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[Preview] EverQuest Next: Making the New World Feel Authentic
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
During last weekend's SOE Live, one of the most-attended panels was the one that featured a look at the lore of EverQuest Next. In our latest EQN article, we take a look at the changes (and similarities!) to the existing lore. See what we heard and then let us know what you think in the comments.
The primary concern when rebooting a franchise as beloved as EverQuest is making sure that this new world feels authentic. A number of times the developers referred to JJ Abrams and his version of Star Trek. While the story was wholly new the universe still felt like Star Trek. This level of authenticity is what they hope to achieve with EQN. In order to do this they have created a historical timeline that spans over 10,000 years. Along that timeline they have placed certain hooks where authors could write and tell stories. There is currently one e-book, The Last Stand of the Teir’Del, with another on the way on the EQN website. Additionally there are 11 shorts stores in the editing process that will help flesh out this new Norrath.
Read more of Rob Lashley's EverQuest Next: Making the New World Feel Authentic.
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Comments
When I hear the words JJ Abrams and his reboot of Star Trek, I get sick to my stomach. It might have been a reboot but they lost the art of story telling all we got was syfy with action aimed at the adhd crowd.
When I heard Smokejumper say that I was like omg no. Then when I saw how cartoon like the art work is going to be I really got sick to my stomach. My beloved Kera look like Tony the Tiger meets the Lion King, with wow armor on.
This is not a reboot, this is a new game with Everquest mainly as the name, when in all reality it is a rip off of wow, fift, gw, gw2, and took all that and mixed it together.
The world looks nice but the character models are not something that most folks who play eq, and eq2 are going to be interested in.
So saying that they are aiming at the 13 year old demographic, this is not you fathers eq2 kids.
Good article..
I love games that have deep lore to go along with it..
Rob, I can't tell you how much I agree. I hope they build game play based on the mysteries of the lore in many stages of depth.
Your pottery example, for instance ( <- dirty little word there). I'd love to see partial inscriptions or images that have meaning as parts of clues to things of importance. Both in determining what "the enemy" might be up to as well as to game rewards hidden away (maybe treasure, maybe rare skill knowledge).
I'd like to have a game where the lore really matters. And I love the idea of artifacts whose value is based solely on important information about the game world and it's factions/cults/history/future.
And I hope that the game has a very interesting "archaeology" aspect of play. This kind of stuff can be very deep, and very interesting, and hold that interest for a very long time. Many player's wouldn't be interested in this directly, but they sure would be indirectly if it had meaning, which gives meaning to the players who play this aspect.
Once upon a time....
Nice article.
Love the archaeology aspect of EQNext. In my view, it's the biggest draw after the new and more light-hearted artistic direction. I suppose lots of EQ lore and history could be clarified/corrected/revealed through archaeology. The discovery of ancient artifacts and lost skills also interests me. Maybe a new race could be discovered? That would be fun.
I wonder if some of the classes could be non-combat, and assist archaelogical exploration: professions like archaeologist, spelunker, engineer, grave-robber
, historian, etc.
This would be great I my self am a lore nut even in EQOA, EQ and EQ2 I was a lore nut but I didnt like the way the lore went into EQ2 it seemed to out there but after you play through the content and get to where we are now in the game it fits into the world. I just hope they give us a world of unexplored possibility and where your not just rediscovering it all I would like to explore new lands and such.
Sherman's Gaming
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I was never an EQ1 fan, disliked EQ2 and have been disappointed in nearly every SOE release I have tried. It seems they always come forth with claims of We WILL do it all!! and they fall flat nearly every time.
With all that said I am filled with enormous amount of hope that SOE can deliver on all they set as goals for EQ Next as I truly believe that pulling this off will change the way MMO's work in today's market. I'm just to burned by the fire to buy fully into that hope just yet.
EQ1 in its very early days was a very good game, especially if you liked a true role playing MMO.......All their other games I thought have been garbage...I didnt play SWG before NCU (tried it after though) so I dont know about taht one, but all the other games they made sucked.....After watching the changes to both EQ1 and EQ2 i have no faith they are going to pull off much with EQN.....They are going to promise the world and then some, and then fall way short of any expectations.....The worse part about it is the more they open their mouths the worse it gets.....Liek another poster said, I wouldnt be surprised if at the release of this game we dont end up with a glorified Fable amde for the PS4.
Thx for the info
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
It's a parallel Norrath so the events and Lore will not be 100% the same as EQ1/2, but will share some things. This allows them to create a new world that isn't bound by the Lore events and structure that already exists in the previous games, but that still feels like the EQ universe we remember. (With its own spin)
I would like the lore people to explain how they can say that there is only one race of Elves in the new game when we have seen pictures of Elves and Dark Elves.
The only thing I can think of is that the Dark Elves are not really Elves and are only called that by the uninformed based on how they look. They may be more Tiefling in origin.
No. Think of this as a new version of Norrath, same natural landscape though different people's and history (and as such differing cities etc...well ruins of such cities anyway, Qeynos is going to be the only 'city' at the start from how they have been telling it thus far as the Combine have not long arrived from Kunark and the shackles of slavery). Gone are the old pantheon of gods with the few that remain having been changed and unlike the gods of prior EQ titles these don't make appearances (which also leaves the possibility they may not exist and their churches might be social-political movements).
As for Teir'dal, they have said there will be more on them later, though the horns are supposed to be linked to their draconic blood which may hark back to the time when the elves and dragons lived side by side, before the Shissar and the subsequent rise of the Koada'dal movement. Such appearance may have led to them being picked as the warrior caste they upheld at the start of Combine (signs of strength etc) though they are not necessarily seperate from the other elves from what has been released. These are not the dark ekves of EQ and EQ2, Innoruuk never twisted them as Innoruuk doesn't exist as of yet (if ever).
I won't pretend to be well-versed in EQ lore but there is only one race of elves but there are three different sects (for want of a better word) of elf: the Fier'Dal (wood elves), the Koada'Dal (high elves) and the Tier'Dal (dark elves).
EQN is set at an earlier time than the previous two titles when the elves were part of the Combine (an alliance of various races). I think the different sects of the elves split after this era.
I dont see much of a resemblance to WoW at all. Not even in art style. I cant think of a single aspect of the game that reminds of WoW. now GW2 on the other hand...
True, i dont see the resemblance to EQ yet either, but Norrath =/= an art style. it remains to be seen if EQN feels like EQ. There needs to be enough similarities with the races, classes, places, spells, etc. Plenty of room for difference, but i want to see Druids casting their swarm DoTs, SKs harm touching, and Rangers needing lots of rezzes.
From what they have said thus far it isn't a casee of this being set earlier this is more a case of an alternate reality (if it must be tied into the other titles), or just a flat out reimagining with no regard to prior titles (only keeping the EQ IP to save time in development and draw in those loyal to the franchise).
The Koada'dal and Feir'dal in this imagining are pretty much the same. The Koada'dal in this was more a movement of the highborn elves to prevent the other 'lesser' races from eventually doing what the Shissar had tried by subjegating them. The Feir'dal seem to be those who opposed this view who formed the Combine when the dragons had crushed the elven empire. Likewise the Teir'dal in this are more a warrior caste than a seperate culture.
There was equally no intervention of the gods, or history of the gods using the races as pawns in their aims. No Green mist for the Shissar, no invasion of the plane of Earth for the followers of Rallos Zek (no Rallos Zek even!!). This is not the same Combine from EQ and EQ2.
Why does everyone think 13 year olds like cartoons? When I was 13 I was listening to Snoop Dog pretending I was gangsta and trying to watch porn on Cinemax when my parents when to bed.
What 13 year old is like "Yaaay cartoons!!!!!! I love cartoons!!" like really?!?! If anything teenagers become more receptive to cartoons around 16 or so when they might get into Anime or something.
But we need to stop this nonsense that 13 year old love cartoons. 13 year olds play Call of Duty all day lol.
Seems like they are doing exactly what SWTOR did with timelines and story etc . Of course we know how SWTOR turned out.
And tbh those stories in SWTOR didn't effect the game much or make it feel more authentic.
While having all that stuff is good I think the game needs to be authentic within the game itself .
Also the games characters look like cartoons so I hope they don't make the game too serious because how can you take a cartoon serious ? It needs to be funny and witty . See Wildstar .
Or make the characters look serious and have a serious game which most people want.
I am a HUGE fan of EQ lore, I loved it in EQ, got to dig even deeper in EQ2, and then got to see the past in EQOA, and I have to say that more than almost any other game out there, save LoTRO or SWTOR, the lore of EQ is extremely deep and detailed. One of the main reasons I like the EQ games so much is the common, shared history and how it was all nearly universal across the three games, and how each game presented a different part of that rich world.
I knew going into all this that it was a reboot, but I literally cringed when I read that SoE had mentioned the J.J. Abrams "reboots" of Star Trek. I had really hoped they were going to keep the foundation of the lore, history, world, and it's various cultures, races, and creatures alone, while changing what happened going forward from a certain point in the history. Kind of like if the day EQNext went online, was the same point in the settings, lore, and history as when EQLive went online. I didn't expect them to mess w/ the lore so much, and I am really quite disapointed.
Not to mention that they seem to have gotten rid of my favorite gods....Tunare (Nature, and patron goddess of the High and Wood Elves), Innoruuk (god of Hate, and twisted the first High Elven Kind and Queen into the progenitors of the Dark Elves), Bristlebane (Kind of Thieves), and Cazic Thule (god of Fear). Not to mention the dozen or so others that haven't been mentioned. I am seriously hoping they are withholding info on the lore, particularly about the pantheon of gods, and that more will be revealed, or even (re)discovered during the course of the game.
This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but I certainly don't like what I've heard about the lore so far.