EQ Never

Down to 100%

Shit's sinking like the Titanic

Well this isn't escalating quickly.

This is the first hit of nostalgia. Unfinished content. Working as intended.

Wait, it's a sandbox right? Maybe we're supposed to make our own film!

They never said when they were going to release the video. They just said unlock and we will release the video. The video is coming out aug2. Good job all.

rolx_sl said:

They never said when they were going to release the video. They just said unlock and we will release the video. The video is coming out aug2. Good job all.

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Didn't the goal get reached after office hours? Tomorrow morning perhaps.

Nirgon_sl said:

Hopefully EQN tells these kinds of people to "suck it up" and "buy a new graphics card".

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You know I actually think they might try. I do. But what people will hear is "maybe vanguard isn't the game FOR you".

They've already sold guys like asdfgh. He'll play the shit out of this game because it would personally humiliate him to admit that it's not what he wanted. He's not exactly mentally balanced. And Tad will play it for a year because he'll keep expecting them to do something interesting with storybricks, he'll keep telling himself next patch until the day he cancels. But you can't make enough profit out of guys like that to fund a release.

They need the 20-28 year olds. These days 20-28 year olds do not want to play everquest. If we'd had facebook, we wouldn't have played everquest.

We've aged out brother.

Iannis_sl said:

They need the 20-28 year olds. These days 20-28 year olds do not want to play everquest. If we'd had facebook, we wouldn't have played everquest.

We've aged out brother.

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Statistically speaking, making a game that follows the same WoW-model is not going to work.
So, no matter who your target audience is if Bioware and LucasArts with a big IP behind them failed to make a hit, no one else will.

Smart move is to do something different.
Smarter move is to revisit something that worked before and there's demand for it (and expand on it / enhance it). It's not a 11 millions subs market, it's more around a stable 500,000.

You claim that they need 20-28 year olds in order to succeed. What kind of data you're basing this on?
Back in EQ days my two real life partners were 40+ year olds with jobs and children and they used to play for long hours per session. I don't understand how anyone conclude that just because a person has a family and a job they cannot spend time on a game.

You want to risk it and follow the doomed path in trying to cater to a market, go a head. You will NEVER retain subscribers because those who make the research are clueless (game design wise) and aiming their product towards clueless market. A market that doesn't know what they want, a market that has no previous experience of a good game to base an opinion on.

In the other hand there's a big demand and the forum here talks. Everyone is longing for the older MMORPGs where the world beats the crap out of you from the very beginning. We're sick of insta-gratification, instances, zero death penalty and the long list. I bet you, you will retain a lot of those 20-28 year olds when using a game model like classic EQ than you would using a model like SWTOR/WoW.


SOE is now doing something different, that's a GOOD move.
However, if I would put my money on something I'd put it on something that worked for me before with little enhancements. Trying something completely different is risky.

Iannis_sl said:

They need the 20-28 year olds. These days 20-28 year olds do not want to play everquest. If we'd had facebook, we wouldn't have played everquest.

We've aged out brother.

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I would guess that the majority of 20-28 year olds had WoW as their first MMO. They have never tried a game with the design philosophy of Everquest. Odd to say they would not want to play it. I started playing EQ at 19. When I was 26 both EQ2 and WoW had released and been out long enough for me to know I agreed with people who missed "the feeling". Since the years have passed since then, there has been no game with EQs design to make a community build around a harsh world with actual penalties for screwing up. Knowledge of psychology has made it clear that "the feeling" was little more than cognitive dissonance. Rewards were felt greater due to the increased risk and the attachment you got to the rewards attached you to the character and game. Combine that with the community that built to counter the various hardships in EQ, and you had investment in the character and people around you. Once you feel you have invested in something, you tend to stick with it. You already described that in the example of asdfgh. Facebook could indeed counter the community aspect of it, and might have shaved a year and a half off my sub. However, what made EQ different for me was that I also felt attached to the character and not just the community. All the items, etc. It was hard to quit EQ. Any other mmo I have just quit outright after not having logged in for a while. Never knowing where I logged off. Droigan was retired outside West FP.

Todays mmo demographic can hardly be asked if they wanted a game like EQ, they would not understand concept of it and what came with the downsides. Because nearly everything that made it stand out from todays market sound absolutely horrible on paper. No maps, death penalties like exp loss and de leveling, much harder level progress, less emphasis on solo (solo play comes after mastering your class). The only people who would want those features are old crazy EQ players who were put face to face with them without knowing MMOs could be made without them. But from a much smaller gaming market, EQ became huge for its time. Now the market is much bigger. Simple and none accurate numbers. If 1/1000 players liked EQ back then and that was enough to make it a success out of a market of 10.000.000 people who played games, why should not the same 1/1000 like it in todays gaming market of 100.000.000. A new EQ would never cater to everyone, but should certainly still draw enough to be sucessful.

Sometimes developers need to not listen to what gamers want and rather give them what they need. A big STFU followed by a slap in the face. I mean, you can not even accidentally attack NPC characters anymore. Whatever happened to NPCs simply informing you "That was a mistake" and then hitting you back?

Demon and Dark Souls are very popular games. They became so in the west despite what the developers originally belived. There was a market for it, and these games are undoubtedly popular with 20-28 year olds. EQ is the only game in the PvE MMO landscape that can even remotely be compared to those games (in the west, no idea about all the asian mmos). I honestly belive we are at a point now where people want something like EQ, they just do not know it can exist. It is the perfect time for a game like it. Could even build on the Dark Souls 2 hype, giving the same fear only in an MMO. EQN can quite possibly give todays 20-28 year olds what it gave us. A new experience compared to what is out there, because to them it would be a very different type of game compared to their previous MMO experience.

That being said, it will not happen, because EQN will not be what old EQ players want it to be. They will ask the kids what they want, and not knowing better, they will ask for more of the same, and EQN will be a Norrath wow clone with fancy dialogue trees put together in a similar way as Vanguards diplomacy.

Denis Leary needs to be the PR guy of every gaming company. People write comments on what they want, and he just replies "You are 18 years old. You don't know shit about shit and pull up your pants".

+1 Droigan i really liked that post

Denis Leary needs to be the PR guy of every gaming company. People write comments on what they want, and he just replies "You are 18 years old. You don't know shit about shit and pull up your pants".

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This might actually work. We have to keep in mind there was no player voice back in eq's dev days, the best hope you had of voicing an opinion was to write a self addressed self stamped letter to PC gamer and hope they published a 30 word paraphrase of your opinion. Now you have small internet cells of vocals that can literally ruin a game before it comes out. The playing field has changed so much that its barely recognizable. In other words shit blew up.

1999:Some computer programmers teamed up with some DND nerds to create what they felt was a real deal 3-D RPG using the best tech they had. Groundbreaking success, as most of us old nerds will agree. - but duly noted we had nothing better.

2004: WoW comes along and elaborated (down right stole) the formula but neutered the difficulty curve so your average 13-20+ MTV generation could grind and farm in a much more casual way. Millions buy it, previous champ made almost obsolete.

2006- Current: Every producer since has tried to cash in on that mass market, with varied but mostly limited success.

Innovations in movies, music, etc get copied ad nasuem until the next big thing comes around and they bring it to a new level, here's to hoping we get something someday that will bring that feeling back. Unfortunately I have pretty huge doubts it will be EQN

Need only look at what's critical to the Nielsens and other demographic gauging tools to know how important the 20-30 age range of males can be. Can make or break. Games are no different.

I do tend to agree on aging out some. If they keep their budget in line they'll be ok.

The reason that same 1/1000th would not like it today is because the gaming market didnt boom in the "I play dnd and magic and love lore" market it boomed in the, well all the cool kids seem to be playing cod and halo so I guess I will too market, or the "celebrities play wow so sign me up" market. There's been basically nothing to grow that first market.

People don't change. Calling the kid's "different" does make you all sound old though. The basic desires we all have are part of human nature.

If EQ Classic was redone with modern graphics and some basic updates (ui, etc), it's success or failure would be determined by how well it was done. Not it's basic design philosophy.

Star Wars (the movies) is just a modern reworking of Buck Rogers. What made Star Wars so successful is how well they are done, not the basic cheesy storyline. Look at all the Star Wars movie clones that came out in the eighties that failed. They had all the basic elements, cool effects and cheesy plots, but they failed because their quality was poor. Battlestar Galactica is the only one that had any success and even it faded until the reboot.

Quality matters. Perhaps even more so than basic design, it is at least just as important. Vanilla WoW's basic design is mostly a clone of EQ's, but it was very high quality and it succeeded because of that.

Grim1_sl said:

Vanilla WoW's basic design is mostly a clone of EQ's, but it was very high quality and it succeeded because of that.

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I've made this statement a few times against the derp that hold that EQ and WoW stand at extreme ends of the design spectrum. They were damn near identical at one point save for one side executing the concept exponentially better. WoW has evolved to expand its marketshare, and EQ has evolved to lose less of theirs. Modern EQ and modern WoW have similar differences as they did when WoW released: WoW is executing the concept better.

Looking at the shape of MMOs from say the last 5-6 years, the differences between vanilla WoW and EQ really do seem small, although they seemed to be worlds apart back then.

I want neither back without some changes but given some changes I would prefer both of them to WoW'12 or TOR and the like. The desired changes is the crux here, because everyone wants different little things changed.

Zehn - Vhex_sl said:

Traps are just an extension of a greater theme of using the environment against you. And not just saying, "Well this boss is in a circular room but that one is in a square room!"

DDO was a master of this. Two of my favorite fucking dungeons of all goddamn time are from DDO. One has you swimming through a flooded tunnel with a strong current where you have to avoid ramming into spikes as you get swept along. The hilarity that ensued was epic. The other is a dungeon that is about to explode and you have a few minutes to escape as you jump up pipes and run down corridors. My first time doing it I fell near the top of one pit and had to re-climb out. My friend didn't think I would make it in time so he triggered the end script which locked me in the dungeon and left me to die as it exploded and filled with lava as I sat there banging on the exit door.

What made me giggle even more is we were doing this shit meanwhile the WoW devs were ejaculating all over each other because the floor collapses when doing the Lich King encounter HOW FUCKING EPIC AMIRITE GUYS?!?

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Fuck, now I have to download DDO... gonna ask a friend or two as well. Thanks Zehn.

EverQuest came at a time when chat rooms were the thing. And chat rooms were lame, so EQ blew it out of the water.
What is this generation's equivalent? some kind of texting mmo that utilizes the most popular of phone games as Candy Crush and Song Pop?

Sacel_sl said:

EverQuest came at a time when chat rooms were the thing. And chat rooms were lame, so EQ blew it out of the water.
What is this generation's equivalent? some kind of texting mmo that utilizes the most popular of phone games as Candy Crush and Song Pop?

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EVE with Jabber