I always hated how the end of Might and Magic games (Heros of M&M too), there would be a spaceship that you got blasters and suddenly were godlike in killing ability. totally ruined the ends of the games for me.
Considering that sci-fi is a genre of fantasy I don't see why anyone has a problem. Unless you're sticking to hard core sci-fi where everything has to be scientifically possible then it's all fantasy.
Are there no spoiler tags available to use on these boards? I'm not sure if I ever ran into that issue before but I could use them now. I'll be vague. Funny enough being spoiled about that about the sixth entry of a certain old school dungeon crawler is what got me to try it in the first place. I thought it was a neat twist and had no idea other fantasy games did it too. Then I played a few hours and I did not grow up with old school maze dungeon crawlers and lost interest after a while. I don't regret trying the game though.
I have a really dumb confession. I played the Wild ARMs games and somehow didn't know they had a Wild West theme until playing the third game. Basically, "Wild West" themes don't have to be copy/paste of the old shows and movies. Wild ARMs is actually more of a sci-fi fantasy "world is decaying for a nefarious reason" series. Well the first three. I didn't play the ones after that.
Crazy old wild west game is called Gun Fight. My grandparents used to have a copy at their camp ground. It had gun handle control sticks and stuff. (time period, showing how ancient it was, we had moon cresta and kung fu master also - which were WAY more modern at the time). Like pong but with gun handles:
Lorewise, there could be technologically advanced civilizations that commune with nature. One example are the Elders in Altered Carbon (Season 2). Another example are the Nox in the Stargate SG-1 series. Sci-Fi does not need to be H.R. Giger's Alien or your typical Greys. Sci-Fi can be subtle. I would like to see a taste of Sci-Fi with an expansion involving The Elddars in EQ.
Ah, so that was a real song? I just figured it was a peeler song (using Canadian slang so as to stay under the radar).
My problem with the M&M 6/7 games, was not that there were robots and blaster-rifles. But that the blasters were so ridiculously overpowered that it made all the hard-earned skills/magic in everything else completely irrelevant. You could pretty much just hold the trigger down, and everything would melt away before your "turn" was over, making any strategic thought unnecessary. If it is well balanced and doesn't ruin the game-mechanics, then it can work well(depending on the setting ofc). Don't let the "theme" over-influence the game-mechanics, but use it to tell an exciting story instead. EQ wasn't ruined by giant robots and flying steampunk fortresses, it only added depth to Norrath!
Then we have the sci-fi series "Babylon 5" spin-off "Crusade" which inverts this question with the "Technomage" someone adept in the use of advanced technology in ways that resemble a traditional magician or wizard. Here's one such Technomage, Galen
At the risk of showing my age, once again, there was an LPMud back in the day called "3 Kingdoms" I believe. It's been a lot of years and the LPMuds were well before most graphic games. Muds were mainly text based, if you weren't from that era and didn't know. I may misremember some of the details, but as I recall, 3 Kingdoms had a fantasy area, a sci-fi area, and a sort of chaotic area (attack of the killer purple dinosaur named Barney type of theme). You could become a "class" based on the guild you joined, but you could go into all three realms armed as a storm trooper or a wheel of time sword character type (and almost anything in between). They seemed to mix the genres quite well, imho, but when you're dealing with just text it would be easier to do. Still, they did manage to combine sci-fi, fantasy, and their chaotic realm fairly well . Edit: I only posted this as quite a few other games were mention in the thread and didn't seem to be EQ specific. I think an LPMud may be as far away from EQ as you can get, but I thought fit the spirit of the thread well .
I think this is more the case of milking the franchise for more themes. Sci-Fi does not belong in fantasy, with rare exceptions. The Dragonriders of Pern did it well, but only by being up front from the start that Pern was a distant planet settled by people from Earth. You can also argue that Pern never was fantasy at all, despite the mind reading dragons...