I'm probably in the minority but, I LOVE EQ1's graphics. I don't want to play a bloated cartoon character. What I DO want is enough content to make an expansion worth $40 (minimum) plus the monthly fee. The announcement of another expansion with only 2 tiers of raid stuff and 2 - 3 tiers of group stuff seems pretty lame to me.
This is not accurate. The graphics engine was completely rebuilt from the ground up at the time of Gates of Discord. Since that time they have continually tweaked it to add stuff and take advantage of new features. The zone art today stands up very well with a lot of newer games. Character models, are something that definitely needs upgrading, but that is a limitation of cost, not of the graphics engine.
Raids: I just hope there is one end game zone with a ton of raids in it that you don't have to run all over the place and go to multiple npcs this time around. Time, VT, UF final zone was all the right way. They should stick with that. Also, I hope they have an alternate form of raid progression than you must do have every toon do every single raid. If the zones are big and very interesting I won't mind only 8 zones. A lot of zones when they make bigger expansions are unused and worthless so it ends up being only around 8 zones used to begin with. If all 8 zones are quality big zones people will want to go to for things it is fine. The graphics are the one thing that kills the game for lots of people. They are terrible. Most people who play EQ don't care about it. They would not still be playing if they did care. But there is a large amount of the gaming community that have standards regarding graphics and won't touch a game with terrible graphics. UI is bad too. Need to have a big overhaul on both so people will come play EQ1 it would probably be more profitable in the long run to do these things. But does SoE the vision to do it? Doubtful.
You're right. I forgot that the graphics and geometry engines were updated, (I wouldn't call it rebuild from the ground up, though), and it caused problems even in unrelated old zones that wouldn't have happened if they rebuilt ALL of it from the ground up.. I guess the reason I forgot about those updates was because of that guy from GU comics boycotting OoW due to all the bugs and stuff in GoD as it was considered only 1/2 of an expansion, which kinda was proven to be true with the GoD part 2 called Omens of War which did raise the lvl cap. But, I think most of the problems with GoD and GoD part 2 (OoW) were because the devs designed it for lvl 70 but management didn't raise te cap above lvl 65. And another major problem was that it was a rushed expansion and upgrade because WoW was under development and due to be released that year and SoE wanted to beat their release date. (Sound familiar?) But, never the less that was 10 years ago and it was done poorly and even John Smedley regretted a lot of the "politics" that went with the release of that expansion. Technology has changed at an incredible rate since 2004 and I would hope that SoE learned something from the fiasco of that rushed release. They could do it well if they did it right and I don't just mean a few tweaks and better art work. Anyhow, better not to revisit all that controversy. EQNext would appeal to me if I could migrate my existing characters over to it without losing my precious pretties. *grin* I know I've played my characters for 14 years and I've come to love them. If EQ dies at the release of EQNext and I Iose 3 accounts of characters that I have groomed and come to love (I DO NOT box) I'm going to be without any game. And the people they will gain will be those very people that I targeted in previous posts that want decent Graphics. Unfortunately, what EQNext *sounds* like is the EQ Vision meets 2nd life. What will those hormone filled kids do that are seeking out cool graphics in a world that they can do and make virtually anything? Cyber. And, make sex stuff to cyber with. It'll become a Sexgen atmosphere just like 2nd life became. Fantasy SIMS on Steroids. That is not the game that would appeal to me. I'm too old to want to type one handed at anyone. No, I think if they just made EQNext really EQ Next due to the great graphics and migrated my accounts to it, it would be awesome. Sure in the migration we would have down time for the cross over but it would be well worth it. Personally I would like to hear from some of the developers and people making EQNext to clarify the problems my solution would cause or actually consider them. I would welcome them chiming in on these topics. Basically, from what I gather with Landmark they are going to have us make the cool stuff and sell it back to us in a free to pay for game called EQNext. My 2 coppers!
Another thing to take into account, this is 2014. It's not 1999. When we all started playing EQ we were mostly in our early 20s. We had gone from table top D&D to text adventure computer games, to overhead board game D&D ala Ultima series, and then elder scroll type 1st person perspective games. So when Multi 1st person D&D came out on the internet it was a NEW thing. The next great progression for us. But, by US I mean those of us who started out with SLOW pen and paper and DICE. When playing out a single D&D module took 4 game sessions of 8 hour days to play over the course of a month. Then text adventures....the computer was our DM and we could go as fast as we could read and understand. The computer games--you saw it, you acted on it. But if it took you 400 hours to beat Ultima IV you were in it for the long haul. Today, it would be really hard to get kids around the same age we were when we started to invest that same kind of time into a single game or hobby or interest. Growing up we only had 3 choices. You picked one, paid for it, and used it til it was over before you would move on just to make sure you got your money's worth. These KIDS today are like the jumping jack firecrackers. They spin around really fast, moving in place and shaking, with no sense of direction or purpose, and just like the firecrackers if they stand too long in one place they tend to explode. I might have been born into Generation X, but it beats the Generation ADD that is out there now. I have 4 cousins in the 16-20 age group, and to get them to sit still in front of a computer and play the same game for over 1 hour, you would need bungie cords and duct tape. You could overhaul the graphics, without a new game you would still be limited on the types of content and scripts the raids could utilize. But no matter how pretty it all looks, it will still be a time investment. A very lengthy time investment, and I just don't see you getting the new blood to come on board. They are too used to instant gratification to have to spend time to reach a worthwhile goal.
The real question is when are we merging with EQ2? From rumors to Hero's forge, I've seen all of these graphics before...and they are/were in EQ2 beta. If the game is being coded toward a 'blending' so to speak, the inevitable conclusion would seem to be a merge.
They should work on revamping the old zones similar to how they did RoF. Update the lore, and either turn the old zones into instances to save the quests/etc or move all of the relevant npcs to a "refugee" zone accessable from PoK. The lore could be that each of the old starting cities gor taken over by that races nemesis faction, make those cities the new raid zones, and the old noob zones that surrounded said cities would be the group content
Id rather that, than adding new geoscape, that spreads our population even thinner. Especially since the heros journey is basically the new low lvl route (minus hotzones) but there are plenty of zones to make hotzones for each lvl range besides the ones they would change in the first place.
Someone posted a few but here is a full count of previous expansions I was going to post. Just as a reference (which may be irrelevant) of previous expansions and their zone numbers. Some notes: instances of the same zone are NOT counted as a zone (i.e. missions in the same zone as the static zone are not counted as a zone). I may have miscounted some of these but it should be relatively accurate. Some of these expansions were heavily based on instances only (LDON, DON, COTF - I counted the HA only zones so keep that in mind). Kunark - 32 Velious - 19 Luclin - 27 LDON - (TONS of instanced missions) Gates - 17 Omens - 17 DoN - 7 (TONS of instanced missions) Darkhollow - 18 Prophecy - 11 Serpent - 9 Sea - 15 Secrets - 13 Seeds - 17 Underfoot - 12 House - 11 Alaris - 11 Rain - 15 Call - 7 Darkened Sea - 8 Until beta rolls around we don't know 1) how big the zones actually are, 2) how many raids each zone (if any) will be associated with said zone), 3) how many instanced HA/Missions/whatever will be in these zones To me it sounded as if there was no true progression lock (ala HoT). With 2 tiers of raid gear, most mid- to top-level guilds will be fully decked out in a few months. This of course is speculation but given the number of staff dedicated to EQ now (we know it's low - they keep taking devs away) I wouldn't expect so much content to last long. I also believe they said Absor was designing most of the raids. If you kept up with the beta forums you saw which raids he previously made. Nothing personal but compare that to raids designed by Dzarn for example (if you don't get my point here: Dzarn - Bee2, Absor - Burn Out). I think the biggest mistake was releasing Tier 2 of COTF so late (just like they did with ROF T4 and COTF1a). It pretty much becomes wasted content. Then again, when was Tier 2 of COTF actually ready to be released..? Guess we wait and see. ps. How is this new spell system going to affect my raid buffing? The Rk 2 vs Rk 3 for buff classes is probably the most annoying aspect of tiered spell systems.
No mention of some revamp like Corrupted Temple of Veeshan? That was the best part of the lv 100 expansions? Maybe VT could be next?
I wouldn't say "we were mostly in our early 20s". I was 39 and retired from the Air Force the next year. There are plenty of players of my generation or older who play and have played since the beginning. /em wanders off muttering about young whippersnappers
Thanks for the correction. I missed most of TSS so I probably skimmed over it too fast What would probably be more accurate to look at what zones people actually used. I know some were unpopular even when they were current. I guess IMO the point was to reinforce that 8 seems too slim. Since they abandoned the staggered model (I think that is accurate?), I don't see 8 zones for a year working out so well unless it's the most-super-awesome-best content evar. Unless of course we're going back to a 6 month release cycle
