Post by Morreion on Feb 1, 2013 11:51:55 GMT -5
EverQuest Next (Wikipedia)
EverQuest Next (working title) is the planned next game in the EverQuest franchise of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, a successor to EverQuest, EverQuest Online Adventures and EverQuest II. The first indication that a new game was in development appeared in a chapter written by EQ creative director Rich Waters in the EverQuest 10th Anniversary Book (2009). Sony Online Entertainment, the developer and publisher, released further details in August 2010, at which point development was still in its earliest stages and feedback was being solicited from existing EQ, EQOA Frontiers and EQ2 players.
The game will also not be a sequel or prequel to any of the games in the EverQuest franchise; it is planned to present to players a "parallel world" of Norrath, one in which some of the locations and characters may be familiar, but specific relationships and events can diverge from the official storylines of the other games. The developers have stated an intention to return to a style of gameplay more like the original EverQuest, while retaining the advances in MMORPG design that have developed in the years since that game first launched. Sony Online Entertainment has developed a new game engine called Forge Light in which EverQuest Next is designed. It has been stated this game engine focuses on lighting effects and making game characters more realistic.
At the SOE Live 2012 event (Fan Faire) in October, John Smedley stated that EverQuest Next has been completely redeveloped, stating "What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed... We are remaking Norrath unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but you’ll recognize it."
In a January interview, John Smedley implied a 2013 launch date.
EverQuest Next and Planetside 2 To Use New Forge Light Engine (The Escapist)
For the creative director of the entire EverQuest line, Dave Georgeson, the real benefit of Forge Light will be in roleplaying your EQ toon. "For the people that love to roleplay, to stand around and talk to each other, the facial expressiveness [that Forge Light will provide] is huge," he said. "It gives them almost everything that they want."
I asked if the emote system for EQ Next will be revised to give tighter control over your toon's face and expressions. "Oh yeah, there's so much that I wish I could tell you right now [about that]," Georgeson said. He hinted at using some of the technology that was shown at E3 this year that could take images from a webcam and transfer them to a digital character. "Even if someone doesn't want to sit there with a webcam watching your face, which people won't want to do all the time, they can still set up these elaborate macros," Georgeson said.
Is EQ: Next Really Necessary? (MMORPG.com Staff Blog)
The fantasy MMORPG space is rather crowded these days. Will the Everquest brand be enough to make EQ:Next rise above the crowd and attract more players than the current juggernauts and those games which are on the horizon or will it suffer from the problem of merely cannibalizing Everquest’s own audience? I suppose that’s part of the idea though: SOE knows that in many gamer’s eyes Everquest is still a classic intellectual property. Maybe all it needs to rise to the top once more is a new take on the old formula. But if that’s the case, why are the early art and details promoting a game that’s very similar to the fantasy MMOs we already have in the field vying for gamers’ attention?
Take the ‘Positive’ foundation from EQ and what do you get? (Keen & Graev)
Grouping is beneficial
I’m not saying that one should be forced to group. I was never forced to group in EQ. I chose to group because it benefited me. Just like you’re forced to group in WoW to do an instance, you were forced to group in EQ to go into dungeons. No difference.
Imagine what a game would be like though if grouping for other things became beneficial. Since the world could offer more dangerous perils and adventures if it were like an EQ world, so too could it offer the opportunity to take advantage of them with others. Group exp bonuses and fun content is really all people need as incentive. Groups create community, and groups were everywhere in EQ.
Reflections on the Upcoming EverQuest 3 (Wolfshead Online)
It’s Time to Change the Rules of the Game
More importantly EQ3 has to be a game changer. It should challenge and revolutionize everything we know about MMOs. That’s the only way to get the magic back. Magic after all is no longer magic once you know how the trick works. But in a risk averse world can SOE come up with something as compelling as the DIKU MUD in 3D formula that the original EQ had? It may take a miracle.
We need to be truthful and honest about the state of MMOs...and it’s this: MMOs are predictable and lifeless. This has led to the state of affairs where they have become completely deconstructed and demystified by most players. A symptom of this is that the practice of Theorycrafting has become the prime MMO player preoccupation. Players agonize over stats. Mathematics is not exciting. We are supposed to be adventurers not accountants!
SOE needs to create a sense of mystery all over and completely redefine and bury the equations and formulae from the curious eyes of the power gamers. As Raph Koster has said and I’m paraphrasing: when we learn, we have fun. Discovering and learning a new code needs to be part of the new EQ3. That’s going to take a lot of bold thinking in a MMO world dominated by the success Blizzard’s WoW.
EverQuest Next’s Design Scrapped: SOE cites SWTOR, Rift, The Secret World as Reason (Star Wars Strategies)
John Smedley: A year and a half ago, we made that decision. I didn’t get to cover this in the keynote, so I should mention it here. The engine and underlying technology has not changed. A lot of the guts and infrastructure are staying the same. What we’re really changing is what the game is all about, all the design elements. We made one fundamental shift to emergent gameplay.
Once we made that shift, everything else had to follow. And what we saw was RIFT. We saw the writing on the wall with SWTOR. We saw The Secret World. We saw all these games that we knew were in development and very high-quality, but we saw what was going to happen — this big spike and then it goes down. That’s the truth of what’s been happening with MMOs. The fans need to realize that if you don’t change the nature of what these games are, you’re not going to change that core behavior. We want to make games that last more than 15 years. That’s why we made the decision to change it.
EverQuest 3: Largest Sandbox Ever Designed (Keen & Graev)
“I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better that what had come before it. It was slightly better. What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more Kill 10 Rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’re delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.'
EverQuest Next is “largest sandbox MMO ever designed,” says SOE’s John Smedley (PC Gamer)
“What we’re building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest,” Smedley said. “It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed with the same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before and the MMO world has never seen before.
“We didn’t want more ‘kill 10 rats’ quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’re delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.”
Everquest Next is “pretty crazy,” says SOE president: “We’re not trying to make WoW2″ (PC Gamer)
“I was really nervous about [showing SOE staff the game],” says Smedley. “We showed it to them on Monday, and I couldn’t sleep on Sunday night because I was scared. We’ve thrown out two previous designs of the game to go with something pretty crazy and… well, it’s awesome. When the team saw it I could barely breathe when they were watching it. But when I’d finished they were clapping and cheering – and these guys are gamers, so they’re not afraid to call bullsh*t when they see us make a mistake. It’s happened before. We’ve made mistakes, and the guys internally will call us on it every time. But they loved this, and we really felt vindicated that the way we’re going with Everquest Next is the right way. I feel good about it. We’re not trying to make WOW2 or Everquest 2.5 – we’re making something that we think will define the next generation of MMOs.”
EverQuest Next: Innovation is key (Techwatch)
Smedley reckons that EQ Next will be a more sandbox-style of game, where adventurers get to truly create and shape the environment around them. He said they were “trying to make a world that players create… it’s not just a prop for them to walk around in, which is really what all of today’s MMOs are. Their worlds are nothing more than a movie set.”
We can only hope that this isn’t just bluster – which is a possibility, of course. But the internal team is supposedly very happy with the EQ Next concept, and it does sound like a promising new direction.
We certainly couldn’t agree more that the MMORPG needs a big and fresh new direction. We cut our teeth on the original EverQuest, which at the time was a spellbinding – but tough – experience. Tough in terms of the XP point loss for death, for one thing (which could be hours upon hours of play in a “hell” level).
Smedley talks players as content, hints at EQNext 'actual release version' (Massively)
"Everybody is content for everyone else," Smedley said. "That's the core of our strategy moving forward. A simple way to put it is: By allowing players to interact with each other, we're providing tools. It's like we're building a gladiator arena and throwing in the swords... We might bust the tigers out or bring in new kinds of weapons, like a tank. In my opinion, the days when companies can make content [generation] the number one strategy, in the kinds of games we make, are over, because we can't win the war. Star Wars:The Old Republic proved that. Players bought it, loved it, and they played the game. Then they left."
..."Players will get their hands on an actual release version of what we're doing late [this] year -- and I don't mean a beta," he said.
EverQuest Next (working title) is the planned next game in the EverQuest franchise of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, a successor to EverQuest, EverQuest Online Adventures and EverQuest II. The first indication that a new game was in development appeared in a chapter written by EQ creative director Rich Waters in the EverQuest 10th Anniversary Book (2009). Sony Online Entertainment, the developer and publisher, released further details in August 2010, at which point development was still in its earliest stages and feedback was being solicited from existing EQ, EQOA Frontiers and EQ2 players.
The game will also not be a sequel or prequel to any of the games in the EverQuest franchise; it is planned to present to players a "parallel world" of Norrath, one in which some of the locations and characters may be familiar, but specific relationships and events can diverge from the official storylines of the other games. The developers have stated an intention to return to a style of gameplay more like the original EverQuest, while retaining the advances in MMORPG design that have developed in the years since that game first launched. Sony Online Entertainment has developed a new game engine called Forge Light in which EverQuest Next is designed. It has been stated this game engine focuses on lighting effects and making game characters more realistic.
At the SOE Live 2012 event (Fan Faire) in October, John Smedley stated that EverQuest Next has been completely redeveloped, stating "What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed... We are remaking Norrath unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but you’ll recognize it."
In a January interview, John Smedley implied a 2013 launch date.
EverQuest Next and Planetside 2 To Use New Forge Light Engine (The Escapist)
For the creative director of the entire EverQuest line, Dave Georgeson, the real benefit of Forge Light will be in roleplaying your EQ toon. "For the people that love to roleplay, to stand around and talk to each other, the facial expressiveness [that Forge Light will provide] is huge," he said. "It gives them almost everything that they want."
I asked if the emote system for EQ Next will be revised to give tighter control over your toon's face and expressions. "Oh yeah, there's so much that I wish I could tell you right now [about that]," Georgeson said. He hinted at using some of the technology that was shown at E3 this year that could take images from a webcam and transfer them to a digital character. "Even if someone doesn't want to sit there with a webcam watching your face, which people won't want to do all the time, they can still set up these elaborate macros," Georgeson said.
Is EQ: Next Really Necessary? (MMORPG.com Staff Blog)
The fantasy MMORPG space is rather crowded these days. Will the Everquest brand be enough to make EQ:Next rise above the crowd and attract more players than the current juggernauts and those games which are on the horizon or will it suffer from the problem of merely cannibalizing Everquest’s own audience? I suppose that’s part of the idea though: SOE knows that in many gamer’s eyes Everquest is still a classic intellectual property. Maybe all it needs to rise to the top once more is a new take on the old formula. But if that’s the case, why are the early art and details promoting a game that’s very similar to the fantasy MMOs we already have in the field vying for gamers’ attention?
Take the ‘Positive’ foundation from EQ and what do you get? (Keen & Graev)
Grouping is beneficial
I’m not saying that one should be forced to group. I was never forced to group in EQ. I chose to group because it benefited me. Just like you’re forced to group in WoW to do an instance, you were forced to group in EQ to go into dungeons. No difference.
Imagine what a game would be like though if grouping for other things became beneficial. Since the world could offer more dangerous perils and adventures if it were like an EQ world, so too could it offer the opportunity to take advantage of them with others. Group exp bonuses and fun content is really all people need as incentive. Groups create community, and groups were everywhere in EQ.
Reflections on the Upcoming EverQuest 3 (Wolfshead Online)
It’s Time to Change the Rules of the Game
More importantly EQ3 has to be a game changer. It should challenge and revolutionize everything we know about MMOs. That’s the only way to get the magic back. Magic after all is no longer magic once you know how the trick works. But in a risk averse world can SOE come up with something as compelling as the DIKU MUD in 3D formula that the original EQ had? It may take a miracle.
We need to be truthful and honest about the state of MMOs...and it’s this: MMOs are predictable and lifeless. This has led to the state of affairs where they have become completely deconstructed and demystified by most players. A symptom of this is that the practice of Theorycrafting has become the prime MMO player preoccupation. Players agonize over stats. Mathematics is not exciting. We are supposed to be adventurers not accountants!
SOE needs to create a sense of mystery all over and completely redefine and bury the equations and formulae from the curious eyes of the power gamers. As Raph Koster has said and I’m paraphrasing: when we learn, we have fun. Discovering and learning a new code needs to be part of the new EQ3. That’s going to take a lot of bold thinking in a MMO world dominated by the success Blizzard’s WoW.
EverQuest Next’s Design Scrapped: SOE cites SWTOR, Rift, The Secret World as Reason (Star Wars Strategies)
John Smedley: A year and a half ago, we made that decision. I didn’t get to cover this in the keynote, so I should mention it here. The engine and underlying technology has not changed. A lot of the guts and infrastructure are staying the same. What we’re really changing is what the game is all about, all the design elements. We made one fundamental shift to emergent gameplay.
Once we made that shift, everything else had to follow. And what we saw was RIFT. We saw the writing on the wall with SWTOR. We saw The Secret World. We saw all these games that we knew were in development and very high-quality, but we saw what was going to happen — this big spike and then it goes down. That’s the truth of what’s been happening with MMOs. The fans need to realize that if you don’t change the nature of what these games are, you’re not going to change that core behavior. We want to make games that last more than 15 years. That’s why we made the decision to change it.
EverQuest 3: Largest Sandbox Ever Designed (Keen & Graev)
“I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better that what had come before it. It was slightly better. What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more Kill 10 Rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’re delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.'
EverQuest Next is “largest sandbox MMO ever designed,” says SOE’s John Smedley (PC Gamer)
“What we’re building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest,” Smedley said. “It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed with the same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before and the MMO world has never seen before.
“We didn’t want more ‘kill 10 rats’ quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’re delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.”
Everquest Next is “pretty crazy,” says SOE president: “We’re not trying to make WoW2″ (PC Gamer)
“I was really nervous about [showing SOE staff the game],” says Smedley. “We showed it to them on Monday, and I couldn’t sleep on Sunday night because I was scared. We’ve thrown out two previous designs of the game to go with something pretty crazy and… well, it’s awesome. When the team saw it I could barely breathe when they were watching it. But when I’d finished they were clapping and cheering – and these guys are gamers, so they’re not afraid to call bullsh*t when they see us make a mistake. It’s happened before. We’ve made mistakes, and the guys internally will call us on it every time. But they loved this, and we really felt vindicated that the way we’re going with Everquest Next is the right way. I feel good about it. We’re not trying to make WOW2 or Everquest 2.5 – we’re making something that we think will define the next generation of MMOs.”
EverQuest Next: Innovation is key (Techwatch)
Smedley reckons that EQ Next will be a more sandbox-style of game, where adventurers get to truly create and shape the environment around them. He said they were “trying to make a world that players create… it’s not just a prop for them to walk around in, which is really what all of today’s MMOs are. Their worlds are nothing more than a movie set.”
We can only hope that this isn’t just bluster – which is a possibility, of course. But the internal team is supposedly very happy with the EQ Next concept, and it does sound like a promising new direction.
We certainly couldn’t agree more that the MMORPG needs a big and fresh new direction. We cut our teeth on the original EverQuest, which at the time was a spellbinding – but tough – experience. Tough in terms of the XP point loss for death, for one thing (which could be hours upon hours of play in a “hell” level).
Smedley talks players as content, hints at EQNext 'actual release version' (Massively)
"Everybody is content for everyone else," Smedley said. "That's the core of our strategy moving forward. A simple way to put it is: By allowing players to interact with each other, we're providing tools. It's like we're building a gladiator arena and throwing in the swords... We might bust the tigers out or bring in new kinds of weapons, like a tank. In my opinion, the days when companies can make content [generation] the number one strategy, in the kinds of games we make, are over, because we can't win the war. Star Wars:The Old Republic proved that. Players bought it, loved it, and they played the game. Then they left."
..."Players will get their hands on an actual release version of what we're doing late [this] year -- and I don't mean a beta," he said.
