It's hard to put my finger on what I like about Everquest. I have gone back to the game recently and am having more fun playing it then any of the recent MMOs.
I remember playing Vanguard and it didn't really feel like EQ to me. Perhaps it was the different artwork or the different combat mechanics. Something definitely felt different. It also came out at a bad time because a lot of people were tired of playing Everquest at the time and were looking for a more WoW experience. Now I believe a lot of people are getting sick of playing WOW and are looking for a different experience.
I can say with EQ it wasn't rose colored glasses for me. Yes grinding, losing levels, waiting for boats, traveling long distances, trying to get your corpse back, fighting over spawns, etc. was frustrating, but it's what made the game worthwhile and what gave you good and bad memories of the game. I bet there are few people who have a memorable experience in an MMO now like they do in real life. That's because of the lack of difficulty and being guided through a solo experience throughout the whole game. When I say it's better for people to create their own stories I don't mean they should sit down and right a back story for their character or try to write a story down to play out in game. I mean you go out, wander around and the story happens around you. You might go to blackburrow and see someone pulling trains to zone killing everyone. That's a story right there. You might see someone kiting a red beetle around the zone and killing it. That's another story. You might fall off the boat and end up swimming around looking for an island. You might have to compete with or agree to share a mob spawn location. You might be killed by a random nasty mob that wanders the zone. These are all stories. Things you remember and can share with others. MMOs these days don't give you that. They are pretty hallow experiences.
As for Brad I doubt I would support his MMO through funding, but when it is released I would pay for it and try it. I find though that sometimes a game just has some magic and that magic isn't easily recaptured. There is something about EQ that is fun to me. Even in it's current incarnation where a lot of it has been nurfed.
Originally posted by ropenice I agree with boats and downtime were terrible design decisions (at first were kind of quaint real world feel, but after years of playing, got really old).
Am I the only player alive that actually liked the boatrides? I always fished while riding them. Then you had the Cyclops(?) and Alisaur(?) that made the ride interesting if they jumped on board. There were also places in the oceans that players actually went to. On purpose! lol There was an isle full of sirens, an isle full of wisps, weren't the pots in one of the oceans?
Boatrides were not like sitting still for half an hour, traveling through boring, uneventful wastelands. The oceans had places within them to adventure in and monsters that could make any trip exciting. There were even quests in the ocean zones.
The downtime, I also liked. I am tired of the games that giver every player insta-regeneration. EQ had that, but at only 1-3 health per tick (6 seconds). Potions had meaning as did spells. It was also nicely timed with the re-spawn of a camp you may have been camping. While sitting and healing, players would tend to chit-chat, which sometimes lead to bonds of friendship.
Of course, both of these "features" interrupted a player;s race to end game and leveling efficiency, but for me, that is no great loss.
I liked the boat rides. It was part of the experience. I actually got knocked off the boat into the ocean a number of times. I remember there being a bug. With no compass and no map it could take a while to find land. It was funny to see others fall into the ocean though lol. The boat rid itself wasn't really that bad. If you wanted to skip it you could play a wizard/druid or ask someone for a port. People seem so against even simple interaction these days if it it doesn't involve a close friend/circle of people. Oh no I can't stop for one second and ask for a teleport to a zone. It was a good way for those classes to make some money as well. Most people were nice and would teleport/give buffs for free. Many would hang around in the newbie zones just to buff people.
Originally posted by ropenice I agree with boats and downtime were terrible design decisions (at first were kind of quaint real world feel, but after years of playing, got really old).
Am I the only player alive that actually liked the boatrides? I always fished while riding them. Then you had the Cyclops(?) and Alisaur(?) that made the ride interesting if they jumped on board. There were also places in the oceans that players actually went to. On purpose! lol There was an isle full of sirens, an isle full of wisps, weren't the pots in one of the oceans?
Boatrides were not like sitting still for half an hour, traveling through boring, uneventful wastelands. The oceans had places within them to adventure in and monsters that could make any trip exciting. There were even quests in the ocean zones.
The downtime, I also liked. I am tired of the games that giver every player insta-regeneration. EQ had that, but at only 1-3 health per tick (6 seconds). Potions had meaning as did spells. It was also nicely timed with the re-spawn of a camp you may have been camping. While sitting and healing, players would tend to chit-chat, which sometimes lead to bonds of friendship.
Of course, both of these "features" interrupted a player;s race to end game and leveling efficiency, but for me, that is no great loss.
I liked the boat rides. It was part of the experience. I actually got knocked off the boat into the ocean a number of times. I remember there being a bug. With no compass and no map it could take a while to find land. It was funny to see others fall into the ocean though lol. The boat rid itself wasn't really that bad. If you wanted to skip it you could play a wizard/druid or ask someone for a port. People seem so against even simple interaction these days if it it doesn't involve a close friend/circle of people. Oh no I can't stop for one second and ask for a teleport to a zone. It was a good way for those classes to make some money as well. Most people were nice and would teleport/give buffs for free. Many would hang around in the newbie zones just to buff people.
I agree with this. Boat rides and other long forms of travel are a good thing IMO. Makes an MMO feel much more like a real world to me. I don't like the trend of instant gratification in MMO's nowadays.
Can anyone tell me, bluntly and honestly (no exaggerations) what Brad McQuaid did to anger so many people?
Are the rumors true - if so, how were these rumors verified? Is there evidence?
Honestly???? I don't think any of us know the real truth other then Brad himself as to why things worked out the way they have.. IMO, Original EQ along with the first 3 expansions were excellent.. Sure there were events that took place during the initial years such as questionable nerfs to certain classes, while beefing up others.. IMO as well is that Brad (Verant) and gang became too big for their britches.. Success has a bad habit of changing people, add in the executives not getting along, lead EQ down a path that many of us disagreed with..
As for Vanguard? I think Brad is just trying to find a way to make money as like anyone else these days.. Even SOE is trying to tap into the EQ lore to make a quick buck with EQNext & Landmark.. I seriously doubt we'll ever see a TRUE successor to EQ, because those that like the original format are too small of demographic.. That is not to say that a well designed version of the original couldn't appeal to the masses, but who wants to take a chance? and who has the mindset to do that? I know I could, but I'm not one of the "inner" circle of devs that bounce from job to job.. BARELY staying afloat..
This project died as soon as they said Brad McQuaid was leading the creative design. Here are a few things to consider.
- Everquest: If people take off the rose colored glasses and looked at the game objectively they would understand the game really wasn't all that good. It had good parts and a lot of bad parts like 30 minute boat rides and week long mob camps. Later on the game became even more punishing with a raid until you pass out at the keyboard mentality. Everquest in many ways gave old school thinking a bad name. Ultra hard core expansions like Planes of Power and Gates of Discord would fuel the exodus of players out of Everquest and into WoW.
EverQuest 2: This was supposed to be SoE's answer to WoW as a mass market MMO. Brad McQuaid played a significant role in the early design of this game. EQ2 suffered from a number of poor design decisions such as shared xp debt and corpse runs. The over land zones were 95% group content and soloing was limited to a few key areas. In some ways it was worse than the original Everquest. It is like they were saying we want our game to fail. They just handed WoW the crown.
- Vanguard: Game was a complete and total failure until SoE fixed it. The most important fix was removing all of Brad McQuaid's influence over the game. His ideas of what a game should be were completely horrible and needed to go.
The amount of ignorance in this post is mind boggling. Clearly done by a person who played all of 0 of those games and is basing his opinions on the standard BS that gets thrown about. I particularly like how EQ2 was soe's answer to WOW, considering they came out the same month and EQ2 was in development before WOW. But hey, you know, whatever.
BTW, i'm not going to take the time respond in detail why this post is just wrong on a billion points, because 1. It won't really matter, and 2. I will probably get another reprimand for being too vulgar or something.
I have noticed plenty of people, especially in this forum, actually have never tried older MMORPGs yet they ask us to "take off the rose colored glasses". The nerve of these people...
I don't understand or justify their strong opinion; especially coming from complete ignorance. I've been debating (on other forums) with plenty of people on why certain game mechanics were better (in EQ) a few weeks later I realized that person I was arguing against admitting that he never tried EverQuest (except for a few hours sometime in 2008; which we all know that's not EverQuest at all...).
I lost hope a few years ago to be honest. Let's face it; MMORPG as a genre was hijacked and we should move on. Brad, to me, is one of the few hopes remaining (along with CCP's World of Darkness). That's about it.
This project died as soon as they said Brad McQuaid was leading the creative design. Here are a few things to consider.
- Everquest: If people take off the rose colored glasses and looked at the game objectively they would understand the game really wasn't all that good. It had good parts and a lot of bad parts like 30 minute boat rides and week long mob camps. Later on the game became even more punishing with a raid until you pass out at the keyboard mentality. Everquest in many ways gave old school thinking a bad name. Ultra hard core expansions like Planes of Power and Gates of Discord would fuel the exodus of players out of Everquest and into WoW.
EverQuest 2: This was supposed to be SoE's answer to WoW as a mass market MMO. Brad McQuaid played a significant role in the early design of this game. EQ2 suffered from a number of poor design decisions such as shared xp debt and corpse runs. The over land zones were 95% group content and soloing was limited to a few key areas. In some ways it was worse than the original Everquest. It is like they were saying we want our game to fail. They just handed WoW the crown.
- Vanguard: Game was a complete and total failure until SoE fixed it. The most important fix was removing all of Brad McQuaid's influence over the game. His ideas of what a game should be were completely horrible and needed to go.
The amount of ignorance in this post is mind boggling. Clearly done by a person who played all of 0 of those games and is basing his opinions on the standard BS that gets thrown about. I particularly like how EQ2 was soe's answer to WOW, considering they came out the same month and EQ2 was in development before WOW. But hey, you know, whatever.
BTW, i'm not going to take the time respond in detail why this post is just wrong on a billion points, because 1. It won't really matter, and 2. I will probably get another reprimand for being too vulgar or something.
I have noticed plenty of people, especially in this forum, actually have never tried older MMORPGs yet they ask us to "take off the rose colored glasses". The nerve of these people...
I don't understand or justify their strong opinion; especially coming from complete ignorance. I've been debating (on other forums) with plenty of people on why certain game mechanics were better (in EQ) a few weeks later I realized that person I was arguing against admitting that he never tried EverQuest (except for a few hours sometime in 2008; which we all know that's not EverQuest at all...).
I lost hope a few years ago to be honest. Let's face it; MMORPG as a genre was hijacked and we should move on. Brad, to me, is one of the few hopes remaining (along with CCP's World of Darkness). That's about it.
I agree on the rose colored glasses sentiment. I believe you can get a feel of what the old EQ was like playing today's iteration though. The old world zones are still untouched. The combat mechanics are still fairly the same. The only issue I have with the game is that it seems fractured. It has some new areas with quest hubs, but the majority of the game (old world) is still almost the same. I doubt many people even bother to go to those zones since there are no quest hubs and that's what most people expect. I even found myself following the quest hubs to try and get the item/exp rewards they yield sadly. I did venture into Warsliks Woods which is a hot zone. I got lost there for a while. I was the only one in the zone lol. This zone is as confusing as I remember it to be when Kunark came out. I actually like some of the improvements they made to certain classes. Rangers were a really bad class in vanilla EQ. They are a fair amount better now. The melee classes were buffed a bit as well. The interface is a mess when you first create a character. I could see that turning people away from the game. You have to move all the windows around to make it useable. I can still enjoy the game nonetheless.
Funny how quick people are to permanently judge and damn others for mistakes but when it's yourself it's totally different. So what if he screwed some stuff up in the past, no one is perfect and he's had a huge part of 2 of the best mmo's ever in my opinion. Vanguard and EQ1 were both not perfect but they had more of a feeling of awe and magic than any of the other crap we have been fed over and over for years in my opinion. So of course I'm interested and will be likely to fund if it seems legitimate.
This post assumes that EQNext is Old School. I don't see anything Old School about it !
As far as Brad McQuaid, He is OK in my books. The problem with Vanguard is that they built the game with the same crap engine as Everquest 2, and that engine always sucked. That and the vision was so big that it ran out of money.
It also assumes that you like what EQNext. I hate everything the game has to offer.
problem imo with vanguard was it looked freaking horible at launch and it was riddled with bugs everywhere. the game wasnt ready to launch yet.
Yes it was a buggy mess but i stuck with it up to present day, say what you want but the game has some great features. It has some the best dungeons, classes, music, features, crafting and housing in any mmo to date imo.
Like i said before, if Brad has sorted himself out then i'll be the first to invest in his game.
If you like Vanguard you should support the developers and designers that made it. That would be the people Brad fired by all accounts even brads he was hardly ever around during Vanguards creation His excuse in his blog at the time was he was busy out trying to raise more money.
Brad blew through some 40+ million dollars to create a buggy mess. There's no way Brads gonna get another 40 million via a kickstarter and even if he did with inflation and todays cost it would only buy a fraction of what it did when Vanguard was made.
IMHO this is just a money grab from Brad now that he has been fired by SOE to support the lifestyle and work ethics (or lack of) that he has become accustomed to.
Unless I missed something, somewhere, he's still with SOE, right? With that in mind, I'm sure he has a crew of great people lined up to get ready to start working on the "Messiah" in MMO's. (when it comes to bringing challenge back into MMOs)
So, yes, I will back him.
You missed a great deal.
Brad was "let go" by SOE in August of this year (along with several other contractors).
Apparently he then had a sudden flash of inspiration (desperation ?) and decided to make an MMO. And much of the team to build it would consist of development talent that is unemployed currently due to the economic situation.
Or perhaps the fact that he was "let go" by SOE finally "allowed him the opportunity" to pursue his MMO dream... ?
Or perhaps he saw the decidedly negative reaction (of one group) to the EQN reveal and decided to capitalise on the disgruntled EQ fans ?
Or perhaps he thought: "Well, I'm unemployed, might as well launch a Kickstarter campaign, what have I got to lose ?"
Do you have any evidence to back this up?
I'm not jumping to the defense of McQuaid here. But there seems to be alot of rampant speculation regarding his "problems" and no actual evidence to support them. Vanguard was clearly a failure - but how much do we really know about what happened?
Do we factually know he was "let go" by SOE and he didn't leave voluntarily? I ask this specifically, because it's also rumored (again just rumors) that Smedley is somehow attached to this project and that McQuaid and Smedley have a strong working relationship.
Yes we do actually know many of these things. Do a little googling, the articles are not really that hard to find if you look.
I'd always heard the problems with vanguard stemmed from SOE kicking it out the door to soon and pulling all resources from it after release so it wouldn't compete with EQ2. Was this not the case?
Originally posted by Convo Let's also not forget the awareness Brad could potentially bring to an overly due niche old school MMO. I'm not saying open your wallets blindly but also understand you're voting for much more than his new project. The more hype/support the better around this project.
Hype/support has a way of burying things when it fails. Give a Indie developer a chance to make a old school MMO and if it succeeds things will open up, if they fail people will just say well they were a indie and life will go on. Give Brad a chance to make the holy grail old school MMO with a ton of hype, and if it succeeds fine the outcome is the same things will open up. but if it fails as he's already shown he can do then the old school genre will be buried for some time and tarnished by the failure to deliver on Brad McQuad level hype. (after all he's "the Messiah" as one poster has already posted here.
Originally posted by Novusod This project died as soon as they said Brad McQuaid was leading the creative design. Here are a few things to consider.- Everquest: If people take off the rose colored glasses and looked at the game objectively they would understand the game really wasn't all that good. It had good parts and a lot of bad parts like 30 minute boat rides and week long mob camps. Later on the game became even more punishing with a raid until you pass out at the keyboard mentality. Everquest in many ways gave old school thinking a bad name. Ultra hard core expansions like Planes of Power and Gates of Discord would fuel the exodus of players out of Everquest and into WoW.EverQuest 2: This was supposed to be SoE's answer to WoW as a mass market MMO. Brad McQuaid played a significant role in the early design of this game. EQ2 suffered from a number of poor design decisions such as shared xp debt and corpse runs. The over land zones were 95% group content and soloing was limited to a few key areas. In some ways it was worse than the original Everquest. It is like they were saying we want our game to fail. They just handed WoW the crown.- Vanguard: Game was a complete and total failure until SoE fixed it. The most important fix was removing all of Brad McQuaid's influence over the game. His ideas of what a game should be were completely horrible and needed to go.
The amount of ignorance in this post is mind boggling. Clearly done by a person who played all of 0 of those games and is basing his opinions on the standard BS that gets thrown about. I particularly like how EQ2 was soe's answer to WOW, considering they came out the same month and EQ2 was in development before WOW. But hey, you know, whatever.BTW, i'm not going to take the time respond in detail why this post is just wrong on a billion points, because 1. It won't really matter, and 2. I will probably get another reprimand for being too vulgar or something.
I have noticed plenty of people, especially in this forum, actually have never tried older MMORPGs yet they ask us to "take off the rose colored glasses". The nerve of these people...I don't understand or justify their strong opinion; especially coming from complete ignorance. I've been debating (on other forums) with plenty of people on why certain game mechanics were better (in EQ) a few weeks later I realized that person I was arguing against admitting that he never tried EverQuest (except for a few hours sometime in 2008; which we all know that's not EverQuest at all...).I lost hope a few years ago to be honest. Let's face it; MMORPG as a genre was hijacked and we should move on. Brad, to me, is one of the few hopes remaining (along with CCP's World of Darkness). That's about it.
I agree on the rose colored glasses sentiment. I believe you can get a feel of what the old EQ was like playing today's iteration though. The old world zones are still untouched. The combat mechanics are still fairly the same. The only issue I have with the game is that it seems fractured. It has some new areas with quest hubs, but the majority of the game (old world) is still almost the same. I doubt many people even bother to go to those zones since there are no quest hubs and that's what most people expect. I even found myself following the quest hubs to try and get the item/exp rewards they yield sadly. I did venture into Warsliks Woods which is a hot zone. I got lost there for a while. I was the only one in the zone lol. This zone is as confusing as I remember it to be when Kunark came out. I actually like some of the improvements they made to certain classes. Rangers were a really bad class in vanilla EQ. They are a fair amount better now. The melee classes were buffed a bit as well. The interface is a mess when you first create a character. I could see that turning people away from the game. You have to move all the windows around to make it useable. I can still enjoy the game nonetheless.
EQ today is very different from yesteryear. Even at character creation, you have to work at NOT going to The Glooming Deeps for the new tutorial. At level 5 you get the nice AA "Origin" which instant transports you to your home city. Unfortunately, the game will NOT let you change that home city from the Drakken home city.
The Commonlands are now 1 zone with newer graphics, instead of the 2 they were before an update. The Desert of Ro has new graphics, too. Steamfont Mountains is the same with newer graphics in place.
The old starter areas are empty. When I log in to play, I am usually the only one in the starter zones, at best 1 of handful of players.
Leveling is much faster now then it used to be and with mercenaries for hire, easier to do. Most of the current players are upper to max level. Lots of chatter about finding high level groups now.
It is a very different game today then it was.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I'm not sure whats worse: Brad McQuaid trying to lead a project again or the fact that if he made EQ1 again with the same graphics and a different world I'd buy it. That's how terrible the MMORPG market is right now.
To the people saying EQ1 wasn't that good because of 30min boat rides, harsh death penalties and camps. You're the reason MMO's are so terrible these days. Levels are meaningless if they presented little challenge and/or sacrifice. And it's not a virtual world if you warp everywhere with massive instancing and no immersion.
I am interested to see what he says, and who he has working with him. I don't see anything on the horizon that I am totally excited about... I am interested in a couple things, but they all have areas that make me very weary.
If he has a solid presentation, good group, and such, it may be the first kickstarter I ever give money to, and I would do so knowing their is a chance I will get the same return as throwing it into a fireplace (yeah, I know, someone will joke at least the fireplace gave me warmth from the burning money...).
Most of the self-published games don't lack the ideas, they come short on the technical side.
Vanguard had no shortage of ideas and good gameplay, they didn't have the engineers / programmers / animators....people who are technically skilled....people who know stuff....people who could turn all those ideas into a working game.
Vanguard failed, not because it was a bad game, it was an amazing game, it failed because you crashed 5 minutes into the game, it was an open world that lagged, the animations were bad, there were server issues, etc
Originally posted by CalmOceans Most of the self-published games don't lack the ideas, they come short on the technical side.Vanguard had no shortage of ideas and good gameplay, they didn't have the engineers / programmers / animators....people who are technically skilled....people who know stuff....people who could turn all those ideas into a working game.Vanguard failed, not because it was a bad game, it was an amazing game, it failed because you crashed 5 minutes into the game, it was an open world that lagged, the animations were bad, there were server issues, etc
That's a great point, CO.
Just because a game has "my/your" feature does not mean it is implemented well or the rest of the game is great.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
If this game comes out as the closest thing to EQ and even a "working as intended" Vanguard I am confident there will be a huge backing. This issue, as others have mentioned, is the release. Not all games that failed were bad games by design. Technical faults have squashed many a promising game.
I can only imagine this mmo will be a massively open world demanding great player cooperation with little instancing. Cries for this sort of game have been loud and frequent on these forums and elsewhere. The problem is that other kickstarter mmos are also promising similar game play and have already pulled cash from many mmo players. The selling point to this campaign is entirely based around it's connection with EQ and Vanguard.
If I were to guess, I'd say this is enough to get the project started.
If not for Brad there would most likely never have been a MMORPG craze and definitely no Wow.Smedley is not the mastermind,he was simply the person that wanted to make a 3D mmorpg and hired guys like Brad to do it.
Personally i feel an old school MMO is a real cheap label,it means nothing to me as there is a VAST difference between "old school" games.
I have ONE single vision of old school "FFXI" ZERO hand holding,no linear questing and no yellow markers ANYWHERE.That to me defines a MATURE/Adult type game and one which you would actually play if in real life,NO where would you ever see yellow markers over a persons head and never would you role play in a linear questing fashion.FFFXI is the ONLY game that got it right.
As for the pvp side of things,that is an idea that CANNOT be copied with realism for the same simple reason that nobody wants to die in real life either,yet devs seem to not understand that simple concept.
So for me ,i look for a good quality game,something similar to what BRAD first tried to bring to this genre but without all the hand holding crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The guy had his chance, and he blew it big time. There's no reason to believe he won't do so again. Perhaps he learned his lesson & will do better now, but I'm not going to bet any money on that.
Edit: And no, I don't want an 'old school' MMO. There's a reason they fell by the wayside.
He blew it?
I consider Vanguard as one of the top 5 all time great games,even though it never reached it's maximum capacity.It imo blows away Wow and other games that had mild success.
Brad simply wanted to make a greater better version of EQ and imo ,he did top EQ2 and EQ1 easily because VG did everything those games did and MORE and of course more than WOW as well.I hardly call that "blowing it".
There seems to be a hypocritical oath among gamerr's,it is ok for SOE to continually toss out buggy games as well as other developers,yet it was not ok for Sigil a developer with far less money?
Even to this day games like Wow and EQ2 turn out tons of bugs and those game's run testing servers to make sure that doesn't happen,yet it does,so Sigil imo is no worse than any other developer.
Then you take other games,without rustling feathers ,i won't mention those games,but they did VERY little to improve the genre,they basically took all the ideas of Vanguard and removed 50% of the game,so i would hardly give those devs credit for polishing OLD ideas and half a game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The guy had his chance, and he blew it big time. There's no reason to believe he won't do so again. Perhaps he learned his lesson & will do better now, but I'm not going to bet any money on that.
Edit: And no, I don't want an 'old school' MMO. There's a reason they fell by the wayside.
He blew it?
I consider Vanguard as one of the top 5 all time great games,even though it never reached it's maximum capacity.It imo blows away Wow and other games that had mild success.
Brad simply wanted to make a greater better version of EQ and imo ,he did top EQ2 and EQ1 easily because VG did everything those games did and MORE and of course more than WOW as well.I hardly call that "blowing it".
There seems to be a hypocritical oath among gamerr's,it is ok for SOE to continually toss out buggy games as well as other developers,yet it was not ok for Sigil a developer with far less money?
Even to this day games like Wow and EQ2 turn out tons of bugs and those game's run testing servers to make sure that doesn't happen,yet it does,so Sigil imo is no worse than any other developer.
Then you take other games,without rustling feathers ,i won't mention those games,but they did VERY little to improve the genre,they basically took all the ideas of Vanguard and removed 50% of the game,so i would hardly give those devs credit for polishing OLD ideas and half a game.
I fully agree that Vanguard was vastly superior to EQ2 which is why I side with the idea that all this game needs to do to survive is to launch smoothly and complete.
I do not pretend this is an easy task either. This is a guy who I feel has solid proof of concept but that alone isn't enough to make a successful game.
Comments
It's hard to put my finger on what I like about Everquest. I have gone back to the game recently and am having more fun playing it then any of the recent MMOs.
I remember playing Vanguard and it didn't really feel like EQ to me. Perhaps it was the different artwork or the different combat mechanics. Something definitely felt different. It also came out at a bad time because a lot of people were tired of playing Everquest at the time and were looking for a more WoW experience. Now I believe a lot of people are getting sick of playing WOW and are looking for a different experience.
I can say with EQ it wasn't rose colored glasses for me. Yes grinding, losing levels, waiting for boats, traveling long distances, trying to get your corpse back, fighting over spawns, etc. was frustrating, but it's what made the game worthwhile and what gave you good and bad memories of the game. I bet there are few people who have a memorable experience in an MMO now like they do in real life. That's because of the lack of difficulty and being guided through a solo experience throughout the whole game. When I say it's better for people to create their own stories I don't mean they should sit down and right a back story for their character or try to write a story down to play out in game. I mean you go out, wander around and the story happens around you. You might go to blackburrow and see someone pulling trains to zone killing everyone. That's a story right there. You might see someone kiting a red beetle around the zone and killing it. That's another story. You might fall off the boat and end up swimming around looking for an island. You might have to compete with or agree to share a mob spawn location. You might be killed by a random nasty mob that wanders the zone. These are all stories. Things you remember and can share with others. MMOs these days don't give you that. They are pretty hallow experiences.
As for Brad I doubt I would support his MMO through funding, but when it is released I would pay for it and try it. I find though that sometimes a game just has some magic and that magic isn't easily recaptured. There is something about EQ that is fun to me. Even in it's current incarnation where a lot of it has been nurfed.
I liked the boat rides. It was part of the experience. I actually got knocked off the boat into the ocean a number of times. I remember there being a bug. With no compass and no map it could take a while to find land. It was funny to see others fall into the ocean though lol. The boat rid itself wasn't really that bad. If you wanted to skip it you could play a wizard/druid or ask someone for a port. People seem so against even simple interaction these days if it it doesn't involve a close friend/circle of people. Oh no I can't stop for one second and ask for a teleport to a zone. It was a good way for those classes to make some money as well. Most people were nice and would teleport/give buffs for free. Many would hang around in the newbie zones just to buff people.
I agree with this. Boat rides and other long forms of travel are a good thing IMO. Makes an MMO feel much more like a real world to me. I don't like the trend of instant gratification in MMO's nowadays.
Honestly???? I don't think any of us know the real truth other then Brad himself as to why things worked out the way they have.. IMO, Original EQ along with the first 3 expansions were excellent.. Sure there were events that took place during the initial years such as questionable nerfs to certain classes, while beefing up others.. IMO as well is that Brad (Verant) and gang became too big for their britches.. Success has a bad habit of changing people, add in the executives not getting along, lead EQ down a path that many of us disagreed with..
As for Vanguard? I think Brad is just trying to find a way to make money as like anyone else these days.. Even SOE is trying to tap into the EQ lore to make a quick buck with EQNext & Landmark.. I seriously doubt we'll ever see a TRUE successor to EQ, because those that like the original format are too small of demographic.. That is not to say that a well designed version of the original couldn't appeal to the masses, but who wants to take a chance? and who has the mindset to do that? I know I could, but I'm not one of the "inner" circle of devs that bounce from job to job.. BARELY staying afloat..
I have noticed plenty of people, especially in this forum, actually have never tried older MMORPGs yet they ask us to "take off the rose colored glasses". The nerve of these people...
I don't understand or justify their strong opinion; especially coming from complete ignorance. I've been debating (on other forums) with plenty of people on why certain game mechanics were better (in EQ) a few weeks later I realized that person I was arguing against admitting that he never tried EverQuest (except for a few hours sometime in 2008; which we all know that's not EverQuest at all...).
I lost hope a few years ago to be honest. Let's face it; MMORPG as a genre was hijacked and we should move on. Brad, to me, is one of the few hopes remaining (along with CCP's World of Darkness). That's about it.
I agree on the rose colored glasses sentiment. I believe you can get a feel of what the old EQ was like playing today's iteration though. The old world zones are still untouched. The combat mechanics are still fairly the same. The only issue I have with the game is that it seems fractured. It has some new areas with quest hubs, but the majority of the game (old world) is still almost the same. I doubt many people even bother to go to those zones since there are no quest hubs and that's what most people expect. I even found myself following the quest hubs to try and get the item/exp rewards they yield sadly. I did venture into Warsliks Woods which is a hot zone. I got lost there for a while. I was the only one in the zone lol. This zone is as confusing as I remember it to be when Kunark came out. I actually like some of the improvements they made to certain classes. Rangers were a really bad class in vanilla EQ. They are a fair amount better now. The melee classes were buffed a bit as well. The interface is a mess when you first create a character. I could see that turning people away from the game. You have to move all the windows around to make it useable. I can still enjoy the game nonetheless.
Funny how quick people are to permanently judge and damn others for mistakes but when it's yourself it's totally different. So what if he screwed some stuff up in the past, no one is perfect and he's had a huge part of 2 of the best mmo's ever in my opinion. Vanguard and EQ1 were both not perfect but they had more of a feeling of awe and magic than any of the other crap we have been fed over and over for years in my opinion. So of course I'm interested and will be likely to fund if it seems legitimate.
If you like Vanguard you should support the developers and designers that made it. That would be the people Brad fired by all accounts even brads he was hardly ever around during Vanguards creation His excuse in his blog at the time was he was busy out trying to raise more money.
Brad blew through some 40+ million dollars to create a buggy mess. There's no way Brads gonna get another 40 million via a kickstarter and even if he did with inflation and todays cost it would only buy a fraction of what it did when Vanguard was made.
IMHO this is just a money grab from Brad now that he has been fired by SOE to support the lifestyle and work ethics (or lack of) that he has become accustomed to.
Yes we do actually know many of these things. Do a little googling, the articles are not really that hard to find if you look.
Hype/support has a way of burying things when it fails. Give a Indie developer a chance to make a old school MMO and if it succeeds things will open up, if they fail people will just say well they were a indie and life will go on. Give Brad a chance to make the holy grail old school MMO with a ton of hype, and if it succeeds fine the outcome is the same things will open up. but if it fails as he's already shown he can do then the old school genre will be buried for some time and tarnished by the failure to deliver on Brad McQuad level hype. (after all he's "the Messiah" as one poster has already posted here.
The Commonlands are now 1 zone with newer graphics, instead of the 2 they were before an update. The Desert of Ro has new graphics, too. Steamfont Mountains is the same with newer graphics in place.
The old starter areas are empty. When I log in to play, I am usually the only one in the starter zones, at best 1 of handful of players.
Leveling is much faster now then it used to be and with mercenaries for hire, easier to do. Most of the current players are upper to max level. Lots of chatter about finding high level groups now.
It is a very different game today then it was.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I'm not sure whats worse: Brad McQuaid trying to lead a project again or the fact that if he made EQ1 again with the same graphics and a different world I'd buy it. That's how terrible the MMORPG market is right now.
To the people saying EQ1 wasn't that good because of 30min boat rides, harsh death penalties and camps. You're the reason MMO's are so terrible these days. Levels are meaningless if they presented little challenge and/or sacrifice. And it's not a virtual world if you warp everywhere with massive instancing and no immersion.
I am interested to see what he says, and who he has working with him. I don't see anything on the horizon that I am totally excited about... I am interested in a couple things, but they all have areas that make me very weary.
If he has a solid presentation, good group, and such, it may be the first kickstarter I ever give money to, and I would do so knowing their is a chance I will get the same return as throwing it into a fireplace (yeah, I know, someone will joke at least the fireplace gave me warmth from the burning money...).
Most of the self-published games don't lack the ideas, they come short on the technical side.
Vanguard had no shortage of ideas and good gameplay, they didn't have the engineers / programmers / animators....people who are technically skilled....people who know stuff....people who could turn all those ideas into a working game.
Vanguard failed, not because it was a bad game, it was an amazing game, it failed because you crashed 5 minutes into the game, it was an open world that lagged, the animations were bad, there were server issues, etc
Just because a game has "my/your" feature does not mean it is implemented well or the rest of the game is great.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
If this game comes out as the closest thing to EQ and even a "working as intended" Vanguard I am confident there will be a huge backing. This issue, as others have mentioned, is the release. Not all games that failed were bad games by design. Technical faults have squashed many a promising game.
I can only imagine this mmo will be a massively open world demanding great player cooperation with little instancing. Cries for this sort of game have been loud and frequent on these forums and elsewhere. The problem is that other kickstarter mmos are also promising similar game play and have already pulled cash from many mmo players. The selling point to this campaign is entirely based around it's connection with EQ and Vanguard.
If I were to guess, I'd say this is enough to get the project started.
You stay sassy!
If not for Brad there would most likely never have been a MMORPG craze and definitely no Wow.Smedley is not the mastermind,he was simply the person that wanted to make a 3D mmorpg and hired guys like Brad to do it.
Personally i feel an old school MMO is a real cheap label,it means nothing to me as there is a VAST difference between "old school" games.
I have ONE single vision of old school "FFXI" ZERO hand holding,no linear questing and no yellow markers ANYWHERE.That to me defines a MATURE/Adult type game and one which you would actually play if in real life,NO where would you ever see yellow markers over a persons head and never would you role play in a linear questing fashion.FFFXI is the ONLY game that got it right.
As for the pvp side of things,that is an idea that CANNOT be copied with realism for the same simple reason that nobody wants to die in real life either,yet devs seem to not understand that simple concept.
So for me ,i look for a good quality game,something similar to what BRAD first tried to bring to this genre but without all the hand holding crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
He blew it?
I consider Vanguard as one of the top 5 all time great games,even though it never reached it's maximum capacity.It imo blows away Wow and other games that had mild success.
Brad simply wanted to make a greater better version of EQ and imo ,he did top EQ2 and EQ1 easily because VG did everything those games did and MORE and of course more than WOW as well.I hardly call that "blowing it".
There seems to be a hypocritical oath among gamerr's,it is ok for SOE to continually toss out buggy games as well as other developers,yet it was not ok for Sigil a developer with far less money?
Even to this day games like Wow and EQ2 turn out tons of bugs and those game's run testing servers to make sure that doesn't happen,yet it does,so Sigil imo is no worse than any other developer.
Then you take other games,without rustling feathers ,i won't mention those games,but they did VERY little to improve the genre,they basically took all the ideas of Vanguard and removed 50% of the game,so i would hardly give those devs credit for polishing OLD ideas and half a game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I fully agree that Vanguard was vastly superior to EQ2 which is why I side with the idea that all this game needs to do to survive is to launch smoothly and complete.
I do not pretend this is an easy task either. This is a guy who I feel has solid proof of concept but that alone isn't enough to make a successful game.
You stay sassy!