EQNext" will be the world's largest sandbox-style MMO ever made"

I miss the "trains". Nothing was better than standing around with a group at a spawn point, just hanging out, waiting, and all of the sudden some asshat comes running towards you yelling "TRAIN" and a swarm of something is running behind him and right into you. Very annoying, but very funny.
 
I miss the "trains". Nothing was better than standing around with a group at a spawn point, just hanging out, waiting, and all of the sudden some asshat comes running towards you yelling "TRAIN" and a swarm of something is running behind him and right into you. Very annoying, but very funny.

The assholes were the ones who didn't yell train and just crashed them into you :p
 
Ahh old school EQ, those were the days. I remember the first time I played I made a Dark Elf and it took me forever to find my way out of the starting city lol.

I never played it a ton as when EQ first came out as UO was still running good and I was using a house loot bug to rob the Greatlakes and Lake Sup shards blind so that ate up most of my free time.

ohh and I also remember back in the beginning stepping foot into kithicor woods not knowing what was in there hahaha.
 
Ahh old school EQ, those were the days. I remember the first time I played I made a Dark Elf and it took me forever to find my way out of the starting city lol.

I never played it a ton as when EQ first came out as UO was still running good and I was using a house loot bug to rob the Greatlakes and Lake Sup shards blind so that ate up most of my free time.

ohh and I also remember back in the beginning stepping foot into kithicor woods not knowing what was in there hahaha.

Hahah. So true about Neriak. That place was a maze. And even as a dark elf with ultravision the starting forest was dark as hell. So easy to get lost in there. I really do miss the days before maps. Having to navigate by landmark etc. And then Dark Elf had one of the highest racial XP penalties IIRC. Playing as a Dark Elf was playing the game on hard mode.

It'll sound funny, but I think MMOs today are too balanced. It was the imbalances and seemingly random design flaws that added character to an MMO.
 
" Something you've never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn't want more kill 10 rats quests. We didn't want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they're delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game."


at the very least, they 'get it'...they realize why mmo's suck...the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one
Click target, click attack, wait 1.5 minutes & read a book while waiting, repeat.
 
In case any of you have missed it, Everquest Next won "Best of Show" at E3. It appears that the brass at E3 got a sneak preview and based their decision solely on that. It's hard not to think this is just hype. But who knows, I'll still be buying the game.

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=7501&val=1&uh=BB8C9DF97F4F2911C53C8E016B0D7BA7

just wish there was something they could tell us. No player housing I don't care, no open pvp I don't care. Most excited about wildstar at the moment.
 
TenTonHammer (one of the few independent MMO sites around) gave EQNext their best of E3 award; they are under a NDA so they can't talk about the specifics, but they said it looks amazing. I'm so excited to see the world of Norrath revitalized. I can only hope the mix the awesome world design of the old EQ/EQ2 days, with the improvements in both themepark and sandbox gameplay of the last 10 years will shine through.
I am a bit worried about the payment scheme though; I'm so very sick of today's "free 2 play" MMOs which require WAY more than $15 a month to have access to all the in-game content. For me, the great thing about MMOs was paying my monthly subscription fee and having the entire world before me to enjoy as I choose, without any extra charges for certain types of content just because Western developers lust after the Korean Grinder market where people are willing to drop $50+ a month on a "free" game that has all its content behind a bloody Item Mall, with time and moneysinks too boot! EQ should be more than that!
 
I am a bit worried about the payment scheme though;

Well it's definitely going to be some form of free to play since it's SOE, and with the exceptions of a few holdouts, the entire market has moved away from subscriptions. But it remains to be seen how bad the "pay to win" is going to be.

Hopefully they keep that kind of stuff to a minimum. They'll have to if they want to be taken seriously.
 
Dang, all these best of E3 awards have me super excited about it now, just a little under a month and half and we'll know.

Also if it's still on track we'll be playing the game later this year.

It seems like they are doing like Bethseda does and not "revealing" the game until they've almost finished it instead of demoing it early and then having people wait another year or more.
 
So when is the release date? I have been anticipating this game for well over 4 years. I used to play EQOA hands down best gaming experience I have ever had. New mmos these days have completely lost it. The most important thing to me in an mmo is the community. None of these new mmos seem to be able to create a true community
 
They haven't gave a' release date.

They just talked about in an interview earlier this year how people could expect to get t heir hands on the release version later this year.
 
Let me get this straight, the game wins best of e3, but was not shown to the public. The people it was shown to are under NDA, so they can't discuss it? What a load of rubbish with so many other great games there.
 
Let me get this straight, the game wins best of e3, but was not shown to the public. The people it was shown to are under NDA, so they can't discuss it? What a load of rubbish with so many other great games there.

What other amazing MMOs were being shown? These are MMO websites...
 
What other amazing MMOs were being shown? These are MMO websites...
Wasn't final fantasy 14 shown? What about Wildstar or Elder Scrolls Online? We have nothing but hearsay with everquest next. It could be phenomenal, but we have been shown next to nothing and is pure hype at this point. Kind of a slight to other games that were actually shown if you ask me.
 
What other amazing MMOs were being shown? These are MMO websites...

Archeage, war hammer online, destiny. Check out the archeage videos on YouTube and e3 and be amazed.

IMO archeage is what we are looking for and probably won't be satisfied until then. It will change mmos forever

I have my eyes set on blade & soul, final fantasy xiv, elder scrolls online, Everquest next, black desert, bless, age of wushu, wizardry online, dragons prophet, and there's more I forgot lol.

Out of those I really look forward to playing B&S, ffixiv, ESO, eq next, archeage, and black desert.
 
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Archeage, war hammer online, destiny. Check out the archeage videos on YouTube and e3 and be amazed.

IMO archeage is what we are looking for and probably won't be satisfied until then. It will change mmos forever

I have my eyes set on blade & soul, final fantasy xiv, elder scrolls online, Everquest next, black desert, bless, age of wushu, wizardry online, dragons prophet, and there's more I forgot lol.

Out of those I really look forward to playing B&S, ffixiv, ESO, eq next, archeage, and black desert.

I am really looking forward to Archeage but what do you mean it will change mmo's forever?

Everything in it has been done in other mmo's, mainly from Ultima Online and a little known mmo called Dark and Light (which had gliders and other things, you could even go sledding down snow covered mountains on your shield).

also Age of Wushu is out as well as Wizardry online, and neither are too good imo, Age of Wushu has good idea's with it's pvp and offline system, but the combat is very very old school mmo and detracts a lot from it.
 
I always thought of Everquest as ... Boobquest.Hey, it's the Marketing department's fault for those slutty advertisements. :p
 
Wasn't final fantasy 14 shown? What about Wildstar or Elder Scrolls Online? We have nothing but hearsay with everquest next. It could be phenomenal, but we have been shown next to nothing and is pure hype at this point. Kind of a slight to other games that were actually shown if you ask me.

Well they can't exactly lie and just pretend they didn't see EQNext, public or not. If they honestly feel it's the best MMO they saw, then that's what they've got to report. And the other MMOs, most of them, are just more derivative WoW/GW2 types. The only one that I saw remotely interesting was Archeage, and that got some mentions too right along side EQNext.
 
I'm worried about ArcheAge a bit; from what some have reported, it does look to include a lot more sandbox elements, but is suffering from many of the issues that are prevalent in Korean "freemium" games (grinding, lack of balance in certain areas - I read that people are just using all of their available settlement space to ranch cattle because it is disproportionately profitable to anything else you can do in that regard at the moment - and stupidly expensive, "boiled frog" monetization - especially in regards to the costs of owning houses,ships and the like). Koreans have a different threshold for what they enjoy in their MMOs in many cases. Many Western developers covet the fact that Koreans are likely willing to spend $75 for a "random chance box" that MIGHT give them the item they want, so these principles have been infecting the Western market in recent years, but it hasn't really held up. Look at TERA for instance; even when it was a subscription MMO, there was literally $80 of weapon skins available PER MONTH if you wanted all the in-game content....

I've yet to see a Korean game that doesn't suffer from being designed for this kind of monetization to date, so despite how aesthetically pleasing or interesting they may be, I've not found one that I could feel was to my interest. Maybe ArcheAge will change that; TrionWorlds may find a happy medium. I'm still skeptical.
 
The one thing from looking at the videos of Archeage is the combat, it just looks like your generic auto-attack/spam special combat.

I've gotten quite tired of that.

I really hope EQnext surprises people in regards to it's combat, as it's the one that made that style of combat so prevalent in mmo's.

It'd be amazing if they went completely nuts and have developed some kind of (fun and tactical) real time combat system, not like quake style, but something that is just straight up fun to play and enjoyable.
 
The one thing from looking at the videos of Archeage is the combat, it just looks like your generic auto-attack/spam special combat.

I've gotten quite tired of that.

I really hope EQnext surprises people in regards to it's combat, as it's the one that made that style of combat so prevalent in mmo's.

It'd be amazing if they went completely nuts and have developed some kind of (fun and tactical) real time combat system, not like quake style, but something that is just straight up fun to play and enjoyable.

Personally I *LIKE* hotbar-based traditional MMO PVP combat that is more dependent on tactical positioning, ability usage, and targeting/timing of aoe/crowd control/etc. If I want to play an action game instead of an RPG I'll go play Battlefield 3.

Archeage looks very interesting to me so far but it'll all depend on how Trion localizes it as to whether it'll be good in the NA market. If not, well, I backed the Camelot Unchained kickstarter including alpha access anyway ;).

All these "ACTION-BASED COMBAT!!!!" marketing proclamations are rather silly from MMO devs lately. Having fewer abilities and having to jump around like a jackrabbit doesn't mean it's better combat. It just means it's simplified and more akin to a faster-paced action RPG instead of being an actual MMO combat system. Personally I vastly prefer MMO combat systems for MMO games.
 
Personally I *LIKE* hotbar-based traditional MMO PVP combat that is more dependent on tactical positioning, ability usage, and targeting/timing of aoe/crowd control/etc. If I want to play an action game instead of an RPG I'll go play Battlefield 3.

Archeage looks very interesting to me so far but it'll all depend on how Trion localizes it as to whether it'll be good in the NA market. If not, well, I backed the Camelot Unchained kickstarter including alpha access anyway ;).

All these "ACTION-BASED COMBAT!!!!" marketing proclamations are rather silly from MMO devs lately. Having fewer abilities and having to jump around like a jackrabbit doesn't mean it's better combat. It just means it's simplified and more akin to a faster-paced action RPG instead of being an actual MMO combat system. Personally I vastly prefer MMO combat systems for MMO games.


MMO combat systems just aren't "fun" to many people.

I have never, in my entire 15+ years of playing mmo's EVER heard someone say they enjoyed that mmo "because of the combat is amazing/fun." It's alwyas been because their friends play, they enjoy the social aspect, dungeon crawling, loot, etc.

Rpgs are not defined by their combat. Having real-time combat that allows players to actually move and AIM their attacks doesn't take away the "rpg" aspects of a game.

See: The TES series, Gothic series, Mount and Blade, Mass Effect, etc.

I don't see how having a zillion abilities, with many being extremely redundant and variations on an earlier skill, and having to tab-target makes combat somehow more "tactical."

I would in fact wager that having to aim your skills, allowing the blocking and dodging to be useful, among other things it would bring to be more tactical, and most importantly more fun/enjoyable.

Also you mention people "jumping around like jackrabbits," as I said not like quake.

Bunny hopping is NOT something that has to be allowed/useful, many real time combat systems get around this with a very simple thing, called Stamina. Jumping takes stamina, the same as combat moves, swinging ia sword, shooting your bow, etc. Also you can make it where when you jump, once you land the jump you ar eslowed for a moment, so it would be extremely un-beneficial to jump during combat.

Not to mention, there's a ZILLION tab-target hotkey combat mmo's out there, can't we have one big AAA mmo that isn't that way? Because aside from Planetside (which doesn't really fill the rpg itch for most people) there really isn't one from a bit developer.
 
MMO combat systems just aren't "fun" to many people.

I have never, in my entire 15+ years of playing mmo's EVER heard someone say they enjoyed that mmo "because of the combat is amazing/fun." It's alwyas been because their friends play, they enjoy the social aspect, dungeon crawling, loot, etc.

Rpgs are not defined by their combat. Having real-time combat that allows players to actually move and AIM their attacks doesn't take away the "rpg" aspects of a game.

See: The TES series, Gothic series, Mount and Blade, Mass Effect, etc.

I don't see how having a zillion abilities, with many being extremely redundant and variations on an earlier skill, and having to tab-target makes combat somehow more "tactical."

I would in fact wager that having to aim your skills, allowing the blocking and dodging to be useful, among other things it would bring to be more tactical, and most importantly more fun/enjoyable.

Also you mention people "jumping around like jackrabbits," as I said not like quake.

Bunny hopping is NOT something that has to be allowed/useful, many real time combat systems get around this with a very simple thing, called Stamina. Jumping takes stamina, the same as combat moves, swinging ia sword, shooting your bow, etc. Also you can make it where when you jump, once you land the jump you ar eslowed for a moment, so it would be extremely un-beneficial to jump during combat.

Not to mention, there's a ZILLION tab-target hotkey combat mmo's out there, can't we have one big AAA mmo that isn't that way? Because aside from Planetside (which doesn't really fill the rpg itch for most people) there really isn't one from a bit developer.

To be honest I enjoyed both methods of combat. I loved the mount and blade series and if someone were to make an MMO like that possible I would be ecstatic. However, the autoattack hotkey combat that people have seen with EQ and WoW isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just needs proper depth (people shouldn't have just one optimal rotation, it should be much more reactive.)
 
MMO's in general are kind of stuck. People want choice, but in reality no matter how many "choices" there are it is just the illusion of choice. Something always works best, and people gravitate towards that, so there isn't really choice in spec's. There might be a couple minor variations, but there generally isn't.

EQ2 does the best in the core mechanics of the game of any MMO I've played. The controls are the smoothest, and there are enough buttons to push that you have to at least kind of think about it. Yes it's easy, but there is enough going on that it seems like the vast majority of people fuck it up and are bad. However the mechanics don't generally lend to creative encounter design. All the encounters are basically variations on a few different mechanics (adds being the most predominant one).

EQ2 fails on the development side hard though. Plenty of new "features" get put in the game, and they could be great ideas, but they never get supported past the initial launch of them. There are usually bugs, they never get fixed, and what could have been a great feature never has any follow through. Even things that are in other games.

A Dungeon Finder to pair groups and put them in a zone? Implemented, bombed because it didn't have any sense in building groups, and then pretty much never touched again. It's 2 expansions out of date in the zones you can even attempt to use and the group building never got looked at.

An LFG tool to advertise that you are looking for group? Put in, but never with any real ability to show what you are looking to do.

A build your own dungeon tool? Basically decorate a dungeon with zero ability to actually design anything, not even the layout of the zone or anything about any monster or encounter, it might as well be a house.

In game voice? 3rd party sourced, and basically sucks.

Itemization? I've been playing this game since a few months after it launched. I can't count a single time in this game that after something went live the itemization was good as is. It forever, and permanently, always needs to be adjusted after it gets launched because the itemization is just fucking god awful.

A few expansions ago they put in "Hot Zones" which are basically a daily zone that you can run for increased chances at the better loot. Pretty much hasn't been updated since then, and is just those zones. They have a daily mission for extra currency, same thing.


It honestly amazes me. Everything I've heard about the Planetside 2 team amazes me that it is under the same company. The PS2 team does a ton of shit right, they have the right attitude, and they communicate. The whole of the Everquest franchise is a fucking disaster of terrible management and zero communication.
 
It honestly amazes me. Everything I've heard about the Planetside 2 team amazes me that it is under the same company. The PS2 team does a ton of shit right, they have the right attitude, and they communicate.

... and yet PS2 isn't a blockbuster success.
 
I agree completely with EQ2 post above. Still probably the best core mechanics game with the most content of any MMO. But yes, it was marred by the poor leadership. It just feels like they have great idea's, but beyond the initial deployment, they get no love to finish them up. Hopefully EQn will resolve that issue. I also like the fact that in the early game, you really had to monitor your skills, because it wasn't a 1-1-1-2 type combat. As a bard, you had like 24 abilities to use or whatever it was, (not as intricate as EQ1 bards I know). But it kept you on your toes. Since then they watered down the classes due to the bitching about "balance" so now every class is almost the same. I hate the word balancing in MMO's. If I wanted to solo in EQ2, I woulda played a monk with FD, but I played a bard so I knew if I got caught out in the open it was my ass, even if I was battling a cleric...
 
... and yet PS2 isn't a blockbuster success.

Ps2 is so awful. The early hacker issues ruined it for everyone I know. Took way too long to get worked out. Beyond that its still just a mediocre shooter.
 
MMO combat systems just aren't "fun" to many people.

I have never, in my entire 15+ years of playing mmo's EVER heard someone say they enjoyed that mmo "because of the combat is amazing/fun." It's alwyas been because their friends play, they enjoy the social aspect, dungeon crawling, loot, etc.

Rpgs are not defined by their combat. Having real-time combat that allows players to actually move and AIM their attacks doesn't take away the "rpg" aspects of a game.

See: The TES series, Gothic series, Mount and Blade, Mass Effect, etc.

I don't see how having a zillion abilities, with many being extremely redundant and variations on an earlier skill, and having to tab-target makes combat somehow more "tactical."

I would in fact wager that having to aim your skills, allowing the blocking and dodging to be useful, among other things it would bring to be more tactical, and most importantly more fun/enjoyable.

Also you mention people "jumping around like jackrabbits," as I said not like quake.

(snip)



I didn't mean literally jumping like jackrabbits :p, it was meant as an illustration :). As far as combat being fun, I found it much more fun in games like DAOC where there were hard interrupts (meaning you couldn't cast for a couple of seconds if someone tried to hit you, except a "quick cast" every 30s that would slow your casting but allow it to go through for one spell) for casters, and timered specials on melee + cast times & instants, with no GCD but just ability timers restricting you. Combat in DAOC was very fun actually, and held up well when I tried it again a couple of years ago briefly just for old time's sake (I played for nearly 7 straight years starting from launch, with small breaks rarely).

Modern MMO stuff with 1.5s between abilities, almost everything being instant cast, positioning minimized in importance and LOS not mattering as much due to only special interrupts with nothing else stopping a cast/etc., is much less interesting. Going towards action combat is even further towards that road of boring in my opinion. That's why you don't hear people say the combat is fun/interesting nowadays, because it isn't: it's pretty much static and has very little depth to it. Every class can do almost everything, and situational abilities often are scarce, leaving you with a set order of abilities being best. Boring, indeed.

The highest game on my radar, assuming good localization, is Archeage, for a good MMO experience again.
 
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MMO combat systems just aren't "fun" to many people.

I have never, in my entire 15+ years of playing mmo's EVER heard someone say they enjoyed that mmo "because of the combat is amazing/fun." It's alwyas been because their friends play, they enjoy the social aspect, dungeon crawling, loot, etc.

Rpgs are not defined by their combat. Having real-time combat that allows players to actually move and AIM their attacks doesn't take away the "rpg" aspects of a game.

See: The TES series, Gothic series, Mount and Blade, Mass Effect, etc.

I don't see how having a zillion abilities, with many being extremely redundant and variations on an earlier skill, and having to tab-target makes combat somehow more "tactical."

I would in fact wager that having to aim your skills, allowing the blocking and dodging to be useful, among other things it would bring to be more tactical, and most importantly more fun/enjoyable.

Also you mention people "jumping around like jackrabbits," as I said not like quake.

Bunny hopping is NOT something that has to be allowed/useful, many real time combat systems get around this with a very simple thing, called Stamina. Jumping takes stamina, the same as combat moves, swinging ia sword, shooting your bow, etc. Also you can make it where when you jump, once you land the jump you ar eslowed for a moment, so it would be extremely un-beneficial to jump during combat.

Not to mention, there's a ZILLION tab-target hotkey combat mmo's out there, can't we have one big AAA mmo that isn't that way? Because aside from Planetside (which doesn't really fill the rpg itch for most people) there really isn't one from a bit developer.

yeah, an mmo with actual action rpg combat would be amazing. that term gets thrown around a lot these days but no mmo on the market really has that kind of combat. gw2, neverwinter, and tes are all tab targeting systems that just added a little bit of positionally to their system. tera comes the closest, but even that isn't as actiony as some people make it out to be. abilities are all short range, it's very difficult to actually miss stuff, everything is slow casting, and you're rooted when casting.

that's not to say tab targeting is necessarily bad though. guild wars 1 has an amazing combat system and imo, superior to that of gw2's and wow. honestly, I wish all these mmo's on the market today tried to copy gw1's combat instead of wow, and now, guild wars 2. the "dodge" system adds very little depth in its current iteration imo.

obviously though, tab targeting systems continue to exist as it's pretty difficult to impossible doing anything else with the massive latency involved in an mmo.
 
Yeah, I'll never understand why they made GW2's combat so much less then what GW1 was.

They way you had to pick your skills for your limited hotbar space and it basically allowed for players to pick skills they wanted/liked and have their own "builds."

In GW2 they just determined it by weapon and made everyone the same based on weapons.
 
Meh. More generic MMOs incoming. All this time with cut & pasting in MMO genre, and it took consoles and Bungie to bring out campaign quality to MMO.
 
I actually think EQ1 is still the best MMO out there today. I tried EQ2 for awhile but the feeling just wasn't the same.

I believe the biggest thing about EQ1 was the tempo of combat. Some might call it slow and boring. But to me, it was just the right pace. You couldn't just kill hordes of monsters without a scratch. You could coordinate attacks (mez this guy, cleric needs mana, slow that mob, attack this add because its a healer)... You could fight 3+ mobs and have the battle take 5 minutes to kill them. 3 mobs today in todays games (like GW2) would take you about 5-20 seconds to blow up and you don't care about crowd control, if a mob is a healer, no need to slow, damage of time.) Just whack a mole.

EQ2 had the opposite problem. So many abilities on the hotbar that had no affect on the outcome of the battle. Dots that lasted 12 seconds. Why even call it a dot? So all you do is play whack a mole on the hot bar as they light up. If you could whack those moles you'd win the battle.

If they can bring back the tactics of EQ1 battles by slowing down the pace. I'm playing it. That is the worse thing that changed in modern MMOs is the pace of combat and the lack of any tactics or strategy. EQ1 wasn't great in that regard, but its still light years beyond what we have in modern MMOs.
 
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