@belegorm: Also the world is supposedly going to have verticality line Minecraft or Terraria. Start on the surface, dig down and you're in a subterranean cave area. Dig down more and you're in a lava area.

For an MMO that sounds kinda crazy. My biggest question is how they're going to handle everything server wise, whether there'll be a lot of intances within a server so there aren't too many players destroying the world at the same time.

I got really excited for GW2 pre-release, and when it came out I enjoyed it for a while but not as much as I thought I would, so I'm cautiously optimistic here.

Sounds like it could be cool.

Still, this is going to be a case of, 'I'll believe it when I see it', since all the hype about GW2 turned out to be either false, or not as impression as they said it would be. Once players upload videos of themselves doing these things, then I'll believe it.

Yeah, I'm also in the "I'll believe it when I see it" boat. MMOs are probably the genre with the biggest history of incredibly overhyping games and then failing to deliver on nearly everything (see: pretty much anything released post-WoW).

Also, I will say that I vastly prefer hotbar MMOs to whatever the hell you want to call a game like GW2. Having ~4-6 skills is much less interesting to me than having ~15-30, and I'm also not a fan of the new 'hey just switch all your shit around whenever because fuck it!' school of thought. It's why I don't like the GW2 weapon/skill system and why I hated the Diablo III leveling system.

I dunno. It's gonna sound condescending and stupid, but I've always felt gross about companies changing games to cater to the casual crowd instead of the hardcore. I'm not really sure why you'd try to make life easier for the people who are going to play your game for the first month and then drop it to the detriment of those that are going to play and support you for years. Obviously an incredibly loose analogy, but just take a look at Nintendo.

My problem with Guild Wars 2 was that it felt like there was no real carrot on a stick as far as spells and attacks go. Using the weapons and gaining those abilities was cool at first but you got them so fast. It felt like i was just treading water. A system like Secret World might be okay. Hopefully SOE will have something to alleviate that problem. Also if the Fae and Arisai aren't a playable race, they should just shutter the whole thing now XD

All of this seems pretty damn awesome for an MMO...

...but none of it feels like Everquest. None of this feels like Norrath.

I love the art style. It looks crisp and unique while still invoking all of the recent stylized MMOs. However, I am having a hard time looking at the art style and saying "that's a Vah Shir." Actually, is that lion person even a Vah Shir? I doubt he's a Kerra.

It seems like they are super hung up on this destructible environment/Minecraft-esque "build the world" setup. It's a poor way to introduce the newest game in the Everquest franchise. Come in, talk about some core gameplay stuff, then show off the new crazy shit.

I just feel like it was a presentation without much solid information besides "HEY SHIT GETS BEAT THE FUCK UP."

That's the idea. EQ1 was the first themepark MMO; nearly EVERY MMO since then, most notably WoW, has taken that formula and done it to death. The problem is that we've been practically playing the same game for the past decade. Evidently what interested the devs behind EQN wasn't to revolutionise the themepark genre (which has entirely too many recent/upcoming MMOs attempting to do this), but to reinvent the sandbox genre. If their first themepark was so good for being the first one, I have confidence that their first sandbox will be decent at least. You need a really high-profile MMO that's DRAMATICALLY different from the current ones to let us finally enter a new stage in the evolution of MMOs.

BTW apparently they're going to release a separate "game" first, which is essentially the tool the devs are using to develop the game world. Basically something like the creation mode in Minecraft. Some player creations will make it into the final game, I believe. Which is pretty awesome, because I think that in most games where there is the capability of player-created content, the player-created content becomes a real high point of the game. The Total War mod community, for example, has created ridiculously amazing stuff far and beyond the original vision of the devs.

I was formerly thinking that Blizzard's Titan was going to be the game to finally revolutionise the MMO genre, but now I'm very interested in what EQN can do.

@belegorm: I can understand where you are coming from. As a developer, I would probably be bored to tears if I was developing the same thing that I had done for the last decade and a half. At the same time, we're talking about something with a VERY long lineage. We're not just talking about Everquest and Everquest 2 here. We're also talking about Champions of Norrath, Return to Arms, Everquest Online Adventures, and Lords of Everquest. There is a WORLD here with a lot of lore. Looking at what was shown, I am not feeling that same connection to the world. Maybe it's because I'm not seeing the deeper stuff within the world's lore yet. Where are all of the different planes? How does the underworld stuff factor into the lore, story, etc? How does this new art style end up affecting the story, lore, and world?

These are things that are VERY important to any EQ player. 19 expansions later, EQ1 is still going strong (for what it's worth at least) and there is a 20th expansion hitting in September. That's insanity, but it proves that the world they have created is absolutely amazing. I had a fear that this is going to cause less focus on appreciating the world and more focus on destroying the world for the sake of destruction fun. I can see where the voxel mechanics can lead to more persistent and memorable moments, drawing you in because things are not just static objects anymore or destroyed through a cutscene. However, I feel as though there should be some level of consequence to players if they go on a rampage of destroying things without being conscious of the world around them. THAT sounds like something that Everquest would do.

Beyond that, I'm just disappointed that we didn't get more about the game overall. There's been plenty of time for them to work on this stuff. I wouldn't mind seeing some UI, some general gameplay beyond a tech demo, things of that nature. I want to see the MMO in honest action, even for just a couple of minutes. Maybe it's just me wanting too much upfront.

I will say that the idea of player-created content within the world that can persistently affect everything...as well as the fact that the world itself can persistently affect that player-created content...is absolute madness. It's literally the one thing I've wanted in an MMO forever. Star Wars Galaxies played with this idea a little (taxi drivers, shops, etc). However, this is the extent to which I've wanted to see it.

I really do hope this game is the thing needed to breath some new life into the genre. I've thoroughly enjoyed Guild Wars 2 since release because it's fresh in a genre full of staleness. However, the luster on that can only last so long...I think. I don't know. Every time I start thinking it won't, they release some new content or have me running around doing all kinds of shit that I didn't expect to do. They suck me back in every damn time.

@jakob187: They've said for years that it was going to be a reimagining of the world. Personally, speaking as someone who has played thousands of hours of EverQuest, it still feels like EQ at its core regardless of how the world is constructed. I would suggest watching the videos of the panels they did, especially the lore panel. They're pretty serious about making it feel familiar while doing completely new things.

And, yes, the character is a Kerran. Vah Shir, while also cat people who descended from Kerrans, were specific to Luclin.

I was getting all excited for this game thinking it sounded so awesome reading Marino's wiki article right up until I read that it was going to run on the Forgelight engine. Unless they put some serious work into optimizing that engine better than they did the technical abortion of a game that is Planetside 2, I won't get within a country mile of this one. :P