Anyone tried EQLive with its 50 expansions?

[t0lkien]

I've done a bit of reading and listening about EverQuest Next and... it's going to be another cup of fail I think. The very big problem is that the people making these games no longer understand what made them great in the first place. They are designing them by committee via marketing, and it's a complete cluster of second guessing and ego driven mediocrity in the end. I say this as someone in the industry who has watched it all happen up close many times - so many times I just bail at the first smell of it now. People disdained Brad McQuaid for his at times infuriating and arrogant "vision", but he had one. And it shows.

EQ got it right in all the big ways (as did UO I hear, though I never played it). WoW, while starting off great, has destroyed the entire genre for a while. WoW did some very good things, but it's just visually, narratively, mechanically, and thematically a vile and vomitous mass now. I hesitate to say it's a game for people with no taste, a bloated sense of entitlement, and no experience of much else besides cheeseburgers, straight to DVD action movies, and miles and miles of inch deep, because that's probably not true. It just feels like it's true.

What they need to do is remake the original EQ with modern tech and some UI/functionality improvements, some mechanical improvements, and maybe some new extensions on old areas, but keep the feel the same. That is a game a large niche of dedicated players would upgrade their systems just to play. SoE have already talked themselves out of that idea with EQ Next, as was inevitable because they really don't understand it, and never did IMO. I believe it's individuals who make these things great, and EQ was lost as soon as Verant sold to Sony, and then Brad inevitably quit later on.