Fippy Darkpaw confirmed for SoE Live

[Tiggles]

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

In EQ next indeed all races can be all classes. Reason? Well, you collect classes all the time. Right from the start they will have 40 classes. A class is just 4 weapon abilities and 4 utility abilities which are each upgradable by xp. During the lifetime of the game even more classes will be added. Since they want players to only have 1 character each, this character should be flexible. So if they now add, say, the druid class and only wood elves and halflings could use it, players who want it and belong to a different race would be forced to reroll. They don't want that.

Of course it might be needed to do faction work to get druid training. So the avarage troll might have a harder time to do it, but it will be possible. In the end, like tiggles said, you create your own class. You will select your weapon class that provides all your weapon abilities (so for example Wizard to get wand skills) and then you can mix in 4 more support abilities from your other classes. This configuration can not be changed in combat.

Regarding world building: Most of the world will be procedurally generated anyways. What player create now in landmark are parts that may or may not be used in eq next for special themes. The world will change a lot over time, it's not supposed to be static like in normal MMOs. There will be earthquakes, dragons permanently destroying buildings and so forth. Most of the world will be destructible (but most things will auto heal after some time). This will lead to interesting combat abilities where deformation of the terrain will play a vital role.

All NPCs will have some rudimentary AI (see storybricks engine) and an agenda. Orcs for example will just naturally look out for lone roads where no guards patrol to surprise travellers. Once that road gets guarded more, said orcs will look for another place to hunt.

I see a lot of potential there. But i am also very worried how much can go wrong. Personally i hope for specialized servers with rules that are a bit more hardcore.

Good post. I also think they game itself will be easier of course but I think a more hardcore server will be made.

And besides I miss playing MMOs with my RL friends who hate old EQ so maybe I'm just getting casual in my old age but I'm looking forward to this.

[Susvain2]

of course ambassadordvinn was the #1 mob. thats my psn and 360 tag.

[Glenzig]

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

In EQ next indeed all races can be all classes. Reason? Well, you collect classes all the time. Right from the start they will have 40 classes. A class is just 4 weapon abilities and 4 utility abilities which are each upgradable by xp. During the lifetime of the game even more classes will be added. Since they want players to only have 1 character each, this character should be flexible. So if they now add, say, the druid class and only wood elves and halflings could use it, players who want it and belong to a different race would be forced to reroll. They don't want that.

Of course it might be needed to do faction work to get druid training. So the avarage troll might have a harder time to do it, but it will be possible. In the end, like tiggles said, you create your own class. You will select your weapon class that provides all your weapon abilities (so for example Wizard to get wand skills) and then you can mix in 4 more support abilities from your other classes. This configuration can not be changed in combat.

Regarding world building: Most of the world will be procedurally generated anyways. What player create now in landmark are parts that may or may not be used in eq next for special themes. The world will change a lot over time, it's not supposed to be static like in normal MMOs. There will be earthquakes, dragons permanently destroying buildings and so forth. Most of the world will be destructible (but most things will auto heal after some time). This will lead to interesting combat abilities where deformation of the terrain will play a vital role.

All NPCs will have some rudimentary AI (see storybricks engine) and an agenda. Orcs for example will just naturally look out for lone roads where no guards patrol to surprise travellers. Once that road gets guarded more, said orcs will look for another place to hunt.

I see a lot of potential there. But i am also very worried how much can go wrong. Personally i hope for specialized servers with rules that are a bit more hardcore.

To me that whole class system just sounds horrible on paper. I'm not sure how it will actually work out in the game though, so I'm still going to wait to actually try it first. The environment being destructible sounds really cool, but I don't think that in itself will make the game good, it will just be a very cool feature. I hate the character models. Way too cartoonish for my tastes. But yet, I will give it a try before I label it as a total piece of garbage. My expectations are low, but that may be a good thing.

[Pyrion]

I also see a big potential problem with that class system. Naturally everybody wants to be able to do everything and be efficient at it. So, very soon after release, everybody will know that the best healing support ability will be "grand heal" from cleric (for example), so everybody will have it. For CC purposes "quick sleep" from enchanter does a good job, so again everybody will have it. The rogue class might have a nice "instant jump" ability for short combat teleports and again everybody will use it if its really usefull. Abilities like "Teleport to west karana" will be in the wizard class for example. Nobody will have those in their normal combat bar. Too easy to switch class just for that and then switch back, as it's not needed in combat.

So it all comes down to balance. Skills have to be very very specialized. All of them. No general purpose skill (as all people would flock to that). That nice heal for example would only work great for physical damage whereas for fire damage you would need shaman's "soothing cold breeze" to be most effective. That's just an example of course. I really hope they will do it in such a way. I remember that they said something like this is actually what they are aiming for (very specialized skills).

[thugcruncher]

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

hopefully its like WoW and every guild can just spawn dragons and stuff and use their EBT cards for loot.

[Tiggles]

I'm going to go full nerd here for a second.

Georgeson Explained the class system to me like it was Magic The gathering. You have five colors in Magic and each one has it's "focus" Blue draws cards and counterspells thing, Green gains mana and has big creatures, Red is Burn etc etc etc...

When you play MTG you can look at all the cards you own and make a deck out of them. You can't effectively play every card you own so you come up with a gameplan or a theme you base your deck on.

They want abilities to be like specific cards you won't see "Complete Heal" as an ability unless it has some sort of massive downside. With 40 classes with abilities they are making them as oddly specific as possible to avoid people making master builds easily.

A sword strike that adds Fire damage will be on one class and another can do Ice, One heal may heal less but may remove a specific Debuff off the caster. Since you have to quest each class individually and then level up the specific ability you have a LOT of "grind" to get to the point where you become a guy that can turn into a tank from a healer to a DPS at will.

Abilities have 5 ranks and you can have 4 on a bar at the time, You also cannot have a wide spectrum of abilities at one time.

If you pick a warrior class you get 2 defense 1 movement 1 attack abiltiy slots plus the 4 abilities your weapon gives you. So having a warrior with Complete heal or Mezmerize isn't possible.

A rogue comes with two Offensive and two Utility slots so you won't see him shield walling or healing either.

Wizards have 2 Movement 1 Offensive and 1 Defensive so you can see a wizard socket a heal but he would be sacrificing his only offensive spot.


Weapons work the same way, a Wizard can use Staves and I think daggers Each type of staff comes with it's own move set of spells or attacks.

You equip a fire staff it will shoot fire spells etc etc so your weapon choice is based off the needs at the time, You can carry different weapons for different sets and change THOSE on the fly.

A short sword on a warrior will give different abilities then a shortsword on a rogue as well.

[Pyrion]

It's from 2013, but here is what they published about classes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOKhfxwLokg

And here is what the wiki knows about it:
http://everquestnext.wikia.com/wiki/Classes

Not much yet, but you get the basic facts. Basically boils down to what tiggles wrote (and me to a lesser degree).

[radditsu]

So ff14?

[TMOcheerleader]

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

So ff14?

more like Diablo 2

[fastboy21]

omeed is a freaky persian...i give him 50% chance of not keeping his job by launch date.