Death of a Game - Everquest franchise

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Shmoopy

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Awesome analysis of EQ >> WoW >> EQ2 >> EQ next:

 
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Big Phoenix

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I saw the preview for this post from the main page and thought this was a post about EQ shutting down.
 
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Erronius

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Jesus H Christ, you motherfucker with this thread title
 
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Elidroth

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Sorry but this guy COMPLETELY misses the boat on EQ2. The ridiculous machine spec to look anywhere close to decent pushed out a ton of players (ironically we made the same mistake again with Vanguard, too). It wasn't designed to be like WoW at all. It was just flawed in many ways from the beginning. It also didn't FEEL like EQ, so it alienated people who wanted to come over from EQ1.

SOE also didn't fuck up SWG.. that was primarily directed by LucasArts. So many of the NGE decisions happened outside SOE, but Smed took it like a leader, and accepted blame, even though it wasn't really his fault.

I've detailed ad nauseum why EQ Next died. It angers me to think about it, so I really don't want to go over it again. The fact that Ponytail hasn't been able to find a job in the industry since getting canned from SOE should tell you all you need to know. EQ Next not being fun was 100% the fault of EQN leadership. When SOE employee testing sent feedback saying combat was awful and boring, the team responded by ignoring feedback, and ultimately they just stopped asking what people thought. They couldn't grasp the possibility that they were wrong, and ignored any criticism of their ideas, arguably the worst trait in game development.

Smed and Russ are both people I would work for again in a heartbeat. Ponytail, never again. DBG is rumored to be working on an EQ game again. I'm REALLY hoping they are.
 
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Warmuth

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It also didn't FEEL like EQ, so it alienated people who wanted to come over from EQ1..

This was a big deal. EQ2 just felt weird. I didn’t like the game all that much to begin with but the fact that it wasn’t really EQ2 in a more literal sense added to the dislike. Of all the mmos I played EQ2 was the one that I couldn’t get into at all, it was too disjointed.
 
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mkopec

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I sure hope DBG does not squander the EQ franchise and ownership of that name by some dumb wow clone bullshit. I hope they are also working on a planetside 3.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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I sure hope DBG does not squander the EQ franchise and ownership of that name by some dumb wow clone bullshit. I hope they are also working on a planetside 3.

There's nothing left to squander. It's a dead IP that stopped being relevant over a decade ago. And even if it wasn't, DBG couldn't create something worth playing if they tried (They're coasting on previous creations)
 
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McCheese

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This Youtube channel has a ton of these Death of a Game series. They're really well made and very interesting watches. I highly recommend checking out some of the others.

Some of them are tainted by his own opinions or nostalgia, and there are a handful of facts that might be incorrect or misconstrued, but they're great overviews of the development and downfall of quite a few MMOs.
 
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Furry

WoW Office
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I remember all you cock gobblers being hyped over eq next.

Everyone on the internet is a degenerate. Allowing people too much creativity just leads to Second Life. EQNext was a retarded idea from the moment someone thought players all create desirable content. They don't.
 
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ShakyJake

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This was a big deal. EQ2 just felt weird. I didn’t like the game all that much to begin with but the fact that it wasn’t really EQ2 in a more literal sense added to the dislike. Of all the mmos I played EQ2 was the one that I couldn’t get into at all, it was too disjointed.
The art put me off. I can't fucking stand SoE artists post Shadows of Luclin.
 
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Wynn

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I had quit EQ in late PoP and remember trying EQ2 briefly and it just being deeply unappealing. Then I tried WoW and really liked it, part of what I think actually kind of paved the path to me liking early WoW was I really liked Warcraft 3, it had an early hero system that kind of directly lead into the modern MOBA concept and also had decent lore/story telling. WoW had a really neat "EQ but done much better" feel in vanilla. The only thing I didn't love about WoW was its art was just a tad cartoony for my tastes at times, but it was easy to just ignore that.

But then in like 2008 or so when I was looking to try other MMOs, I think EQ2 must have been advertising/pushing for new players because I became aware of it again and tried it out, and I actually really enjoyed the game of that era. It was obvious the player base was shrinking and probably never going to stop doing so, but it actually was a pretty cool MMO at that point with a lot of cool features and zones, it felt like they may have actually been pretty close to something really great with EQ2 but they bumbled it in its early days and lacked the ability to get people to try it out again later. My understanding is the more recent eras of EQ2 content have been abjectly abysmal, though.
 
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Erronius

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The art put me off. I can't fucking stand SoE artists post Shadows of Luclin.

cNReb56.gif
 
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Siliconemelons

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Cad Cad write a lawyer letterhead and ask DBG how much to license to use EQ name and classic to POP lore, imagery and music.

We can make EQ great again!
 
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Erronius

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Cad Cad write a lawyer letterhead and ask DBG how much to license to use EQ name and classic to POP lore, imagery and music.

We can make EQ great again!

Part of me is laughing because we didn't want to pay for Rerolled content, but then again, by this point the EQ IP might be worth less than that
 
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Erronius

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Who was responsible for the spammy combat system?
Man, I remember taking a screenshot when I still played, where I had at least 6-8 hotbars full of bullshit. Just complete and total bullshit ability spam.

It's been a really long time since I played, and I don't remember specifics. But I do remember a raid/encounter that required everyone to have finished a group run, just to get awarded a class-specific ability, so that depending on which named you were fighting, the appropriate class would rotate their ability to debuff the named.

Who in God's name thought that YET ANOTHER ability was a good idea? But not just any ability, a complete niche ability that was only necessary for that scenario?
 
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cabbitcabbit

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How do you guys think the EverQuest movie is trucking along? Think they’ll be wrapping up soon?
 
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pharmakos

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i wonder how the big wigs at SOE felt when, first they thought they were so amazing and were king of all things MMORPG, and then World of Warcraft came along and showed them that they had only achieved maybe 10% the potential of the genre at best
 
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