Here's a crazy idea...

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Risiko, Aug 25, 2017.

  1. Evertrek Augur


    bah, that's old school. now they need to be fully up-to-speed and take half pay. company's also expect dev to test and QA their own work. lucky you're not living in India or china...

    hang in there.

    https://www.forbes.com/2004/02/16/cx_al_0216mondaymatchup.html
    Prathun likes this.
  2. Nolrog Augur

    As neat as this may sound, the suggestion is completely ignorant, entirely not practical, and totally detrimental to the game as it exists now.

    This is not snap your fingers and content appears, even if the server tech, client and game rules exist (which is completely irrelevant). That's not where the time is spent. It's in creating the new zones, the new monsters, new lore and new gear, the art for the zones, new models, new gear appearances.. They are typically working on 2 expansions at a time (right now they are full out on whatever is beyond EoK and they very likely have started sketching plans out for the one beyond that), because that is how long it takes.
  3. Rhodz Augur



    Might have to bump that up to 50s and 60s and I doubt they are much interested. Brad is busy for sure and I will bet he grabbed anyone worth grabbing in that group already. Speaking only for myself, and I was in another discipline, after finally escaping the corporate hell pits and chilling in the Northwestern wilderness (heh) nothing much would get me back into it.
    Sad reality? Naw man just how it works, can't go back.
  4. Aurastrider Augur



    You do realize that the live servers revenue over the years is what has allowed the TLP servers to even exist right? I am not sure where you get this 90% of live players are ftp idea. ftp on live as a non boxer only works until around level 60ish and then your merc is useless and you fall behind on AA's. If you manage to make it to higher levels the gear restrictions will get you especially if you are a tank in which case you might as well forget about it. The only ftp high level characters running around are part of a box crew and even then those ftp accounts are usually all access for part of the year to obtain AA's. Then there is the actual expansion purchases for said accounts also. Even if someone is 6 boxing and only one account is all access year round they will spend significantly more than a solo tlp player over the year. Base expansions alone for that individual will run around 200 bucks. But hey you spend how much per year on expansions to play on a TLP server?
  5. nostalgicfool Augur

    i tried many things will check that ...
  6. Crackers Elder


    Kickstarter for the win Absor. C'mon now, follow the Star Citizen model. However I would encourage you guys to improve upon the model they set up, by actually releasing a game! :p
  7. Furios New Member

    I think it would be neat and kind of fix making the world feel new is if they inverse the world data. By that I mean if the top left is x:0 and y:0 You take the max x value and make it 0 and the lowest x value and make it max. You can do this with combinations of x or y. This can be done as a toggle to all server and client side so the world data is kept in fact as it is. Z wouldn't change so buildings and dungeons would be different but not too unfamiliar. If you used to take a right path you would now have to go left.
  8. Fhiele Augur

    Maybe something more like "Legends" would work. A premium+ TLP server, with 24/7 paid staff support (no more training, ninjaing, dpsracing, cuz lots of staff to handle it).
  9. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    A "mirror-mode" expansion would be a silly gimmick, IMO. Although I could see them do stuff like that(like tilting the world 30 degrees) for drunk effects etc.

    Im not crazy about "lazy" content, tbh.

    The laziest idea I can come up with: "Shadowed men have invaded norrath and have cast a zone-wide blindness curse across the world", featuring a "new graphics-engine" with " revolutionary black-screen"-technology... :p
  10. Risiko Augur

    I think people read way too literally in to anything ever posted on any forum.

    Just because I said new character models did not necessarily mean new high res character models. Also, it was mentioned as a Kickstarter stretch goal, so it wasn't even the main point of the thread.

    What I am asking for (in the simplest terms possible) is a new MMORPG built on top of the existing Everquest game engine utilizing the existing Everquest Agnarr TLP server technology with new zones, new lore, new monsters, everybody starts at level 1 and it does not follow the existing Everquest expansion set.

    Could this be handled as an expansion (as you suggested)? Yes. Absolutely it could. But, it would have to be an arc in the Everquest story where once this expansion is opened on a server, that server no longer follows the previously existing expansions from that point forward.

    For example, if there was a new Everquest server started that had this new expansion come out after the Shadows of Luclin expansion, it could be an arc in the story line where some of the Gods were able to alter history and destroy the books that got people to the Plane of Knowledge. Therefore, everything from Planes of Power onward is erased on this server's time line. From that point forward, that server would be following a new time line which is based on expansions that are only available on this type of server. It would start where Shadows of Luclin left off.

    I think that if you were to poll your customer base, you might be surprised at just how many of your customers would prefer a restart of this type.
  11. Risiko Augur

    And, that's EXACTLY what they do EVERY YEAR for Everquest. It's called an Expansion.

    I'm just going to say it. Modern Everquest is a failure. Period.

    Stop making expansions for modern Everquest. It failed. It is going to cause Everquest to be shut down. The handful of people left buying and playing the latest Everquest expansions is getting smaller and smaller every single year. I know because I see more of my Everquest friends LEAVE the game one by one every year.

    The ONLY thing I see that brings my Everquest friends BACK to the game is the TLP servers. That's it. Nothing else. The expansions are NOT keeping them, and they are NOT bringing them back.

    It's that simple. Anybody that wants to argue it, have at it. I won't sit here and blow smoke up your butt over something that we all know is true. The game has been on life support for many years. Every indicator shows it. Hell when Sony sold SoE to a major financial investment firm in Russia and they renamed the company DBG, that was the nail in the coffin.

    Do you honestly think that Smedley would NOT be still there if there was a future with the direction of that Everquest is headed right now? Really? Then explain to me why Amazon hired Smedley to make games for them. Is it because he was so bad at Everquest, that they said, "hey lets make a bad MMORPG. Hey Smedley is available. Lets have him make it." No.

    Everquest has a ticking time bomb on it, and the people that work at DBG can either watch it tick down, or they can be proactive and do something that just MIGHT make enough money to get their billion dollar overlord to sell them off to a company that would care enough to pump life back in to the game.

    It's really that freaking simple. The employees have to make a stand, or they might as well update their resumes because it is going to take MONEY to make DBG's parent company listen to them, and I can tell you right now, you are NOT going to get enough sales from another modern Everquest expansion to make them take notice. That's just the truth. It sucks, but it's the truth.
  12. Punchu Augur

    Good god man. Excellent troll or complete idiot, jury's out.
  13. Risiko Augur

    If insults is all you got, then I have nothing to worry about.
  14. Kujoe Lorekeeper

    Create a new expansion, and make the mobs have 2 level ranges when spawning (or conversely, a MoTM type buff to buff up or buff down the zone NPC), and implement two loot tables appropriate for the mobs level range. Fit the top end level range as a new expac for live, fit the bottom end level range as a new expac for TLP.

    Yes, it is double the work to tune trash mobs, raid events, dropped gear, quests and rewards, and trade skills to be appropriate for each respective level range (such that the gear/rewards are upgrades from the previous expansion, while not making the next TLP expansion gear obsolete), but you could reuse lore, zones, quests, and all the other items which are created and designed for an expansion.

    As a TLP'er, i don't pay for expacs like live players, but i would pay for this (plus the usual monthly fee of course).
  15. Absor Developer

    Realistically, nobody here would want to do that. You have to understand what you are asking for when you suggest building on the existing engine. To make my usual terrible analogy, it would be like building a new car starting with a 20+ year old engine. An engine that has had a bunch of parts replaced, sometimes with replacement parts that just don't really fit. Building a car on a very old engine is never going to be a good idea.

    And there's no point in arguing about where history would diverge. Despite your confidence, you would never get a consensus about where that should happen, or if its even a good idea.

    I'm not against the idea of starting something new in the EQ universe. I think its a good idea. But I would never want to start with the existing engine or in the existing timeline.

    A
    Chatoyan and Ryak like this.
  16. Brumans Augur

    The EQ engine is terrible, heh. I love the crap out of EverQuest, but the engine holds it back so badly.

    I wish DBG had the funding the give it constant updates and improvements as Blizzard has done. But only Blizzard has that kind money.

    Other older MMOs I still enjoy (like WoW and LOTRO) don't suffer nearly as bad, simply because they were just a few years later. EQ was written when 3D PC gaming (and MMOs obviously) were still in their infancy. Unfortunately, they took the guess that CPUs were where the future would be, and chose wrong.

    Now we have issues where too many models, even on amazing PCs, gets you lots of graphical lag. I suspect its age is also why we can't get modern UI updates as well, like tabbed chat, actual hotkeys instead of text buttons, etc.

    Absor (or whoever) - is there actually any realistic chance we'll ever see more of the rendering moved to the GPU so we can draw 50+ characters without video lag on modern machines? Or even rework how mouse look interacts with frame rendering (you know, you try to mouse look over the bank in PoK and it hitches then you're staring on the other side of the zone - really messes with me when raid pulling heh)? Or tabbed chat?

    Or have those ships sailed at this point?
  17. mackal Augur

    They just want you to throw away everything post PoP and do different expansions. They may disagree with that statement, but that is what they want.
    Chatoyan and Risiko like this.
  18. Risiko Augur

    BiNGO!
  19. AgentofChange Augur


    :rolleyes:

    I'd like an new MMO too, but who is going to make it? Build it on top of the EQ engine and what new people would you draw in? The answer is very, very few players. They would have to invest millions & millions of dollars to create a new MMO to keep essentially the exact same playerbase they currently have. A playerbase who seems to be satisfied by them simply pressing a button and making a new server every year or so.

    Never going to happen.
  20. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence

    EQ players, satisfied?