Why on earth would they waste time or a zone on anything under 100, specially below 90. There are over 50 zones full of content for that crap, use them.
Yea, Phathom said soon for Beta invites, and early September for Beta start, should almost 2 months to Beta the 8 zones, which probably isn't too bad.
Riou. Is there anything about a new progression type server yet? (other than "we talk about it regularly") I think a lot of people are waiting for a PoP locked server or Velious/Luclin locked server.
That is illogical. If you used all those zones enough to get tired of them, you would have leveled past it and maxed all aa. Being ADD about zones isn't a justification to waste dev resources on it.
Just they talk about it regularly, I imagine someone surely will ask about it at the Q&A panel (I'm not at SoE Live ) hopefully someone will have cliff-notes of the Q&A
Wow, do you think you are going to get some really uber special loot card for sack hugging like that on the devs? Seriously, 8 zones is normal? haha Why do you think the player base has shrunk? Because people are going outside? No. Because other games have devs that actually make games people want to play. Lets talk about graphics The engine of eq1 hasn't been upgraded since the 3rd year of the game's release, that was with SoL. Today, the games can suck (WoW comes to mind), but the graphics are coooool. Smedley et al, instead of "investing" in the game that really set the standard for mmorpgs decided to spend their money on eq2 graphics and SWG and a slew of other games that went no where. All eq2 did was split the player base with new graphics and *gASp* houses! We didn't get houses till HoT came out. I'm all for diversification, as it's healthy and Sony has diversified into everything over the years, But rather than spending their investment on EQ playstation and eq2 and *cough* EQNext *cough* etc... they should just invest that incredible amount of money into something they KNOW works. Look at us all, playing a graphically challenged game, because of the great memories and what has sometimes been really decent content and lore. EQ is only around now due to content. If they actually spent some money on the graphic engine and had the content of the past years and actually advertised on Television like WoW did, (I want to see Betty White playing a DE SK kicking some MoB butt!), maybe they would have a return on their investment along with a huge *paying* player base.. So, what do we expect? I don't expect that a game that I started playing and paying 9.99 a month for, ( I don't care about the all access pass. I only play EQ1, so don't go there), and now pay 14.99 usd and spending more per expansion for less content and 2001 graphic engine would think I owe them more money because you would recommend it. I would expect that company would take notice of their mistakes and spend the time and money on eq1 instead of EQNext. I like my characters. I have enjoyed the game immensely over the years. But, SoE has been dropping the ball for years. So, if they are going to raise my price on the game I love to play I would expect them to raise the standards to the modern day. I'm not angry about the new expansion. I can't say a word about it because I've not actually seen it and other than announcing TDS, there really isn't much info on it. I love EQ, despite SoE's lackluster efforts with it. I will continue to play and pay to play for it as long as it is supplied. No question there. But, your synopsis of what "good business" practices are or should be and what we should appreciate and justifying what has not been done to improve game play ... baffling. Can you understand that? ~O~
I'd like more than 8 zones too, but it depends on how big the zones are, how many quests, how many raids, etc. So I'll hold my judgement until I know more. Regarding graphics, EQ's graphics engine may well be positively ancient compared to most games, but is it just me who saw the EQNext and the EQ1 panels and thought EQ1 looked better, lol? (EQ2 better still.)
How they got through the question/answer phase yesterday without someone asking this is rather boggling.
I have a simple rule... If I don't like something I never ever pay for it month after month or year after year. (Seems a little nuts to do that) So far the new expansions 8 new zones look pretty good and I look forward to spending some time checking them out. I was a little surprised at how many items where TBD when asked about things wrt the new expansion on the Q & A part of the presentation. The 3 group tiers and 2 raid tiers sounded as expected and the new caster spell power progression looks interesting but may generate some negative response. This new loot system has a lot of potential but I'm sure there will be a couple of patches before it is bug free. The level cap increase has to my biggest worry if progression is bottle necked through a zone or 2. New Content is always good but for all those Debbie Downers out there that are soooooo negative here is some simple advice. 1 If you don't like the game don't play it 2 don't buy the expansion ... You can always wait until after you know if it's bad or not worth the money before purchase 3 play on test server for free for a while and save your 15 bucks 4 go FTP 5 Buy it and spend the next 12 months complaining how EQ is the worst game ever. If I had to bet I think 5 will be a popular choice Long live EQ
This is a good post, the excuse of not putting money into Eq development and so we get less and less real content is getting really old. Because the cost of playing it never changes. The truth is the player base is abused for it's addiction to the @riginal game, and once the game ends (yea yea i know it might be in 2030) and everyone looks back a lot of people will feel bad abbout what happened here, and what the time was spent on. I can guarantee that. All it takes is the drug to leave.
Very few people would use them. The last full level range expansion Everquest had was The Serpent's Spine, released in 2006. It's unrealistic to expect an expansion today to be anything but current level content.
Basic math and budgeting; $40*millions of players can pay for a lot more zone designers than $40*thousands of players. As a community, we are getting more for our money nowdays.
Durn it! I still wanna see Betty White playing EQ! Why is that so crazy?! But, seriously,, some may call us spending our money year after year as crazy or some could see it as a loyal customer base. EQ has a loyal base core, obviously. But we all talk about how we wish there were more people playing and grouping and so forth. I have nothing to say about TDS as there is nothing at this point to say about it as there is no defining info about it. But I really and truly believe that kids would flock to this game if only the graphic engine was overhauled and updated. I don't really think SoE should spend all their profits on only EQ1 but some priority should be given to a bonafide working formula that EQ became and still somewhat is. We were all nerds back in the day with our pasty, sun starved skin. They are just as nerdy today if not more so. Upgrade the graphics! And call, Betty! If you build it ... they will play!
Also, the excuse of systems being out dated to play a better graphic version of EQ is well, getting outdated in it of itself. Let's get an original EQ with a new Graphic engine. I am not saying we need to have all that jumping around and crap with animations. Just a more visually appealing game. Content is great but so is graphics and sound.
That would take so much time that we wouldn't see an expansion in... well, ever. People would have gotten bored of no content being released while the game engine is being reworked, that the game would be long since dead dead. I don't play Everquest because of its graphics. I'm pretty sure that is the case for a majority of people.
That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. The same old people saying the same old thing about the graphic situation. This game needs a serious reboot. That's what they should have done instead of developing EQNEXT. They should designed a new EQ1 Game with a new engine and migrated us over somehow. Those who play Everquest have spent a lot of time, patience and money with our characters over the years. We deserve an upgrade also. 2 coppers and they are all mine!
The only way that would work and keep our original EQ going uninterrupted is if it were developed/ported in parallel by an additional team. The problem with that is that team doesn't exist. In order for that team to exist would require substantial cost which at this point would probably be hard to justify and leave them with the potential of not seeing an adequate return to recoup those costs and once again make a profit. The whole process would be orders of magnitude more complex than 'just do it'.
I love my 1999 graphics. WoW's graphics haven't changed since its release, either (but yes, I know those are coming - player reaction is mixed) and their budget is orders of magnitude greater than EQ's.
