The last few expansions reached pretty much the bottom so things can only get better there. Overall the business management of EverQuest was more than horrible in the past especially when SOE sold the franchise to the investor group called DGC. Instead of reinvesting capital into EverQuest capital did get drained out to finance unsuccessfull games. However there is no way around a complete remake of the game and maybe something is already in the pipe since years which would explain alot. I would not be surprised if SOE or DGC started to work on EQ3 inbetween 2012-2015 already as since then expansions got smaller and smaller. Its just logical that there is no need to invest much money into an overaged game if a remake is under development. Basically its about the only logical reason as a low reinvestment does also mean to squelch a game project. Rumor is that one of the EG7 major capital share holder is a former EverQuest player which definetly would be a nice detail. Games are a very emotional thing and if they lack investors that have a positive emotional connection to the substance of their investments these games are not going anywhere.
So much wrong. SOE never sold anything. Sony sold SOE to Columbus Nova. SOE then changed their name to DayBreak Games or Daybreak Game Company if you prefer. But it was the same company with different parent company.
At least one person claimed nothing has been done with the game engine over the last 15 years. That's just not true. They had to pretty much redo the entire inventory system to get rid of the ten slot bag limit. They said it took more resources than adding mercenaries did. There have been improvements to various things over the years but most people probably don't take note of them when reading patch notes. Full screen exclusive is actually obsolete now. Full screen windowed mode is better in pretty much every way in modern Windows to the point Windows tries to trick programs into thinking they have exclusive mode while giving them a version of windowed. That might not be for DX9 games though, come to think of it. I still prefer windowed mode. The UI being married to everything else is a problem that must be very difficult to solve. At higher resolutions, it means sloppy stuff like adjusting UI elements individually and manually changing font sizes rather than having a UI scale. It also makes the UI dependent on the performance of the rest of the game. For example, EQ struggling on a computer results in mouse clicks being unreliable, picking up hot buttons rather than clicking them, etc. I believe in EQ2 that's not the case, and UI performance doesn't bog down when the in game graphics do. EQ really needs a full screen windowed mode and options to configure a borderless windowed mode to custom sizes. I'm not a game developer, but I suspect that's probably realistic while things like fixing the UI to scale or freeing it from in-game performance probably aren't.
What are the advantages of windowed mode, if you don't box? https://game.info.intel.com/gaming-access/should-you-use-fullscreen-or-borderless-windowed-mode Looks like true fullscreen still has performance advantages...
If you want to use programs like gina, gamparse or others that want to draw on your screen you need to be in windowed mode for them to be able to do that. As far as performance goes EQ has no issues running in windowed mode as long as you have a halfway decent computer.
Thank you, that was really interesting! I don't know how typical I am, being English and all that, but I have two accounts, one (annual) dating from 2013, the other (Lifetime) opened in July 1999. I play every day for just a few hours at a time, save up my monthly 500DBC and pre-purchased CoV for both accounts (not done that for a few years!). I do not expect ever to reach past 100 but am not bothered by that. Good hunting to everyone.
For what it's worth, I counted about 50 other players in the general channel, when I was in the Beta the other day.
I havent used full screen in a while but iirc it is slower to tab out to look stuff up and tabbing sometimes caused eq to crash. And overlays wont work.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/dxgi-flip-model/
Disagree. If you add WoW and EQ2's cartoony characters to EQ1 will that bring in new players? Maybe but you're likely to lose a lot, too. Plus "a complete remake of the game" isn't possible. You'd end up with a different game, not a remade EQ1. Isn't that what EQ2 really is and EQ Next was supposed to be?
There is more to a graphics engine than shiny, high res textures and massive poly count objects. There is pure poly throughput, which is where EQ is severely hurting and why a large raid force drags FPS into single digits on even some fairly modern rigs at any decent graphics settings. Rendering the same current content on a modern graphics engine could give people 60FPS in places that they now can't even viably play without turning off all graphics settings.
There is reason to believe that there is an EQ3 under consideration, I personallly would advice against it: - EQ3 would undoubtly split the community again. I strongly believe that what keeps EQ strong is the continuity and the community. - EQ3 would just be another MMO on a somewhat obscure IP. The number of failed MMOs is insane, and it could easily kill the cash cow that EQ1 Instead, continuing the code refactoring that has been ongoing, and investing in making cosmetic changes and performance upgrades can very easily be spun as something more than it actually is, in an Everquest Remastered narrative. Making new models, and remaking the old zones is actually already doable. Upgrading to Unreal in the process would massively lower the effort of developing new (“reimagined”) assets, and could be done on a per expansion basis. I would buy Classic Everquest Reimagined without blinking, and keep buying expansions I already own as they are released over the years... on top of the regular expansions. Playerbase would be onboard as long as it is optional... Of course assuming that I could go to these zones with my main, that I have had since feb 2000... In this approach, which could be seen as TLP on steroids (I play on Live), DBG can cater to current TLP, to Live players (because some of us will not have less than everything EQ1), and to the many (millions?) of potential returnees, on a proven game system, with an existing community to take returning players in. Also, this is closer to what EG7 does with older IPs, the gfx invigorating and other improvements (according to their Investor Relations stream).
We should be able to choose new models for any mob type, the same way we can individually choose character race graphics. I HATE that they removed new and nice models in old zones and replaced them with boxy "classic" ones because they thought it would give them a few more bucks from TLP players. It still makes me angry, to be honest. I shouldn't have had my game experience degraded because some people whined about 20+ year old models having been replaced with something that was MUCH better.
I like the idea of them updating graphics, to the limited extent of, keeping old and new models (as well as stick figures). And just fixing really bad issues, we all know, so that it appears properly as intended. No new models, as Bardy mentions, if I can paraphrase on my own. There's not as much 'bang-for-your-buck' updating to higher poly counts. Or thinking anyone can pay for better low poly models than the originals (at least in the hearts of die-hards). I hear P99 or one of the emus has classic models with updated (higher res) textures. That might be interesting after they fix the basic graphics issues. The writing has been on the wall for a while though. They need shoring up on the backend and networking, at least until the new overlords get in full swing.
EQ3 won't be a competitor to EQ1. EQ3 will likely target the "instant gratification" crowd with constant and consistent flow of shiny rewards that streamers can show and brag about. That's what most modern gamers want nowadays. It will have a preference on shiny graphics and shorter play sessions. There will likely be an abundance of visual mods in the in-game store right out of the gate for players to dump real money into so they look cool for their friends and streams. It won't be the grind-fest, minimal guidance game that EQ1 is and what EQ1 players that have stuck around mostly prefer. The game will also probably have a game-enforced PnP so that GMs don't have to babysit players, something probably similar to EQ2's encounter system. Another reason EQ1 players probably won't be for EQ3 even though the system works pretty well in EQ2 (imho but I know I'm the minority here). TL;DR; If EG7 makes a game that directly competes with EQ1 then they are shooting themselves in the foot, both from the perspective of the existing player base and also any potential younger, modern day gamers.
I think EQ1 is a much better game than it was years ago (overall; obviously they have budget constraints on content), and I don't necessarily think all the advances in other MMORPGs are bad things (much less reason to infantilize others over for differences of opinion). The EQ population is also much older now too, which complicates things. I didn't used to be uncommon for many guilds to raid 5-6 days a week. Looking back on that now, that's insanity.
Hopefully now they have a gaming oriented owner the profits will be more consistently spent on the game that earned them rather than someones idea of what else they would like to do. Not saying they dont need to build new things, but there is a point where you starve your cash cow too much!
