could everquest ever run in a browser or on an ipad?

I'm not super tech savvy when it comes to this so it's a legit question. I mean baldur's gate and the gta's can run on an ipad and lots of MMO's run through browser. what's stopping everquest?

The rather large amount of man hours to create such software for a total of maybe 15 people that would use it?

EQ dropped support for mac systems a while back because there's no $$$ in keeping said server afloat. Not to mention if you *could* play EQ on an ipad, it would be gawd awful. GTA is one thing. Typing the correct message in the correct chat window in the correct chat channel during a raid or even a group on an iPad would be next to impossible. MMO's aren't mobile-friendly games.

The need to rewrite EQ would be stopping it.

Elidroth once posted EQ will run on a MicroSoft Surface Pro (not sure which version). So I'd expect anything that will run Windows, has enough memory and storage, and reasonable graphics will run it. But there aren't a lot of tablets like that.

I believe the plan was that EQ Next would either run or stream on SONY's hand held. I've got no idea about the plans or direction now but if it were me I'd finish the desktop version, start on an XBox port, and consider remote play on some standard tablet platform. Maybe tablets will have the power of today's $300 laptop when the time is right but I'm not convinced.

TBH I've looked at the offerings for desktops over the last 3 years and I'm not thrilled. Console games are getting a little stale too. IMO tablet/highly portable computing is the re-invention of personal computers so long as people think they still need something beyond a browser. If that's true you can expect companies to (and Daybreak has intimated it will) get on board.

A virtual world you can connect with randomly on a mobile device and use as a glorified chat room while doing virtual property sales and having adventures when you have a longer block of time is pretty exciting IMO. You're going to see it I swear. The only question is what company can slog it out and grind their way from now till then.

That's a little optimistic. There would need to be a completely renovational UI for any MMO I know of to work on a tablet that doesn't have a detachable KB (though it seems most these days do). I'm sure most *phones* would have the power to run a client of EQ (without most of the bells and whistles), but the small screens of mobile devices + weird keyboards = horrible gameplay.

But I guess I'm not really keeping up with the times. Imo, any tablet that has a keyboard isn't a tablet when said keyboard is attached. It's a laptop.

Thanks for the insight!

Strong keyboard dependency is probably the biggest thing blocking an Everquest for touch devices.

The Mac version was killed off for several reasons: low populations, of course; but also the inability of SOE to maintain it. Low pops were arguable the result of it being locked at PoP. Which in turn was for the second reason: SOE/Smedley were strongly anti-Apple, and the Mac build was outsourced, and written to an API that was killed by Apple shortly after the project started (and everyone know that was about to happen, too). If it had been written to the Cocoa APIs, it could have been ported to iOS relatively relish (but see the keyboard dependency problem).

*wrong thread*

My buddy got an iPhone when they first came out, and using tools could actually load EQ... he just couldn't do a dern thing. This 32 bit game has gotten more advanced textures, ect since then but has had a much slower rate of growth than computing power of hand held devices, so I would imagine most non junk current handhelds could hold up at lower models/ resolution /fps, but you would essentially be stuck with teamspeak / skype type communication, as trying to type would be laborious. That said, the rework / support / ect would basically be a huge nightmare, much worse than a DX or 64 bit overhaul that are deemed unrealistic.

Yes it could reach out to more customers, but gameplay would probably be meh and in the end, probably a lot of work for people to mostly try and abandon.

Anyways, do you want to be raiding with your dork healer connected through his iphone?
Mugs

Would be much more interested in a mobile app that connects to an EQ server, logs in a character, and has an interface limited to:

Start Trader
Set Price
Stop Trader

and equivalent for Buy and Barter.

Bonus points for being able to browse and purchase from the bazaar and send to parcels. Could care less about loading the game world, chat channels, etc.

Moogs you can do all of that through teamviewer or logmein just dont try to run around turning is difficult so if you have two accounts one could buy and parcel etc stand him at the parcel guy before leaving home. the other account sits in trader mode.

I'm not keeping up with the times either despite believing that I have some idea about what future computing might look like.

There are 2 general ways to do it without changing EQ.
1. A highly portable Windows machine. A Surface computer or tablet equivalent.

2. Remote operation/streaming. Your home computer does all the work, you see what is on it's screen and your local input becomes input for your home computer. Done over WiFi. Doesn't necessarily require a Windows compatible mobile device.

3. ? MicroSoft is doing something related to #2 - not sure what.

Yes, I've done this before. Remote software has issues with rendering Direct3D/OpenGL at high frame rates. Reasonably high desktop resolution means more pixels. More pixels means more data. The trouble is that most remote software has a hard cap on network bandwidth, so it's not possible to play in real-time. I've found it much more convenient to just install EQ on my work laptop (being the IT guy has its perks), but then we switched from private offices to an open cubicle environment. I figured it could wait until I got home... Having a mobile platform just to do price checks and monitor for specific rare items would be ideal for me.

Multiple companies have attempted this in the recent past. Some relied on Flash rendering your stream, which created some problems for input. It was also limited by the lack of high speed connections in much of the US. Steam's In-Home Streaming is really cool for playing on a cheap laptop while your desktop is elsewhere in your home, but that's limited to your local network.

I saw a video on YouTube a few years ago where someone was playing EQ streamed onto his mobile phone. It's possible to do, but hardly worth the effort. It's clunky and you really don't have much of an interface to work with. Might be fun for making a new character and whacking some rats and snakes, but it's more of a novelty than anything else.

Try playing EQ on Steam and then use its free In-Home Streaming feature. I'm curious.

would be cool if you could something with the game outside of running the game. Bazaar stuff, inventory and bank stuff, chat, tradeskills. IDK just stuff outside of running around the game.

I would really hate to be a raid leader when a quarter of the raid misses an emote because their iPhone screen is too small to see it, or they don't have working audio triggers.

Out of the box, EQ is pretty much unplayable without a 2-button mouse. At an absolute minimum you would likely need to set up your character config files on a PC and somehow transfer that to your mobile platform.

Precision clicking would definitely be an issue. Even with precision gaming hardware I inadvertently activate the wrong abilities frequently, just because the UI is so crowded. I shudder at the thought of spell memorization via multitouch.

I should try it on my surface, never thought to use it for EQ

should run great on the surface

Yep, everything you just said. Nobody should ever be raiding with their guild from an iPad, even if it were possible to do so. It would just be nice to have access to the API to provide the ability to use basic functions like the bazaar (or banking, or chat *cough* EQIM) with a mobile-friendly interface. None of these things should require the game world to be rendered, and they should definitely not use the current user interface.

Console MMOs are more of a Playstation thing, Microsoft doesn't allow any MMO developer the access to XBox Live necessary to keep an MMO running, it's led to the cancellation of almost every MMO announced for XBox platforms other than FFXI.

Fun fact, Vanguard was supposed to be an XBox 360 launch title until Sigil and Microsoft couldn't come to an agreement that would allow Sigil to have unlimited access to Live, and they were a Microsoft subsidiary at the time.