EQ Never

Iannis_sl said:

On the other hand, if you do that, how do you stop it from turning into a One Guild to Rule Them All world like Shadowbane?

Eve avoids it. But is the "hardcore" pve EQ crowd willing to put up with how hardcore eve really is?

I honestly don't think they would be. It's a different mentality.

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It is... which is why a lot of the competition would be by completing questlines, writs, guild achievements, Storybricks and so forth on both sides. Those that wanted to compete via PvP directly or interfere with the building process would only have a partial - possibly even minimal - effect on the accomplishment of the other team. Again, "griefing" (whether actual or implied) would have to be limited/evaluated, as I stated above.

As for the One Guild issue, offer incentives for breaking up monopolies on the server - titles, loot, reputation, whatever is needed in order to have people actually compete during the events. Plus, each side would offeruniquerewards for completion (Title: "Founder of Halas") or even failure so that players would HAVE to pick a side in order to get the incentives they wanted.

I'm aching for info on digging, and how these tiers of difficulty work.

If me, noob_01, and jackass_23 start chopping away at the ground all day long, and we're tier 1... can we ever dig to tier 2? Also, is it a guarantee that the hole I'm digging even leads to a dungeon? If we can't access the entire world, because we're only using 1 continent then technically we can't dig forever... etc etc..

Race/classes should be restricted with the exception of Troll Paladin, just to spite you all and be hilarious.

Creslin_sl said:

I really do agree with this. I think its fine if we all start out as members of the combine and reasonably good aligned at the start. But I really hope they add more raciel cities and start to differentiate the races as time goes on. I hope that grobb and neriak and oggok are added later on as evil cities and I hope that if you decided to be a troll paladin you aren't really welcome to go live with most of your race who have started to worship the evil gods.

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rolx_sl said:

Exactly. Because casuals don't care about that kind of thing. The more they can do with less consequence the better.

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Teekey_sl said:

At this point I'm not sure if it's dumbing it down. From what it seems, they're trying to make your individual choices matter more than having your status predisposed by race or religion. It could certainly end up being dumbed down if your choices end up not really mattering, however.

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They have been harping on that "life of consequences" every day during SOE Live. Granted it could be smoke and mirrors but IF they want to follow through with that they need to tell the gaming populace that your ogre has to work his ass off to be a paladin and that's just how its gonna be. They have to take a hard stance on that or the whole foundation of their game, meaningful choices, gets nerfed to casual. Now I know that is exactly your point, rolx. But I think they realized that "nerfing it to casual" doesnt actually get your players to stick around and they are trying to create this as a game that has a good population for a decade, not just for . At least I remember some interview or something from Smed saying so with regards to PS2 and their (then) new stance on game development going forward.

So for now I am assuming they will not nerf it down to not having any consequences, if they fail to stick to that stance then I agree that the game will be casual vapidware that drops to under a mill players in the first year (and I am sure they get 5 mill easy at start because their concepts are the first step forward in a decade).

For that very same reason I do hope they reconsider their "all start neutral-ish in qeynos" solution. Having different initial conditions for different races adds depth to the game, and depth keeps the players. With different starting towns surrounded by entirely different conditions for those two characters, their paths will be completely different right out of the gate, and that's what you want. It increases replayability. If my elf mage and my dwarf warrior start in the same environment and can unlock the respective other class there, why would I make both? They arent on exactly the same path but practically running side by side. If I play one for 3 months, then decide to make the other one and start in qeynos and go "eh, been there", I quit. If I make my dwarf and everything is new, curiosity peaks up and I start to check out whats behind that hill and get drawn into the new character. In the long run the latter is obviously better for SOE, question is can they stand up for it (do they want to?).

Mr Creed_sl said:

If I play one for 3 months, then decide to make the other one and start in qeynos and go "eh, been there", I quit. If I make my dwarf and everything is new...

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Qeynos may not be the same city by the time you roll an alt. Maybe after we all branch out, the city ends up neglected. Now it's a slum, and run by gnolls. With a Gnoll Commander, guards, merchants, an army and everything. Maybe you can't even roll in Qeynos during this time period.

Azeth_sl said:

Qeynos may not be the same city by the time you roll an alt. Maybe after we all branch out, the city ends up neglected. Now it's a slum, and run by gnolls. With a Gnoll Commander, guards, merchants, an army and everything. Maybe you can't even roll in Qeynos during this time period.

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Heh. This quote made me think..

What a cool way to run a server. What if they basically gave the players a foothold on day 1, and the rest of the continent was wild and unsettled. There are no cities, no places to bind, no safe areas besides the beach head. A fantasy D-Day, played out over the course of the life of the server. Players would have to move forward as a server, reclaiming territory. As they cleared out an area, NPCs start settling there, building Inns or places they can bind, or transportation hubs. But clearing out an area takes ALOT killing or driving away huge indigenous populations. Does the horde of people move north? South? East? People would follow the crowd. Sort of aVolkswanderung. Each server would be completely different as different Macro choices triggered different Rallying Cries. Maybe a huge guild develops of Elves who decide they want to drive toward Faydark and open try to rebuild the HE city. What if over the course of the months, the path is so deep and narrow that other players don't follow in numbers, the cleared out path behind the elves closes and the HE players are fighting a Rallying Cry without much help from players of other races...

That... would be awesome.

Azeth_sl said:

Qeynos may not be the same city by the time you roll an alt. Maybe after we all branch out, the city ends up neglected. Now it's a slum, and run by gnolls. With a Gnoll Commander, guards, merchants, an army and everything. Maybe you can't even roll in Qeynos during this time period.

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This is something I would enjoy. I would love to take a 1 month break and then come back asking what has changed. Having asked that, it would be nice to get a long answer filled with actual changes in the world that I needed to be aware of because, what used to be safe now, can kill me for just looking at the area. This would add so much more replay to the game.

Azeth_sl said:

Qeynos may not be the same city by the time you roll an alt. Maybe after we all branch out, the city ends up neglected. Now it's a slum, and run by gnolls. With a Gnoll Commander, guards, merchants, an army and everything. Maybe you can't even roll in Qeynos during this time period.

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unfortunately I highly doubt anything remotely close to this, of course I guess they could force this scenario with a rally call but you wont see it happen organically.

tad10_sl said:

SOE is going to fuck it up for the sake of casuals who aren't going to fucking care whether or not they can be Troll Paladins because they'll all be Elves, Dark Elves or Human.

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This my fear. I wish I could visit everyone of these morons that are running rampant on the forums, chats, etc. They have no idea what a MMORPG really is now. This is the after effect of WoW and casual gaming. If people have a problem with what MMO's are they should play Diablo or something. I think some of the ideas Georgeson is touting is more MMO-esque. Rally calls that take months, permanent change, etc. are all great moves back to the roots of the genre. The squeaky wheels are going to take the majority of the development time to appease the masses. When it comes down to it, there are more of them with pockets full of cash to spend in the shop than there are of us.

tad10_sl said:

I don't know about "best" but at least we won't talk about houseboats. We might talk about whether or not wood floats and whether or not you could build large floating structures.

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If i'm the devs i'm reaching out like WoW initially did to the prominent guilds of EQ1. There are probably skeletons of what was lurking around and I would want to how the guilds that lead EQ, moved to WoW and others games, and find out how they feel today.

FoH, AL, LoS, Triton, etc. I think at one time were the cream of the crop in EQ (game wide) and i'm sure they have each raided in WoW and played other games. I would have them in round table meetings weekly, picking their brains, instead of listening to these public chats and forums full of idiots.

Muligan_sl said:

This my fear. I wish I could visit everyone of these morons that are running rampant on the forums, chats, etc. They have no idea what a MMORPG really is now. This is the after effect of WoW and casual gaming.If people have a problem with what MMO's are they should play Diablo or something. I think some of the ideas Georgeson is touting is more MMO-esque. Rally calls that take months, permanent change, etc. are all great moves back to the roots of the genre. The squeaky wheels are going to take the majority of the development time to appease the masses. When it comes down to it, there are more of them with pockets full of cash to spend in the shop than there are of us.

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This forum should be playing diablo then.

This just in: Games aren't made just for you.

I know, take your time.

Lets all just play APB:Reloaded

Shit yeah I'm down. If we get a good 6 of us we can increase their population by 50%

Even if you're making a game for idiots, you don't have it designed by idiots. Idiocy is a devolution from intelligent design. For example, if WoW started with Cataclysm as vanilla back in 2004 it would not have turned out so great. EQN may look pretty but the development is putting all of the kids at the starting gate and letting them decide where it goes from there with no foundation.

You think you have a good idea? You're a whisper in a sports stadium full of raving lunatics.

Carl_sl said:

This forum should be playing diablo then.

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Just to clarify, I was referring to the ultra-casuals that push for minimal time investment and consequence. In addition to providing mechanics that have very little to do with the core gameplay.

I can already see the troll bard SG/spec trains heading my way

Azeth_sl said:

I'm aching for info on digging, and how these tiers of difficulty work.

If me, noob_01, and jackass_23 start chopping away at the ground all day long, and we're tier 1... can we ever dig to tier 2? Also, is it a guarantee that the hole I'm digging even leads to a dungeon? If we can't access the entire world, because we're only using 1 continent then technically we can't dig forever... etc etc..

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One of the devs mentioned not being able to mine X mineral with Y pick. I imagine that when you hit a new tier, the rock type changes, and you can't continue until you get a stronger pick. Repeat this until you hit "unbreakable", or the bottom of the world (similar to Minecraft?). Just guessing, but it would make sense.

I am a fan of the old EQ / Terraria method, though; you can go as far in/deep as you want, but you'll likely die. Let the players decide how much danger they want to face. In a sandbox world, there shouldn't be such strict limitations on exploration.

That said, concerning dungeons and "random environment", I don't understand how this is supposed to work in a persistent world. If I go east from Qeynos and am running along the terrain, is this terrain being randomly generated? Is it like Minecraft, where it's generated once, and then persists forever? That way, each server would have different terrain?

A dev mentioned that storing the voxel data was extremely memory heavy, so they defer to randomization.. but how would that work, if the world is constantly being randomized.