If I wanted to play Fortnite, I'd play ... Fortnite. It is not "if it would work," it is"if it is still Everquest."
I'm going to guess from your dislike of the art style, and comment, that you never played Everquest:Landmark. My point was not 'go play Fortnite'. That image is Fortnite characters overlaid on an Everquest:Landmark loading screen. My point was, SOE/DB had all the elements of a wildly poplular modern game. Yet they failed to see how to combine them successfully. Pantheon is trying to create a modern game with EQ1/Vanguard looks. My assertion is, if you ever see a modern successor to EQ it will look more like Fortnite than Pantheon. Also, I'm not even sure that a story/game universe can only be told through one defining art style. But your choice to stick to one look is great. Your not the only one, and that helps EQ live on. A fair number of people do like the cartoon style as well. Nothing wrong with that either.
Personally, I've always disliked the jarring mix between different artsyles in EQ, especially when they mix and match new and old graphics (FM and droga in EoK doesn't fit each-other at all imho). I have always valued consistency in art-style, it makes the game feel more coherent. Which is why I was in favor of all the zone-revamps back in the day... EQ looks really disjointed atm... I think the art-direction they had in SoD/UF/VoA was damn near perfect and timeless, and still hold up today... I wish all of EQ looked like that.
Well, by 'different art styles', I had been thinking along the lines of... Comic books changing artists over different issues, or game franchises changing look with a new sequel, or television series changing look with a different season. I agree, for the most part, within one game it's best to have a unified art style. You got me thinking on the other hand though. One of the things I liked about Landmark was the type of world with time-travel or 'parallel worlds' that travel between each other. You could see medieval, cowboys, space-men all together. Under one basic art style, but allowing more visual variety. This is something Fortnite does in spades. Also, the original Freeport was the defining art style they should never have diverged from, IMHO. But of course, over the years, they wanted to 'make things better'. **EDIT** To be clear, I don't think Everquest needs to incorporate those kinds of things. But what a modern successor to EQ might look like (in my crazy mind).
I did not play Landmark. Same thing, ... cartoon style, and it wasn't really a complete game. I'd rather Everquest had moved toward Skyrim style graphics. When Everquest was released in 1999, it had great graphics for the time. Why move backwards?
Content > Art. Give me ascii art if the content is good. Bonus points to a dev if they can make some form of boss look like ascii art.
Agree! Funny you should mention it, I had been working on a text based game with all ascii art for gladiators and their weapons. Even in this day and age I think it could be made a bit of fun. You can still play Zork from people that were kind enough to curate it.