@qwerty
it's not about making a big buck vs a small buck.
Yeah it is, business is always about the bottom line. We can say what we want about gaming philosophies but the people who run SOE don't care about all this. They just want to make something that makes as much money as possible. Did you ever play Syndicate in the 90's? A classic on Amiga and PC and everyone I knew who played games back then, had their minds blown by that game. A year or two ago we start hearing about a new Syndicate game is being made, zomg! But wait, 99% of remakes are shit, that's just how the world is. And low and behold, our precious epic from our youth is raped and pillaged by a generic modern FPS.
Why not just make a new franchise for the generic modern fps? Well presumably because the Syndicate name guarantees a certain number of sales and a certain amount of hype from the mainstream gaming websites. Yeah most people will be super pissed off once they actually play it, but by that point they have already bought it, hah hah ho ho. It's like a fast buck scam. The Syndicate name is now soiled, but they made a stack of money and there are plenty of other classics to plunder in the future! Sadly this is a regular thing nowadays, but that's just business. I don't think SOE are above any of this.
EQ2 was absolutely slaughtered by WoW and it was decided that there was no space for an EQ3.
But WoW was a killer product and EQ2 was horrible. It had high system requirements yet weird wonky looking graphics, and gameplay wise there was a list as long as my arm of shortcuts, cost cuttings, and compromises. Only 2 cities, and heavy instancing, little clickies to instantly travel you to places, pets are just glorified dots not real entities, etc..etc..etc.. All that stuff mattered believe it or not. From a personal point of view, I just didn't like the feel of it, it didn't feel anything like EQ and if I was going to play some kiddie MMO, I'd rather just play WoW, simply because it was just a better game.
But my point is that none of this really has anything to do with Everquest. It's to do with SOE's lack of budget and or lack of talent at the time. How they survived all this time, I'm not sure, but whatever, they are still here and now it's time for them to step up. They don't even have all that many options. One is to try to hit it out the park with a safe option, but that's what every other MMO has tried to do for the past several years and many of them have not done very well, even though they designed their games on what seems like sure fire designs (ie: WoW clone). But even the most mindless suited statistics obsessed business drone must be starting to doubt that option at this point? Just how many dozens of smouldering wreckages of wannabe WoW clones does there need to be until the industry starts to look at alternatives?
All I think is that one of the best alternatives, not just from a gamers point of view but from a business point of view, is to revisit EQ properly... It's the game which kickstarted the entire genre, and made SOE in to something noteworthy, and yet even after ~13 years, STILL nobody has revisited it, properly. Vanguard was close, but no cigar.
Bottom line, WoW is basically a different genre to EQ, and the WoW genre is too dominated by WoW itself. EQ is in a genre with barely any competition at all, and it was like crack to some of us, but by tinkering with the design and doing what seems on paper to be 'better', only ends up somehow blandifying the experience. Whether Brad and Co are geniuses, or they just stumbled in to greatness, or somewhere in between, I am convinced that EQ was just one of those stars aligning moments. WoW might have hijacked the limelight but not respecting ole' EQ is a big mistake, and to fully respect EQ you would have to make a modern version of it that wants to keep it as close as possible, not look at every little aspect as something that could or maybe should be changed.
SOE went from being Lycos in the mid-90s to being the one losing ground to a newer competitor. At the same time other trends came out prominently that players wanted (F2P, sandboxes, ugc etc) and that no AAA MMO studio was considering because of their glacial development cycles or philosophy.
It's not really rocket science, SOE are a game developer and for their one big franchise, they delivered a really mediocre product. They could have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those pesky WoW people happening to nail it just at the right place and right time.
But look on the bright side, SOE are glad to even be alive after an ass kicking like that. Now they need to dust themselves off, learn from their mistakes, and become Yahoo! instead of Lycos. Yeah sucks to not be google, but being able to survive and prosper in a niche that actually happens to be a pretty huge niche... is better than trying to take on the big boy and becoming yet another dumb casualty.
EQN is not about defiling the franchise
That remains to be seen and based on SOE's recent direction, I am extremely sceptical. That's not to say I'm a 'hater', I still play Vanguard sometimes, but the pay2win (and don't deny that's what it is) thing provides me with fun only in short bursts. And really, people these days have no shortage of fun in short bursts what with an interweb full of free porn and an endless supply of Need4Spdz and Call of Duties etc. What people would REALLY like though are long term passions, and I only have a few of those. Playing EQ Mac, I settle in to another, and it's very satisfying.
because EQ is still out there being developed and you can still play it.
But that's not EQ. It might be called EQ, but it's like this weird deformed monstrosity, whose life was artificially extended far beyond what is natural, and the result is this wrinkly old drooling mess that can't even remember what it is.
If we want EQ, we have to play some crappy p99 or EQ Mac type server with a population of 12 and a ping of 300 and a constant fear of being shut down at any moment, etc.
It's not being Lucas that takes the original Star Wars out of circulation, re-edit it with with bad special effects, re-releases it, makes a wadton of cash, and then declare that they are actually non-canon (guess how I felt about that). I'd say it's more like Final Fantasy games, where they share common design, lore and gameplay but they are not the same games.
You mean...... like EQ2?
Why do you think EQ2 didn't do so well? Because I'm not sure we would see eye to eye on that, unless your answer is, "It was just kinda lame." EQ3 can VERY easily be kinda lame too, and make no mistake, if it is, it will flop like a dead fish. I do quite like EQ's world and lore, but I wouldn't play it for that. I absolutely need gameplay that's nothing short of brilliant, and the safest way I know of achieving that, is to copy EQ very faithfully. The only other way I know, is to create the game of my dreams, and I'm just not sure anyone would have the balls and the budget to do that. SOE are actually my best shot.. I'm just doubtful they would be bold enough.
tl'dr
p.s. Wine induced ranting ramblings aside, I'm not completely against RMT. I like it from a business point of view, I just think it has nasty habit of harming the 'seriousness' of games and therefore their longevity. I could imagine a dream game where it could work, maybe, but I would feel far safer about making a game that takes a stand against it and goes with another option - even GW2's approach. But really, I look at EQ and I think if it aint broke... don't butcher the hell out of it.
