EQ Never

X X E X X_sl said:

I am looking forward to how this thread turns after its reveal next month. Then the total frothing at the mouth that will spew on the keyboards for 2 years till release. A good portion of the team on EQN is just relocated from EQ2, i'd be surprised if AA was gone completely, and i seriously doubt it will be. I dont think they will have as many abilities as they did in EQ2 but i also doubt it will be dumbed down to that of WoW either.

I honestly wouldnt put it past them to keep EQ2 combat at all, or just use VGs.

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Butler and McPherson are both ex-Sigil. Game is releasing between March 2014 and Thanksgiving 2014. There won't be a 2 year wait.

And mods need to close this thread on July 31st/Aug 1st and we need to open an SOE Live Live thread (for those of us going to post in - mostly but not completely EQN) as well as the Next EQ Next thread.

will be a fun 4+ week vacation next summer when EQN drops 175 hrs vaca straight

I didn't say heavy instancing; I said instanced dungeons. Camping was a result of shitty mechanics and the newness of the genre. Dungeon crawling is what they wanted and odds are what they still want, even in 1999. The best way to facilitate multiple people trying to go through a dungeon is to have it instanced. Or you make 30 clones of the dungeon all over the place and hope they aren't full at the same time. Which sounds like a cheaper implementation?

The sandboxy elements they are most likely extrapolating on are going to be crafting/housing/content advancement related. I doubt they try to make sleeper 2.0 and have it just fuck people out of good stuff when someone else beats you there. As to the PVP aspect... I personally hope it stays contained on the Zek servers so that people with that mindset can go there. We'll see though. I fully expect to see moddable classes and skillsets that are marginally interchangable, but instancing and active combat will most definitely be in.

And as an aside: WoW vanilla/TBC would be exactly in between EQ and VG combat.

tad10_sl said:

Butler and McPherson are both ex-Sigil. Game is releasing between March 2014 and Thanksgiving 2014. There won't be a 2 year wait.

And mods need to close this thread on July 31st/Aug 1st and we need to open an SOE Live Live thread (for those of us going to post in - mostly but not completely EQN) as well as the Next EQ Next thread.

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I seriously doubt that, especially since its not gone into alpha yet and was told quite the different date than what you're saying. Its possible but pretty unlikely, and almost impossible to expect it before summer of 2014.

Azeth_sl said:

will be a fun 4+ week vacation next summer when EQN drops 175 hrs vaca straight

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In before "OMG I planned my vacation after this, why can I not log in? Queues!!!?? LAAAAAGGG. FDFSDFSDF Servers went down!!! .... QUEUES!!"

I don't see why they can't have semi-instanced dungeons that only split once they've reached a certain player cap. 50 people already in L Guk? Generate a new one. People in a raid party entering the zone en masse? Give them a private instance. Run it through plenty of testing to make sure that people in the same group never get split up and you have a win/win.

X X E X X_sl said:

I seriously doubt that, especially since its not gone into alpha yet and was told quite the different date than what you're saying. Its possible but pretty unlikely, and almost impossible to expect it before summer of 2014.

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Summer 2014 is inbetween March 2014 and Thanksgiving 2014. March 2014 is the earliest, Thanksgiving 2014 is the latest so summer is probably the probabaliest.

@Rezz I think you're wrong on group dungeons being instanced. Instances = Wow. Openworld = EQ. As noted some raid encounters will most likely be instanced and there may be the odd instance here and there (e.g. a special instanced dungeon for leveling necromancers) but I am reasonably confident the average group dungeon (endgame or leveling) will be non-instanced.
This is based on various interviews where the devs have spoken on how they like openworld content but don't like uberguilds locking down raidmobs.

Also there is no difference between heavy-instancing and instanced dungeons. Instanced dungeons = heavy-instancing. Who says they're 'facilitating' getting people through dungeons. They've repeated multiple times they're not a themepark.

Rezz_sl said:

I didn't say heavy instancing; I said instanced dungeons. Camping was a result of shitty mechanics and the newness of the genre. Dungeon crawling is what they wanted and odds are what they still want, even in 1999. The best way to facilitate multiple people trying to go through a dungeon is to have it instanced. Or you make 30 clones of the dungeon all over the place and hope they aren't full at the same time. Which sounds like a cheaper implementation?

The sandboxy elements they are most likely extrapolating on are going to be crafting/housing/content advancement related. I doubt they try to make sleeper 2.0 and have it just fuck people out of good stuff when someone else beats you there. As to the PVP aspect... I personally hope it stays contained on the Zek servers so that people with that mindset can go there. We'll see though. I fully expect to see moddable classes and skillsets that are marginally interchangable, but instancing and active combat will most definitely be in.

And as an aside: WoW vanilla/TBC would be exactly in between EQ and VG combat.

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I imagine that last statement will be met with a lot of anger.

There was one post earlier about vanilla wow that read like a bulleted list of present day wow and read like something straight from mmo-c forums instead of someone who ever played the game.

Droigan_sl said:

In before "OMG I planned my vacation after this, why can I not log in? Queues!!!?? LAAAAAGGG. FDFSDFSDF Servers went down!!! .... QUEUES!!"

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Yes, that's always the conundrum. Assuming EQN is interesting looking (still a big assumption given predictions like Rezz'), do you play at release and deal with the lag and hope to somehow break out a little bit to see the new stuff first or do you wait a week or two until newbie areas area actually playable?

Summer 2014 is inbetween March 2014 and Thanksgiving 2014. March 2014 is the earliest, Thanksgiving 2014 is the latest so summer is probably the probabaliest.

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Fine i'll rephrase - To expect this prior to September of 2014 is borderline lunacy. I was told 2015 by quite a few not long ago but i also said 2014 would be prime due to how the MMO market is. This would be a good time for a new EQ from SoE and if they could put it out in 2014 that would be great.

However even with the engine being ready, them scrapping the vision they were working on just last year to reboot it into yet another vision doesnt bode well for a 2014 release. I would have expected a 2014 release if they had not done this but with it having happened its a bit of a toss up.

To do alpha, CB, OB, & release within 1 year is something i dont see happening.

Caeden_sl said:

I imagine that last statement will be met with a lot of anger..

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Indifference. I didn't mind WoW Vanilla combat but VG combat was better simply because of OT/DT - VG had more abilities up all the time (a negative) but WoW had talent trees (also a negative) which generally would affect what abilities you had. Both are roughly equally distant from EQ in terms of lack of downtime so its just a bit of hyperbole. If WoW Vanilla had had OT/DT I would have said in-between WoW Vanilla and EQ.

VG combat was pretty awesome, it was almost the only good thing the game had going for it aside from its good classes.

X X E X X_sl said:

To do alpha, CB, OB, & release within 1 year is something i dont see happening.

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This is SOE. They will release early and incomplete. Look at PS2. Also by all accounts they're in alpha, the switch happened in October 2012 and they're keeping the art assets. March - November is my bet for the launch window, and they'll launch early if they can (March/April/May).

Lenas_sl said:

I don't see why they can't have semi-instanced dungeons that only split once they've reached a certain player cap. 50 people already in L Guk? Generate a new one. People in a raid party entering the zone en masse? Give them a private instance. Run it through plenty of testing to make sure that people in the same group never get split up and you have a win/win.

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Agreed. With todays numbers that play these games an open world dungeon ffa probably wont work. It was fine when EQ had 300k players. But I expect this game to at least have a few million.

My only hope is they stick with keeping classes separate, tank, healer, pure dps, crowd control and maybe a few jack of all trades. Keep the same concept as original eq, build dungeons/raids around this. Don't make loot easy to get, have downtime. I never thought i would say this but forced interaction/grouping was good, even for leveling up. There will always be players trying to rush to get max level, thats unavoidable. They can just make it harder to get loot to slow it down before the player can really advance.

tad10_sl said:

This is SOE. They will release early and incomplete. Look at PS2. Also by all accounts they're in alpha, the switch happened in October 2012 and they're keeping the art assets. March - November is my bet for the launch window, and they'll launch early if they can (March/April/May).

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Would call it pre-alpha but not the alpha that has FnF involved thus i really dont consider it as being in alpha. November is possible, but i would hope they would try to be as complete as possible. Smokejumper is over there, and i doubt they want to fuck up another release and have a horde of people flock from the game early on due to various bugs, glitches etc. After EQ2 I am not entirely sure they could afford to have another massive failure on their hands.

Rezz_sl said:

Expect EQ:N to have instanced dungeons, faster and more action oriented combat than EQ by a large margin (for all classes, not just some of them) and progressive MMO features that typically turn most of the mmo hipsters into frothing retards. Because they want to make money, and aiming for a 14 year old audience isn't really the way to go about doing that. Not saying some ideas from the past are 100% bad, as I actually like the slightly slower pace of EQ compared to WoW for SK action and I like longer leveling times in general but not absurd shit that forces you to grind the same 8 mobs in a hallway for a week. But clamoring for progressquest with a chat bar is just going to leave you guys wanting when the game comes out. No company is going to do that if they intend to make real money.

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You may be right, but the argument against SoE going that route is the fact that what you describe is just another WoW clone. And WoW clones have NOT made a lot of money. Plus, they specifically scrapped their first try at EQN because it was a WoW clone of sorts.

If they really want the big bucks then they have to try to innovate a little bit and be different from what everyone else is doing. What that exactly means is anyone's guess, but getting away from instancing everything in the game would be a good start. Over instanced dungeons are pretty much a WoW trademark.

Getting away from instancing totally is tough realistically, but it can be done in a limited way. A good compromise is Vanguard's form of instancing, which isn't separate to the group. It still allows multiple groups to be in the same dungeon but also lets players find one that isn't too crowded.


As for the combat and leveling speed, that all ties into so many other things we are not talking about. Like how tough are the mobs? How much xp do they give? Is combat an AoE fest for all classes? Or is it primarily single target combat? Is it a first person or third person experience? Etc. So even if the combat is more action oriented it still may feel slower because of the way encounters are designed.

I will take early and incomplete over WoW clone

Nirgon_sl said:

I will take early and incomplete over WoW clone

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I hope its not a WoW clone, and i also hope its not incomplete, tho i am sure it will be. It would suck for it to be tho with new console MMO style games coming out, and shit like Destiny and The Division which also offer persistent worlds and likely no monthly cost. This is a very "off" comparison but i've already been leaning towards putting more time in consoles than PC games as is and a fail launch of a game i am looking at to play would just be another nail in the coffin.

Then again i honestly and fully expect to see them announce that when EQN does come out it will also be on a next-gen console.