I can understand why big events, like Halas are inevitable. I just hope they also create smaller rallying calls that can go either way that also have a permanent affect on the world. Things like small outposts should be fought over (on both sides) and be permanent. Hell, they could even be fought over again down the line if some very specific objectives are met.
This is true, your impact toward rallying call storylines will not ultimately stop the outcome. However you can still do this with the other dynamic events that are supposed to happen unscripted throughout the world if the AI works as advertised.
There has to be a set level of development on all servers or SOE wouldn't be able to release expansions. It doesn't matter if the goblins have ransacked a_dusty_village_11 or not, but no Halas would cause problems if they decide to split human factions and make Barbarians a new playable race.
I apologize if I missed this (it's a long thread), was it confirmed that Rallying Calls only have one final outcome? Does 'Halas gets built' have multiple possible outcomes on different servers? Even if the results are superficial (walls of stone vs wood; main gate north vs south)... it's just pre-defined outcomes don't sound like moving the genre forward any more than Rift World Events or the opening of AQ in WoW.
I was 14 and playing Multiplayer Battletech: Solaris pretty heavily on Gamestorm when a friend in my stable (guild) told us to take a look at the EQ website. This was a few months before launch in 99. I became enamored with the game. I visited the website incessantly (if anyone remembers, the website was laid out the way the first loading screen looks between server select and character select), When it finally came out, I bought it and came home to find that our household computer didn't have enough of a GPU to run it. I took the only $100 I had to EB Games and bought a Voodoo3. Got home, installed it, chose Cazic-Thule and became hooked for years.
Halas being built is the only outcome. But it can be achieved in different ways based on the dynamic AI (or so they said).
When asked if someone could intervene with villainous intent during rally calls, the panel (Principally Dave Georgeson) recoiled in horror and stated "We didn't make a game with griefing in mind." (As if that would be griefing) but Terry Micheals did say that you could technically slow it down but chopping like every tree in the fucking world down but even then "there would be alternative methods of advancement" in the rally call.
I wonder if they realize that they're ripping the immersiveness out of the event by saying there's absolutely no way to alter the end result? I'd rather they just not say anything at all, even if the result is predetermined.
The only thing that really matters with EQN is whether StoryBricks is any good. If SB is great then this is EQN:
Wait , so they are actually pre-determined outcomes with no chance of making they happen differently/not happen ?
That's a good MyEQ Story. +1
Because Rallying Calls are for players to be apart of large story-driven events. It's hard to have a consistent over-arching story across multiple expansions if every server has MAJOR differences.
I guess to me it just would seem far more enjoyable if this had a chance of at least two different results. In that case , the Ogres/Goblins/X whatever side keeps this from happening and instead an "evil" city comes into play. Cascading effects from storybricks to mobs etc in the area and so on. With enough variances in these events , each servers could have a different landscape , you login to server Y and it's cheery on the east side and a cess pool on the west , on Z it's reversed , on A server it's a completely evil run will a small pocket of "goodness" holding on , and so on.
You say that now and then you wake up in 2016 and every new city on your server is an "evil" city or doesn't get founded and all the good races are stuck in Qeynos. Not as fun as you think.
Agreed on that end. I have absolutely no doubt that if players were given the ability to ultimately decide the outcome, it would most likely always end in that type of result.