WTF? Everquest... 3?

Pharone said:

I played some of BFA, and I will NEVER play a game with content that auto scales up to my level again.

It was the stupidest thing I've ever experienced. There literally was no point to even having a leveling system in the game.

It was the worst decision ever made in the history of WoW in my opinion.

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The problem with BFA is the game became about the destination instead of the journey. It's a race to level cap. I know this sounds crazy but games like that don't really need a level cap if everything scales anyways. It needs a logarithmic curve. That kind of design choice - to have a max level that's easily obtainable - is where Destiny and WoW went wrong. Don't let Blizzard hear that though or they'll allow infinite Titanforging...

Sadre Spinegnawer said:

You could argue, eq2 was anti scaling. raids were locked at 24 members, etc. For a few years, while so many were playing WoW, eq2 had some good raiding and raid zones.

Scaling just creates more alienation, where players really have no way of understanding each other. The goal is to get players to buy into a gameworld that is defined. The player needs to come to the content. If the content adjusts to the player, what does the game even mean?

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Flex raid scaling is different than content scaling. It's fine to design content around 24 people in a raid. What's NOT okay design... is designing content that remains the same level but scales at the same rate from 10-25 people. It causes players to feel alienated. They might think they're not good enough to be in the group of 10, the encounter might be impossible with 10 people, or too difficult to manage fail condition mechanics with a raid of 25, etc... list goes on.

What's important is that when you design content around a specific number of players, that you do not reward players for exceeding the content's player requirements. That is the #1 flaw of EQ up until PoP; they did not allow caps on their content. It was all non-instanced, zerg shitfest content. I'm fine with that design normally, if the content is required to unlock some sort of expansion or feature set that the entire server has to work together to get, but the whole notion that players can fight over NPCs with each other with no recourse to stop each other besides stealing is completely retarded.

Also, I'd like to mention that I have a strong belief that the original EQ team did not intend to have Lord Nagafen downed by such small numbers that are downing them in TLPs now a days. They were, in era, supposedly gods, dragons, and other non-trivial beasts. They should've been one-off events similar to how bosses are in D&D campaigns, or in that anime series Sword Art Online where they had to clear the floor to get to the next one; unfortunately that doesn't work well in a persistent world.. see: Kerafyrm, the Sleeper.

Pharone said:

I played some of BFA, and I will NEVER play a game with content that auto scales up to my level again.

It was the stupidest thing I've ever experienced. There literally was no point to even having a leveling system in the game.

It was the worst decision ever made in the history of WoW in my opinion.

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It was one of their worst decisions out of many this current crew has made. There's zero point to character progression in the form of levels and loot when you never gain power.

Secrets said:

Also, I'd like to mention that I have a strong belief that the original EQ team did not intend to have Lord Nagafen downed by such small numbers that are downing them in TLPs now a days. They were, in era, supposedly gods, dragons, and other non-trivial beasts. They should've been one-off events similar to how bosses are in D&D campaigns, or in that anime series Sword Art Online where they had to clear the floor to get to the next one; unfortunately that doesn't work well in a persistent world.. see: Kerafyrm, the Sleeper.

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They didn't, but this was one of the main areas where we repeatedly explained to people that we couldn't go back.. The code for damage, armor, evasion, etc has been DRASTICALLY changed since those original days.. Players at lvl 50 today are probably 60% more powerful than they were at 50 in original launch. If I remember correctly this major shift happened in the Buried Sea or Secrets of Faydwer era when player power kinda went bonkers.

One-time events like the Sleeper can ABSOLUTELY work, but your dev team needs to be constantly adding in new ones to keep the world fresh. A simpler solution would be to put a boss like that into the world for a timed duration, and have the lockout for killing it be longer than that duration.. That way, you get your one kill on it, and others at the same power level get their shot too.. Not as much 'cool' factor as being the guild that killed that ancient evil, but definitely puts some urgency on getting there and doing the deed.. but it isn't on rinse/repeat for months.

Of course, I'm also a big fan of world altering events. I'd very much like a new MMO to actually feel alive like that. The world changes. Populations change. Boss npcs come and go. Make the players have a part in that.. Similar to the way EQN wanted Storybricks to work (except it really didn't).. It adds some storytelling avenues too.. like 'oh.. back when Trakanon burst out of Old Sebilis and wrought disease all across Kunark, but was ultimately killed by some hearty adventurers', and then some guy who was around during that period shows up with some special armor or weapon that SHOWS he was there.. Kind of the same feel more bigger/more epic as when you first saw that Warrior in EC wearing a full set of Cobalt armor.. You knew that guy had done shit! The big issue here is it takes a lot of dev time to ensure that stuff is living/breathing in the world too.. it can't be static.

Elidroth said:

Of course, I'm also a big fan of world altering events. I'd very much like a new MMO to actually feel alive like that. The world changes. Populations change. Boss npcs come and go. Make the players have a part in that.. Similar to the way EQN wanted Storybricks to work (except it really didn't).. It adds some storytelling avenues too.. like 'oh.. back when Trakanon burst out of Old Sebilis and wrought disease all across Kunark, but was ultimately killed by some hearty adventurers', and then some guy who was around during that period shows up with some special armor or weapon that SHOWS he was there.. Kind of the same feel more bigger/more epic as when you first saw that Warrior in EC wearing a full set of Cobalt armor.. You knew that guy had done shit! The big issue here is it takes a lot of dev time to ensure that stuff is living/breathing in the world too.. it can't be static.

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This exact scenario was my large hope for what Guild Wars 2 had originally described their "world events" as. Very shortly after release, I realized it was all bullshit and the events just repeated in the respective zones. So, nothing much ever really "changed".

I'd really like to see an MMO try what you described - only each "world altering" event has multiple "branches", if you will, that lead to different story paths. So, each server would have a completely different storyline possibility and after months/years, most servers would be completely unrecognizable from one another from a storyline perspective.

Elidroth said:

... good stuff...

The big issue here is it takes a lot of dev time to ensure that stuff is living/breathing in the world too.. it can't be static.

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To me, there are two parts to the cost associated with playing the game.

1. Cost to buy the game / major expansion
2. Monthly subscription cost

When I pay $60 initially and $60 for each expansion of a MMORPG, I expect that cost to go towards the development of the game systems and content.

When I pay $15 a month, I expect that cost to go towards the server costs, support, and content growth/manipulation.

With FFXIV and WoW, companies are delivering on the "content growth" part, but many MMORPGs are not, and simply relying on expansions to deliver their content. That being said, even FFXIV and WoW fail to cover the "content manipulation" part of the maintenance.

I believe you are correct in that to deliver on a living breathing virtual world, the content itself needs to age and change. That should be part of the maintenance phases paid for in part by the monthly subscription that customers are paying.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy old content like Lower Guk in EverQuest as much as the next guy (maybe even more), but that content should have changed and/or even gone completely away over fifteen years ago. Content should not last for ever, and the content should follow the CURRENT story path. If it is truly a living breathing world, your players should not be working on defeating Gates of Discord content when the server is ten expansions beyond that. That story has been told. It's over. The players should be working on content relevant to the current story.

Now how you deal with the power curve is truly a difficult discussion. I mean, what happens when your player base is on the 24th expansion of the game, level 110, and someone picks up the game for the first time? That person is going to be level 1 in a world with nothing but level 105 to 110 content. You can't just make it so they instantly are level 105, and have the needed gear for that content because it makes all the effort that everyone put in to beating the last expansion meaningless. So, you have to have a path for a new player to catch up, and I think that is where the developers have to get creative. You would need to have content to level up and gear up in that is relevant to the current story arc with out making the previous content (that is now no longer available) seem like the those who went through it wasted their time.

I think that maybe the way you would handle this is that you are constantly putting out new content for the level 1 to "current starting level" of the current expansion that replaces the previous expansions leveling path, but in a much smaller quantity of content. In other words, When levels 30 to 50 were part of the current expansion, there was probably 10 zones, 5 dungeons, and 9 raids of content for that level range. Now the game is on it's 24th expansion, and all of that content is no longer available. In it's place, there are 2-3 zones, 1-3 dungeons, and 1-3 raids of content for that level range that are relevant to the current expansion's story. It's a much smaller set of content with accelerated experience and gear progression. The acceleration is not enough to make it meaningless, but enough that a new player could make it through it in a month or two where as it would have taken six months to a year when that level range's expansion was current game content.

TL;DR ... if you really care, take the time to read it. No cliff notes here for ya lol

Somewhere along the lines, content just became too scripted.. too "in depth", I guess? When I played Asheron's Call (usually while raid camping something in EQ) on my second computer - AC had events like Tufa being destroyed. I was playing on darktide and the monarchy was there so when I logged back on, I just fell to my death in this big ass crater. I vaguely remember reading the notes of the event, but was totally taken off guard by that event. Then, as lightning hit - you could see creepy images of shit in the backdrop of the sky. That event solely made me subscribe to that game for months more, and go through several other events.

Point being - if a company did that in today's market, and created this ominous back story that you only find out at the end of the event (Or if you're some people on this board - you read the bat dung and bear collection quests to find the story) ... it wouldnt cost near as much. The creativity, the imagination that something like that would invoke would be crazy! Think for a moment and imagine if instead of WoW changing the landscape all at once for Cataclysm, that they made small changes like Tufa to the landscape (Stormwind) and dont tell the players shit - and then, release the cinematic of what happened when the expansion drops. I mean, I would have been a hell of a lot more intrigued if I was playing at that point.

In a way, I agree with Pharone and Ive mentioned it before. It's comparable to these big businesses that you know make god awful amounts of money, but they are in these old ass buildings and you cant help but sit there and ask... "Why the hell cant they spend a few bucks to fix those GD water spoiled ceiling tiles?" .. and I feel like MMO's as a whole are in that bucket, especially WoW. Spent millions upon millions to make the game, now it has to live like a glacier to make those funds back. What do investors see during this time period? That the game can succeed while it moves like a glacier. (Ex.Big corporations seeing how little money people will take to do the job in a recession only to never raise the wage back up as time goes by)

can we get Cad and or the other forum lawyers to organize us as some... investor group or company... inquire as to the cost of licensing or acquiring all or limited EQ IP- then pen a tentative deal - form us into some dev team... look at the IRL forums there are TONS of programmers etc. I am sure we could outpace Pantheon with forum bros working on the weekend... we also have massive talent on the visual arts side...

then start a kickstarter to get a EQ2.0 going.... get basic funding going...

Well, DickTrickle , I like his optimism and belief in the forum to actually work together lol.

Mick said:

Another round of layoffs. They cant have that many people left. EQ3 dead???

It looks like Daybreak’s been hit with yet another round of layoffs | Massively Overpowered

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Planetside Arena team got smashed. EQ/EQ2 teams were untouched. No idea what's going on there internally.. but they did register a number of new game companies.. My guess is the EQ/EQ2 team is about to become Darkpaw Games..

looks like a bunch of cucks to me