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The Current State of EQ Next and EQ Next Landmark.
Quillim
Member UncommonPosts: 83
Well.. with the livestream and them finally putting out some solid information I glean the following:
* EQ Next Landmark is not even in Alpha yet, and it will be in Alpha sometime between now and the end of February. You can bet it'll likely go Alpha very close to that deadline, whether its ready to or not. Outside of some developers and some playtests to journalists, nobody has touched the thing. It is in an early stripped down playable form, with very minimal abilities(while at the same time being fairly impressive in what they can do imo). If it goes to Release before 2015, be shocked. Figure Alpha/Beta to go through the entirety of next year.
* EQ Next. You probably saw the extent of what they have done at SOE Live. Some generated maps, some destructibility and mob tests, and not much more. It'll be developed in tandem with Landmark, as the tools become more mature(the ability to create quests, etc) to allow them to build the EQ Next game. I would not be surprised if the entirety of what was seen at SOE Live was canned video, which is why they couldn't let people actually touch the thing. Also.. EQ Next is definitely not a sandbox and will be a traditional story-driven themepark MMO. Expect it 2016 at the Earliest.
* They're hurting for cash, but are too proud to call it a Kickstarter(and they can fudge, suppress, or lie about the numbers if it doesn't sell well). So they're putting forth FOUNDERS PACKS that provide you certain in-game benefits at a sliding scale of donations, along with early access to the Beta and/or Alpha based on your donation to their Kickstarter(I mean Founders Packs). At least some of the stuff sounds fairly useful... like items that help you farm the resources quicker. And who wants to wait until back half of 2014 to tinker?
* Pretty much everything from the time E3 absolutely embarressed themselves by giving a Kickstarter Best in Show has been PR designed to drive that Kickstarter, in order to spur investment. Whoever did that at E3 needs to be Fired, or they need to show the sizeable check SOE fed them to buy BiS. There were plenty of games that weren't vaporware that could have used that accolade.
Personally, my take is that what they have and what they're intending to do shows a lot of promise in this early stage. But it leaves a really bad taste in the mouth to mislead the public as to its actual state of release and accept awards for a game that doesn't yet exist. If you're going to do it, be upfront about it and simply admit you're running a Kickstarter to spur investment. You wouldn't be the first, or the last, to fund it this way and what you have isn't that bad. But don't be all shady about it.
Comments
EQNL is much more than a kickstarter at that point. The whole editing thingie, the only one I'm interested in, is in a much better shape than I thought and is, if not impressive, then certainly worthwhile. As for Founders' packs, everyone does it: it's pretty much raining free money, you would be stupid not to put out a bucket.
As for EQN proper, it doesn't exist yet and isn't going to exist for years. Who knows how it'll end up.
As for "Best of the show", I fart in the general direction of those giving awards.
I don't disagree with your first two points but the 3rd point is ridiculous. They are just doing what all games are doing these days. The way games are being marketed has changed, get over it.
Almost every game I've played in the past few years has had some sort of get it early deal. Whether it be pre-order to get a beta key, buy more expensive version of game to get key or donate money like PoE, Neverwinter etc. This isn't them being out of money, it is them adapting to the current market. Nobody wants to pay $60 and then $15 a month anymore, games that go that path are shooting themselves in the foot.
while I did enjoy the absurdity of your post... I felt I must respond..
From everything I've seen (probably about the same amount as everyone else) this game is far from "kickstarter"
Kickstarter: a site that allows you to come to a online marketplace with nothing more then an idea.
EQ:L is so far beyond that its funny.
They have a working voxel based destructive world, that has multi teared levels...and they are making this for a MMO? that is groundbreaking (pardon the pun) But no one has even attempted that before, for a MMO.
They have working ingame models, art sets and physics engine.
And from what I've seen they have a fair amount of content. So really this "alpha" you are paying to get into (which is not uncommon) is more of them saying "Want to play it a month or two early? we are setting up stress test on the server.. come join us"
And the rest of your post is pretty much nonsense...
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I agree - a "behind closed doors" screening should never get best of show
EQ2 fan sites
EQN seems to be Free Realms 2.0 with EQ subtle flavor mixed with GW2. The graphics look like shit and the cartoon feel makes me not want to even try it.
They are setting the expectations for Landmark pretty low with most features like mobs and combat being added sometime later. I am not sure they have actually said those features would make launch.
My crystal ball is they will meet all the founders dates and open beta will happen 4-6 weeks after closed beta starts in March with launch a week or so after that. End of April early May would be my launch date for landmark good or bad.
Not sure exactly what we will see in the game at that date other than being able to harvest, craft and build. And of course sell items on the marketplace.
You think release of Landmark is a year and a half out? Get real. It'll likely be out late spring, early summer. As for EQN, it'll likely be mid/late 2015 if not earlier. You've only seen snippets of either game because they want people to be realistic about when it will come out, not because nothing at all is done. You can expect just as much of EQN to be done as EQN:L. Of course there is probably about a years more worth of work that needs to go into EQN because it is a much more involved game. Either way, they aren't doing anything negative. Who cares how long it takes them or about their marketing. We only care about them providing us a compelling game environment...right? I'm going to buy a Founders Pack because I want to support this game through and through, whether you think its a kickstarter or not doesn't really change anything, including how anyone else feels about the game.
This is an easy one.......................................................then don't.
For new tech similar to this, you will never get into or out of alpha without large scale tests. If they choose to involve us, all the better!
If they end up doing a nine month beta, i'd be shocked. There is absolutely no reason for that. They stated that in the worst case, alpha will end when close beta begins, in March. They are meeting their winter 'hands on' promise. Let's hope that they follow through with the dates.
You misunderstood. The March date is not when the Beta begins, but the latest date Alpha will START. They are not currently in Alpha. This was made perfectly clear by Dave in the Livestream with the judicious use of the term 'pre-Alpha' . That means you're looking at like at least June for the closed Beta to start and probably September for it to go open.
They basically have a stripped down Cerny Method playtest to show capabilities and promote their Kickstarter(Founders Packs). Their livestream was almost beat for beat what Storybricks was showing their Kickstarter before EQ picked them up, except with buildings, instead of the ability to design a quest. About the only thing Landmark can currently do is build buildings. The functionality to construct everything else(quests, tradeskills, items, classes, mob difficulty, combat system, blah de blah), is on the drawing board. As they tackle each issue.. the facilities to implement this stuff will make its way into Landmark for a unified development process.
But my point holds.. if you see an actual Release Date of Landmark before 2015, be shocked. They have a LOONG way to go. Everything having to do with the hype surrounding it, is to fund their Kickstarter(Founders Packs).
There is almost no way Landmark isn't coming out in 2014. They already stated it won't be feature complete when it is released.
Your post is also too bleak about other features. Different people work on different parts of the game. The people in charge of building the voxel engine have been doing it for the past 4 months or whatever but the rest of the team has to have been working on something. Just because they haven't revealed the something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Oh.. i'm sure people are hard at work on both the Game Design for EQN, and various tools for Landmark. But right now its largely Paperware. You don't write code to develop classes, races, abilities, or to design the abilities of expected tools to aid in that development.
But trying to make like your Beta is coming out at the end of the year and trumpeting a Kickstarter-level project as being a full-fledged almost-ready-to-Beta game is tacky. I don't care if you want to go the Kickstarter route, simply be honest about that. The Emperor really did have no clothes yet with that Livestream. I was absolutely shocked at just how little actual concrete game they had complete.
I would actually be surprised if they have a way to even mine resources yet. If they did, they would have shown it. More than likely, they simply had the values turned to max, with infinite resources available to fine-tune the building aspects, without worrying about the actual gathering part yet. There is almost no chance that game is going to release before 2015, and if they get it out in time to ship for Christmas 2014, it'll be a miracle. Everquest Next itself, probably not before 2016.
I doubt we'll see EQN in 2015 but hopefully by then EQN:L will have the tools so we can make our own fun while waiting
The Founders Packs clearly state the Closed Beta will be on or before March 31, 2014. Then once we get to Open Beta it is basically launched. So we're looking earlier in the Summer at the latest.
What is the concrete evidence that EQNext will not be a sandbox? Have they actually said this? SWG had quests and theme parks but they were contained within a sandbox.
Can you conclusively exclude the world being a sandbox in EQNext?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
See you go on and on as if you have more than one point, but you could say "I dislike the art style." and be done with it. I with hold game judgement until after all I can access is eye candy.. if you don't like how it looks and can't do anything other than see it right now you're setting up to fail. (Yes you can read people's opinions... but words are just words and everyone seems to have nice things to say.)
Honestly the people who sit around and whine about wanting a Sandbox MMO and then don't understand what kind of potential is behind Landmark, these people are totally inept at reading or listening. I can NOT wait until I can get my hands on Landmark. We're going to be able to create our own worlds. Combat is going to be added and they even said that we'll eventually get EVERY. SINGLE. TOOL. Not just to craft the world itself, but the tools that they're going to be using to create EQ:Next. How is that not awesome? How is that NOT what people have been wanting forever?
Hell, during the twitch stream he even mentioned that you'd be able to create your own zone and you and your D&D group could play through it as a weekly game or something. There's so much potential for something like this. I'm looking forward to creating my own little zones and worlds and I know that my friends will enjoy this as much as I do. We're already planning on moving around together and setting up our 'plots' as close to each other as possible so that we can form our own area. We're going to create a city and allow others come in to RP. ;D
That's fine for RPers, but anyone else will be shit out of luck once they are done building stuff.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Your reaching. There have been founders packs, collectors editions and other incentives in the industry for a LONG time.
Trying to link this to SoE is "hurting for cash" is absorb.
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It is pretty clear that you are the one that misunderstands. The $20 pack says that you will receive the items 'on or before March 31' and one of those items is beta access, not alpha. Which means that beta will start on or before March 31.
Alpha will start on or before February 28.
Also going back to your comments, companies run alpha tests concurrently with development. SoE would have an in house team running alpha tests right now. What they are offering is more accurately surmised as pre-beta testing. It will be the latest stages of alpha (the final month).
From what I have seen in the latest video, the game functions perfectly well already for what it is, a building game. Other features can be added later, its a MMO after all.
Based on the March beta I would be surprised to see it launched any later than April 2014.
Furthermore, while I'm not a big fan of the founders packs, this isn't exactly an isolated case where SoE is desperate for cash. I can't think of a single high budget MMO release in the past few years that hasn't had a founders pack on offer.
OP , dude. Its obvious you dont know much about game development (or development in general)
- Alpha : Alpha is one of final stages of development.
- SOE is not hurting for money. They are doing same promotions everyone else does. Where you living under the rock ?
- EQN is sandbox - in a way old MMOs were. Its not WURM type of sandbox.
One thing I'm not seeing is where are they making money. So instead of a $60 to buy box, they are getting 20-100 for early access and in-game items, but where is the revenue moving forward? They a re selling plots, but for how much? They have the RM sales of items created, but will people buy them to put in their EQL creations or is that for EQN players to buy for their houses/forts in that game? CS items/tools/access? It just seems like they are holding things back as far as who pays for what. Being f2p, they have to have some revenue coming in. I just don't see where it is coming from.