Recent content by Mughal

Blizzard are looking at alt friendliness FWIW, they might end up in a situation like Darkest Dungeon, where one puts time and effort to level up a shared resource space and there is a roster of characters to play with. They have been talking about this for a long time, and requires changes to...

that's the graphics engine. Unity does not have any decent networking stack, MMO servers, content management system, PvP, billing etc etc. Part of the huge cost of making an MMO is that you need to develop your own tools to create and manage the game. And because there are only few MMOs built...

Having been through the process of creating an MMO from scratch I cannot understand how it can be done with less than $20m (production, servers, personnel, testing etc). So the moment anyone starts promising more than 1 race (unless they all look the same), multiple classes, multiple modes of...

SOE was fighting for its survival as was bleeding cash looking for a buyer. Pleasing Sony Japan was a key issue for the management. The mandate was to design a PC game and consoles were not even mentioned (this was pre PS4 reveal, even tho it was obvious from the action buttons) and the lead...

There wasn't one. The game was a result of the games the leads played: Terraria (with destructible environments), League of Legends (with heroes, a small subset of abilities and fast paced combat). Then they decided to make it an official EQ game and later the AI was added to it. Some of the...

The design was to block voxel editing in cities, have a limited impact in PvE areas and use it mostly in PvP areas. Also editing was going to be limited in time. But mostly the game design was never finished in most of the systems so it's not that it was a "bad MMO mechanic" - it was an idea...

After three years there was no agreement on gameplay and core features. Apart from that I agree the art was amazing. Especially the art of the buildings that was done without knowing how to actually build it with voxels, or if the voxels could have been implemented at all in buildings.

There is an open position for a creative director at Daybreak and you would be correct in thinking it's EQ related. EDIT: and you will also be correct in thinking it's not going to be an MMO

Which goes back to my previous post. These were untested systems still under development. They should have prototyped them before going into full production (was very weird to have rooms full of concept artists working, writers hired, without having finalized the game design and engineering side...

It never existed except for some concept art and some models, the "EQ3" that was scrapped was just ideas they had for design. Probably it was just the internal pitch that they created to greenlight the game (and it was rejected, so they proposed EQN)

No, the new owners appointed Jens Andersen and it was a great choice as he made the only game that was actually making money in that company (DCUO). Part of it was luck because when the PS4 launched there were few AAA F2P titles and part it was because DCUO was developed in Austin away from Smed

No idea, sorry

Anyway I think EQN will live in other projects as the ex SOE guys get new jobs. Warcraft is adding more procedural content (Moorgard is on it) and Talisker is working on Mass Effect Andromeda.

- it's not that there were multiple versions being rebooted but mostly a continuum of changes to the project. it started with some core design points that with hindsight looked a lot like Terraria, only in 3D, and then it was iterated from there. The problem was that when the designers were...

We are in what if territory but here's the gist: was convinced that the EQN/Landmark split was a mistake and they should have converged back into one. the biggest issue with that project was that it went into full production before the core design was finalized, prototyped and tested. So every...