Anyone tried EQLive with its 50 expansions?

[t0lkien]

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

WoW pre BC was an amazingly fun experience. I hope in my heart of hearts that EQ Next does a great job.

I agree for the most part. Beta and Vanilla were fantastic, and made a great contrast for me to the then dying and dreary mess of what EverQuest had become in Luclin and beyond.

[Thulack]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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.

What made EQ great was that for many of us it was our first MMORPG or atleast 2nd or behind UO. It was the thrill of something new and challenging. No one will ever make a game again that was a challenging as EQ was in 1999 because it was a whole new world and no one really had any idea what to expect. Eq players brains are wired differently then most MMORPG players because we like(d) the challenge and sense of new that EQ brought. No other game has been able to reproduce that for me and many others and none will because its not capable of being done.

[Droog007]

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

What made EQ great was that it rode you hard and put you up wet.

Today's gamers prefer to be trotted around the corral for a few minutes at a time, and indulged on apples and oats.

[Arclanz]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

...They are designing them by committee via marketing, and it's a complete cluster of second guessing and ego driven mediocrity in the end.

...People disdained Brad McQuaid for his at times infuriating and arrogant "vision", but he had one. And it shows.

...I believe it's individuals who make these things great...

Great post. Highlighting parts I especially agreed with. Whenever a committe tries to please the masses, everything gets washed over and watered down = sucks for everyone rather than being epic for some.

[Droog007]

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

But it's time for an EQ3 - an EQ3 that captures the essence of EQ1 in a new engine and improves on it. Nostalgia is a very powerful sales driver - and IMO if they're smart they'll even try to recapture the cartoonish graphics from EQ1 rather than pursue the horrid plastic look they have in modern EQ and EQ2.

I mean how stoked would you be if you hopped into EQ3 and went to make an ogre/troll/dwarf/gnome/whatever and not only could you easily identify the EQ1 influence on the models, but they even had facial options that were similar to ones from EQ1?

^^^T^^^H^^^I^^^S^^^

I just had my first thisgasm...

[Gadwen]

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

But it's time for an EQ3 - an EQ3 that captures the essence of EQ1 in a new engine and improves on it. Nostalgia is a very powerful sales driver - and IMO if they're smart they'll even try to recapture the cartoonish graphics from EQ1 rather than pursue the horrid plastic look they have in modern EQ and EQ2.

I mean how stoked would you be if you hopped into EQ3 and went to make an ogre/troll/dwarf/gnome/whatever and not only could you easily identify the EQ1 influence on the models, but they even had facial options that were similar to ones from EQ1?

If there ever was a game modeled after EQ they would model it after the most popular era, which unfortunately for us...was after PoP.

There are a lot more people out there who see WoW and post PoP EQ when they think of MMOs than see classic EQ.

[Khaleesi]

There's a lot of comments about people going onto Live to see how the zones have evolved both graphically and geometrically. The majority feedback is negative.
My suggestion is that instead of EQ Live, you go onto EverQuest II. Identifying similarities (and differences) was the first thing most people did when the game came out - and zone art and layouts was one aspect that was no exception.

At least when playing EQII you don't feel so dirty about the way things changed.

[t0lkien]

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

There's a lot of comments about people going onto Live to see how the zones have evolved both graphically and geometrically. The majority feedback is negative.
My suggestion is that instead of EQ Live, you go onto EverQuest II. Identifying similarities (and differences) was the first thing most people did when the game came out - and zone art and layouts was one aspect that was no exception.

At least when playing EQII you don't feel so dirty about the way things changed.

...however you have to live with not being able to assist anyone realistically (combat is locked out once it starts), and every single damn zone is instanced. No thanks. It's a completely different game, and fundamentally exchanged the MMO experience for something else. Also, character models looked like Plasticine.

(This is all unless they changed things after launch. I gave up on the game after a week and never went back).

[Khaleesi]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

...however you have to live with not being able to assist anyone realistically (combat is locked out once it starts), and every single damn zone is instanced. No thanks. It's a completely different game, and fundamentally exchanged the MMO experience for something else. Also, character models looked like Plasticine.

(This is all unless they changed things after launch. I gave up on the game after a week and never went back).

Yes, which is why you do not feel so bad about it.

[Visual]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

and every single damn zone is instanced.

I don't like this trend at all. Seemingly counterintuitive, seeing as the first word in the acronym mmorpg is Massively [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]