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I'm actually glad EQN is unlikely to be released
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Couldn't have said it better myself.
That being said, I caved and went back to EQ2 because I missed it so badly and can't find anything at all to replace it. I still love it as much as I used to. It plays VERY well on my current rig (i7, 16 gigs of ram, windows 8, 2 tb hd, geforce 770). The only thing I don't love is the horrible graphics for the toons, but since I don't spend much time looking at my characters face, the rest works just fine for me. I would rather it went back to the original status where going to Antonica was still scary, and the more involved crafting and the like, but I can live with the way it is now. It's STILL way more in depth and involving than any other game out there, even WoW's crafting and housing can't remotely compete.
After all these years, the EQ2 theme music still makes me smile when it boots up.
Well some are arguing that a lot of people were not let go, but yeah.
Also, I'm not arguing that EQN was hit the worst either. Just that EQN does not have more resources now as a result of the merger as Daybreak claimed.
Likewise I'm not sure anyone really knows how little or heavy the loses to the EQN team were. Just that according to reports it was affected least, which could mean a lot of things.
I don't pretend to know the level of damage to each team, but nearly half is a huge number and I can't see any team getting off lightly.
Daff is correct.. It really doesn't matter which department got axed the most, or least.. The simple fact is that it will effect the company as a whole.. Obviously Smed's comment about being in better shape now after the buyout, only a week before the mass layoffs was deceitful in the least.. With all the sister games taking a hit, one can only conclude that it's only a matter of time before those games start leaking players as content is being cut back.. There is no way you produce the content after laying off 200 people globally..
Something has to give, and it has yet to be announced or known who or what is going to take one for the team.. EQ1? EQ2? DCU? Landmark? lol I think we can all agree CHANGE IS COMING TO DAYBREAK, but where and when?
Of corse change is coming. Im guessing over the next 3-6 months we will see lots of changes.
I took the day off to watch the reveal live on twitch or whatever they did it on. I was pretty shocked to say the least. It wasn't like anything I ever expected, but I didn't hate all of it. I actually like the graphics, EQ was never a hyper realistic game nor was EQ2 with its clay monsters I mean character models.
I also liked the movement parkour stuff it looked fancy they moved across the terrain. I liked the idea of having a layered world that you could break into during combat or exploration to find new treasures and encounters. I really loved the idea from the story bricks and emergent AI. The idea of having mobs with real AI that actually lived in the world instead of just standing around was fantastic to hear about. Pushing a camp of gnolls out of the forest and forcing them to relocate, or losing to them and having them get stronger and conqueror territories, etc. That is fucking awesome!
No more quest hubs? Yes please! I also loved the idea of players creating things for the game through the player store, I don't like Minecraft, but I wouldn't mind buying a badass tower some player makes.
The only thing that really killed it for me was this: They announced 3952959 classes or whatever and how you could combine them for different outcomes. I was like "Okay, I can get down with that!" Then they said and you get to use 5 abilities..... Really? You are going to the GW2 route? WHY?! That really made me lose interest in the game. I can't stand that shit. You get all these awesome combo choices and you get to use a tiny little bit of the abilities. It blows ass in GW2 and it will blow ass in EQN.
But who really knows what we will actually get from this game, if it even comes out at all. It might get rushed to launch and be the next Vanguard.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
Stick a fork in it, and stop cranking sequels.
1) Graphics.. I too don't mind the less then realistic graphics, BUT, I don't want all rainbow ponies either.. Take WoW for example, at least they had the undead and death knights that allowed one to have a darker image.. I want the option to have scares , wrinkles, and aggressive eyes.. I also hope the game allows for skinny and fat characters as well.. I loved that in SWG.. lol
2) Parkour.. OMG, how I hate that in the game.. I can tolerate a class such as Monk having it, but for every other character to have the ability to be James Bond surfing down a mountainside is crazy and a grame breaker..
3) Layered world.. Again, another bad idea IMO, especially if it goes unchecked without restrictions.. I see this being abused and used for grieving on a regular basis.. I"ll give you one classic example.. Player A is mining in the valley, and Player B comes around and decides to be a dick, so he cast a voxel damaging AOE around Player A.. Player A doesn't take damage from the spell I assume, but he will FALL through that hole created by Player B.. NICE.. now what? Trust me, I have been on enough games over the past 15 years to know that players that are bored will grieve others for entertainment.. /shrug
4) Mob AI is nothing special.. What SB wanted to do was place a code on each mob, that causes that mob to gravitate to certain parts of the map, all depending on what was going on.. This is nothing more then taking what Rift & GW2 has done and tweak the code on strioids.. Problem is, will the code end up too complex causing software and hardware issues? That has yet to be seen or talked about..
5) I wouldn't count on player made items being planted anywhere in the open world, like houses were in SWG.. As much as that looked good on paper, it just causes too many bugs and problems..
6) I do agree it will play very much like GW2 and Tera.. I have no problem with limited hotbar, because I actually hate it when people have 40 buttons at their disposal using macros to achieve the "I WIN" title.. It's still a mystery as to how far along EQN really is.
Its 5 abilities from the class you are using, you also can use abilities from other classes you unlock. I think its something like 10 abilities in total you can use at one time. Part of the progression of you char is unlocking other classes and swapping skills around. Skill are broken down to 2 types. Main skills, only usable by the class and secondary skills, able to be used on other classes you unlock and each class has a set of secondary skill you unlock by earning the class. This will add a lot of depth. With that you also have gear that changes skills. Gear wont be just for stats. To give you an idea equipping say a staff that turns all DDs into dots, you have a necklace that takes all dot damage and returns 25% of all damage done as healing. Now your Wizard is a dot class that self heals. There is a lot of depth to the class system, much more then what GW2 has currently.
I guess it's a good thing it's not all about you, or people with your specific opinion on things.
I really doubt that at the end of the layoffs Daybreak ends up with a more generous budget than they had while being part of Sony. A $60 million dollar loss last year sounds like SOE had a very healthy amount of money to waste. Reading about the culture of how Sony treated their engineers/designers who had previous success like rockstars, that fits the bill.
However, using the assumption that the layoffs do somehow result in more money to spend on "things", what are those "things"? It doesn't look like it is more staff as they just fired half the staff. After seeing the layoffs and cancelling support contracts from Oracle database and Storybricks it doesn't look like more support or employees is going to happen, so what would this money be spent on?
Honestly I think the comments about more resources were nothing but damage control in an effort to give players something positive in the face of massive layoffs coming in the next few days.
I would have felt a whole lot better if Columbus Nova had fired a lot more top level leaders and replaced them with outside talent. Clearly things were not getting done at SOE and leaving some of the same people in charge while promoting up a few people in the company is unlikely to make necessary changes. There is always hope, but that is hoping against odds at this point.
Which is sad, because EQNext was perhaps the only game that was shaping up to be something different and interesting in terms of an MMO with a real world for players to live in.
There are a few thoughts on this. First of all, less can be more. Games just seem very inflexible when it comes to feature sets. So innovation is expensive, we know this. There might be some core concepts that we aren't willing to ship without, but if it's things like housing or destructable environments or WHATEVER, I really wonder how much time could be saved by cranking out a WoW clone with the promise of something more, or a timeline for something more. I suppose the fear is that people simply wouldn't accept something less than a 100% finished product *cough* Early Access */cough*, but if they can, then it really could be a way to develop more complex games without having to deliver a feature complete version of the game upfront. If it's a 3 or 4 million dollar project, then you're probably ok to assume that you can throw some marketing dollars at it and get your money out of it. When it's a 50-100 million dollar project, though, you better make sure that people are going to like it. So spending 20 and finding out that people hate it, but you at least get your money back, might be better than taking an 80 million dollar bath.
I wouldn't be surprised if CN tried to ship this more quickly, than killing it altogether. Not sure whether it'll be a feature complete version or not, but if development is the bottleneck at the moment (like they have all their other assets) then I could see them making a push for release (ie slap some stock AI in there and just make the game happen). Interesting stuff can happen later, as long as that's the vision.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I think SWTOR is a good example of how community organizers can take SCRUM and abuse it to their own ends.
The development of the game was essentially subverted from the ground up. People in hiring pools that deal with community typically are from GDC pools who have a group thought on how games should be developed. Larger companies like EA tend to take more advice from said groups, which trickles down into smaller mmo Dev communities.
That might sound crazy, or a bit odd, but thats exactly what I was saying about TOR before Tortanic happened.
Here this video shows how personal bias can control not only a games development but who is actually playing it in testing from the ground up.
I think some organizations if not most are asleep at the wheel on this.
Then they should never sold it initially on the nostalgia that they did. Remember all that 'EQ Memories' stuff they pushed before the reveal?
No wonder so many vets felt let down when they saw what was actually on offer. It was all bait and switch.
You can't evoke a game that people love(ed) and then tell them, "we are sick of playing that game".
I agree OP. As much as I hate to say it, maybe it's a good thing EQN might not get here. It would probably fail to find much hype, failing to appeal to the vets or the kids.
I don't need a new game for now anyhow really, I am fine playing classic EQ while keeping an eye on Pantheon.
Well, guess you learned your lesson. Don't take days off work for video games if you are easily offended.
Not sure that using someones private webpage is proof that the game is going to do any of what is posted.. Right now EQN is "talk the talk".. and many of us are tired of it after years of hype.. I want EQN to walk the walk, and put their money where their mouth is.. Time to back up the hype or shut it down.. LOL (in my opinion)
That makes no sense at all. If they don't show you what you demand, they should stop development? If that is how it worked, we'd have no games.
What they should of done is at the start of SOE Live 2013 said "Alright everyone, it is going to be a long road and we will be doing development different the previous games, if you can't handle that, please sign up for our EQN Release Date notifier and find something else to do in the mean time, everyone else, relax and kick back because it is going to be a long ride."
Imagine tomorrow they come out with real in-game alpha footage of XYZ that people demand to see to prove the game exists on any level. Now what? They demand it is released the following day? Or suddenly impatient folks chill out and accept the process? People start paying attention to a game that still is a long ways off or those that have been then care less and move on?
Really don't see where this view (which you share with several others) gets anyone.
I think what Rydeson is saying is that right now EQN is nothing buy talk and there is almost nothing to show for it.
Back in 2013, EQN was already at least 4 years into development, where most other MMOs are in beta and nearing release at that point. I'm see no reason why SOE would start hyping the game if they thought it was going to 3-5 more years to develop. Either SOE knew it was going to take 7-8 years to develop and forgot to tell players back in 2013 or they really thought the game would be out much sooner and that is why they introduced the game and started building hype. Which makes more sense?
I think the view is caused by people getting nervous about what is happening. Honestly if someone said "EQN is going to get cancelled", I could not think of a valid reason to say why they were wrong.
The EQN leadership was fired. The EQN forums were closed down. Storybricks support was cancelled. The EQN team was downsized. Customer support is gone. SOE/Daybreak has been in almost complete blackout about the game.
That is frightening stuff. However it would not take much to give the players something to reassure hope. Even something as little as a flyover video of some terrain or even start talking about the game again on the official podcast.
So you think releasing to much might kill the buzz if it is too unfinished. Perhaps.
Yet, don't you think the doing a media release about the game 2 years ago and then going all silent has not also killed the buzz?
Didn't they already show their hand?
Spot on, some people really haven't got a clue.
It's looking more and more that Brads Pantheon: Rise Of The Fallen will hit long before EQN and be the true successor to EQ, not some jumped upped Minecraft wannabe.
I am hoping Pantheon delivers on their promises.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Yes they did show a teaser but enough time has gone on to build up tension, this subforum is evidence of that. If they had shown enough then people wouldn't be claiming vaporware. Can't have both sides of the argument.
Assuming there is an EQN in full development they are making the right choice. People are just impatient, I'm included in that list.
After 2 years of near silence, I can't exactly blame players for being impatient. If SOE had not started hyping the game on media events, then players would not have any expectations.
Same. It looks good, but I am afraid of the cash shop aspect.