EverQuest Next Looks Pretty Damn Impressive

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Should have called it NeverQuest.

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.

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...?

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.

I like MMOs, but I'm super tired of fantasy, I was hoping for that Warhammer 40k MMO, but that got canceled and now Wildstar is the only one that looks semi appealing.

Give me some good sci-fi action and not magic please anyone. I know that EVE and Planetside exist, EVE is a space ship simulator and Planetside is more of a MMO PvP arena, give me sci-fi in the likes of Everquest, WoW, Warhammer.

The Star Trek and Star Wars ones were just plain bad.

When the first Red Faction came out, I thought destructible environments were going to be the hot new thing. It's crazy that more than 10 years later it's still a unique feature, one that has me interested in an MMO no less.

It looks interesting, but not enough to get me to play an MMO.

Players will build the world in some aspect. You can design landmarks, monuments, houses, castles etc. If they gain enough attention they may be added into the world as a cross server structure by the devs (something everyone playing in every 'world' will see), otherwise they can be used by yourself or other players to decorate your own home/land.

Players can also use parts of others designs in their own and sell designs for real money. If someone uses your design in their own work and goes on to make money from it, you get royalty based on the % of work he included that was your own. This is also real money, like in Second Life. Skilled builders and people with creative flair will be able to get paid to play this game.

I run Guild Wars 2 maxed out and it is incredibly scalable since it runs on my cousins dual core HP with no issues at medium soooo not really sure what you mean.

@dacnomaniac: @mysteriousfawx: I get the world would be a crater part, but what I would find cool is if not only was the world destructible but also constructable. That way you can have that permanence and allow for the world to be healed and destroyed by the players.

That would be really cool.

I´ll believe it when I play it. I will leave here my expert opinion: I think we are still about 10 years away from the mmo experience all of us who enjoy this kind of game are looking for, but we are getting closer!

Im no expert.

Now that's what I'd be interested in - procedurally generated dungeons would be a step in the right direction for EQ - preferably areas bigger than dungeons, too.

I had the good fortune to make my first char in EQ a Wood Elf, so I got Kelethin right off the bat. I sat around, lost for a minute, then ran around lost for many minutes, then finally got to my class trainer, typed "h-a-" which turned on autoattack and I died immediately. I think I was too young to have a sense of humor about it at the time.

@christaran: Everyone can see the destruction and it will be required to reach some areas, however, ove time the world will 'heal' so that the game isn't one giant crater after 1 week of launch.

@christaran: That would be stupid if it were to be permanent. The landscape would be flattened in about 5 minutes after launch...

Free to play. Looks amazing. I'm in.

Unless that destruction is permanent and all players can see it, I don't find it the least bit interesting.

Meh

...Then I would punch you back, Patrick

Based on what I heard, it seems like something I would like to play.

ooooooooooooookay. Did the wrong video get posted?

Nothing about that looks damn impressive, or even impressive, and this is coming from a huge EQ nerd.

Old times in MMOs might never come back indeed, but games like this are an actual step forward new and firm instead of wild bemoaning of "holy trinity" and "tab targetting" that obscures the future.

@veektarius: Man...I love those old midi's. Kelethin is clearly the best, though I have a soft spot for the weird, polka-like music from Rivervale.

@norusdog: If you watch the full-length videos from SOE Live (or at the very least, read the wiki page on the site here), you would see that there's not very much that's WoW-like about EQN.

Yep. The world is hundreds of feet deep below the surface. So you can dig below and discover hidden caverns and whatnot that are procedurally generated.

I'd suggest watching the lore panel they had at SOE Live. You'll see there's a ton of the nostalgic EQ stuff layered in there, although some of it is slightly altered from previous games.

I don't think Everquest is defined by an art style, though the one displayed here definitely doesn't match what I recognize. Everquest is defined by exploration. That's hard to do nowadays (and was when EQ2 came out too, to a degree) but EQ was always at its best when you were wandering around with hardly any clue of what you were doing, using every trick at your disposal to try and solo past this next encounter which was clearly meant for at least three people. But hey, let's pour one out for past, the old days are never coming back.

Steady that hype folks, it will and has killed otherwise healthy MMO dead with its poison.

SoE's attempt at a new MMO with EQN is probably the LEAST accurate target of this comment short of EvE.

Hey. Heeeeey. Hey, guys. Guild Wars 2 is a pretty great video game.

it was more like watching a WoW spinoff or something honestly. the overly big Kerran (cat dude..I think that's right) and art style screams World of WarCraft..not EverQuest.

I much prefer EQ's more realistic approach as opposed to this WoW-ish cartoon crap (even if a lot of the player models were ugly)

All of that just makes me shrug. Not one thing I saw in that video made me exited about the future of gaming. I guess I just don't see the appeal of MMOs like that when RPGs like Deep Down are being conceived.

I watched a Twitch stream last weekend where Carmack was talking about a lot of things, one thing he mentioned was how cool voxels were, but how they were just too processor intensive at the time.

Anyway... this is Forgelight 2, which is the Planetside 2 engine, and Planetside 2 cranked up looks amazing.

I watched the reveal or whatever from SOE Live, and gritted my teeth more than a few times when the director said things like 'the players will have direct input into how the game is developed'. If Star Wars Galaxy taught us anything, it's that the players don't know shit about how to make a popular MMO.

I think he meant "new" compared to the old Everquest art style.

you wouldnt punch shit

Hey guys, epic battles.

I guess this is what a next-gen MMO looks like. Sign me up.

If you had told me that the Everquest Next announcement would have involved the word "voxel" I would not believe you - It seems like SOE is doing "X but more MINECRAFTY" and for some reason my gag reflex didn't trigger.

@angrighandi: Yeah, I've never seen voxel tech that advanced. Smoothing, irregular angles angles different size voxel brushes! It's nearly as crazy as thinking about how Fez was made on a technical level. It also uses the the same lighting techniques as Planetside 2.

Props to them for trying something different at least. Destructible world MMO could be very cool if they pull it off well.