EverQuest Next Looks Pretty Damn Impressive

that framerate...

I'll play it like pretty much any big MMO that comes out but man, all of this stuff is so early and pie in the sky that I can't get excited about it. So far the biggest possible draw seems to be the amount of emphasis they are putting on AI.

Edit: Also, seeing that the EU version is being handled by ProSiebenSat and the game being region locked bums me out.

Well then...

I like the new art style and I am curious on how all these effects will hold up on my computer.

Oh come on. This is clearly work in a progress. Don't be that guy

I've played and followed a lot of MMO's in my time, and honestly been disappointed too many times to count.

But the fact that these guys are coming to the table with some gameplay ass gameplay is brave and made me WAY more interested than some million dollar CG trailer. I'm actually KINDA excited for an MMO again.

I cannot imagine Patrick punching anyone to be honest.

Someone tell those players to stop standing in the fire!

This is their chance to impress me. If they can't even capture their own game in 30fps, that makes me think that this is going to be a lot like Guild Wars where it looks incredible until you have to push the quality down because you're getting 8fps and then it just looks like WoW with slightly better foliage.

There's physics in my MMORPG!

@giefcookie: Yeah, ProSiebenSat is terrible. They are one of the big reasons I don't play Planetside. SEO really should reconsider their partnership with them!

Pretty hard to judge just by this, but seems like it has a good foundation of gameplay. The art style and models looks very disney-esque to me, in a good way.

I wonder if this will come to the PS4.

"new", its the mainstream RPG art style these days...

Yeah I am going to try this game. MMOs have needed destructible environments and it'll be amazing if they pull this thing off.

I'm worried about it being F2P. I don't have much faith in that model. It seems like it's usually used to trick players into spending more money. It also destroys progression mechanics and makes skill less valuable. Who knows. Someone is bound to figure out how to do it right.

I guarantee it. It's SOE. Also...

CAKEBOSS!

For all the effects that art going on there, not much is being "destroyed". But aside from that, still sounds cool and I'd want to check it out.

HA YEAH THEY SHOULD HAVE MADE A COMPLETELY SEPARATE EXZECUTABLE FOR THEIR MMO LIVE DEMO THAT WOULD REQUIRE THEM TO SHOW FOOTAGE WHICH WASN'T LIVE-BUILD IN-ENGINE TO THEIR PASSIONATE FANS THAT WERE AT THE EVENT WHERE THE VIDEO WAS FIRST SHOWN. COS' GAMESSSS YEAAAHHH!!!

THEY'RE USING VOXELS!!! IT SHOULD BE EASY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My prediction is that diehard Everquest fans will hate the physics-based gameplay, and nobody else will care.

I was not quite as impressed. Something is going to suffer to bring this detail they are saying will be there- either that or the destruction will be event triggered and not actually anywhere/anything.

Is this not an MMO? There is very little about it (to early to tell of course) that shows the open worlds that Everquest and Everquest 2 have.

I'll wait and see, but I've seen much more epic battles and the destruction seemed to mostly be just particles.

Not a lot is destroyed?

at 0:19 the player destroys the bridge

at 0:23 the player destroys a big part of the wall

at 1:40 the enemy smashes a hole into the ground which drops the players down to an underground cave (the game randomly generates those places according to the everquest next keynote)

at 2:16 the aoe of the underground boss basically destroys all of the pillars around it

According to soe keynote presentation you can basically take a shovel and dig your way downwards...the engine is voxel based so theoretically anything in the game can be destroyed. Though I do believe that some stuff cant be destroyed because some players would otherwise level cities to the ground.

In excactly how many other mmo games can you actually destroy the environment around you while fighting?

Some more destruction:

@varrosanon: I'd much rather they honestly show me where they are at right now with the things they intend to put into the final game than give me a bullshit target render that won't resemble anything in the final product.

Really curious to see how the environments work. Do they get fixed periodically? Is the world just made up of many shards so that there's only ever a few people in each environment other than cities?

How can they have destructible environments in an MMO and not have everybody playing in a wasteland after a week?

im the immortal words of jeff...."thats....pre-tty damn goood"

Everything's probably going to be instanced... this makes me sad. :(

I'll definitely be following this. I wasn't a fan of EQ1 or EQ2 but this one definitely has me interested so far. We will see how development goes along for this. I just hope that the hype around all of this "destructible environment" stuff actually pans out.

I wonder how they will handle a couple hundred players systematically destroying the environment though, even with regular resets it seems like, with enough people, everything would always be a pile of rubble.

I was a fan of EQ1 and EQ2, and I'm looking forward to this. Not too fond of the art style, but damnit, voxels and destructible environments, it's like 1996 all over again, and I like it.

Honestly I don't think anyone knows whether or not an mmo is any good till about 6 months post official release. As a result I find it impossible to be hyped by a trailer for this sort of thing. Good on them for trying some original stuff though.

Finally someone tries something slightly more daring for an MMO. I doubt it will end up as awesome as it sounds, but I'm rooting for them to succeed.

Visually, it does look pretty good for an MMO. It's well saturated, but not overly saturated like WoW. The eventual UI/HUD will make or break that look though.

Is this on a console?

It's kind of weird that they put this out without any music, it made the game seem kind of bland. Just imagine listening to those sound effects over and over - they didn't even sound that great!

Best sub-headline ever, @patrickklepek.

I like destruction, but I have never really cared about EverQuest.

A Patrick punch must be like a Vinny pat.

Your standards are insanely unrealistically high, no mmo in history has ever run well in a beta. Most of the time you're lucky if the server is even stable or hell even running. Give them some fucking credit for being confident enough and respectful enough of gamers to show what they are actually making actually running and being played and not bullshitting people with some cgi or whatever. As far as mmos in early stages go, this is the most impressive I've seen in years.

This looks pretty dumb, not sure why I am not digging it.

They made reference to the land "healing" over time, so destruction won't likely be any more permanent than killing an orc in a regular MMO. They also said certain areas will be immune to destruction to prevent griefing. My guess is that they won't quite hit the level of destructability they're going for, but it'll still be cool. In particular, I imagine you'll be able to lay waste to instanced content, and most non-hub overworld areas.

Looks neat. I'll wait until there's a release day before I get too excited though.

For everything EQN is wanting to do, I hope they can pull it off. When I see MMO trailers they never look impressive. To me, that's a genre you need to experience, not watch. That's why I'm glad EQN is free-to-play.

@chiablo: They're already said they're going to avoid instancing as much as possible, including having completely public dungeons.

I like how physical everything is at this stage, pushing enemies around, popping them up for juggles etc.
Though it seems like it would be absolutely chaotic for an mmo, warrior barges in knocks back the enemy, mage misses a huge spell because the enemy has been moved, archer knocks an enemy out of the warriors juggle, floor explodes and everyone sighs because they have to fight a harder enemy, going to be tough to balance.

I know I'm in the minority when I say I've played both EQs and enjoyed them, but I don't get any EQ vibes off of this trailer. Not that that's saying much, considering how little was shown.

THOSE PHYSICS.

Art style is awesome.

tsk, tsk. Well, you know, just don't play it. I agree that performance is absolutely important, but it's way too early to judge. I don't think the thing is even close to being in beta yet, as far as I know it's still alpha.

Anyway, looks alright to me. Loved the original EverQuest, but most MMOs suck nowadays. The communities have kind of been ruined after they got so popular. That aside, the voxel business seems cool. I just hope the rest of the game isn't crap.

Cool tech demo.

Curious to see how it will play in action.

Well said, sir. I recall the scarily impressive cg trailers for The Old Republic, and, well...yeah.

If you told me Patrick Klepek was making thinly veiled threats, I'd have cowered in a corner...

I'm 6'4" and 220 pounds, but that dude seems wiry as hell, and you know he sneaks a switchblade in that fro.

@nardak: There are examples of destruction in this video, but for large portions of the more incredible things happening, not a lot was being destroyed, they were simply particle fx.

23 seconds -1:11+ shows no actual destruction. Particle Fx is not destruction.

The “Epic Battle”(1:52+) Doesn’t actually show any environment destruction, it appears to just be particle effects with no change on the environment.

I think the game looks neat, and don’t want to come off as a skeptic, because they clearly have parts where stuff is being destroyed, I just wanted to note that much of this video is standard particle effect stuff all video games do with no change on the environment.

You also should understand that optimization is typically one of the last steps in any piece of software before release, game or otherwise. You get everything running and implemented and then start making it better. It's the same as going from first to final draft in writing. Do you write one page, go back, revise it ten times then move on to the next page, or do you write the whole thing and then revise after completion? Any sane, logical person will do the latter.

In short: People like you are the reason we don't get more honesty while a game is being developed. Please be quiet, lest the industry think you're representative of the community.

(for some reason I can't get the quote junk off the first paragraph of mine...)