Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
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Giant dongs?EQNext is a fundamental misunderstanding of their MMORPG playerbase. In terms of tech improvements, MMO players just wanted more dynamic mobs, perhaps a bit better interactivity with the environment then current MMOs allow (say the ability for a rogue to climb a wall to break into a castle) and of course more appealing graphics then EQ or EQII.
Nobody was asking for EQcraft the MMO for the very simple reason that when we thought about it for more than a vodka-fueled weekend that EQcraft the MMORPG wouldn't work very wall on the scale of an MMO. It's like the old American Folk Song: How Many Giant Dongs Must be Built in a Game Before You Can Call it a Day?
With respect to the first or second vision of EQ3 I believe there is a Smed or Butler interview where they admit it was basically EQI with better graphics, which though not my ideal game, would have been much better than the current mess and would either be in beta or full on operational now.
Anyway you're mostly right. I think a game like landmark could do well, the problem is it is now associated with the EQ IP and its associated baggage, for better or for worse. Everquest conjures up a fairly specific idea of challenging group based PvE, raiding content, and dungeons. Landmark would probably be much better off divorced from the themes of eq and creating its own art style, themes, etc (like some dumb ass steampunk shit or something), likewise EQ would have been better off uninhibited by the constraints of ramming square shaped voxels into a round mmo shaped hole. I feel your chart is accurate. What happened is they took a smattering of all things popular, Minecraft, mobas, and MMOs, and said "how do we make this into one uber game?" Think about it, after shit-canning the 3rd iteration of EQN, I imagine they were sitting around spitballing ideas onto a dry-erase board and someone said "I got a cool idea, know what the kids like today? Minecraft, so, what if we... you know, put that in there?" Its like a room of 60 year old men trying to pitch the next big hit TV show for tween girls.
They had the dusty old EQ IP just sitting there, for free, with a built in framework of lore, themes, races, ideas etc to work off of (read as: principally disregard), with a built in-fanbase, built in brand awareness, and the ability to tout it as "The franchise which started it all!!" etc and just applied it to something which is so removed from Everquest that it works toward the detriment of both Landmark (which they later removed the EQ title from, too late though) and EQN.
Lets be honest, if the sacrosanct setting of Norrath was not associated with either title, I doubt we'd be paying that much attention.
tl;dr version
