Watched the most recent stream.
Banks are not linked as of now, and it doesn’t sound like they intend them to be.
In a round-about way, without adequate preparation, this also adds to potential death penalty.
A lot of people expecting a ‘spiritual successor’ to classic era EQ are in for a real surprise if these decisions all make it in.
The increases in zone size, death penalty, and night danger are going to have enormous impacts on how the world feels. There will be a much much greater focus on survival and preparation elements, and it will shrink the world the player engages with significantly. EQ never really felt like that to me. If someone forgot something it wasn’t a total catastrophe that resulted in my gameplay being disrupted for 30 minutes. I never felt like i had to stay close to my preferred city/hub. If i was soloing in Overthere and got a /tell to join a SolB group, i simply ran to Skyfire and got a port. Now I’m going to have to first travel to a specific bank to grab who knows what I’ll need for a potential corpse run.
These all sound like intentional strategies at this point, but i really haven’t heard much design philosophy behind the decisions. If i were to guess it’s about content consumption rate and player interaction.
But yeah, this game is going to be a lot more about survival elements and preparation for adventuring than any classic EQ players are used to. We’ll see where it all shakes out.
I love playing classic EQ to this day, and as such I was hoping to be the target market for this game, but i just don’t think I am. I really only have 3-4 hours a few nights a week these days, after the kids go to bed and my obligations are satisfied. I have zero desire to devote 25%+ of a given play session to traversal, preparation or survival elements.
Funny enough, this game may be positioned for much younger or much older men, or ones who have 25+ hours per week to devote to it.
