Yes indeed.... Me thinking that mmos today have gone towards catering to children rather than a more mature audience is me being childish, a 32 year old just trying to grow up.
I know you are not exactly known for constructive feedback, but do you have any disagreements with what I said in the post?
Do you not agree that wow has no darkness? That is your favorite mmo right? Have you ever been outside in nature (away from lights) and have full clear 20/20 vision? Do you not agree that EQ having actual nights, with spells or racial abilities to fix it, did in fact add an element to the world as a whole? Or do you feel that game mechanics that can be countered 100% of the time at a later stage/end game (worn items), might as well be removed as a whole, because they are pointless after a while? Because personally I remember that experience of being afraid of the dark in an mmo, and think that others would enjoy that too. It was a subtle character progression that gave the world flavor that is outright removed in any mmo past EQ.
Do you not agree that the current trend of graphics style from WoW and after caters to a demographic that is certainly not adult/mature. Not saying the WoW art style is not good, it is incredibly well done. However, the artistic style is that of a cartoon. In my life experience, some grownups enjoy that too, but very, very, very, rarely have I been in a room with a group of people my age, discussing a movie we would like to see, and a cartoon has been the suggestion. I love Pixar movies and South Park. Cannot wait for the South Park game, but in an mmo, which is (hopefully) a long term game, I do not wish to run around feeling like I am in a Disney movie. I do not connect to that. You obviously like it, which is fine. I just do not, and think there is room for a game not catering to the same crowd. EQ was realistic for its time, copying the current trend of cartoons just seems so.... sellout. I want EQ:N, not WOW:N.
However, that is probably what we will end up seeing, as I can assume the meetings required to get funding would go much smoother if they pitched Norrath in a WoW world. Less development time as Norrath has an established lore, would draw from the EQ and EQ2 crowd, and the style of WoW would draw in the many, many, many millions of people who tried WoW as their first mmo, but is bored with that and want something new after so many years. Most features that are in both games would then be catered to the WoW crowd as there are more of them.
Art style - EQ: realistic, WoW: cartoonish - EQN: cartoonish
Night - EQ: Dark, WoW: Light - EQN: Light
Overworld - EQ: zones, WoW: open world/seamless - EQN: open world/seamless
PvP - EQ: separate servers, WoW: separate servers, PvE also has instanced PvP content - EQN: Guessing separate servers, PvE will have player created PvP instanced content.
Death penalty - EQ: harsh, WoW: minimal - EQN: guessing minimal
And so on. There might be new features in EQN, but from what has been seen and confirmed so far, it seems outside of the lore I think that people coming from WoW will feel more at home in EQN than people from EQ. Which would be a shame (to us few old EQ players who liked EQ better than WoW). It makes perfect sense too. Nintendo just released the statement that most people today would not be able to finish the original Super Mario. Catering to the people who enjoyed the difficulty and danger of an actual Game Over, in today's market of press X to win in a QTE, would be madness. The ones of us who wanted Smed to put on war paint when talking to the investors and say, "Madness? THIS IS EQ!" will be very disappointed. Like Tad said, I am in line to have my hype level drop -110%. EDIT: For some reason now, my hype level is really high and I hope I am wrong about everything and that I owe Smed a beer for kicking over an investor suggesting EQ lite.
But, to bring this back to what has been discussed in the last few pages. The SOE Live conference, are they really going the way of streaming the first bit, where they present themselves, what they have (powerpoint/screenshot/small video clip at best), then only show the actual game to the people there + press at 5pm?