EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
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Soygen
The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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Bruman
Golden Squire
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Mughal
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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PvP combat was more or less working, and it was no different from any other action MMO in the market. The problem is that the rest wasn't there and it was never going to work. E.g. by the time the only way to have buildings in the game was to bake their mesh thus losing voxels and destructibility. Monetization was not really considered beyond few items and considering that this was supposed to be a F2P game it's a pretty big issue. All these problems should have been addressed before scaling production but that's not how SOE used to roll.
Personally I found it pretty awful. I didn't care for the way it felt, but I also understood that it could just be me. I still think TERA is the standard for action MMO combat, and this wasn't anywhere close.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
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So ignoring the design phase, complete failure to come up with a pay structure, then saying fuck it and continue rolling the dice, and hope it all works out? Nice.
Sounds like my kids.
Agenor
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Bought the $100 Trailblazer pack as well to support the game, and the kicker for me, and not sure if anyone recalls this. If you purchased one of the three starter packs, and played Landmark, it would unlock the "Adventure class" in EQN.
Conveniently, I cannot seem to find any of the videos that stated that. Could care less about the money, but they clearly broke some terms of agreement here.
Conveniently, I cannot seem to find any of the videos that stated that. Could care less about the money, but they clearly broke some terms of agreement here.
Programmers are supposed to do what they are told to do and create the systems they are told to create. The lower level design team is supposed to be the guys dreaming big and brainstorming and then getting reined in by the guys on Ponytails level who are a bridge between the idea side and the programming side, and largely should be focused on keeping the scope feasible with maybe some input into ideas and how to convert some design team idea into an actual goal based project.
EQNext is what happens when you promote someone from your idea side, who has no idea about what his programming/systems teams can actually accomplish, to head a project. You see it with lots of MMOs, Vanguard was the same issue. They put an idea man to a position where he had to be both an idea man and the guy who shot down ideas and actually made sure shit would hit target, and it failed terribly because he just wasn't prepared for it.
WoW succeeded because they brought in alot of low level idea guys who worked as part of the overall structure and released a great project. Ironically I think they eventually ran into the same issue where they promoted certain idea people beyond their abilities and ended up with projects that just got completely out of hand like Titan.
lol, that must be why they have been consistently downsized as a company over time right? That must be why they fire and rehire people who have stuck it out, not to renegotiate wages, but to give them more of the profit and control over the game.
Makes sense.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Aside from the pandas, those were all present in previous iterations of Warcraft lore. The discordians came out of nowhere; the moon came (mostly) out of nowhere. The finding a new continent thing is a way to expand and it's ok, but even Chen Stormstout was hinted at previously in WC3 and the barrens quests.
There's definitely a difference in how the lore is created and used, and that's pretty key. However I am not going to defend the storylines of WoD or Cata (even if I generally like the revamp to old zones) and the lore in TBC was pretty shitty as well, largely due to the retcons of the Draenei and Eredar, and turning Kael'Thas into a bad guy because of the now cliche "I'm a good guy with too much power, someone must stop me as I inevitably turn into a bad guy!" that they pull with every other npc in the games.
People got released from EQ and EQ2 so other teams wouldn't feel like they were being picked upon.. So it felt like everyone shared in the pain. It was dumb as fuck, but they were more concerned with making people not feel bad. Instead of saying "Those guys are carrying you.. get your ass in gear", they'd fuck every team some so people didn't feel singled out.
Then of course, were the meetings with Ponytail.. Between the one where he took most of our programmers to EQN, to the one where he looked at the 4 senior designers on the game, between us with over 40 years development experience with the game, and told us the ideas we thought would best resonate with our players were stupid. Of course when we did them anyway, the players reacted as WE predicted, but he would never acknowledge that we knew what we were doing. The same guy who with a straight face asked "How easy is it to make cut-scenes in EQ?". Um.. cut-scenes? Are you fucking kidding me? He knew so little about EQ that he thought we could make in-game movies yet felt fully confident to throw game direction demands at us in wildly condescending emails.
It's funny how being away from the industry now for 6 months has given me a clearer picture of just how fucked up things were. The truly sad thing is SOE/DBG has some amazing people, who plain got stifled from the self-absorbed, wannabe high-profile game god egomaniacs..
Flobee
Vyemm Raider
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I remember arguing with Georgeson while the F2P crap was still being discussed on the F2P EQ2 server. I'm pretty sure he was almost entirely responsible for that initial EQ2 F2P Matrix, either way it was fucking awful. It amazes me that the company was converting to F2P, but was hellbent on making F2P players hate themselves for not paying monthly.