EQ Never

Even zone based grouping is better than sending out to everyone on the server, as was suggested earlier (2000 clients). I can see how that's an easy alternative with zones since, in most cases, usually no more than 200 people were in a zone most of the time (obviously shit got real during raids and later expansions).

Regarding terrain data, when you mine/drill in Landmark it's not a continuous stream of destruction. Your tool has a delay that determines how often an update happens and rarely is it more than twice a second. I imagine if they stick to less updates they are able to greatly diminish the frequency that updates need to happen and reduce overhead.

Forehead_sl said:

Thanks for the link...

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If nothing else even if it never sees the light of day the whole landmark alpha/beta has been a great data collector for voxel farm. Large amounts of people messing around with what their engine can do and find where weak points are. Lack of occlusion has been an issue that some of the more complex builds have really shown so good to see voxel farm has found ways to help that. Some of the really complex landmark builds really kill systems when you get close to them as there is just so much detail that had to be drawn no system could handle a full town of those.

So maybe landmark/eqn does not get made but maybe that means games like crowfall and future games using the tech can be better for the lessons learned.

Yup it sure was although if you are aiming to make a AAA MMO that pretty much by definition is going to be an immensely expensive undertaking. The whole land mark thing seemed spun off right from the begining as a way to have people tinkering in the game world engine to see what could be done with it. I am not sure it every really was much of anything other than a pure test bed experiment and honestly all the work done on it was directly usable by their EQN development so it likely was not costing them much of anything to spawn it off that was not already being dumped into the creation of EQN.

At this point, my speculation is that EQN is not going to be a voxel MMO. As kaid mentioned, DBG tested it with Landmark but it didnt work out that well. Also, the new AI thing isn't going to work either since they fired the AI company. So DBG is back to square one and EQN will be a more "traditional" MMO (if it is still a thing).

Laerazi_sl said:

Steve Klug, Rosie Rappaport and Terry Michaels are definitely still there.

Dave Georgeson and Jeff Butler are definitely gone.

Emily Taylor was pulled back onto EQ2 afaik, but she still makes an appearance on the Landmark forums so maybe she hops between projects.

Supposedly Darrin McPherson has been updating his LinkedIn resume and has new recommendations from EQN team members.. so, he could go soon?

Other people still on the team: Dexella (Community Manager), Josh Augustine (Game Designer), Allen Lapadis (sp?) (Lead Artist)

When they stopped doing the community Landmark builds I was 100% sure EQNext was dead, but if they are moving away from voxel tech that would explain their silence. We'll see, I guess.. They'll need to show something really good once the break the news to the existing community. "BTW all the stuff you've been making for EQNext isn't gonna be used. LOL"

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From what I understand, Darrin is now Creative Director on EQN.

Dave leaving didn't hurt the project at all to be honest. I don't want to throw him under the bus, but let's just say the more I worked directly with him, the less I liked his management style. Landmark should have never been a game, but Dave tried really hard to make it into one. It should have remained the voxel development tools it was originally intended to be, and not been a distraction from EQN.

Jeff is super passionate about his projects, so they lose that for sure, but there is a lot of talented people who could do Jeff's job, and probably a lot cheaper. I'm pretty sure Jeff's departure was a $$$ thing.

Rosie is still Art Director. Some of you may not like her art style choices, but a lot of people do. I was a little surprised at how stylized things went, but I didn't hate the art, and the characters animated really nicely.

Steve is Technical Director. If anyone can figure out the technical hurdles, Steve can.. He's easily once of the most creative and intelligent programmers I've ever met.

Greg Spence left, but to run his own company, not because he was unhappy with the project. Broken Token exploded as a business and requires ALL of this, and his wife's time. Everyone is super happy for Greg's success.

Any thoughts on Terry Michaels manning the helm? He seemed like the most grounded of the "visionaries". I felt like he was always trying to reel in Georgeson during Landmark Lives; like they must have butt heads during development

Terry is an exceptional coder and one of the best people there is at DBG. I always found it a bit strange that they'd move him to producer when he's such an incredible technical asset, but his organizational skills are outstanding, so I have no doubts he's a solid Executive Producer for the project. I just think it's a waste of his exceptional technical skills.

On the flip-side, having a technical-minded producer can greatly benefit the entire process since he is greatly aware of feasibility, time-requirements, technologies, etc. Clueless producers often do more hard than good when they have no idea whether things are even possible or how much time something would take (ie Dave Georgeson, Brad McQuaid)

Valid points for sure.

Tearofsoul_sl said:

At this point, my speculation is that EQN is not going to be a voxel MMO. As kaid mentioned, DBG tested it with Landmark but it didnt work out that well. Also, the new AI thing isn't going to work either since they fired the AI company. So DBG is back to square one and EQN will be a more "traditional" MMO (if it is still a thing).

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The engine itself is very interesting and I was very impressed by it but I think its just going to take way to long to make pathing work on a full voxel world I think wound up being a much larger challenge than expected. They proved they could generate pretty worlds that were fully destructible and pretty robust building capabilities but I am not sure the tech is there yet to actually populate it with critters that can move and navigate the landscape effectively. Something like crowfall has a smaller hurdle to cross. Their focus is primarily PVP based the world is less deep volume wise mostly surface or near surface caves cuts down a LOT on the processing needed and potentially makes pathing a lot easier. And that is a game if the mob AI is not awesome its less of a deal because the real enemy is going to be other people who will path across the landscape just dandy.

Thanks Elidroth!!

I think the big problem with MMOs is the increasing thresholds of complexity. Every time a new element that moves independently is added it multiplies the amount of shit that can go wrong to a degree that its impossible to predict what exactly can get fucked up. All of the different Elements EQ Next wanted to have are possible... independently... but everything put together trying to play alongside each other is pretty much beyond what games are capable at this moment. I dont think there was any way to know this until it was tried though.

I appreciate the ideas and for lack of a better word, vision, they had. "This is what MMOs can be". But I think they probably tried to rush along the evolution of the genre before it was ready. Each of these elements pretty much need to go into seperate games, tried, fleshed out and gradually over time blended with other ideas. Its maddeningly slow, and probably too long of a process to hold peoples attention to MMO type games. The reality that it suggests is that the genre is at a dead end.

I think this will be a game, but I also think the reason for the radio silence is that Daybreak has been unknotting the giant ball of yarn and is trying to figure out which features are viable and which need to go to make the game possible. How far will they walk it all back is the question and if they have to walk it too far back is it worth even doing? Is there one or two features that EQN could have that would make it unique and worth playing? The AI is almost definitely out. Voxels would almost definitely be in.

Elidroth_sl said:

From what I understand, Darrin is now Creative Director on EQN.

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Thanks Eldiroth!

Elidroth_sl said:

Rosie is still Art Director. Some of you may not like her art style choices, but a lot of people do. I was a little surprised at how stylized things went, but I didn't hate the art, and the characters animated really nicely.

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Thanks for the info, however I couldn't disagree more. The whole "Disney" look was just fucking awful, terrible, horrible. It makes the entire game look as if they are marketing to 13 year old girls. It could have been the next EQ or WOW and I would have never touched it. Its a deal breaker.

Merlin_sl said:

Thanks for the info, however I couldn't disagree more. The whole "Disney" look was just fucking awful, terrible, horrible. It makes the entire game look as if they are marketing to 13 year old girls. It could have been the next EQ or WOW and I would have never touched it. Its a deal breaker.

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I agree. I always thought EQNext looked likeFree Realmson steroids. Never liked the style.

All the throwaway MMO's SOE released over the years and they never made a real successor to EQ, just complete incompetence.