EQ Never

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Reht

Molten Core Raider
1,115
317
Yeah.. No. Dave's direction pushed Landmark into being a game instead of just the tools to create the voxel world.. In some way, you could say this decision ultimately caused EQN to be cancelled.
Yeah, that's kind of what i thought, glad to know i am not totally full of shit.........
 

Louis

Trakanon Raider
2,836
1,105
Everyone seems so hung up on Landmark/voxels. For me storybricks was by far the more important innovative feature they announced for EQN. Voxel terrain was a cool idea (looking forward to it in future games) but without storybricks, which died loooong ago, EQN was no longer that interesting for me. I'd like to hear if the storybricks features are in any way feasible, even if that particular team was just trying to put up smoke and mirrors to sell their little company.
Always tended to think the whole premise was bullshit being that we only saw 1? video pertaining to it.
 

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,771
628
Dave and his bandits dreamed a big dream but the reality is the know how or expertise to deliver wasn't there. He may have gotten the game out but that doesn't mean shit if it was broken. If anything it means he's not realistic with design goals and could potentially cost another project dearly if it happens again.
 

Treesong

Bronze Knight of the Realm
362
29
Everyone seems so hung up on Landmark/voxels. For me storybricks was by far the more important innovative feature they announced for EQN. Voxel terrain was a cool idea (looking forward to it in future games) but without storybricks, which died loooong ago, EQN was no longer that interesting for me. I'd like to hear if the storybricks features are in any way feasible, even if that particular team was just trying to put up smoke and mirrors to sell their little company.
Gogojira linkedthisa page back which is written by one of the storybrick guys. Apparently they are now teamed up with Smedley and his new project? Did not read it very thoroughly but it seems Storybricks is still alive.

I was hopeful (and dubious) about that part of EQN myself. I even "played" a little storybricks back when they had some sort of pre-alpha tech demo of it running for people who wanted to take a look. Was too complicated for me to let the NPC's do anything interesting though. But it was fun to fiddle a little bit with the "bricks" where you could build up certain"if--->then"seqences. This was before EQN even.
 

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,389
283
Didn't someone a couple hundreds pages back find out that storybricks was never workable to begin with? If that was true them teaming up with Smed is not going matter (and I doubt the new studio Smed opened is going to amount to anything anyway).
 

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,771
628
Didn't someone a couple hundreds pages back find out that storybricks was never workable to begin with? If that was true them teaming up with Smed is not going matter (and I doubt the new studio Smed opened is going to amount to anything anyway).
That was what leaked out, yes.. But it makes you wonder how true it was if Smed teamed back up with them.
 

gogojira_sl

shitlord
2,202
3
rrr_img_128686.jpg


EQN was going to be so awesome!
 

Erronius

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
17,319
44,962
Georgeson and smedley, two out of touch old fucks in an industry they dont belong in doing shit that nobody asked for.
Honestly I think Smed gets a lot of flak he doesn't deserve, and I'm saying that as a Smed critic. AFAIK there hasn't really been another western MMO as profitable as WOW and with Sony suffering losses in the billions and desperately swinging their proverbial axe left and right, SOE didn't stand a chance. Middling to moderate profits wasn't going to cut it, but all of us should know by now that barring WOW and maybe a few Asian MMOs that's pretty much the norm.

Maybe Smed should have tried getting away from MMOs altogether instead of trying to find the "magic" formula that may never have been there in the first place. He seems to have tried a number of different projects and IPs, and to his credit (AFAIK) he more or less kept SOE's proverbial head above water for years. Maybe EQNext was a last gasp effort to save themselves as a project, or maybe he simply didn't realize how bad things were at Sony until it was too late. I remember him tweeting about wanting to move towards the mobile market, for example, but I don't know if he has regrets in that regard. But to be honest, even if EQNext was making good progress I don't think that Sony would have kept them. I don't care if EQNext was going to be"EQ Done Right"or"Stylized Voxel Lion Shoulderpads", the bottom line was that SOE probably needed to have WOW levels of profitability, sustained over time, to stand a chance that Sony would keep them on. And the odds of duplicating WOW's succes is probably a million to one or more.
 

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,771
628
Smed deserves a lot of the criticism.. Not sure how anyone can say he doesn't.. He was the head guy and oversaw these projects that released like shit, took advantaged of the player thru bullshit pre alpha payment models and cancellation of a game that started development like 7 fucking years ago.

Most recently he tried to get people to pony up for his 2D game... The guy could fund the whole project himself but instead he half assed a KS for a concept nobody cares about. How could he not deserve blame in the past with that kind of vision and forward thinking?
 

Siddar

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,457
6,003
Yeah.. No. Dave's direction pushed Landmark into being a game instead of just the tools to create the voxel world.. In some way, you could say this decision ultimately caused EQN to be cancelled.
Yep Landmark caused a delay for EQ Next hiding the fact that EQ Next was mostly a bunch of vague design ideas without any real foundation. Had there been no Landmark they would have had to have been realistic about EQ Next a lot sooner. Landmark allowed them to avoid the reality of not actually having a coherent EQ Next plan for about a year.
 

Erronius

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
17,319
44,962
Smed deserves a lot of the criticism.. Not sure how anyone can say he doesn't.. He was the head guy and oversaw these projects that released like shit, took advantaged of the player thru bullshit pre alpha payment models and cancellation of a game that started development like 7 fucking years ago.

Most recently he tried to get people to pony up for his 2D game... The guy could fund the whole project himself but instead he half assed a KS for a concept nobody cares about. How could he not deserve blame in the past with that kind of vision and forward thinking?
My saying he gets criticism he doesn't deserve doesn't mean that I'm also saying he doesn't deserve any criticism whatsoever. These aren't mutually exclusive statements; both can be true.
 

Felmega_sl

shitlord
563
1
The developers just could not get the voxels to run decently. In landmark, if you approach a highly detailed creation, your computer will slow down considerably due to how the engine handles the geometry. Understand, this is with no other characters or mobs around. The engine was not MMO capable. There was a fun game somewhere, buried in there, but they just couldnt hit find it.
 

Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,564
2,304
Plus the fact that DBG must have realized that making an entire world seamless instead of little Landmark island would be impossible.
 

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Well that and trying to get pathing to work on a totally 3d world of multiple levels and destroyable ground is hard. This is going to be something to watch in crowfall as well to see if they can manage decent NPC pathing on a voxel world.
 

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
Well that and trying to get pathing to work on a totally 3d world of multiple levels and destroyable ground is hard. This is going to be something to watch in crowfall as well to see if they can manage decent NPC pathing on a voxel world.
Correct. Basically all the systems like pathing, AI, voxels should have been prototyped and tested with placeholders during pre-production. Instead (not going to speculate as they might have had their reasons) SOE decided it was a good idea to hire designers, writers, an entire floor of artists and announce a game without even knowing if any of these components were going to work together or if it was fun. The worst part was to have to do fake demos for SOE Live (the NPCs running around in the 1st gameplay reveal? they were controlled by actual people as there was no pathfinding).