SOE Live

[Razdeline]

Not only that, but a lot of people in this thread are not keeping up with current industry trends and what the general consumer wants. Here is a hint: It isn't wow.

All wow clones are failing, keep crappy subs, have to lay off large portions of development staff. The model does NOT work anymore.

It works only for 1 thing: Initial sales and hype created from marketing, but once people figure out what it is, they stop playing.

If you haven't been to the EQNext page, have heard Smedley talk about EQN, you haven't been paying attention. This is speculation, but there is a lot of *hints* and nostalgia floating around from their developers on classic EQ. Not only that, everyone on their dev team has PLAYED classic EQ.

Smedley describes some basic elements of what to expect from EQN: A sandbox first and foremost, the largest created. Minecraft gathering/building elements. A changing environment from the players. Either casually or combat related. This means a battle could level a forest, but the forest could grow back. Or the casual aspect of players crafting different buildings.
Another fun fact: The original tradeskill developer from EQ2 is heading up tradeskills here. EQ2 had the most in depth tradeskilling of any game I have seen. It was a mini game and well crafted.

Smedley: Factions: Factions are going to be a major aspect of this game.

Smedley: PS4 servers and Computer servers will be seperated.

Smedley: In EverQuest Next, the world itself is a part of the game. What is the world in these other games? It's a simple backdrop. It's nothing. We are changing that greatly. We're changing what AI is in these games to a degree that we're going to bring life to the world. That to us is the essence of the change that we're making. (They are trying to re-create immersion which is dead in modern MMO's)

Smedley(on Emergent gameplay): We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that. We're not talking about the end of raids, the end of this incredibly high-level content. We're talking about changing the nature of the world around it so that there's a lot more to do "in between" expansions. But imagine the entire world as part of the interaction. Imagine seasons changing.(The weather in eq is awesome can you imagine seasons?!) Imagine if you're a Druid and you need to literally seek out reagents for your spells or worship your deity in a glade somewhere off in the wilderness, but you don't know where.(more immersion here. This type of gameplay described is similar to UO) Or image forests growing back after they're burned to the ground by invading forces. What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it.

[Tecmos Deception]

Originally Posted by Razdeline [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not only that, but a lot of people in this thread are not keeping up with current industry trends and what the general consumer wants. Here is a hint: It isn't wow.

All wow clones are failing, keep crappy subs, have to lay off large portions of development staff. The model does NOT work anymore.

It works only for 1 thing: Initial sales and hype created from marketing, but once people figure out what it is, they stop playing.

If you haven't been to the EQNext page, have heard Smedley talk about EQN, you haven't been paying attention. This is speculation, but there is a lot of *hints* and nostalgia floating around from their developers on classic EQ. Not only that, everyone on their dev team has PLAYED classic EQ.

Smedley describes some basic elements of what to expect from EQN: A sandbox first and foremost, the largest created. Minecraft gathering/building elements. A changing environment from the players. Either casually or combat related. This means a battle could level a forest, but the forest could grow back. Or the casual aspect of players crafting different buildings.
Another fun fact: The original tradeskill developer from EQ2 is heading up tradeskills here. EQ2 had the most in depth tradeskilling of any game I have seen. It was a mini game and well crafted.

Smedley: Factions: Factions are going to be a major aspect of this game.

Smedley: PS4 servers and Computer servers will be seperated.

Smedley: In EverQuest Next, the world itself is a part of the game. What is the world in these other games? It's a simple backdrop. It's nothing. We are changing that greatly. We're changing what AI is in these games to a degree that we're going to bring life to the world. That to us is the essence of the change that we're making. (They are trying to re-create immersion which is dead in modern MMO's)

Smedley(on Emergent gameplay): We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that. We're not talking about the end of raids, the end of this incredibly high-level content. We're talking about changing the nature of the world around it so that there's a lot more to do "in between" expansions. But imagine the entire world as part of the interaction. Imagine seasons changing.(The weather in eq is awesome can you imagine seasons?!) Imagine if you're a Druid and you need to literally seek out reagents for your spells or worship your deity in a glade somewhere off in the wilderness, but you don't know where.(more immersion here. This type of gameplay described is similar to UO) Or image forests growing back after they're burned to the ground by invading forces. What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it.

As much as I'd like to get excited, seeing as those mechanics are the things I've been wanting in an MMO for like a decade now, plenty of companies have promised the world to us and only ended up delivering an MMO that should probably still have been in alpha.