honestly, the word sandbox scares the shit out of me. every time i think of that word i think of a game like mortal online, where there is some shitty, boring pvp and nothing else in the world to do but grief people or mine for minerals. i hate pvp, and the fact that they think pvp will somehow help them make EQN some great game is probably the main reason why i will never play it. i enjoyed the original EQ because it was PvE, and it wasn't total sandbox, nor was it completely theme park, but somewhere in between; which i think was a perfect balance of both.
EQ Never
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tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Latest rumor I've heard. There will be no or a very short beta as soe wants the game out before information about mobs storybricks/quests and etc is endemic on the web. March 16, 2014 might be the latest it will release. From "a friend of a friend of a dev" take it with salt.
So competitors won't have a chance to copy? Or before people realize it's all hype? And speaking of hype, I just realized the two guys in charge of game design for EQN had the pleasure of being partially responsible for Vanguard. Awesome.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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Ya, it is awesome. Vanguard is an awesome game with some of the best classes, one of the most interesting and vast worlds, and some of the largest most compelling dungeons in all of the MMO industry. Did it have its bugs at launch? Yes, to the point of unplayability. Was the content top notch? You fucking bet.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Tsang's was top quality. Everything else up to Dargun was pretty fucking lamesauce. And whatever the "Grey" castle/dungeon/thing was horrendous. That's when I quit the game; it had shit dungeons all over the place with terrible lore/encounters and the most boring gameplay during said encounters. I'm sure things got pretty awesome later on, but for the first 3 months, dungeons were ghost towns and pretty much complete bullshit. Yay literally farming a named in Dargun's for like 8 hours and nothing to come for it besides little to no xp because the shit started greening out for most the group (level appropriate characters) looking for a trigger to spawn the boss.
Some things are to be praised. The majority of the package 3 months in, however, was abysmal. Including content.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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There are many other good "dungeons": Rajin Stronghold, Magi Hold, CIS, Pantheon, Karrus Hakrel. The palace in the hidden valley. I didn't do much in thestra but I thought the estate of unrest equivalent was okay though I didn't do it all. I'll agree had a similiar problem - too easy to outlevel a dungeon with a good group, they fucked up the XP curve.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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It's only a rumor but I'd guess the former would be a consideration. We will know in 2 weeks.
How can they possibly test an MMO properly without a large number of people playing at once... Seem's total bullshit to me.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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FTFY
Seriously though, I'm both excited and apprehensive about the Vanguard affiliations with EQN. I loved - and hated - Vanguard both for what it was and what it could have - and should have - been. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all true. Same goes for my anticipation over the Storybricks involvement; it could be bring about some radically different play, or be a complete shitfest/waste of time depending on the implementation.
Honestly, my biggest concern over the game is how SOE is going to gouge the living hell out of its playerbase if the game is good.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Except for the fact that it's supposedly just in pre-alpha/alpha right now. So'd they'd be skipping the FnF Beta period - Noon Aug 2nd will be interesting...
I'm not thrilled about it. I'm even more concerned about the connection to Free Realms. Of the six main players on the EQN team, four of them came straight from Free Realms. I can see it now: the hype from Vanguard meets the gameplay of Free Realms.
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Going with the all hype /cashgrab angle.
Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the game had little to no alpha/beta testing and just launched as is, being SOE.
The games current iteration has been in work for less than a year, and it's a no brainer that the art/level asset are being recycled from the WoW Clone version of EQN.
That's little to no time at all to redesign and develop game play systems. I'm guessing the sandbox stuff is all spin. They saw how terribly WoW clones are doing and how much money it would cost to actually make one that could compete (their last try of making a WoW Clone failed epically lol EQ2), so instead of investing the dev time and resources to write a million McQuests they're just going to release the world without content and call it a sandbox.
Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the game had little to no alpha/beta testing and just launched as is, being SOE.
The games current iteration has been in work for less than a year, and it's a no brainer that the art/level asset are being recycled from the WoW Clone version of EQN.
That's little to no time at all to redesign and develop game play systems. I'm guessing the sandbox stuff is all spin. They saw how terribly WoW clones are doing and how much money it would cost to actually make one that could compete (their last try of making a WoW Clone failed epically lol EQ2), so instead of investing the dev time and resources to write a million McQuests they're just going to release the world without content and call it a sandbox.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I would argue that SOE knows exactly what an NDA ridden closed beta leading into a lackluster release will give them. Will they make the same mistake they have previously? Who knows. But ignorant they are not.
Also Tad: Raijin and Hakrel were "ok" for partial outdoor dungeons, but they were seriously pull-spank-pull affairs at best. Tsangs is, and should always be, one of the best dungeons with accurate "quests" and lore that still fit the theme yet don't make it a super retard grindfest. Doing it alone to satisfy one player? Boring. Full group with different symbol needs et al? Magic.
Do more of that, less Dargun's/Grey style dungeons, and I am more on board with uninstanced. Go the way of Sol B/Lguk/Karnors/Seb and fuck right the hell off.
Editing because: I don't mind the concept of a camp mechanic, I just want it to be more ogranic than "You killed this PH, wait 22 minutes for the next possible spawn" type of gameplay. Literally the only way to effectively play is to metagame the entire system. That's bad design and I get angsty when people mention copying that bullshit. Lets take Raster. Fuck minotaurs, you punch their faces and they die. Great. Him having x9+ placeholders before spawning? Bullshit. Make that stuff a tally.
Kill 200 PHs? Dude spawns and is only targetable by you. You get the drop; you progress the quest. Add in failsafes that don't only reward the most prolific players. Put in hard as fuck raid-only encounters to gate out the newblets, but don't let the RNG dictate when shit is available and only the RNG. Fuck Soul Leech and killing 15 CTs before I saw one. Fuck the Ashenbone Drakes and 101 (7 per spawn, per day, so 15+ days of camping this shit nightly) spawns before I see a hide. It doesn't make it more epic; it makes it tedious as fuck. Killing easy mobs should not reward you with a super badass item, no matter how rare the drop you are looking for. If I kill CT/Innoruuk and fuck up the hole? I should 99/100 get the required items. Then it is up to me to kill Lhranc, and if anyone has actually done that pre-SoV, mofo fucks -raids- up hilariously fast. Make the difficulty at the end, not the patience to deal with stupid spawn timers and even worse PH models.
Also Tad: Raijin and Hakrel were "ok" for partial outdoor dungeons, but they were seriously pull-spank-pull affairs at best. Tsangs is, and should always be, one of the best dungeons with accurate "quests" and lore that still fit the theme yet don't make it a super retard grindfest. Doing it alone to satisfy one player? Boring. Full group with different symbol needs et al? Magic.
Do more of that, less Dargun's/Grey style dungeons, and I am more on board with uninstanced. Go the way of Sol B/Lguk/Karnors/Seb and fuck right the hell off.
Editing because: I don't mind the concept of a camp mechanic, I just want it to be more ogranic than "You killed this PH, wait 22 minutes for the next possible spawn" type of gameplay. Literally the only way to effectively play is to metagame the entire system. That's bad design and I get angsty when people mention copying that bullshit. Lets take Raster. Fuck minotaurs, you punch their faces and they die. Great. Him having x9+ placeholders before spawning? Bullshit. Make that stuff a tally.
Kill 200 PHs? Dude spawns and is only targetable by you. You get the drop; you progress the quest. Add in failsafes that don't only reward the most prolific players. Put in hard as fuck raid-only encounters to gate out the newblets, but don't let the RNG dictate when shit is available and only the RNG. Fuck Soul Leech and killing 15 CTs before I saw one. Fuck the Ashenbone Drakes and 101 (7 per spawn, per day, so 15+ days of camping this shit nightly) spawns before I see a hide. It doesn't make it more epic; it makes it tedious as fuck. Killing easy mobs should not reward you with a super badass item, no matter how rare the drop you are looking for. If I kill CT/Innoruuk and fuck up the hole? I should 99/100 get the required items. Then it is up to me to kill Lhranc, and if anyone has actually done that pre-SoV, mofo fucks -raids- up hilariously fast. Make the difficulty at the end, not the patience to deal with stupid spawn timers and even worse PH models.
They'll release it with a slightly updated version of Dungeon Maker and a re-skinned Player Studio. Then Smedley will say, "See, players make ALL the content. Biggest sandbox EVER!"
No, there will be a decently long beta. They'll release a few beta keys and then charge $40 for people to get in early, a la Planetside 2.
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Well that's why I said if they start soon after. Still I think 3-4ish months is decent enough for a beta assuming you start with most/all the content from the start. Lots of betas take a long time cause they start when the game is 1/3rd finished and they add stuff as they go which needs testing then add more stuff which needs testing again etc. Depends on the state of the beta and how fast they are with fixing issues.
Xexx
Vyemm Raider
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I don't like this. Sure i want to play it as much as the next but skipping a decent sized beta will mean alot of untested mechanics, content and server load. That is unless of course they plan largely ahead for worse case scenarios(which Sony is known for having).
This is more talked about than the pre e3 talks lol. It's just a couple weeks away but even I'm awaiting the live stream.
I'd totally buy the "pet as mount" one in WoW. 'Scuse me, Personal World Destroyer coming through.
Yeah, this is bollocks. As soon as they release a client, it'll be datamined within hours and up on EQNHead/EQN ZAM minutes after that. Skipping beta so you can keep shit off the net formaybe24 hours longer is too retarded, even for SOE.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Befallen was a hell. Early in 99, a friend of mine did the "oops, I dropped thru the well" and then went with a few passerby trying to recover his corpse.
After dying 4 or 5 times, he asked for help in guild, and that's when things got wrong. It turns out that the Bard "locate corpse" would target the first corpse dead, but the /consent command would only allow you to drop the last corpse in the zone. So here we were, down in the last room with the original corpse there, no problem, but we needed to recover every single corpse BEFORE it (with a handful of autosplit coppers on each). Without being able to track them.
(we were high enough to clear the dungeon, but we didn't had a cleric for rez on the spot... necro coffins? what's that? well, HE's the necro, and he's not enough level for that)
Thankfully, we managed to convince a GM that this was clearly a bug (find corpse but consent not working), and all the corpses got summoned at entrance.