EQ Next: #1 Next gen MMO

Elidroth said:

When they announced the new lead designer, someone who'd never worked on a successful game in his entire career and gave him the keys to the key franchise in the company, we all got worried. When those of us outside the team got our hands on the first combat 'demo', we were shocked, and very very disappointed. I gave up caring about EQN at that point.

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Sounds like you are talking about Steve "Moorgard" Danuser. As you mentioned, he's a guy with no real track record of anything successful in the MMO industry yet he was given a pivotal role in EQ Next. He was one of the first hired by Curt Schilling to create his MMO which never materialized in a debacle of epic proportions. Yet somehow he's managed to parlay his track record of non-shipped titles into a senior designer gig at Blizzard.

One of the best articles on the demise of EQ Next mentioned that the 38 Studios staff hired by SOE for EQ Next approved of the horrible character art direction. I'm sure that Danuser was part of this.

EQ2Wire » Closing the Book on EverQuest Next and Landmark

"Feedback from the existing EverQuest and EverQuest II teams was largely ignored. Instead, credence was primarily given to outside feedback from recently laid off 38 Studios staff and other outsiders in the industry. 38 Studios staffers in particular encouraged the exaggerated Disney character style."

Why SOE thought that Dansuer or anyone from 38 Studios had more a grasp of the EQ franchise and more talent than established devs like Elidroth is beyond me. Giving Danuser all that undeserved power was an insult to the existing staff. The sheer incompetence of the MMO industry (especially with regard to cronyism in hiring) never ceases to amaze me. I lay much of the blame on John Smedley for his ineptitude. The buck stops with him as far as the current state of the EQ franchise. He hired Ponytail who hired those below him.

SOE is a company rife with bad hiring over the years. People like Alan "Brenlo" Crosby come to mind.

Most of the bad and failed MMOs can be traced to bad hires and bad personnel decisions. Even WoW suffered greatly when they transferred their top talent to the Titan project, leaving the lesser talented devs to work on WoW. Get the hiring right, and you have at least a chance of success, get it wrong and your MMO is doomed.

Graphics were never the problem with the game. It was a problem to people that -really- loved Luclin shit-models I'm sure, or thought at any point that EQ had hyper-realistic graphics for some reason, but that wasn't why it shit the bed. They hitched a large part of their wagon to the silly idea of having Minecraft/Terraria as a MMO with something resembling an actual storyline, and kept focusing on the non-RPG aspects of the game (from what it looked like as an outsider looking in). Instead of taking the stuff people fondly remembered from EQ and EQ2 and expanding on it, they took ideas from completely unrelated games like MOBAs and Terraria and threw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

38 Studios certainly weren't making EQCraft the MMO, so them trying to turn EQ:Next into Minecraft was definitely from the internal guys.

The kerran animations absolutely reeked of Ponytail's EQ2 shit-hattery; that wasn't some outside group being given all the credit. The game itself was a piece of shit; the art direction was negligible and only the hardest of hardcore WoW haters blame the graphical style. It came down to trying to mix genres that don't make sense, and instead of going "Ok, destructible environments and MOBA gameplay out; lets make an actual EQ game" they kept riding the retard train to vaportown.

Could be wrong; Elidroth would be the one to confirm or deny. But you have to be a strange bird to think that EQ ever had non-stylized graphics until they went to EQ2, and most people turned that shit off the moment they had access to the SoGa models.

Considering the EQ art teams -made- the terrible Luclin and EQ2 release models after a good chunk of the guys who made the good shit at EQ's release were gone, I can sort of see why someone wouldn't want their opinion. That shit was terrible.

Elidroth said:

EQ and EQ2 were making money, but all of that was being funneled to EQ and we could barely get table scraps to improve our games.

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That is how SOE always worked. My entire time working there on EQ, we did nothing but have to turn out expansions to help fund SWG, EQ2, PS, Free Relams etc. etc. etc. with a skeleton crew.

I believe there are some great devs at SOE. The problem I always saw there was management with the exception of a few of the team leads. I feel like the management always had to stamp their direction on the games which led to poor execution. The fact that they made EQ2 and tried to make EQ3 and both times ignored what made EQ a great game is the perfect example of why everything misses with them. They are always trying to look for the next gimmick instead of making a deep and interesting game. Storybricks and Voxel worlds for an mmo. Gimmicks that should have never made it past the initial brainstorm.

You have a guy on your H1 team that leaves and remakes H1 into Pubg and it explodes. How do you fuck that up and not recognize that before they decide to leave? I'm sure it might not be as simple as that but come on.

Old Man Potter said:

Sounds like you are talking about Steve "Moorgard" Danuser.

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Nope.. Not Steve. I don't think he was ever Lead either, but I could be wrong.

Schags said:

That is how SOE always worked. My entire time working there on EQ, we did nothing but have to turn out expansions to help fund SWG, EQ2, PS, Free Relams etc. etc. etc. with a skeleton crew.

I believe there are some great devs at SOE. The problem I always saw there was management with the exception of a few of the team leads. I feel like the management always had to stamp their direction on the games which led to poor execution. The fact that they made EQ2 and tried to make EQ3 and both times ignored what made EQ a great game is the perfect example of why everything misses with them. They are always trying to look for the next gimmick instead of making a deep and interesting game. Storybricks and Voxel worlds for an mmo. Gimmicks that should have never made it past the initial brainstorm.

You have a guy on your H1 team that leaves and remakes H1 into Pubg and it explodes. How do you fuck that up and not recognize that before they decide to leave? I'm sure it might not be as simple as that but come on.

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This exactly. Ponytail was determined to make his gaming 'legacy' with Landmark.. He had an ego that rivaled anyone I've ever worked with.. Any time anyone suggested we just make an updated EQ, we were dismissed as 'not thinking big enough'.. Well.. his 'big' thinking got us SOEmote, and EQN vapor.. He knew absolutely nothing about EQ as a franchise IMO.. the best example of that was him telling those of us on EQ that we didn't know what we were doing when we presented new feature ideas for our expansion, and in the same meeting asked what system we used to make in-game cutscenes, as if that was a thing.. like fucking ever.

EQ3, using the art style Rosie and her group initially came up with, without the voxel nonsense, using the single character multi-class ideas Rich Waters had come up with could have been fantastic. Unfortunately, the voxels camp took over, and then the MOBA nonsense happened too.. There was a lot of League of Legends and DOTA playing going on in the team, and they were convinced that was the way to make an MMO, even though they're nothing alike.. Again.. anytime someone suggested this was a bad idea, they were shut out and ignored. Literally everyone outside the EQN team was hoping for a small numbers of classes, firstly in order to make them unique and interesting, and secondly easier to balance, and instead we were told they had 'planned' 47 classes. FORTY FUCKING SEVEN.. We also learned this 47 classes stuff at SOE Live like everyone else did..

Oh.. and if you were there at the panels.. "We have it all planned out but are not ready to talk about it yet" is code for "Uh.. we have no fucking idea what we're going to do there yet."

I realize I'm probably dooming myself from working in games again as a result of this.. but honestly if that's the case then so be it.. The shit that happened with EQN upsets me more than I can describe. SOE had a chance to really do it right and recapture the EQ nostalgia in a new game, and instead they flushed 6 years, who knows how much money, and basically the future of the EQ franchise right down the shitter.

That being said.. the people on EQ and EQ2 are doing great work in keeping those games alive IMO.. The people on the team are fantastic developers, incredibly imaginative, hard working, and really have the best interests of the games at heart. And Holly is a superb producer to work for.. She actually gives a shit about the integrity of the game, the people who make the game, and the people who play the game.

I can kind of understand the knee-jerk over-correction of trying to lock into moba action bar for EQ3, after basically non-stop (justified) criticism of EQ2 for ability bloat.

Of course, if EQ3 hadn't flopped, it'd be a VR Survival Voxel Building Sandbox Moba Mobile Battle Royale Game by launch, judging by how "SQUIRREL?!?" everything was.

I don't.. You can avoid ability bloat by simply not making 100 abilities. Not every class needs to be able to do every goddamn thing.. That's the whole point of having different classes.. to make different ways of doing things.. It's a conscious choice to not be stupid.

But if every class can't do everything then they'll complain on the internet about it, yo.

Elidroth said:

That being said.. the people on EQ and EQ2 are doing great work in keeping those games alive IMO.. The people on the team are fantastic developers, incredibly imaginative, hard working, and really have the best interests of the games at heart. And Holly is a superb producer to work for.. She actually gives a shit about the integrity of the game, the people who make the game, and the people who play the game.

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Yeah I liked working with Holly/Caraker/Mash on EQ a lot. I think they dicked Mash over and let him go awhile ago though. He did a lot of great stuff on EQ when it came to getting scripted events to be not so shitty. Caraker was always someone who actually logged in and talked to people back when he was a raid designer. I felt like he always got the most out of EQ's raids given the tools that we worked with. I liked working with Akil as well. He left for EQ2 shortly after I jumped to the design team though. I'm sure I'm missing some as well. It's been a long time since I worked there.

Then you had people like Salim Grant who "scripted" most of GoD and Uqua, and left for sigil 2 weeks after GoD launched while his shit was broken. Meanwhile guilds were stuck for months on progression in a broken zone right as wow launched. Not sure how that dude kept getting promoted.

It was disheartening that each expansion needed some new feature as a bullet point on the box to get it approved knowing it was only bloating the game. How many features got introduced then forgotten about/not supported 2 expansions later. It's part of the reason I'm playing on p99 now and not live.

Mash's problem was he was difficult to work with.. He's not a people person at all. Extremely talented, and dedicated, but kind of a dick at times. Akil is freaking awesome to work with, and one of the reasons I'd be interested in joining the Ashes of Creation team.. He straight up loves games, and has a great mind for all aspects of development. I worked with, and for Caraker for 8 years. He's one of the best the EQ team has had.. Salim is... Salim.

As for the 'feature' battle.. yeah.. it sucks. You can thank marketing for that.. they simply couldn't grasp the concept that putting out new content was enough of a selling point. We would argue for weeks about your exact point.. that a new system or feature needed to be supported down the road, and that it was adding to the development time (or meant something else had to be scrapped or scaled back), and marketing just never cared.. They wanted their selling points and truly didn't give a shit how it impacted the dev team. Then we'd go to monthly business meetings and they'd trot out some useless fucking data points about how much money they were spending for this or that.. and NEVER ONCE could they ever honestly tell us how that money spent impacted membership or sales. Like the time they took a Prince impersonator to various online media sites for one of our anniversaries to 'party like it's 1999'.. Yeah.. might as well have just set that money on fire in the parking lot..

Do you guys remember the exact day or week when EQN changed it's vision and concept ?

(Was there a real life event or staffing change that prompted the swing?)

I know it wasn't always set to become what it became, and I know the direction of a few people seemed to doom the concept. I would like to know about the mood or morale of the crew when things changed dramatically.

It seems an interesting topic (and was the 38 studios story) in regards to how something like that can affect people.

Sure.. When Ponytail was made head of the EQ Franchise as a whole, and a new Creative Director, and new Lead Designer were assigned.. I didn't realize what an egomaniac Ponytail was until then, and the people promoted to the new positions made me not want to be on the team anymore. I was REALLY excited to get onto EQN and shape a new EQ game until that happened. I wasn't alone in that feeling either.

E Elidroth did Ponytail ever actually play Everquest? If so any idea to what extent?

Marketing people are slime

Elidroth said:

That being said.. the people on EQ and EQ2 are doing great work in keeping those games alive IMO.. The people on the team are fantastic developers, incredibly imaginative, hard working, and really have the best interests of the games at heart. And Holly is a superb producer to work for.. She actually gives a shit about the integrity of the game, the people who make the game, and the people who play the game.

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IDK how you can look at the current state of EQ2 and say they care about integrity. They seem to be on a different mission. Cash cow.

Take the progression server. Show XP down to a crawl and sell XP pots. Nevermind that it was even slower than at launch. Nobody asked for that shit. They did it to make money. I don't begrudge a company making money. I do begrudge them charging a subscription and then raping my wallet further though. And forget all the cool stuff that used to be created as part of the game before. Now that stuff is sold on the store. On a game that you need to sub to to even remotely advance in. Yeah...game integrity is it the window.

Schags said:

You have a guy on your H1 team that leaves and remakes H1 into Pubg and it explodes. How do you fuck that up and not recognize that before they decide to leave? I'm sure it might not be as simple as that but come on.

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PlayerUnknown had been working on the Battle Royale game mode for years, as a mod first for Arma2 (a game first released in 2009), though it really got most of its attention for its Arma3 version. They, SOE, licensed his version of Last Man Standing, and hired him as a consultant. He wasn't some ignored junior dev who ran off to make it big. They've made plenty of mistakes, but bringing in PlayerUnknown was probably one of their better/best decisions of the last decade.

Flipmode said:

IDK how you can look at the current state of EQ2 and say they care about integrity. They seem to be on a different mission. Cash cow.

Take the progression server. Show XP down to a crawl and sell XP pots. Nevermind that it was even slower than at launch. Nobody asked for that shit. They did it to make money. I don't begrudge a company making money. I do begrudge them charging a subscription and then raping my wallet further though. And forget all the cool stuff that used to be created as part of the game before. Now that stuff is sold on the store. On a game that you need to sub to to even remotely advance in. Yeah...game integrity is it the window.

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To be fair, I'm not sure how Daybreak handles this but working on another game that went f2p, we were often handed this same kind of directive off from publishing/money people and we had to implement it whether we agreed with it or not. I'm not saying it's the same there, maybe they do sit around all day thinking of new shit they can charge for. I'm just saying sometimes that type of shit flows down to development.

I'm not a fan of the nickle/dime people philosophy. Then again, I consider myself a gamer and tend to lean more in favor of looking at it from a players perspective.

Flipmode said:

IDK how you can look at the current state of EQ2 and say they care about integrity. They seem to be on a different mission. Cash cow.

Take the progression server. Show XP down to a crawl and sell XP pots. Nevermind that it was even slower than at launch. Nobody asked for that shit. They did it to make money. I don't begrudge a company making money. I do begrudge them charging a subscription and then raping my wallet further though. And forget all the cool stuff that used to be created as part of the game before. Now that stuff is sold on the store. On a game that you need to sub to to even remotely advance in. Yeah...game integrity is it the window.

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Actually that was from player feedback according to my sources.. Players actually ASKED for the game to be slowed down on progression servers.. Maybe this is a case of players not knowing what they actually want, but that was from polling data..