too many things about MMOs, imo, even though it does address overcrowding and performance issues. I think it was DDO that did this with the city zones? When the servers would be busy, there would be multiple instances of the different city zones and you could pick which you wanted to go to... so you could go meet up with buddies if you wanted, or you could go to a less-crowded instance, whatever. Maybe that could be adapted to dungeons in a way that would relieve overcrowding and such issues but without causing much damage to the community by fracturing players into their own little universes any more than absolutely necessary or enabling every individual who wants to have his own wonderland to play in by himself.

[Kiwaukee]

Honestly, you're setting yourself up for failure if you think that a big box SOE MMO is not going to have instancing.

Please describe how you would accommodate 1 million+ subscriptions w/o the virtual real estate provided by instancing. All popular or near popular MMOs contain instanced dungeons, or even instanced zones at large.

The scale of gameplay cannot be contained to static zones that crash if there are 150+ people in them. The population is just too spread out. With the prevalent technology we have all information about the game will be catalogued and readily available within days of its discovery. If people have to wait to get to a singular spawn that only occurs once every 30 minutes, they will rightfully think that is bad game design.

I absolutely think there is a place for static zones and a server community. I just don't see why an instance is evil - given the circumstances I described. A bundled adventure that you have to form a group for yourself, that has to be traveled to. It doesn't mean there can't be zones like unrest, it just means that there can't ONLY be zones like unrest.

How many unrest zones do you need for a server whose population is 30,000?

Original EQ worked fine with similar circumstances and less technology by limiting server populations. Limit the server population to 5000 and have 200 servers. Encourage players to create characters on low population servers using common methods (Preferred servers, free transfers, etc.).

Couple that with the innate diversity within the game (characters of different races level in different areas and each have different options within a given level range) and you have a functional system that can operate without fracturing the community.

That's the driving point behind non-instanced gameplay - people would rather have a real community and wait 30 minutes for a spawn or move to another camp because their target is occupied than instantly get what they're looking for and never care about the people they play with. Your focus is too narrow - you're assuming people will only enjoy the game if they don't have to wait for things, and that's simply not true. Having to wait or having to work for things in games like EQ was what made each upgrade and each group a true accomplishment. Ask people who play here what they think about WoW as it stands currently, and most of them will tell you that it's turned into a kiddie game where you're spoon fed pixels.

No thanks. I like my pixels at the top of a mountain, not right outside my front door.

EDIT: Making a game that's instantly gratifying in the manner described is only asking to be in direct competition with WoW, and no one in their right mind wants to do that. People who play WoW (or are addicted) will likely never leave it for a similar experience for any extended amount of time because of the investment that they have in their characters. WoW, while watered down, is still fun sometimes. People won't just quit for a similar game. You have to have a marked difference in your content and play style to draw players out of the MMO market and retain them. Non-instanced, competition for content can be that difference for EQN.

[August]

It's not like I get paid [whatever big-shot MMO designers get paid] to design brilliant MMOs! But I'd like to think that the people who DO design games for a living would be able to come up with something. Of course, I'm pretty pessimistic, so I don't actually think that.

It's mainly about resource management. You either have low population servers, no servers at all (multilayer-instanced zones - everyone zones into Dreadlands, or Dreadlands_01, Dreadlands_0xx), or high population servers that employ hubs of connectivity (Cities, other leveling zones) with instances in them to increase the real estate. When you have 2000 people at level 40, you need them to go somewhere. It's really just a thought exercise in population distribution.

I don't think there's a magic bullet. I think the EQ we played, and the way we played right now, was unique. Servers had relatively low populations as the genre was new. We had lots of players playing at different times of days, and even then zones got 'crowded'. Now that MMO is more mainstream, you have to be able to sustain that model, or throw it out entirely. However, most attempts I've seen make you either feel like you're playing solo, or there's no community, or that everything is too easy.

Also consider the effect of a high population server and static zones with regards to loot distribution. Say normally there are 1-2 FBSS on this server entering per day on a population of about 900 peak hours. To keep prices the same, on a population of 30,00, you'd need 35-45 dropping a day. You can't do that in a static zone - it has to be instanced. I think a lot of this conversation has to do with scaling a community when we are used to our small ones, and maybe what a lot of you want is just a small community.

You can guarantee that SoE is not going for 'small' w/ EQNEXT.

[Tecmos Deception]

I think the EQ we played, and the way we played right now, was unique. Servers had relatively low populations as the genre was new.

I think you're wrong here. Last time I was about to try playing WoW seriously again, I was exploring for a high population server that had a datacenter nearest to me. The majority of WoW's servers have smaller populations of players online than EQ servers had back in the classic-velious era. Some of them have smaller populations than p99. And iirc even the largest WoW servers are only a couple thousand players per side at peaks?

[August]

Original EQ worked fine with similar circumstances and less technology by limiting server populations. Limit the server population to 5000 and have 200 servers. Encourage players to create characters on low population servers using common methods (Preferred servers, free transfers, etc.).

Couple that with the innate diversity within the game (characters of different races level in different areas and each have different options within a given level range) and you have a functional system that can operate without fracturing the community.

That's the driving point behind non-instanced gameplay - people would rather have a real community and wait 30 minutes for a spawn or move to another camp because their target is occupied than instantly get what they're looking for and never care about the people they play with. Your focus is too narrow - you're assuming people will only enjoy the game if they don't have to wait for things, and that's simply not true. Having to wait or having to work for things in games like EQ was what made each upgrade and each group a true accomplishment. Ask people who play here what they think about WoW as it stands currently, and most of them will tell you that it's turned into a kiddie game where you're spoon fed pixels.

No thanks. I like my pixels at the top of a mountain, not right outside my front door.

I don't understand why you think that having 'instances' causes your entire gameplay is non-instanced.

As to my focus, it's anything but narrow. You cannot limit an MMO launch to 5k people. The amount of uptake and then submission relapse is huge on new releases. If you start with 5k people per server, it may end up with only 1k active people. Increase this cap but don't increase the game world, and people are constantly fighting over resources (quest mobs, drops, camps) and people quit out of frustration. There is a very fine balance between world size and population that I feel the majority of people don't put into consideration.

And please stop bringing up WoW in its current incarnation. I don't like it and I don't participate it, and I'm not advocating that system at all if you read what I write.

[Kagatob]

I'd like to see an MMO that puts the RP back into MMORPG.

I'm not talking about people writing up elaborate backstories to their characters or speaking in ye olde english or whatnot. No no. I'm talking about removing the focus on esport PvP and PvE, about taking the some of the harsh reality aspects from PNP RPGs and from survival horror games and weaving them into an MMO.

On p99 you park your dwarf cleric and your ogre shaman and your iksar monk in tube room for 3 weeks at a time, logging in one at a time as needed to get the pixels from king. Your characters are living in a wet, slimy, damp, dark 10x10 room with a goo waterfall in it, right around the corner from their enemies. There's no RP there!

I want to see characters who are soft-capped on playtime because the characters need rest, because the characters don't get much rest when they are sleeping on slimy stone floors in the bottom of a dungeon with their enemies patrolling just feet away. I want characters to stay ingame when offline, obeying scripts from the player, etc. I want druids to plant trees that grow into a forest, gear to decay (but that not be a OMG HORRIBLE thing because it is designed to decay and be repaired and replaced and that's no big thing), weight (and volume, omg) limits to exist and be meaningful, PvP actions to have reprecussions with NPCs and PCs alike, etc.


Might be asking for a bit much for this decade, but god knows no MMO is going to convince me to spend a dime on it until a lot of these sorts of things are put into one.

Isn't this pretty close to what they wanted Vanguard SoH to be? We all know how that worked out. :(

I agree that instances are terrible for communities, I stuck with Everquest for about 5 years after it's release, I stopped enjoying it and pretty much just went with the flow for a couple of years once LDoN released. After LDoN, GoD and PoTime becoming instanced EQ just lost everything that felt magical about it.

[August]

I think you're wrong here. Last time I was about to try playing WoW seriously again, I was exploring for a high population server that had a datacenter nearest to me. The majority of WoW's servers have smaller populations of players online than EQ servers had back in the classic-velious era. Some of them have smaller populations than p99. And iirc even the largest WoW servers are only a couple thousand players per side at peaks?

WoW servers on average have 50k population.

The height of everquest in 2003 - when the world was already huge by comparison, was 425k subs total . It's hardly even close. Not to mention that EQ spread out leveling quite a bit - a tactic that can be used again, but, with technology the way it is today, I don't see it really being a possibility.

November of 1999 had 225k subs - wikipedia to the rescue

[stormlord]

Honestly, you're setting yourself up for failure if you think that a big box SOE MMO is not going to have instancing.

Please describe how you would accommodate 1 million+ subscriptions w/o the virtual real estate provided by instancing. All popular or near popular MMOs contain instanced dungeons, or even instanced zones at large.

The scale of gameplay cannot be contained to static zones that crash if there are 150+ people in them. The population is just too spread out. With the prevalent technology we have all information about the game will be catalogued and readily available within days of its discovery. If people have to wait to get to a singular spawn that only occurs once every 30 minutes, they will rightfully think that is bad game design.

I absolutely think there is a place for static zones and a server community. I just don't see why an instance is evil - given the circumstances I described. A bundled adventure that you have to form a group for yourself, that has to be traveled to. It doesn't mean there can't be zones like unrest, it just means that there can't ONLY be zones like unrest.

How many unrest zones do you need for a server whose population is 30,000?
No point in tryign to convicne people who do not like isntancing.

But I agree that there's very very high chance of instancing in EQN.

Just don't start pounding your chest and acting superior.

I wish people would just realize there's a difference in opinion and leave it alone. The past 15 years of arguing back and forth is never productive. It's like a husband and wife that can't divorce or something.

I was arguing a whole lot back on live. That was b4 I realized there were options out there. I felt like the game I had liked was being smashed and remade into some circus show. I didn't realize back then how many games are available. There're tons. I tended to stick to a couple games, I didn't explore a lot.

[Tecmos Deception]

WoW servers on average have 50k population.

What's your source? I ran census mod RELIGIOUSLY the entire time I played WoW (so on and off several months at a time over the course of years). I think it was Kel'Thuzad that was the largest of the servers I played on. KT ally never had remotely close to 50,000 characters in my census. Maybe more like 10k. And every 1 player had way more than 1 character. And you never had every single player online at the same time.

[Rhuma7]

From what I've heard they want EQN to be the biggest (in size) sandbox game ever made.

Instancing any of that content will be a disaster. Youll have 5k people on a server and it'll look like a ghost town.

[Millburn]

I want to see an auction house you have to interface with both from a game menu perspective but also from a community perspective. The idea that I have in my head right now is that you have very few auction houses or trade hubs in the world but in those areas you are limited to posting only a few items at a time for menu searching. If you want to sell more you hang out in the zone and hawk your wares like the good old EC days. I feel like this is a good compromise of convenience and community.

[Rooj]

I'm serious - I would rather have training, overpopulation, lack of camps and available content, and even long camps instead of instances.

[stormlord]

From what I've heard they want EQN to be the biggest (in size) sandbox game ever made.

Instancing any of that content will be a disaster. Youll have 5k people on a server and it'll look like a ghost town.
Gonna need a lot of teleporters if the instances (or open world?) are big. I'm not against teleporters, especially ones that players can build. I'm just against developers determing how everything works. The fun with sandbox games is doing things yourself and figuring it out. Developers should take a backseat.

[Rhuma7]

Honestly I expect EQN to be a lot like vanguard, maybe a little less brown.

[Rhaj]

I will never play a game that has instancing at its core. Thats why I couldn't stand most "modern" MMORPGs.

[August]

What's your source? I ran census mod RELIGIOUSLY the entire time I played WoW (so on and off several months at a time over the course of years). I think it was Kel'Thuzad that was the largest of the servers I played on. KT ally never had remotely close to 50,000 characters in my census. Maybe more like 10k. And every 1 player had way more than 1 character. And you never had every single player online at the same time.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly the numbers because you don't know the counts of per characters. There are sites that do estimation based on guild presence, armory, etc.

http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

is one of them. You can also try WoWWiki, but these are current numbers, and WoW subscription is down by 3 million as well. Realms clocking in with 120k characters in them, all of which are atleast level 10.

You also can't undervalue presence in multiple realms in a limited resource society. You can have multiple raiders be the same person behind the wheels, and he's consuming more pieces of pie by doing so. In an instanced dungeon, this doesn't matter, but it would certainly play a role in a completely non-instanced one. I had lots of friends who would raid on multiple realms in Wow, and I knew a few botters as well. People 6-boxing because it's 10/month and it's not disallowed can kill a community if they monopolize the static content. I've seen it happen on Fippy Darkpaw already.

[t0lkien]

WoW servers on average have 50k population.

WoW servers are hard limited to 5k at any one time. You obviously don't remember the hour long queues shortly after launch.

On the open world, all on one server thing, Eve Online called and would like to say hello. Also, see Big World technology.

[August]

WoW servers are hard limited to 5k at any one time. You obviously don't remember the hour long queues shortly after launch.

On the open world, all on one server thing, Eve Online called and would like to say hello. Also, see Big World technology.

Wrong. You're talking about launch when they hard capped servers to maximum pop because of server load. FWIW I remember being #14XXX in line for Archimonde queue.

Maximum capacity for a WoW server is 40k active connections.

[t0lkien]

Wrong. You're talking about launch when they hard capped servers to maximum pop because of server load. FWIW I remember being #14XXX in line for Archimonde queue.

Maximum capacity for a WoW server is 40k active connections.

You are going to have to provide a link for that. 40k active connections is serious tech.

If a single server can support 40k connections, there is no reason to ever implement instancing. As I said though, link please. I honestly doubt that is true - but happy to be wrong!

[Kiwaukee]

I don't understand why you think that having 'instances' causes your entire gameplay is non-instanced.

As to my focus, it's anything but narrow. You cannot limit an MMO launch to 5k people. The amount of uptake and then submission relapse is huge on new releases. If you start with 5k people per server, it may end up with only 1k active people. Increase this cap but don't increase the game world, and people are constantly fighting over resources (quest mobs, drops, camps) and people quit out of frustration. There is a very fine balance between world size and population that I feel the majority of people don't put into consideration.

And please stop bringing up WoW in its current incarnation. I don't like it and I don't participate it, and I'm not advocating that system at all if you read what I write.

I don't understand your first sentence, but if you're trying to say that my perspective is that instances are evil and that there should be absolutely zero of them, that's not correct.

And of course I didn't mean that servers should be limited to exactly 5k people on release, it was just a number that I threw out there to show that server population can be controlled as a means to promote un-instanced content. Obviously, more people will be playing in the first few weeks than over the life of the game, but that's the same for any MMO. You shouldn't build your entire game to try to work around the fact that the low level zones will be a disaster for a month or two. That's part of the process. Once the levels begin to bell curve out, population will stabilize.

Build your servers with an ideal peak population that fits the size of your open world. The first week or two will be nuts, and every server will feel like Orc Hill or the Newbie Log would feel if P99 wiped and rerolled tomorrow. After a while, it would settle. Yes, some people would quit because they get frustrated with the early overcrowding, but that's just part of the process.

Some instances would be fine, but you'd have to limit them. I personally enjoyed the LDoN instances because they encouraged repeat runs for progress and had some element of randomness to them. The format promoted grouping with the same people and developing a system of progression through each dungeon type. That's the type of instancing that works FOR the community of the game without taking a huge chunk out of the competition element, and that's the type of stuff I'm talking about.

[Kagatob]

I don't understand your first sentence, but if you're trying to say that my perspective is that instances are evil and that there should be absolutely zero of them, that's not correct.

I would say the same.

Levels 1-5 mines of gloomingdeep instances. Once you hit lvl 5 you get 'released' to your town and the rest is a static world. Noobie log/Orc Hill problem solved. :cool:

[t0lkien]

Here's the thing though - removing the "down" side of open world also removes the positive, deep side. They two are sides of the same coin. Same with a punitive death penalty, and a slow progression curve. You can't make things easier and less painful, and keep the immensity of the reward.

Also, you lose the inevitable moments of synchronicity that happen when players are forced into community that could never be planned for or designed. That is the beauty of open world MMOs. I hated aspects of the endgame cluster on live, but I loved what accompanied it. You don't get that love without that hate. This informed guild structures, and the entire meta game that was the community. Instances reduce and inevitably kill all that. It creates a smaller experience.

I understand a lot of people prefer that, but I also understand we are talking about different games. I won't commit to a game that has any type of instancing for these and many other reasons that have to do with inevitable design impact. It's like avoiding certain openings in chess because they lead to certain types of middle and endgame. You may not be able to see that during the opening, but it's inevitable and logically inescapable. A seemingly innocuous pawn move during the first 10 moves can lose you the game 30 moves later. Instancing may not be immediately obviously bad, but the results of it are IMO. And that can be seen in all the games that have implemented it.

P.S. LDoN was crap for me, and I actually quit the game for a long time after it. The augmentation system accompanying it was also ugly, inelegantly complex, and game changing in a bad way (and clearly implemented to force players to play longer, and farm instances, not because it increased the fun aspect i.e. it was an SOE-ism that the original designers would never have considered).... but that's another discussion.

P.P.S. I'm still waiting on a link showing 40k active connections per WoW server.

[Kagatob]

I like to compare instancing as a gaming mechanic to cell-shading as a graphical medium.
Both were quick cheap fixes that became essentially the standard for a while before a better solution was created, but boy did things suck during the transition.

[Millburn]

I thought Wind Waker and XIII were pretty awesome actually.

[Kiwaukee]

Dark Cloud 2 was cell-shaded and was beautiful. I think it worked with games like that, where the protagonists were younger.

[Rooj]

I hated Wind Waker... That was the last Zelda I will ever play.

[Kagatob]

I thought Wind Waker and XIII were pretty awesome actually.

If you saw the game that would of been Wind Waker before Nintendo went the cheap rout you'd shit your pants. Game still looked better than anything Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword ever dreamt of being. I don't know if they are still up on youtube (can't look don't have access where I am currently) but I think it was Zelda Spaceworld trailer. Spaceworld being the convention it debuted at not the name of the game.

XIII was awesome, but it was also a parody game of sorts and didn't set any industry standards for several years.

Dark Cloud 2 was cell-shaded and was beautiful. I think it worked with games like that, where the protagonists were younger.
Paper Mario worked too, but those games were targeting younger audiences, I dislike Cell-shading less then I dislike the fact that it became an industry standard when developers all wanted to go cheap.

[gotrocks]

guarantee you wow servers are not currently hardcapped at 5k active connections.

At launch, maybe, but 8 years later that tech has been improved upon.

40k sounds like a stretch though.

[t0lkien]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php?serverid=-1

Unless I'm misunderstanding that site (and it's a little hard to read IMO), that's an average of around 700 players per server per day, with peaks of no more than 1500 o_O

If that's even ballpark, that 40k active connections figure is (and I mean this without insult) laughable. I kind of knew this because 40k active connections is in the realms of CCP's server tech, and that stuff is world-wide and absolutely cutting edge. I suspect it may even exploit some unreported quantum bug in time and space ;)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/09/28/eve-evolved-eve-onlines-server-model/

That WoW data may not be current/complete though...

[JurisDictum]

Community is what brings MMORPG's to life. It's the difference between Diablo 2 and Everquest. And those games are worlds apart compared to say, WoW and Diablo 3.
Things that kill community:

-Solo to max level with efficiency. Obviously if you can just solo and deal with no one but yourself, you will opt to. Who wants to spend 15-30 mins assembling a group if they can just level alone at roughly the same (or better) pace. I feel that EQ did it best, by making this a niche thing for certain classes, that only situationally competed with group exp.
Otherwise, everyone is shortly dumped into the endgame having little to no grouping experience. Then suddenly expected to find groups, make a lot of friends, and get into the raid scene. While some people managed in early WoW, most socially awkward gamers just pouted to blizzard until they streamlined raiding into a group-finder like system. This way you barely had to talk to anyone and could essentially continue to solo.

-Anything endgame or groupable is instanced. Instancing encourages linear dungeon crawls that are tailor made for any random group of people to complete as long as they are the correct level range. Every piece of loot is massively farmed by the server and easily obtained by anyone. This is where, IMO the game stops being a true "MMO" and more of a action RPG (Diablo style). I want a dungeon to be a place, in the world, where people go to explore. Not a level in super mario.
With modern technology and sufficient funding, a lot of the problems with EQ overcamping and cockblocking can be solved by adjusting spawn rates real time. In other words, more people in the zone = faster spawn. They could also just make the areas bigger in the first place. There are many ways of incentivizing guild rotations for top content. For example: only get full rewards once a week, yet the mobs spawn once every 48 hours. Or something to that effect. If more than 3-4 guilds on a server are doing top raid content, chances are you should make the game harder.

-Making all travel instant. Maybe we don't need to wait 20+ mins a boat these days. But instant porting around the map makes the world seem artificially small. Horses and hearthstones are good enough.

If you disagree with the majority of this, I have a hard time understanding why you aren't playing WoW. It is clearly the best "modern mmorpg," if that's your thing.

[Kiwaukee]

Community is what brings MMORPG's to life. It's the difference between Diablo 2 and Everquest. And those games are worlds apart compared to say, WoW and Diablo 3.
Things that kill community:

-Solo to max level with efficiency. Obviously if you can just solo and deal with no one but yourself, you will opt to. Who wants to spend 15-30 mins assembling a group if they can just level alone at roughly the same (or better) pace. I feel that EQ did it best, by making this a niche thing for certain classes, that only situationally competed with group exp.
Otherwise, everyone is shortly dumped into the endgame having little to no grouping experience. Then suddenly expected to find groups, make a lot of friends, and get into the raid scene. While some people managed in early WoW, most socially awkward gamers just pouted to blizzard until they streamlined raiding into a group-finder like system. This way you barely had to talk to anyone and could essentially continue to solo.

-Anything endgame or groupable is instanced. Instancing encourages linear dungeon crawls that are tailor made for any random group of people to complete as long as they are the correct level range. Every piece of loot is massively farmed by the server and easily obtained by anyone. This is where, IMO the game stops being a true "MMO" and more of a action RPG (Diablo style). I want a dungeon to be a place, in the world, where people go to explore. Not a level in super mario.
With modern technology and sufficient funding, a lot of the problems with EQ overcamping and cockblocking can be solved by adjusting spawn rates real time. In other words, more people in the zone = faster spawn. They could also just make the areas bigger in the first place. There are many ways of incentivizing guild rotations for top content. For example: only get full rewards once a week, yet the mobs spawn once every 48 hours. Or something to that effect. If more than 3-4 guilds on a server are doing top raid content, chances are you should make the game harder.

-Making all travel instant. Maybe we don't need to wait 20+ mins a boat these days. But instant porting around the map makes the world seem artificially small. Horses and hearthstones are good enough.

If you disagree with the majority of this, I have a hard time understanding why you aren't playing WoW. It is clearly the best "modern mmorpg," if that's your thing.

Agreed, with one exception.

I think instanced groupable content is fine for major quest mobs and events. I think it's acceptable (and maybe better) for major quest mobs to be separate from campable or competitive content. If you want to have endgame quests that require drops from raid content, that's fine, but I think the majority of quests should require resourcefulness and determination instead of a batphone. I feel like some of the best quests in EQ were those that were rich in lore and gated by the time investment and ingenuity required rather than the power of a raid force. Circlet of the Falinkan is a perfect example, and I'm looking forward to it going live with Velious.

I think it's sad that some of the best lore in EQ wasn't experienced by a large part of the population because they did not have the capability of killing the raid bosses (due to competition), thus didn't even start the quest. A shame, because many of those quests were FANTASTICALLY written.

[Snifflechomp]

Re-railing this thread.

Someone said it already: Game play is king.

I basically want EQ with modernized features.

Leveling needs to be hard, and NOT quest-based. This is something I hate about WoW. If you aren't doing quests then you might as well be wasting your time.

Gear needs to be iconic, and truely difficult to obtain. Top end gear should never be crafted. Gear should NOT be restricted by levels (except for procs) just like it is now. This was part of the brilliance and replayability of EQ. You can slap that Fungi Tunic or Cloak of Flames on your level 1 alt.

[Snifflechomp]

This one is so big I thought it deserved its own reply.

I want a non-arbitrary combat system.

Most games use a model that determines the chance to hit, resist, etc, based on levels. A lvl 5 has no chance to land a spell on a lvl 50 for no reason other than the level difference. Conversely, a lvl 50 might get a huge bonus when attacking a lower level opponent.

Levels should simply give you access to better spells, skills, and gear but should not, imho, place arbitrary restrictions on what you can hit and for how much.

[diplo]

i wish my coworkers played EQ :(

[Scoresby]

This one is so big I thought it deserved its own reply.

I want a non-arbitrary combat system.

Most games use a model that determines the chance to hit, resist, etc, based on levels. A lvl 5 has no chance to land a spell on a lvl 50 for no reason other than the level difference. Conversely, a lvl 50 might get a huge bonus when attacking a lower level opponent.

Levels should simply give you access to better spells, skills, and gear but should not, imho, place arbitrary restrictions on what you can hit and for how much.

Yeah, I'd actually like to see it where the game essentially had unlimited levels, but with a non-linear leveling curve. To the point that you effectively have soft capped limits in place. Maybe the (typical) max level people reach is 10, but you still have content available for levels 11-20, it's just no one will likely ever reach these.

The levels basically buy you a bigger toolbox of abilities and more damage/efficiency via skill gains. However, each player has the same number of base hps and the major differences are the flexibility a character has by having more abilities and the increase in raw stats from gear (but not to crazy extremes).

A rough balance of this would mean 10 level one characters would have a shot at taking down a level 10 character in head-to-head (in a simple example melee just auto-attacking). Throw in the added abilities of the level 10 and the difference is more apparent with the level 10 winning out easily. I feel a system like this avoids some of the obvious traps of mudflation and actually makes the end game a bit more accessible without reaching "max level" if tuned correctly.

Speaking of that, raid tuning is silly. Let the raids be uncapped. If it takes you 100 people to kill it, that's what it takes. If you can do it with two groups, awesome. The benefits of mobilization/gearing a smaller raid force are clearly better, so any tuning should be a matter of player preference (how many people do we want to do this with?).

Lastly on gear. Gear should be important, but I like the idea of having situational gear that again, improves the flexibility your character has. Fishbone earrings were a good example. This item gave anyone a huge benefit when fighting under water. Think more like Metroid or Zelda, where you have certain equipment that makes things either way easier or possible at all. I feel for raw stat/more better gear, a healthy mix of drops and crafted is the way to go. Unlike a previous post though, I think at least some of the absolute best gear should be crafted (with a chance to fail on combine) using materials that come from rare/raid sources. Doing this actually gives some backbone to crafting and keeping the materials rare ensures the items stay rare (just like normal raid drops).

Everyone has their wishes, those are a few of mine!

[Rooj]

Why does it matter how many people a WoW server can hold, if they're all in instances? There is no longer a reason to ever leave the city in WoW. You just level up from dungeon/battleground queues. And when you're max level, well, you do the same thing.

[Atmas]

Things I would like to see:
A large expansive world that is not easily traversed. (I hated EQ2 for making everything a bell click away)

No or fewer gear sets for higher end gear. I really hate seeing everyone wear the same crap.

Items with unique abilities. One of the things I really liked about old EQ versus newer games were that some items quested or obtained actually augmented game play style.

There really is a million things I would like to add but since I doubt any EQ Devs are reading this will leave it at that.

Finally I know this may derail things but many of you forget or don't realize EQ created instancing. WoW went a bit overboard but I think some of the aspects of their use of instancing was good. I'm mainly talking about use of instancing to drive story and temporarily alter static areas. Anyone remember that epicly long chain of quests in Dragonblight during WoLK? Where some dragons wrecked shit infront of the LK's castle and you have to bust some skulls in Undercity (horde side).

[Scoresby]

Things I would like to see:
A large expansive world that is not easily traversed. (I hated EQ2 for making everything a bell click away)

No or fewer gear sets for higher end gear. I really hate seeing everyone wear the same crap.

Items with unique abilities. One of the things I really liked about old EQ versus newer games were that some items quested or obtained actually augmented game play style.

There really is a million things I would like to add but since I doubt any EQ Devs are reading this will leave it at that.

Finally I know this may derail things but many of you forget or don't realize EQ created instancing. WoW went a bit overboard but I think some of the aspects of their use of instancing was good. I'm mainly talking about use of instancing to drive story and temporarily alter static areas. Anyone remember that epicly long chain of quests in Dragonblight during WoLK? Where some dragons wrecked shit infront of the LK's castle and you have to bust some skulls in Undercity (horde side).

Phasing as it were. Yeah, there are definitely good cases for it, but there needs to be careful consideration about the loss of community when using it. I think having a few "trials" or "proving grounds" type dungeons where you get your own instance might be OK as would certain storyline portions, but wholesale use of it just waters down interaction too much. The right answer IMO is more servers.

However much content you create, decide how many people that can support (conservatively) and then create additional servers as necessary. Don't be lame and link servers together either. If I play regularly with 5000 people, I'd like to see the SAME 5000 people so I can know who the assholes are and who's worthwhile hanging with.

The real trick is understanding that (one day) your playerbase is going to all be pushing for the same tier content, and you need to ensure there is enough of it to support them. Long travel times is a good idea. If you have multiple top tier areas, but they are separated by a long travel time then you essentially have a scenario where multiple top tier people can setup base and exist in relative peace. That also opens up an entirely new avenue of trade routes where you could have real-world like economic impact of supply/demand based on geography. Players could become traders and spend their time hauling stuff back and forth to make bank.

[RevengeofGio]

I don't like you anymore Tom.

Saying nice things about instancing. Get a load of this guy! :p

They may help fix a problem, but god damn they ruin my immersion! :(

I agree and don't agree at the same time :(

Maybe they could instance when the population gets past a certain point entering the zone?

[xCry0x]

I suppose there is also no reason that a game would need to have ONLY instanced dungeons or ONLY non-instanced dungeons.

/shrug

I agree with this but it is hard to implement really well and I honestly cannot think of how I would like it to be done.

When I played WoW i missed the open world competition for things. I missed doing camps like lguk or seb where when you get in a crypt group there is this sense of "awesome, all this great shit can drop to earn me money". I missed the feeling of dominance from racing to the world spawns. They had a few in original WoW (emerald dragons and 2 other guys blanking on their names) but they were primarily secondary targets with lower priority than the instances.

At the same time, the lack of instances makes the playability of the game suck for people who have real life obligations.

This server is a perfect example. Every guild as far as I know maintains a CST/EST raid schedule, ie be on at 5/6pm CST on raid day so we can see what is up and move on hate, fear, whatever.

That is great, but I am in California and that is 4PM for me. I am lucky enough that my job is flexible enough that I simply decided to come in earlier and leave earlier to be home by 4 but shit, if you worked a typical 9-5 + drive time you would easily be 1.5 hrs + late for every raid (aka miss most of it).

In WoW you could have east coast & west coast guilds because you could schedule raids based around the play times of the players and that was honestly very nice although casual.

I could see some sort of combination put in where using EQ terminology:
Seb = non instanced therefor trak = non instanced
kc = non instanced therefor vs = non instanced
All the outdoor dragons obviously non instanced

vp = instance
Hate = instance (including inny & maestro)
Fear = instanced (including ct & draco)
Sky = instanced (including nobles)

This would allow shit like trak to cock block lesser guilds on getting keyed to VP, this still maintaining the tiering of guilds.

It would also allow casual guilds to actually be casual and have set raid times and still accomplish shit like killing gods etc.

[Thulack]

Not sure if it has been talked about but people that want a token system for raiding here should be all for instancing since its basically the same thing.

[skipdog]

The problem is you can't compare EQN to classic EQ. It will be NOTHING like classic EQ. It'll have more in common with the newest MMO's. That means virtually nothing in common with old school EQ. So when I see this thread, I just shake my head. EQ Next is not EQ, it's more like the newest Star Trek movies. They're pluggin into the sandbox stuff in minecraft and freerealms and second life and adding it their re-envisioned EQ.

EQN is EQN. Take it for what it's. Don't compare it to EQ because it's like apples and oranges.

Do you have info about EQN that we don't?

I cannot fathom how you can make such sweeping statements regarding EQN when we barely have any information about it.

[fennixad]

instance system will destroy the fun of ec game.

[khanable]

That model looks fucking stupid

Looks like some shitty korean knock off

I hope they don't take this WOW/Korean style of armor on.. stuff is so god damn ugly

[August]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php?serverid=-1

Unless I'm misunderstanding that site (and it's a little hard to read IMO), that's an average of around 700 players per server per day, with peaks of no more than 1500 o_O

If that's even ballpark, that 40k active connections figure is (and I mean this without insult) laughable. I kind of knew this because 40k active connections is in the realms of CCP's server tech, and that stuff is world-wide and absolutely cutting edge. I suspect it may even exploit some unreported quantum bug in time and space ;)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/09/28/eve-evolved-eve-onlines-server-model/

That WoW data may not be current/complete though...

Yes you are misunderstanding. warcraft realms is a ui mod that hasn't been in wide use since 2008. Based on census data back then there were times when the mod picked up over 35,000 active connections on a server. They extrapolated that the cap was at 40k. Keep in mind that some servers are rated for higher load than others.

Nowadays, servers work in clusters and 'battlegroup realms' where there are several servers together. Almost all content is instanced, and this mod is no longer up to date.

Also, and I know this won't get me far in internet fake-world points, I work in software and have several friends that work @ Blizzard who corroborate 'more or less' these numbers, back when I was an active player (2004-2009). I obviously have no proof and won't use it as a pedestal, but I have no real reason to lie, either.

[t0lkien]

I'll take your word for it August. I have a friend at Blizzard too, but he's an art guy who I don't think would have a clue even if I asked him. The point is really moot anyway, as I think the reasons Blizzard implemented instancing probably had less to do with server load and more to do with the design choices they made, now that I think about it - at least once they'd upgraded their tech past launch and Vanilla WoW. I can tell you that in other MMOs instancing is used as a tech solution to solve a perceived problem of potential load - witness EQ 2 and Neverwinter etc. It was the "solution" adopted by the server guys on the MMO I worked on as well.

I understand why people liked Heroics and personal/guild instances, but as I said, they make it a different type of game. And one I'm just no longer interested in playing, personally.

Re. that picture, that Warhammer/Asian art style just confirms the vibe I picked up from the Smedley interview. I can pretty confidently say I won't be giving EQ Next any time whatsoever.

However, this has all given me a great idea. Now to find someone who knows someone at Sony...

[stormlord]

Community is what brings MMORPG's to life. It's the difference between Diablo 2 and Everquest. And those games are worlds apart compared to say, WoW and Diablo 3.
Things that kill community:

-Solo to max level with efficiency. Obviously if you can just solo and deal with no one but yourself, you will opt to....

-Anything endgame or groupable is instanced. Instancing encourages linear dungeon crawls that are tailor made for any random group of people to complete as long as they are the correct level range. Every piece of loot is massively farmed by the server and easily obtained by anyone...

-Making all travel instant. Maybe we don't need to wait 20+ mins a boat these days. But instant porting around the map makes the world seem artificially small. Horses and hearthstones are good enough.

If you disagree with the majority of this, I have a hard time understanding why you aren't playing WoW. It is clearly the best "modern mmorpg," if that's your thing.
I 3/4 agree. I've been playing Wurm Online off/on over the past year and the only teleporting it has is after you die you can choose to select a city to spawn in, but since your loot is on your corpse then you cannot just spawn conveniently wherever you want to. I play on Chaos and the map is huge and tough to travel on and there's no in-game map. However, I'm not completely against teleporting. I liked how teleporting worked in Ultima Online via hte recall/mark spell system. Evenso, teleporting changes things. It reduces the value of building and maintain good roads. It reduces knowledge somewhat about the map. It makes the game more like a "Select where you want to go" experience than a immersive experience in another world.

I do think that with huge maps a game does probably need some teleporting. It all depends how it's used and how powerful it's. It depends whether you want a traveling game or a different game.

Some people consider these traits game-breaking or old school. Me, I'm not sure. I like them. Does that mean I'm a masochist? Again, I don't like that label. I like to survive in games.

Look at this:
http://www.gameskinny.com/9ltw7/mmos-are-not-games-where-mmo-s-go-wrong
...............
To understand that, let's go back in time about 16 years to the dawn of the MMO genre. By today's standards, those early games were brutal, punishing events that relentlessly smacked down players by being too difficult and unfair. But were they?
............

I don't know whether to believe what that article is saying or not.

I do know I like survival games. Don't Starve is an example of one. I like harsh rules. However, I like it to be intuitive. I don't like when a game doesn't give me options. By "options" I mean you have to work at it. I don't mean a "Give Me What I Want" freebie button. I want to have to learn how to do things. I really really like it when dungeons have secret places and secret passageways and tricks and bells and whistles. Corpse runs, for example, are fun if the loss isn't too great and you get better as you learn more. It's also during those tense times when bad things happen that you're going to ask for help. Players who normally wouldn't talk to others will talk to them when they or others need help. In this way, bad things bring players together. And it's not a fake bad thing like a scripted event. It's real and the feelings between players are heightened.

Loss is as valuable as gain. If we always gain, we don't truly gain. It's not how you respond to success, it's how you respond to failure. True success means getting up after failure and succeeding.

The only downside to all this is that it taps into how our brain actually works in reality. Reality latches onto the learning/reward system in our brain. It's self-sustaining. It's a risk/reward ratio. But games can also hook onto this system. If they remove the risk and maintain the same level of reward, they can addict players much faster. Either way, games will tend to be addicting because our brain self-reinforces learning/reward. When games simplify their component parts and only have the parts that're addicting, they become something like a casino, but without the world. This is when the whole thing becomes very obvious to an observer.

At their core, games are like parasites and reality is just a less efficient parasite. The difference is small. BUT if you don't play reality then you will die. And THAT is a BIG important difference.

[Grahm]

Didn't read thread so don't know if it was mentioned, but obviously instances are going to need to be in any newer MMO. Look at the 1k people we have here and the literal every day crying over how TMO gets this, or someone is always camping that.

But what I am thinking of are not instanced dungeons, but instanced zones. Think every 60-100 people a new zone opens. Besides the first zone, a newer version of the zone can only be spawned whenever atleast 20-30 people want to get in, or else you have to wait in a que and farm outside of the zone etc etc......

New zones would have a decreased chance for the "bosses" to pop right at zone in. But to also get it where you have to use multiple zones, or wait for the zone you would like, would have to have a max instance limit, say 3 per zone. So say you really like Mistmoore, but its packed, you have to go to Overthere. Same here, if there are already 3 full instances you have to wait for your spot, or go somewhere else.

Raiding is a whole other subject, but I always thought it'd be simple as hell to do instance raids is 2nd best gear while open world raid bosses drop top end gear. But a full 2nd tier skilled player can beat a full top end mediocre player in a duel.

[Grahm]

Blackrock Depths sucked. And have you ever gotten lost in a WoW instance? I haven't.

replying as I read, but if you have then you're an idiot. Only reason you got lost in Lower Guk is because you didn't have M to push to show you where to go...

[Rooj]

That model looks fucking stupid

Looks like some shitty korean knock off

I hope they don't take this WOW/Korean style of armor on.. stuff is so god damn ugly

I think what the picture is trying to show is that we are going to be able to create and model our own graphics in EQN. Last year they added Player Studio to EQ2, where players can create models for items, equipment, furniture, and even houses, to be submitted and possibly selected to be added in the game. I think this is what they mean when they say EQN will be the biggest sandbox ever created. I can see us being able to make our own spell graphics and particle effects as well. At one point (can't remember the source but I believe it was official) they say we'll be able to light fire to a forest and burn it completely down. We'll probably be able to create our own quests and dungeons too.

[August]

replying as I read, but if you have then you're an idiot. Only reason you got lost in Lower Guk is because you didn't have M to push to show you where to go...

Correct - it's not like the zone is so super complex. There is a path down and a path up. And if you know lguk well you could be dropped anywhere and know how to get to the exit. Bad lightning and unfamiliarity doesn't lend to a comparison w/ a WoW instance where you have a map and everything is bright as day.

[Rhuma7]

I think what the picture is trying to show is that we are going to be able to create and model our own graphics in EQN. Last year they added Player Studio to EQ2, where players can create models for items, equipment, furniture, and even houses, to be submitted and possibly selected to be added in the game. I think this is what they mean when they say EQN will be the biggest sandbox ever created. I can see us being able to make our own spell graphics and particle effects as well. At one point (can't remember the source but I believe it was official) they say we'll be able to light fire to a forest and burn it completely down. We'll probably be able to create our own quests and dungeons too.

Yeah, sounds like a real fucking reason to play.

Tired as shit of gimmicks. Just give me a good fucking game to play and cut the "look at this cool feature, were so fucking hip"

You know what WoW's gimmick was? Polish.

Why is it so hard for companies to see what their doing wrong?

Do they honestly think people play WoW because its easy or they have some magic powder they sprinkled on the code?

Make a game, fill it with shit to do and make the shit work. Dont start your game with some ground breaking awesomely new piece of shit feature that nobody but some hipster with a 3d art degree can get some use out of.

99% of the people who are going to use that feature are going to make vagina shields and dick swords.

God sometimes I wish I could make my own MMO so I can make something that isnt buggy as shit filled with retarded gimmicks that has the things players want to play.

[enr4ged]

I don't understand the hate towards instanced zones. Just because WoW instanticized the dungeons doesn't mean that it was a bad idea.

I mean, look at the way we (or at least, I) play P1999. I look for zones that are not that populated so I can get a group / get decent EXP. I skipped unrest almost entirely this leveling up path because often times there were too many people. And, if I had a group, some 6 people, that was awesome. Usually, though, I was wishing that we were the ONLY group in the zone so we could have more pulls. Sure, the higher level camp is there and that's fine, as long as they don't pull from us.

This extrapolates into the end game as well. We have a bunch of 'hardcore' raiders out there who want to slay dragons, and we all can't. Well, if things were instanced, we certainly could.

I'll give you some reasons why I love NON-instanced content.

1. I LOVE seeing other people in the game... it's an MMO... "Fuck me, right?" I don't like going into a dungeon and suddenly I'm in my own world, this is also precisely why I can't play single player RPG's anymore.
2. Instance crowding can be solved in some ways that games have come out with recently. I think the best trade off between instance and non instance that I've seen thus far is games that incorporate limited number of instances. For example say Lower guk has a capacity of 45 with an over fill of about 15. You could start splitting it up into a separate instance once you get to around 45 and the overfill can choose a new instance or the main instance. You lose some of the non-instance feel, but you can still get into a dungeon with other people.

3. Dungeons are more fun to me with a lot of people/groups doing their own thing at different parts of the dungeon. I like encountering other people and seeing what they are up to or just having some fun chats with random people.

4. Loot - With instanced dungeons you generally get an overflow of loot since all players can do their own instance as many times as they want to get an item. Loot becomes less rare, and plus its not even that valuable at that point. If the game is created with TRADEABLE loot (I LOVE when all/most loot is tradeable) then you can BUY stuff from others, so its not so bad when you can't "get your camp"

5. non-instanced dungeons kind of create a system where you know which camps are better and they feel more dynamic as suddenly it's not a "queue for instance, plow to end with the best/fastest route, rinse, repeat" you get dynamism in the dungeons, where people are excited when they get better/more fun/camps. And if not they go to a sub par camp and wait.

[August]

I'll give you some reasons why I love NON-instanced content.

1. I LOVE seeing other people in the game... it's an MMO... "Fuck me, right?" I don't like going into a dungeon and suddenly I'm in my own world, this is also precisely why I can't play single player RPG's anymore.
2. Instance crowding can be solved in some ways that games have come out with recently. I think the best trade off between instance and non instance that I've seen thus far is games that incorporate limited number of instances. For example say Lower guk has a capacity of 45 with an over fill of about 15. You could start splitting it up into a separate instance once you get to around 45 and the overfill can choose a new instance or the main instance. You lose some of the non-instance feel, but you can still get into a dungeon with other people.

3. Dungeons are more fun to me with a lot of people/groups doing their own thing at different parts of the dungeon. I like encountering other people and seeing what they are up to or just having some fun chats with random people.

4. Loot - With instanced dungeons you generally get an overflow of loot since all players can do their own instance as many times as they want to get an item. Loot becomes less rare, and plus its not even that valuable at that point. If the game is created with TRADEABLE loot (I LOVE when all/most loot is tradeable) then you can BUY stuff from others, so its not so bad when you can't "get your camp"

5. non-instanced dungeons kind of create a system where you know which camps are better and they feel more dynamic as suddenly it's not a "queue for instance, plow to end with the best/fastest route, rinse, repeat" you get dynamism in the dungeons, where people are excited when they get better/more fun/camps. And if not they go to a sub par camp and wait.

I don't disagree with you, and if you read more than just that one snippet you would see i've made the same points, and how to solve them in an instanced environment, specifically I have mentioned (2) - and btw, that is still an 'instance'. Once again, most people are comparing 'instances' to post-TBC WoW linear instances that are a 15 minute joy ride of face rolling. That's not what I'm advocating for.

[Cheeb]

I think what the picture is trying to show is that we are going to be able to create and model our own graphics in EQN. Last year they added Player Studio to EQ2, where players can create models for items, equipment, furniture, and even houses, to be submitted and possibly selected to be added in the game. I think this is what they mean when they say EQN will be the biggest sandbox ever created. I can see us being able to make our own spell graphics and particle effects as well. At one point (can't remember the source but I believe it was official) they say we'll be able to light fire to a forest and burn it completely down. We'll probably be able to create our own quests and dungeons too.

If EQN is like this I give up all hope in modern game developers. Gary's Mod with swords and sparkles, awesome.

[Kiwaukee]

Things I would like to see:
A large expansive world that is not easily traversed. (I hated EQ2 for making everything a bell click away)

No or fewer gear sets for higher end gear. I really hate seeing everyone wear the same crap.

Items with unique abilities. One of the things I really liked about old EQ versus newer games were that some items quested or obtained actually augmented game play style.

There really is a million things I would like to add but since I doubt any EQ Devs are reading this will leave it at that.

Finally I know this may derail things but many of you forget or don't realize EQ created instancing. WoW went a bit overboard but I think some of the aspects of their use of instancing was good. I'm mainly talking about use of instancing to drive story and temporarily alter static areas. Anyone remember that epicly long chain of quests in Dragonblight during WoLK? Where some dragons wrecked shit infront of the LK's castle and you have to bust some skulls in Undercity (horde side).

I agree with travel. I like the server cooperative gates to convenience, like the stuff in Isle of Quel Da'nas in WoW. Having the server work together to build a portal that transports people from a rally point to the front lines of the latest content is AWESOME in my opinion. Having a clickable instant port from a hub to anywhere in the world is not.

The quests in WoTLK were using phasing, not instancing. It's sort of the same, in that people in different phases often had different content in front of them in the quest area, but the players were still fundamentally in the same place and had the same content everywhere else in the zone. I think phasing was a nice addition to WoW because the content is quest driven. Phasing in a game that's less quest driven would seemingly only serve the purpose of making it easier for people to farm or acquire gear, and that's what I'd advocate trying to avoid. Need that competition.

[t0lkien]

I don't disagree with you, and if you read more than just that one snippet you would see i've made the same points, and how to solve them in an instanced environment, specifically I have mentioned (2) - and btw, that is still an 'instance'. Once again, most people are comparing 'instances' to post-TBC WoW linear instances that are a 15 minute joy ride of face rolling. That's not what I'm advocating for.

Time limited instances in a "world" - what is the justification within the game world for it? It breaks the 4th wall without even acknowledging it - as the instances themselves did. Notice how the "solutions" created to solve the problems the original bad "solution" created get more and more inelegant and more and more "gamey"? This is what those of us advocating no instance worlds are saying. This breaking of immersion goes on and on. It's an ugly solution to a non-existent problem by people who don't understand, respect, or care for the game world. Any instance does this - it is an illogical, de-immersive departure from the continuity of the game world. An exception would be where the game world supports it, as in a sci-fi or overtly "online" setting such as we had in the now defunct Otherland game, and where it makes perfect sense and instead of fracturing the world actually strengthens it.

Mind you, once gamers accepted bright yellow question marks and exclamation marks hovering over NPC heads, it was all downhill in that sense. As I know I keep saying, we are talking about fundamentally different types of games. This is why many of us are back in EQ - the "modern" mindset of game design has lost its way.

This isn't just rhetoric, at least for me. I spent 3 years on a next-gen MMO arguing continually these points, and from this perspective. During one heated discussion on a design point, I had the epiphany that we were all talking about different types of games. Developers now look at game design as a "craft". You have a bunch of mechanics and tools, like little blocks, and your job is to fit them together to suit the project. There are accepted structures and mechanics. If you dare to question the "industry practice", and point out that maybe some of those blocks are questionable, you are a pariah. I'm not kidding, it's really that way. It's now a bunch of pompous nerds enforcing intellectual and creative reductionism. There are exceptions, but they are viewed as mavericks.

Unfortunately, the only MMO that plays by the rules that I want (or close to it), is classic EQ. And there are a lot of people who feel the same way.

[Rooj]

I don't even like the "make 2nd instance of overpopulated zone" thing. Why can't people just deal with it, lol.

[ajellis6976]

I don't understand the hate towards instanced zones. Just because WoW instanticized the dungeons doesn't mean that it was a bad idea.

I mean, look at the way we (or at least, I) play P1999. I look for zones that are not that populated so I can get a group / get decent EXP. I skipped unrest almost entirely this leveling up path because often times there were too many people. And, if I had a group, some 6 people, that was awesome. Usually, though, I was wishing that we were the ONLY group in the zone so we could have more pulls. Sure, the higher level camp is there and that's fine, as long as they don't pull from us.

This extrapolates into the end game as well. We have a bunch of 'hardcore' raiders out there who want to slay dragons, and we all can't. Well, if things were instanced, we certainly could.

Instances that were difficult, and that produced loot on a weekly cadence, allows for a healthy server size without the need to grief each other and the necessity of a RnF board that plagues this forum. Do I think that being able to teleport and get assigned to random people from a pool of 50,000 is a good idea? No.

But, then again, if you want EQNext to be a success, and I'm going to assume you do, you are going to need subscriber bases reaching into the millions (hopefully). When talking about how to fit all those people in there - do you make 1000 servers with 1000 people each in them? That's way too many servers! And the bad ones get vacant and waste those peoples time. You need consolidation - you need higher numbers to have a community thrive if there are multiples. P1999 works because this is only 1 private server - not a brand new MMO catering to the multitudes.

The answer to this is instancing. Instance the dungeons because let's face it, at level 10 there will be thousands of people all wanting to go do those dungeons. Can you imagine 100 people in a dungeon like unrest? Can you imagine 1000? And if you don't instance, what is the answer? Make the dungeon HUGE!! But then the dungeon becomes out of scale for your world, with so many camps. You won't be able to memorize the layout or kill the choice rare because there'd have to be so MANY of them - enough to maybe satisfy 200-300 people at any given time.

The alternative to that, if you don't instance, is to make the WORLD huge - make everyone so spread out that we don't have this problem. Instancing gives us virtual real estate without the cost of spreading out the world to it's limits.

If I was going to redo it, I would certainly do instancing, with the following caveats:

24 hour timer on any instance - you go in, you're locked to it for 24 hours, no massive clears & reclears
No teleportation to instance - you have to find it.
No dungeon finder - you have to find your group.
Death = bind point, naked, none of this pansy spawning at the ent and walking back in.
Drops are not guaranteed - loot tables exist, but the item you want / any item doesn't necessarily have to drop.

I added the last one because the problem with instancing is item bloat. In WoW, everything is bind on pickup or bind on equip - very few things don't bind! Trading items is one of the best things about EQ to me, and I'd like to keep that going forward. If you want to keep items rare, then there needs to be thresholds to how many of X item can drop in a given day. This is already done by the laws enforcing p1999 (spawn rate, loot table, etc) and can be done in a more sophisticated way in the present day. THis way, FBSS are still awesome, they drop just as frequently, and are still tradeable. Giving everyone a FBSS per run sucks - and that's why instancing sucked in WoW - you are no longer special, just another toon.

After reading this post it became obvious, quickly, that although you play on p1999 you didn't or don't remember the early days of eq. Instances can easily be done without and as for tons of people wanting to instance in the same zone, you'll adapt.

[tops419]

Wow, that was a long thread to read-

I don't think a completely non-instanced game can work; this is 2013, not 2000. If there is a mob which drops something valuable people will camp it to no end. I think Project1999 is a very good illustration of the failures of a non-instanced world in today's world.
People will take it overboard and despite how most "normal" people think that the players whom camp these items will eventually get enough and move-on, they will not. Seriously, look at the people who were camping the same items 2 years ago on this server... many, many are still here camping the same items. Why? I'm not quite sure but they are persistent and strangely dedicated to "earning" game currency and such.
Also, gold farming is only becoming more and more widespread. In a game which will surely not regulate multiboxing, I think it's naive to think that goldfarmers will not have many, many bots going at once, locking down several important camps.

I think vanilla wow (comparing it to later versions is really apples to oranges) held a GREAT balance as far as instancing dungeons, yet still having a huge distribution of gear. It was rare to see anyone with more than a few things the same as yourself, unless you were sort of endgame, which is equally true of classic EQ.

And, as far as seeing everyone wear the same thing as yourself--- Don't you think EQ was pretty much one of the worst games ever in that sense?

I really hope they do have an in-game store. I have played modern eq a mild amount and I thought the store is a great way to allow a huge population increase from F2P players, whilst also increasing the playability for those willing to spend $. It's not truly Play-to-win as only mounts, xp potions, and bags are sold (among other cosmetic things). There is no "instant level", "instant heal", or such. I'm sure many folks are playing p1999 not only because of the great game it is, but because it also doesn't affect their pocketbook.

Last, if the store gives people the ability to buy platinum or whatever the currency is, good. This further alleviates the burden off the rest of the population to financially support the structure of the game and significantly reduces the incentive for illicit RMT to occur which can destroy a community. There just needs to be significant ways to remove money from the game such as mounts, casino's ( Which I think are very fun and immersive, if executed correctly), spells, and cosmetics. Speaking of such, I think epic mounts in vanilla wow were probably one of the best executed methods of removing tons of currency from the game in a way which did not feel silly (such as the shadowhaven casino) and gave the player a sense of value.

[Razdeline]

Yeah I think some people have too much of an appeal to wow. No place for that here. Instances are the first step to destroying the social aspect of the game.

Id rather have open world content that is unpredictable. Rather than an instance which turns into a steamrolled easymode dance-dance revolution, American idol fuckfest.

[tops419]

And just to pose another question for those completely against instanced zones or encounters of any sort...
EQ is probably one of the largest worlds ever created. Yet, do you honestly feel there's enough game to go around for everyone who wants to play on this server? I mean, I understand that many people will respond with "well if they can't hang, then F-them" or "they don't deserve it" or "Thats the fun" or something with that general sentiment. But, the single most important thing to remember is that for a game to be successful, have dedicated devs, have a decent population, and strong financial support it cannot be a game of attrition. There must be some balance struck between offering all players a sense of accomplishment and opportunity and the hardcore players a level of separation and superiority.
If you cannot agree on some middle ground between these two things, you are forever destined to exclusively play on underdeveloped, underfunded, and underpopulated games such as P1999 or Wurm Online or the like.

All that being said. P1999 is a really great, nostalgic experience. Yet, the moment you choose to try to camp some select item you've been wanting, complete an epic, or raid in general; you find that there is not an opportunity for the <20 hour a week player.

[Rhuma7]

lol @ buying currency and not being "pay to win"

You new to MMOs? If i can start from scratch day 1 and buy 10 million platinum out of thin air on p99 what do you think is going to happen to p99 and the economy?

WTS Flowing black silk sash 150 mil pst

Lets do some math.

1000 players x 100k = 100,000,000

Lets compare to a mainstream MMO like WoW back in the day, per server.

5000 x 100k = 500,000,000

How much would a company charge for currency? $10 for 1k? $90 for 100k? I know people that spend THOUSANDS on in-game stores on EMULATED servers.

$1000 @$90/100k*1000 players = 1,111,000,000. out of thin, fucking, air.

End result: no.

[t0lkien]

In which case, a game like EQ is not for you, or you just have to live without the top items. This idea that everyone deserves the best is, quite honestly, nonsense. There are other ways to get things anyway. Get things you can, sell them, save, buy from others what you want. No, it's not going to be easy. That's what makes it more challenging, and so more rewarding in the end, and meaningful within the game world.

I would challenge the entire premise that the game needs to offer you everything you want on your terms. If you want that experience, you've got every other game out there. Take your pick. There are scores of games grabbing for mass market mediocrity with everything they've got. You are literally spoiled for choice. For the hardcore niche and those who want a slower, deeper experience there is EQ and (hopefully) other games like it. It's not mass market, by design (and yet EQ was the biggest MMO in it's day - which says something about what a significant number of players really want).

[tops419]

Sorry for all the WoW references on my part. I just really enjoyed the vanilla era of the game as I did the EQ -Kunark/Velious era. I think they were easily the two best "modern" MMORPG's ever made. I think because of the dramatic changes wow has experienced over the past 10 years, many folks have become a bit sour to even the mention of it (Remeber, im talking about wow 10 years ago)... in reality vanilla WoW was, with the exception of death penalties (maybe negated by costly repairs?), very much on par with the difficulty of EQ. Especially considering many end-game items were much more difficult and time-consuming to get than anything I can think of in EQ.

[Nune]

dat corpse run

[Rhuma7]

Sorry for all the WoW references on my part. I just really enjoyed the vanilla era of the game as I did the EQ -Kunark/Velious era. I think they were easily the two best "modern" MMORPG's ever made. I think because of the dramatic changes wow has experienced over the past 10 years, many folks have become a bit sour to even the mention of it (Remeber, im talking about wow 10 years ago)... in reality vanilla WoW was, with the exception of death penalties (maybe negated by costly repairs?), very much on par with the difficulty of EQ. Especially considering many end-game items were much more difficult and time-consuming to get than anything I can think of in EQ.

Maybe as a casual it was "hard" and "time consuming" to get gear in vanilla WoW.

but to say it was... much more than EQ? This man is a troll.

They had instanced zones with no competition for end-game raid content best in slot gear lol that shit was like getting your food stamps on the 1st of the month, just apply and bam, steak dinner.

[tops419]

lol @ buying currency and not being "pay to win"

You new to MMOs? If i can start from scratch day 1 and buy 10 million platinum out of thin air on p99 what do you think is going to happen to p99 and the economy?

WTS Flowing black silk sash 150 mil pst

You 100% can buy as much platinum as you want on P1999 or any other game you choose to. It will just be an illicit transaction that starts a chain of events that really works to ruin the server and its economy. If purchased from the server and offset with sufficient ways to remove currency from the game, it does not have "such" a bad effect on the game.

I like to think of it like legalizing marijuana- People will do it anyway, by legalizing it, you reduce the burden on those that must regulate it, reduce the incentive to obtain it illicitly, and provide financial support to the system. Of course there are downsides, but in what situation aren't there?

Also, assuming you pay 10$ per 100k plat, what is that, like 1000$ for your 10 mil plat? How many people do you think would be willing to spend that much money for currency? Not enough to throw the economy into the disarray you mentioned.

[Rhuma7]

You 100% can buy as much platinum as you want on P1999 or any other game you choose to. It will just be an illicit transaction that starts a chain of events that really works to ruin the server and its economy. If purchased from the server and offset with sufficient ways to remove currency from the game, it does not have "such" a bad effect on the game.

I like to think of it like legalizing marijuana- People will do it anyway, by legalizing it, you reduce the burden on those that must regulate it, reduce the incentive to obtain it illicitly, and provide financial support to the system. Of course there are downsides, but in what situation aren't there?

Also, assuming you pay 10$ per 100k plat, what is that, like 1000$ for your 10 mil plat? How many people do you think would be willing to spend that much money for currency? Not enough to throw the economy into the disarray you mentioned.

The difference between marijuana and in-game store selling currency is the pot doesnt just magically appear out of thin fucking air.

This isn't even a discussion or theory. Games arent flocking to free2play with in-game shops because people dont spend money.

You give a retard an opportunity to get anything he wants for a credit card # and his ass is doing it. Already seen it happen on EMULATED SERVERS for christ sake.

Plus its not just a one time thing, $10 here, $50 next paycheck, $250 for little timmys birthday.

plusplus You cant retire buying Marijuana and trading it for a mansion in malibu for a months work at mcdonalds.

[Nune]

And to everybody taking a diaper-filler shit over instances, get real. EQ2 had instances, and I played on Nagafen from day 1 (Blue for a long time before then also). Never, at any hour of any day, was there a lack of PvP. And as far as items are concerned, this is one of the main reasons I often question if people ACTUALLY played on live.. nothing was EVVVER open. Ever. Never once did I find a LGuk, HS, KC, etc camp open. Guild politics played a big role in handing camps over and such, but the point being is that on a modern MMO, especially EQN which has been followed for years, there would just be too many people camping everything endlessly

[tops419]

Maybe as a casual it was "hard" and "time consuming" to get gear in vanilla WoW.

but to say it was... much more than EQ? This man is a troll.

They had instanced zones with no competition for end-game raid content best in slot gear lol that shit was like getting your food stamps on the 1st of the month, just apply and bam, steak dinner.

I completely understand what you mean. EQ was much much more difficult from level [1-endgame). At endgame, I thought they were similar in difficulty as far as filling your role within a raid ( I never raided in original EQ, I only raided Kunark and so on, so i cannot speak for that era) and achieving the legendary items. I simply do not equate waiting with a challenge. For example: A challenge is taking down trak with 18 people. Waiting for him to spawn is not a challenge. Getting FTE is not a challenge.

[Rooj]

EQ2 had instances

And what a winner of a game it was.

[Nune]

And what a winner of a game it was.

I loved EQ2 up to the end of DoF. PvP was also fun. But whatever, it's cool to hate everything and I'm acting all square and whatnot.

[JurisDictum]

And just to pose another question for those completely against instanced zones or encounters of any sort...
EQ is probably one of the largest worlds ever created. Yet, do you honestly feel there's enough game to go around for everyone who wants to play on this server? I mean, I understand that many people will respond with "well if they can't hang, then F-them" or "they don't deserve it" or "Thats the fun" or something with that general sentiment. But, the single most important thing to remember is that for a game to be successful, have dedicated devs, have a decent population, and strong financial support it cannot be a game of attrition. There must be some balance struck between offering all players a sense of accomplishment and opportunity and the hardcore players a level of separation and superiority.
If you cannot agree on some middle ground between these two things, you are forever destined to exclusively play on underdeveloped, underfunded, and underpopulated games such as P1999 or Wurm Online or the like.

All that being said. P1999 is a really great, nostalgic experience. Yet, the moment you choose to try to camp some select item you've been wanting, complete an epic, or raid in general; you find that there is not an opportunity for the <20 hour a week player.

These are legitimate problems with non-instanced MMORPGs. These issues have been largely avoided by the modern incarnations of the genre. But to suggest that instancing is the only way to solve these issues demonstrates a complete lack of imagination.
How large is Unrest really?. Is the FBSS bottleneck in classic EQ really the best a non-instance MMO can hope for? Is there something about open world raid encounters that inherently makes them only viable for the most hardcore of gamers? Or is this just some of the problems that exist now that can be overcome...
Instancing, in my mind, always was a lazy fix to a complex problem. Just give them all their own dungeon. No need to ambitiously make a huge dungeon larger than Dreadlands, filled with all kinds of unique mobs and items. We ca just give everyone their own copy of a KC crawl to the boss.
The majority of the industry simply has not been trying. Why would they? Most modern MMO gamers seem to have no idea what they are missing.
Unlike the problems of open world content, which can be fixed simply by providing more viable content (including removing the severe bottlenecks that exist in EQ); the problems with instancing are inherent in its design. Its the difference between a training simulation in the matrix and an actual alternate digital world.

[tops419]

The difference between marijuana and in-game store selling currency is the pot doesnt just magically appear out of thin fucking air.

This isn't even a discussion or theory. Games arent flocking to free2play with in-game shops because people dont spend money.

You give a retard an opportunity to get anything he wants for a credit card # and his ass is doing it. Already seen it happen on EMULATED SERVERS for christ sake.

Plus its not just a one time thing, $10 here, $50 next paycheck, $250 for little timmys birthday.

plusplus You cant retire buying Marijuana and trading it for a mansion in malibu for a months work at mcdonalds.

I understand your first point, but the others don't make sense to me. Of course people spend money, that was one of reasons I said I support the F2P model. Some people pay and those that don't still are given a place within a well-supported game and the population is increased.
No-Drop/attuneable/bind-on-equip items are a great way to negate the effects of inflation. I can't think of a single game that doesn't embrace this.

I do not understand your last sentence at all.

[t0lkien]

I loved EQ2 up to the end of DoF. PvP was also fun. But whatever, it's cool to hate everything and I'm acting all square and whatnot.

Horses for courses. It's cool you liked it. I dumped it after a week as a total turd of a game that utterly disappointed after years of rhetoric on the forums. EQ2 is a good example of most things I despise in an MMO, and over designing things that were imagined as needing to be re-designed. I agree EQN is probably going to be similar, and I'm as equally uninterested in it.

There are two camps on this issue, and we're not going to agree. You guys have a plethora of instanced psuedo-MMOs to choose from. Go to town. The rest of us - probably the minority - will be in other worlds.

[Rhuma7]

I understand your first point, but the others don't make sense to me. Of course people spend money, that was one of reasons I said I support the F2P model. Some people pay and those that don't still are given a place within a well-supported game and the population is increased.
No-Drop/attuneable/bind-on-equip items are a great way to negate the effects of inflation. I can't think of a single game that doesn't embrace this.

I do not understand your last sentence at all.

Lets say on a given day on p99, people loot a total of, 5k platinum.

over a month thats only 150k.

Lets say we have an ingame store that sells platinum.

The entire economy is based on how much platinum people actually have and items are listed at prices people can/will buy said item.

If theres an influx of 1 billion platinum on the first day, nobody but people who bought platinum will be able to afford items with this huge influx of platinum in the market.

The only way to compete is to buy. Pay2win.


EDIT: As far as retiring in a mansion in malibu on a mcdonalds salary. The dollar is much more valuable and a persons time is even more valuable. It only makes sense to skip being a scrub and shelling out a few bucks to completely deck out a character and within a year of having buyable currency you wont be trading with currency, it will be traded in stone of jordans. Which is a sure sign you fucked up.

[Nune]

Horses for courses. It's cool you liked it. I dumped it after a week as a total turd of a game that utterly disappointed after years of rhetoric on the forums. EQ2 is a good example of most things I despise in an MMO, and over designing things that were imagined as needing to be re-designed. I agree EQN is probably going to be similar, and I'm as equally uninterested in it.

There are two camps on this issue, and we're not going to agree. You guys have a plethora of instanced psuedo-MMOs to choose from. Go to town. The rest of us - probably the minority - will be in other worlds.

Well, when you constantly subject the world to your own standards, you'll find yourself in the minority on anything. It'd be cool to have it zone like EQ1 did, it's just a dated concept. And calm down lol. fuckin Fred Flinstone up here bitchin because they dont make cars with open floors anymore

[Rooj]

You guys have a plethora of instanced psuedo-MMOs to choose from.

Thisssssssssssssssssssss.

[Rhuma7]

Well, when you constantly subject the world to your own standards, you'll find yourself in the minority on anything. It'd be cool to have it zone like EQ1 did, it's just a dated concept. And calm down lol. fuckin Fred Flinstone up here bitchin because they dont make cars with open floors anymore

More like going to see an event and its the same exact event with nobody else to watch it with you, no matter how many tickets you buy.

EDIT: make more sense

More like going to an MMA fight and seeing the same fight it was last month with the same people and the same outcome. No matter how many times you go.


Like i said wayyyy earlier in the thread. Non instanced leveling and instanced end-game raid content.

[tops419]

These are legitimate problems with non-instanced MMORPGs. These issues have been largely avoided by the modern incarnations of the genre. But to suggest that instancing is the only way to solve these issues demonstrates a complete lack of imagination.
How large is Unrest really?. Is the FBSS bottleneck in classic EQ really the best a non-instance MMO can hope for? Is there something about open world raid encounters that inherently makes them only viable for the most hardcore of gamers? Or is this just some of the problems that exist now that can be overcome...
Instancing, in my mind, always was a lazy fix to a complex problem. Just give them all their own dungeon. No need to ambitiously make a huge dungeon larger than Dreadlands, filled with all kinds of unique mobs and items. We ca just give everyone their own copy of a KC crawl to the boss.
The majority of the industry simply has not been trying. Why would they? The majority of modern MMO gamers seem to have no idea what they are missing.
Unlike the problems of open world content, which can be fixed simply by providing more viable content (including removing the severe bottlenecks that exist in EQ); the problems with instancing are inherent in its design. Its the difference between a training simulation in the matrix and an actual alternate digital world.

I agree that many forms of instancing are lazy fixes, but do you think that by creating a world or dungeon that is so massive, you are effectively creating some of the same problems instances do? Like making players feel disconnected or decreasing player interaction?
To kind of explain my vision of an instance:
I'd love to see a dungeon like Sebilis, where a group would work their way down to the Emperor's room, to enter a 72-hour lockout 5 level difference instance which features ~15 mins of clearing and a chance at killing the emperor. Sort of a Boss instance, with a long lockout, at the depth of a dungeon. This stops people from camping the same items for days/weeks/months and instead encourages them to do many, many dungeons.
Perhaps make major world bosses such as Trakanon a 10day lockout. Instances such as Plane of Fear a 7 day lockout. Perhaps 10 man raids vs 20 man raids with no scaling of the mobs. Doing it with less rewards you with more?
Regardless, I agree the mass/indiscriminate instancing seen in many games is inexcusable. I think there is a smart way to implement it though.

[SpartanEQ]

Even the people who come together to play a 14 year old game (because it's the only one that is close to giving them what they like) can't agree on anything.

There is no hope. None. :eek:

[Rhuma7]

Even the people who come together to play a 14 year old game (because it's the only one that is close to giving them what they like) can't agree on anything.

There is no hope. None. :eek:

lol when you have a lot of people you have a lot of opinions. It's only natural.

Trying to cater to everyone is crazy talk. Why can't we get a niche game when there's other games to cater to the masses? Besides, non instanced non theme park MMOs are a niche playerbase remember? We wont have this overpopulation problem :)

[tops419]

Lets say on a given day on p99, people loot a total of, 5k platinum.

over a month thats only 150k.

Lets say we have an ingame store that sells platinum.

The entire economy is based on how much platinum people actually have and items are listed at prices people can/will buy said item.

If theres an influx of 1 billion platinum on the first day, nobody but people who bought platinum will be able to afford items with this huge influx of platinum in the market.

The only way to compete is to buy. Pay2win.


EDIT: As far as retiring in a mansion in malibu on a mcdonalds salary. The dollar is much more valuable and a persons time is even more valuable. It only makes sense to skip being a scrub and shelling out a few bucks to completely deck out a character and within a year of having buyable currency you wont be trading with currency, it will be traded in stone of jordans. Which is a sure sign you fucked up.

I'm sorry. I was mistaken. In EQ live, Platinum cannot be purchased. Valuable items which can be easily sold to other players for platinum can be purchased. It equates to about 100k for ~$7.
On live, gold memberships (which are 14.99 a month) can be sold to other players in a form of currency called Kronos (Which are sold for 17.99). These sell for 240K. There are also tradeable bags and such.
This is more of what I was saying, though I did a poor job saying so. This doesn't change the amount of money in the economy, it just gives players a way to move that currency around and encourages people that would normally hoard their plat to move it around for the sake of saving some $$. It also financially supports the game.

[koros]

Rhuma, what you just said... is not at all how economies work.

edit: To clarify, a select few people with massive wealth, unless intentionally maipulating prices, will not have an adverse effect on the overall economy. It's a function of supply and demand, and items will be priced at the marginal bid/ask spread. If one guy has a billion plat, and offers 10m for an item, it will definitely get sold at that price, but because no one else has that money, the next item won't sell for a billion plat, it will sell for its normal price or become illiquid to the seller.

[t0lkien]

And calm down lol. fuckin Fred Flinstone up here bitchin because they dont make cars with open floors anymore

O_o No-one's upset. It's a discussion, and we disagree - politely I hope.

[TarukShmaruk]

EQNext needs to take advantage of the nostalgia for EQ by choosing an art style - at least for player characters - that closely resembles the one for EQ1.

As many posters have pointed out before, the art direction EQ1 had personality, whereas the plastic garbage from luclin models and EQ2 was vapid and uninteresting.

[TarukShmaruk]

Also I don't want instances for regular dungeons. I think I'm ok with it for raid targets because raid rotations are shitty, and cause more problems than the benefits of competition, but if you have enough dungeons having them be open shouldn't be a huge deal.

Put lots of mobs in, use random zone drop tables instead of everything being on a camp (some things on a camp is still cool), and cap the number of players on a server.

[Gadwen]

While I agree with the vast majority of the negatives of instancing that I have read here, I really wouldn't expect to see any MMOs without instanced zones coming from any big dev for the foreseeable future.

When it comes down to it the devs, and a large number of players see a very narrow picture of the issue. Compete with dozens of people for kills, loot, exp...even potentially hanging around for hours trying to get into these camps without getting anything, as many of us did on Live and may still do here today. Or, let everyone have their own dungeon, a really good shot at some awesome loot, and very little downtime hanging around waiting for camps to clear or groups to tell you that your up next on the list.

Instances are here to stay, the "Casual" or "average" player benefits greatly from them (ignoring any perceived impact it may have on the "community"), and they are the target demographic.

[myriverse]

Instancing never, ever adversely affected any game I played. Sony would be a damned idiot not to have it.

If they want to have a successful game, Sony would do good to probably not listen to the vast majority of P99 players. By definition, they are looking for something that does not and cannot exist in 2013.

[SwordNboard]

Just make a server type that has instances and another that does not. Most of the people around here would probably love a [PvP, No-Instance] server type. Give the players the choice!

[August]

A lot of arguments are coming about what people want in a game and not from the technical / feasibility aspect of the game.

It is about population density guys. If you have 100000 sq. ft on real estate you're going to have to consider population density.

Take any zone in EQ - and then consider how many 'zones' there are at launch. Let's throw a number out - how about 50 actively used hunting zones (disregard cities, etc) - 1 for every level (and i think that's very generous)

So, let's look at a 'normal zone' and I'll use fudged numbers for this because it's easy and I don't want to get into 'specifics'.

How many people can that zone service without feeling frustrated and/or bored. Looking at zones like unrest, mistmoore, lguk, solb - i feel 'crowded' starts at 30-40 people.

So, the game world could be populated with some 1500-2000 people and feel 'full to brimming' so to speak. This is fine assuming normal distribution... but.. there won't always be normal distribution.

During the initial stages there will be a surge through these zones. Say you have 1500-2000 people in these zones at the start and say they're confined to only 10 to start off with - now we're talking 150-200 people in said zones. Way overfull.

There will be a time where it tapers, but then we will hit high end stagnation - much like we have today. Even today when we have 700 people online, all of seb is camped. Imagine this with a live server. We're talking 150-200 people in those zones again assuming they don't reroll out of frustration or go to another game.

So what is the solution to this problem?

1) Instance zones - multiple copies of a zone that allow you to spread out and keep numbers low
2) Larger zones - Increase your virtual real estate with static content == more work for the developers to appease the masses. More zones, bigger zones, doesn't matter, the more people on the server you want, the more real estate you have to provide
3) Smaller servers - Cap population to something realistic - at any given time about 20% of a population is online in a server. Cap it to 5k to have roughly on average 1k people online, with peaks higher and lower than this. WoW's top subscription was 11 million, which would lead to about 1000 servers assuming everybody played on a singular server.

We have a problem with scale of population and the density it provided. People are saying they want a game that appeals to a niche market -- the niche market doesn't make money. The game will be mainstream. Only one of these options costs less money and less resources, and that's (1). That's why I think EQN will have instancing, and why most MMOs have instancing. You increase your virtual real estate without additional work beyond instancing code. This isn't a matter of how you want your game - the way you want it is the way it is on p99 - and this server barely supports 1k concurrent users.

[lecompte]

... First of all, I'm impressed with the level of thought and consideration folks have put in to their responses here. I know I've given lots of thought to this topic myself so I'll present a more out of the box solution the kind that has been postulated in this thread up to now (I skipped a few pages after page 7 cause things were getting repetitive).

EQN is being touted a sandbox MMO. What sandbox MMOs exist? ... Eve Online, Wurm Online and uhhh, what else? I think a player based open economy, like the one that exists in Eve, is whats coming if they expect to live up to the sandbox promise. Likewise, there maybe faux instances where you can farm items/gear and items decay or are destroyed to create scarcity.

Game breakers for me:
An overly polished experience.
A game where I click a quest guy, don't read crap, following the prompts to the next quest guy and on and on.

Game Makers:
Fights that last 30+ seconds each.
Exploration of my class to find the non-obvious play method that accentuates my style.

[Strifer]

Ok guys I got this I think you can have your cake and eat it too.

Most people dont like instancing because it ruins the communities...however what if we were able to make it a way it would stimulate playerbase?

Imagine a zone like Lower Guk. Make it so that all the good loots(say..dead side) were non-instanced making the entire server fight for the drops...while having say the live side be instanced, which require no less than five players out of six and cannot be used to power level. Perhaps have a small reward, like an above average portion of money.

In that way dungeons can be used in the way that they're used in normal EQ, and not over inflating the economy with gear, while at the same time providing a place that players can go to for leveling and getting to see some parts of a dungeon without worry, and needing a near full group ensures.

Unless you plan on having a small amount of subscribers in today's gaming world it would be very difficult to have absolutely no instancing. In this way dungeons could be seen as social hubs, bringing in people to farm the public, rare loot and giving a place for all the folks who may just want to get some experience.

TL;DR- Hybrid Dungeons between instanced/non-instanced also acting as mini for players.

[Alawen]

I expected to see some interesting thoughts in six pages of posts, not just bickering about instancing.

Here's a thought: mobs popping out of thin air at a particular location is clunky as hell. Respawns should never happen in view of a player. Mobs should be doing something, not stand in a room swaying back and forth for eternity. Bosses and named mobs should be particularly busy. Some dungeons should be in a state of construction, others should be in a state of decay.

If you get rid of these beat to death ideas of spawn point and camp, the need for instances is diminished. Fighting the exact same encounter over and over with no change ever is boring. This is particularly ridiculous in the case of dragons.

The one idea I really liked in this thread is dealing realistically with weight and volume. If you want to carry around three suits of armor, you'd better have a wagon.

[Tecmos Deception]

I expected to see some interesting thoughts in six pages of posts, not just bickering about instancing.

Here's a thought: mobs popping out of thin air at a particular location is clunky as hell. Respawns should never happen in view of a player. Mobs should be doing something, not stand in a room swaying back and forth for eternity. Bosses and named mobs should be particularly busy. Some dungeons should be in a state of construction, others should be in a state of decay.

If you get rid of these beat to death ideas of spawn point and camp, the need for instances is diminished. Fighting the exact same encounter over and over with no change ever is boring. This is particularly ridiculous in the case of dragons.

The one idea I really liked in this thread is dealing realistically with weight and volume. If you want to carry around three suits of armor, you'd better have a wagon.

Hey! Basically ALL of my ideas are in the same vein your description of mobs spawning and mob behavior. I was basically envisioning what you described every time I say something like "static dungeons are lame" or "we need dynamic zones."

[Alawen]

Hey! Basically ALL of my ideas are in the same vein your description of mobs spawning and mob behavior. I was basically envisioning what you described every time I say something like "static dungeons are lame" or "we need dynamic zones."

One scenario I've always wanted to play out is following a nomadic race, picking off their scouts and stragglers until they were croaked. I'd also like to see off-road travel a lot more difficult and dangerous than following maintained pathways. I'd also like to see mob wars that change the terrain and population. Maybe the dwarves are good and sick of the trolls and they kill every last one of them and rebuild on top of the smoldering ruins.

I think the way forward for MMOs is more realism, more detail, less clunky things. I don't want to know about the server load or any of that. I want the world to feel really huge and full, not endless flyover space that's nothing but an inconvenience. If I'm crossing from one side of the world to the other, I want danger and adventure along the way. If we agree to meet in the middle, we should both have things to talk about when we get there. I think convenience is grossly overrated.

I have a very poorly formed idea of devs having tools to implement things organically, too. Does anyone else remember the mindless wars between Southshore and Tarren Mill before there were battlegrounds in WoW? That happened by itself and it should have been built up in real time.

Forward, not rehash.

[Tecmos Deception]

Alawen and I officially want the same thing.

Until they develop it in like 2027 though, we've got a lot more p99 to play :p

[Gadwen]

An MMO with a truly dynamic world would be amazing, I always wanted to see an MMO where the landscape would change and cities/forts etc would change hands and players could play parts in wars that broke out.

Ignoring the technical aspects, I don't really know how well a game that allowed those kind of significant changes to take place in the world would do. Let's say Player A and his guild help the Dwarves overthrow the Troll city. I know it sounds awesome, but when player B spent the last 2 weeks trying to finish a quest in that Troll city right before it got taken over, well there is going to be some anger there.

Now sure, this could be avoided by making those cities and forts meaningless cosmetic lumps in the landscape, but that would take all the fun out of the battle for the city to begin with.

Ultimately, I think people just want what they are comfortable with. People LOVE logging into this server and seeing Kelethin, or Freeport looking exactly the same as it was when they first logged in 14 years ago. Many of us were infuriated by the changes they made when they overhauled zones and let the Froglocks take their city back. Now imagine this happening constantly, I just don't know how well it would go over with todays average MMO gamer.

[Jerin]

I don't care how large this sandbox world is going to be, they need to
put the kibosh on Translocators and Plane of Knowledge/Nexus type zones.

Druids and wizards should be the only way to travel long distances.
Or Boats that you have to wait for.



EQ Next needs to be hard...which it wont be

[Ahldagor]

An MMO with a truly dynamic world would be amazing, I always wanted to see an MMO where the landscape would change and cities/forts etc would change hands and players could play parts in wars that broke out.

Ignoring the technical aspects, I don't really know how well a game that allowed those kind of significant changes to take place in the world would do. Let's say Player A and his guild help the Dwarves overthrow the Troll city. I know it sounds awesome, but when player B spent the last 2 weeks trying to finish a quest in that Troll city right before it got taken over, well there is going to be some anger there.

Now sure, this could be avoided by making those cities and forts meaningless cosmetic lumps in the landscape, but that would take all the fun out of the battle for the city to begin with.

Ultimately, I think people just want what they are comfortable with. People LOVE logging into this server and seeing Kelethin, or Freeport looking exactly the same as it was when they first logged in 14 years ago. Many of us were infuriated by the changes they made when they overhauled zones and let the Froglocks take their city back. Now imagine this happening constantly, I just don't know how well it would go over with todays average MMO gamer.

Darkfall man

[TarukShmaruk]

Hell I think most of us would love to see a remake of EQ1 with new graphics - stylized after the original graphics (ie. a bit cartoony as to have personality yet good performance) and 50/50 split on old vs new in terms of features.

Make that sucker F2P - a model proven to be highly successful with MMOs and in some cases done very well - and you don't even have to compete with WoW anymore, you're just raking in cash in your own little segment of the market.

Nostalgia has been a *proven* winner in our generation.

If anyone wants an example of the kind of remake I'm talking about - look at the new XCOM:Enemy Unknown game. Fantastic job of blending old concepts with the modern age and having a fantastic game that captures the essence of the original.

Dynamic world

This never turns out as fun as it sounds. It will all boil down to "oh, the dwarves won this zone today? dammit, I needed to kill the orcs" and it gets old pretty quickly.

[Kiwaukee]

I don't care how large this sandbox world is going to be, they need to
put the kibosh on Translocators and Plane of Knowledge/Nexus type zones.

Druids and wizards should be the only way to travel long distances.
Or Boats that you have to wait for.

EQ Next needs to be hard...which it wont be

I didn't mind the Nexus much at all, because you still had to wait and it made sense with the lore of the combine. How else were we supposed to get to the moon?

Having books on the ground that instantly transport you anywhere and back just for the sake of convenience is garbage.

[Alawen]

I don't care how large this sandbox world is going to be, they need to
put the kibosh on Translocators and Plane of Knowledge/Nexus type zones.

Druids and wizards should be the only way to travel long distances.
Or Boats that you have to wait for.



EQ Next needs to be hard...which it wont be

I agree with you about the first part, but I think even druid and wizard transportation is way too easy. If the mechanic is in the game at all, I think it should take an elaborate ritual by a large number of players to open a portal, and the portal should have a limited duration depending on the number and their cumulative power.

I'd like to see that as a mechanic in other magic as well--multiple casters combining powers to create large effects.

[Gadwen]

I agree with you about the first part, but I think even druid and wizard transportation is way too easy. If the mechanic is in the game at all, I think it should take an elaborate ritual by a large number of players to open a portal, and the portal should have a limited duration depending on the number and their cumulative power.



I think something like this would ultimately be even easier, people would keep a portal open all the time at every major city or wherever large numbers of players gather.

[Growlers]

I'd like to see an MMO that puts the RP back into MMORPG.

I'm not talking about people writing up elaborate backstories to their characters or speaking in ye olde english or whatnot. No no. I'm talking about removing the focus on esport PvP and PvE, about taking the some of the harsh reality aspects from PNP RPGs and from survival horror games and weaving them into an MMO.

On p99 you park your dwarf cleric and your ogre shaman and your iksar monk in tube room for 3 weeks at a time, logging in one at a time as needed to get the pixels from king. Your characters are living in a wet, slimy, damp, dark 10x10 room with a goo waterfall in it, right around the corner from their enemies. There's no RP there!

I want to see characters who are soft-capped on playtime because the characters need rest, because the characters don't get much rest when they are sleeping on slimy stone floors in the bottom of a dungeon with their enemies patrolling just feet away. I want characters to stay ingame when offline, obeying scripts from the player, etc. I want druids to plant trees that grow into a forest, gear to decay (but that not be a OMG HORRIBLE thing because it is designed to decay and be repaired and replaced and that's no big thing), weight (and volume, omg) limits to exist and be meaningful, PvP actions to have reprecussions with NPCs and PCs alike, etc.


Might be asking for a bit much for this decade, but god knows no MMO is going to convince me to spend a dime on it until a lot of these sorts of things are put into one.

Hell yeah man!

[Jerin]

I'd like to see that as a mechanic in other magic as well--multiple casters combining powers to create large effects.

That would be pretty awesome

[webrunner5]

One scenario I've always wanted to play out is following a nomadic race, picking off their scouts and stragglers until they were croaked. I'd also like to see off-road travel a lot more difficult and dangerous than following maintained pathways. I'd also like to see mob wars that change the terrain and population. Maybe the dwarves are good and sick of the trolls and they kill every last one of them and rebuild on top of the smoldering ruins.

I think the way forward for MMOs is more realism, more detail, less clunky things. I don't want to know about the server load or any of that. I want the world to feel really huge and full, not endless flyover space that's nothing but an inconvenience. If I'm crossing from one side of the world to the other, I want danger and adventure along the way. If we agree to meet in the middle, we should both have things to talk about when we get there. I think convenience is grossly overrated.

I have a very poorly formed idea of devs having tools to implement things organically, too. Does anyone else remember the mindless wars between Southshore and Tarren Mill before there were battlegrounds in WoW? That happened by itself and it should have been built up in real time.

Forward, not rehash.

I thought WoW was pretty cool in the beginning. But as you got higher that flying crap for what seemed like 10 minutes to get back to a zone sucked big time. Was not a fan of not being able to twink like hell either. But I like your ideas.

[Alawen]

I think something like this would ultimately be even easier, people would keep a portal open all the time at every major city or wherever large numbers of players gather.

What I have in mind is something analogous to twenty wizards being able to open a portal using all their mana to open a portal for a couple minutes. A big guild could move around that way, but it wouldn't be commonplace. One of my favorite mechanics in classic EQ is the complete heal rotation. It creates such a strong camaraderie between those clerics. I have in mind similar to that, where the portal class(es) have to perfectly plan and execute together for success. Otherwise, the gate collapses and resources are depleted for a while.

It would be interesting to have shared tasks for other classes, too--maybe it takes ten shield-wielding tanks to deal with the frontal assault of a dragon breath weapon.

[Alawen]

and make players have to figure strats like that out

Absolutely, although I'd like the mechanic of that process to be something other than wiping and running back. Some kind of strategic withdrawal. Everyone dying has never struck me as heroic, just sloppy.

[August]

What I have in mind is something analogous to twenty wizards being able to open a portal using all their mana to open a portal for a couple minutes. A big guild could move around that way, but it wouldn't be commonplace. One of my favorite mechanics in classic EQ is the complete heal rotation. It creates such a strong camaraderie between those clerics. I have in mind similar to that, where the portal class(es) have to perfectly plan and execute together for success. Otherwise, the gate collapses and resources are depleted for a while.

It would be interesting to have shared tasks for other classes, too--maybe it takes ten shield-wielding tanks to deal with the frontal assault of a dragon breath weapon.

Ritual Magic - WoW did this somewhat with summoning stones and cauldrons, although it was to weaken the basic ability such that a singular player couldn't do something like that rather than to create a greater effect. I'm heavily in favor of using natural features and geometric positions to affect the tide of battle. Kind of like a 'line of sight' that could move. Shield classes forming a phalanx and the dragon breath brushes off against it and creates a 'safe' zone behind the tanks, etc. Similarly, positioning of mages/wizards when forming the ritual could give it different powers or lend to a greater effect. Imagine needing to immobilize a creature but a singular root wouldn't work - you needed a channeled spell that required input from 4 locations around the monster - 4 players surrounding it channeling it to prevent the movement. Add detriment to that channeled effect (health loss, mana loss, stacking upkeep, etc) lends to some cool strategy ideas.

[Alawen]

Ritual Magic - WoW did this somewhat with summoning stones and cauldrons, although it was to weaken the basic ability such that a singular player couldn't do something like that rather than to create a greater effect. I'm heavily in favor of using natural features and geometric positions to affect the tide of battle. Kind of like a 'line of sight' that could move. Shield classes forming a phalanx and the dragon breath brushes off against it and creates a 'safe' zone behind the tanks, etc. Similarly, positioning of mages/wizards when forming the ritual could give it different powers or lend to a greater effect. Imagine needing to immobilize a creature but a singular root wouldn't work - you needed a channeled spell that required input from 4 locations around the monster - 4 players surrounding it channeling it to prevent the movement. Add detriment to that channeled effect (health loss, mana loss, stacking upkeep, etc) lends to some cool strategy ideas.

I like your positioning concept quite a bit, particularly the part about casters taking damage and getting depleted while trying to hold position. I didn't know about cauldron's before this, but I like that idea, and I've always thought totems were one of the coolest new things in WoW.

I'm not a fan of WoW summoning stones, however. I think they trivialize an already easy to navigate world. We've gotten very jaded to these powerful magics like teleportation, flying, and invisibility. Those all enable crazy powerful tactics. This seems like more leakage from ease of coding showing up in game play. What I want most of all are difficulty, balance, and consistency in the world.