EverQuest Next Looks Pretty Damn Impressive

My impression of this gameplay footage is that it's pretty standard MMO fare these days. There's only so much you can evolve the genre before things start to get repetitive, so it's nobody's fault. Nothing extraordinary, but not bad either. Can't say this gets me excited.

It's impossible to judge an MMO off of pre-release video.

Fancy effects, destroyable environments are all things that are impressive, but won't keep anyone playing beyond the free trial (or to buy anything extra, if its F2P)

The big question is going to be gameplay and endgame progression. Are we finally going to break away from the EQ1/WoW trope of having to do a bunch of raids to get stuff that only exists to allow us to do more raids...until we inevitably get tired of the system and quit the game...?

People who haven't, and are interested at all, should check out the hour long panel on it with lots of in game footage http://www.twitch.tv/soe/c/2680835

the short trailer Patrick posted really doesn't do it justice or show how it's actually innovative.

It really looks innovative for once in the MMO genre. Destructible voxel world, innovative AI, several layers of depth of geography (like terarria), procedurally generated changing world, permanent player driven actual world changes (like building new cities, destroying cities etc) through massive months long public quests, player building, a separate voxel minecraft-esque building game where the best creations will be put in the actual EQNext game and parkour movement system could be amazing in a MMO if they pull it off. And it's free to play.

Given recent MMO's history though, I'm not holding my breath too hard because I've been disappointed too many times.

Should have called it NeverQuest.

Ha! Yeah, I did that a few times myself. Most of the early players I knew that started in Kelethin all told horror stories of falling off the city and not being able to figure out where their corpse was. Call me biased, but Misty Thicket was the best newbie zone in the game. I would take all my alts there to level up. Even my shadow knight. He was loved in Rivervale except for the cleric guild obviously.

By the way, what server were you on? I was on Rodcet Nife.

Add in some music, and level design that helps you ignore that ground can't break and It'll be great. Until then I'm still only somewhat interested.

The ground can break. The world is hundreds of feet deep and full of procedurally generated caverns and dungeons. There's a different gameplay video where an earth elemental does an AoE ground pound and the players fall through the ground.

You may indeed be biased, because I feel you are undervaluing the proximity to Crushbone Keep.

Anyway, I was on Tarrew Marr. I doubt that I made much of an impression on anyone there, though - the sad truth of the matter is that for all the time I spent in EQ, I never even made it to level 50, and I had quit by the time that Kunark came out. I did spend a lot of time spamming Lower Guk looking for a group as a ranger, however. I think that makes me legit. I fared much better in #2.

The cartoony, WoWish art style and player models is just a major turnoff for me at this point.

Patrick, I call bullshit on you actually being interested.

We both know you don't like MMOs, for a variety of reasons; they have weak stories, they're big grindfests, and by their very nature they must appeal to the widest audience so they inevitably play it pretty safe in terms of setting and gameplay.

This looks interesting, but very early. I'm surprised they would show it such an unfinished state. I wonder what their rationale was behind this?

After announcing it three years ago, they probably felt it was time to at least show something. Plus it was at their own fan convention (SOE Live), so it was the right place to show it.

Yeah, I can't wait for a next gen mmo.

Ok if this comes out on the PS4 and is free to play I'll give it a try. Which is more than I can say for many other MMO's out there.