"So there tends to be lather, rinse, repeat sorts of ways to defeat those monsters," Georgeson continues. "In addition, all the quests that are like that are very linear in nature. There's a quest, you go out into the world, you kill 10 rats or whatever it is, you get your loot, and you move on to the next quest. There's not very much attention paid to the world around you, and the world isn't very dynamic, and doesn't change to whatever tactics you want to adopt."
It's this emergent AI system that Sony Online Entertainment has been talking up for EverQuest Next -- the ability for the enemies to not just attack you in waves, but actually read how you play, and react in such a way that they have a better chance of survival.
Says Georgeson, "Let's say you're in combat, and you use a fireball followed by a cold spell, and it happens to kill the monsters really well. You think 'Well, that seems like a really good idea, I'm going to do that a lot!' Then you go in and start using it against different types of monsters, and you realize that they start reacting to you in different ways, depending upon how smart the monster is."
Enemies have different levels of brain power, and the smarter they are, the less likely the same tactics can simply be used over and over again.
"They start using different dynamic situational modifiers," Georgeson adds. "It's not like an aggro bar, where you're basically just trying to keep a monster's attention by going 'nee-ner nee-ner' at him. They are assessing the threat constantly. So as you move around on the battlefield, your physical location in relation to all the other monsters is being assessed by all the monsters. The tactics you were, which defensive abilities you have up - all these things affect the monster's decision making."
The hope is that this will mean every combat situation is different, no matter where you are and who you are battling against. Of course, when you bring another of EverQuest Next's big selling points into the situation -- the voxel-based world destruction -- things can that little bit more interesting.
"When you start using destructability on top of that, to be able to use the environment around you in a tactical kind of situation so that you're blowing a tree down to block a doorway to keep monsters from coming in, or building a pit under some monsters so they fall in temporarily," says Georgeson. "All of these things are different ways to interact with the game."
Another way in which EverQuest Next is attempting to break the mold is by nixing the leveling system.
"In a regular MMO, you pick a class, and then if you want a different kind of game experience, you have to ditch that character, and form a new one that's a different class," Georgeson reasons. "What we're doing instead is, as you move through the world and you learn more things, what you do is you pick up other classes. You can not only play any of those classes at any time, but you can actually mix and match their character abilities, to be able to create classes that you've never seen before."
The idea is to provide players with a feeling of moving forward through vertical progression, upgrading gears and items within each class. By removing a leveling system, SOE hopes that players will be able to join their friends at any point, no matter how many hours a person has already put into the game.
"Our intent is that you'll be able to play the game for two years, and if one of your friends joins in, you will be able to group together and play together," he explains. "You'll clearly still be the vet - it just won't be as dramatic as it is with a traditional leveling system, where's there's no way you can group with each other. What we do is give you lots of ways to progress, and essentially customize each one of these classes to be the way you want them to be."
"So there's a lot of verticality depending upon what way you want to play," Georgeson adds. "But there's definitely not the same game as a traditional leveling RPG, and you have to kind of look at it in a slightly different way."
