There's always Pantheon

Fallout One and Two inspired me to come back to Everquest.

A lot of the McQuaid apologists forget about the outside forces in effect on the industry at that point in time. Microsoft was about to start heavy development for the XBox 360, and they were literally buying up any developer they could purchase. Remember, Vanguard was intended initially to be a PC/360 cross platform MMO. There's preview guides from the 360 launch era that unbelievably have Vanguard mentioned right next to Halo.

Microsoft had already had immense success in buying out a developer (Bungie) and seemed to be of the belief that buying out Rare would get them the next Donkey Kong Country and buying out Sigil would deliver the next Everquest. Instead, they got the company name with none of the talented creative personnel in the case of Rare, and the talented creative personnel with zero management in the case of Sigil. One spent years working on XBox Live avatars, the other spent years and never managed to deliver anything other than a ton of concept art and a horribly unstable build of the game. The Microsoft Beta was nothing more than an early Alpha and did a whole lot to kill the game there.

I've been buying other MMOs for over a decade, all of them mostly crap. Played WoW a little during the BC/WoTLK days... played FFXI for a couple years... and bought countless other MMOs. I keep coming back to EQ.

You all just need to accept the fate of EQ. Its been 16 years, at this point I really don't care about the "next everquest 1". It isn't ever going to happen. I'm just going to go down with the ship. When EQ sunsets, so do I and my days of playing MMOs will come to an end.

You all just haven't accepted the fact there will never be another EQ1.

The problem is a sequel was already made (as is mentioned), it's spiritual successor was Vanguard. I played it from early testing and on and off until it finished (albeit I never got very far very fast, though I didn't in original EQ, I enjoyed taking my time). The problems with Vanguard were massive and would take forever to detail (and require perspectives not present in this chat for some of the planning and business side issues)... but despite being very buggy, mis-managed, bad business management, etc... it really just wasn't a game that the big current MMO market wanted to play.

I enjoyed it and I genuinely miss it, will have to give the a try at some point since it seems to be out in some version now. I would personally love for another game to come out like it... the problem is the MMO market grew far beyond the original EQ player and though Vanguard did put a genuine effort in taking steps forward in many ways it simply didn't step forward enough. Unless an MMO is launched like EQ that plans to have a user based capped far *far* below something like WoW it simply cannot succeed.

I mean EQ peaked at about 500,000 players... WoW peaked at over 12,000,000. Likely a modern EQ would probably appeal to a smaller user base than the EQ peak as well.

The reality is that Vanguard is the best representation of a EQ like MMO being able to bootstrap it enough to keep running and it couldn't... if something like Pantheon starts with *much* lower expectations then maybe they can do so but I'd be personally skeptical. There simply isn't that many of us that would be potential customers.

Personally I'm fine with a newer game that has many features and gameplay that appeals to the mainstream MMO player but also pulls in some aspects of classic EQ (such as a much slower progression where the leveling treadmill isn't such an obsessive goal) as well as progressing and genuinely innovating (like Vanguard did as well), I mean someones got to take some risks and innovate MMOs out of their current rut of quest grinding boredom. I had hoped EQ Next might be that sort of mashup... since Daybreak was formed and it's got silent I'm avoiding keeping any hopes at all that EQ Next is even a thing anymore.

I'm a little bored by conclusions like "only WoW & casual mmorpgs can get enough players".
Of course we have been put into a niche, if there are zero good games for the serious mmorpg player.

There's little point in comparing a Ferrari to a Fiat, and coming to the conclusion that Fiat cars are not worth building. You can be happy with a well built product that doesn't reach out for the masses, and it can also make enough money because by now people who want something else are most definitely willing to support with cash if it delivers a fine experience.

But you have to stay true to your target audience, if you mix in all that crap that mainstream mmorpgs have you won't succeed. They seem to have the right plans for Pantheon, we will just have to wait how it turns out. I'm also interested in how this will look like https://www.revivalgame.com/

Vanguard post release content across its entire lifespan made TDS look like a bountiful expansion.

In fact at release the vanguard design had plenty of players and thus plenty of interest. It wasnt the type of game that lost them numbers - just the bad coding. People saying its proof people dont want this kind of game anymore are completely missing the point.

I enjoy how you're backing down from claiming I lost credibility on the last page and are now admitting that Vanguard WAS a buggy mess.

I agree with VG was a buggy mess.
After saying that i usually shiver thou, cause it was prolly the best mmorpg i played after Eq1.
Yeah people would love a bug-free game like Vanguard (just add in 2015 graphics now).
VgEmu is gonna rock! Pentheon is gonna rock! Rock on brothers.

Nope. You claimed it had nothing to show.

In fact it had a lot to show (game design), but had difficulty getting it to work (coding). You do understand the difference between game design and game coding, right?

I have always said that vanguard failed due to bad coding, and in fact I said exactly that in my first reply to you. But for you to say there was nothing there to show proves you either had no idea what you were speaking of, or dont know how to clearly say what you mean. Either way - you lost credibility.

I never said they didn't have a lot of concept art and proof of design. Concept art and proof of design doesn't mean anything when you're making a game if you don't have a stable build, which Vanguard simply did not have until Smedley cracked the whip on Brad once Vanguard was under SOE management. I can draw you pretty pictures and get you Parkinsonesqe box art all day and tell you it's for my new game. I can hire a 3D modeler and bury you in so many bullshots that you swear someone's been playing the game. Aliens: Colonial Marines comes to mind. Until you deliver a playable experience, you have nothing though.

In fact, 6 months after release they did have the coding worked out. It was too late by then as most had already left, but to say they had nothing to show is total BS. They absolutely did. The game design at release was admirable and there to see, but just not working well enough.

And then for you to claim that I was finally fessing up that there was bad code

is more BS because you know that I already said that because you replied to it in my first post.

Again, working build >>> design. I'm not quite sure why you're arguing me, since Brad himself has acknowledged all these points I've brought up as problems with Vanguard recently when he was trying to get money for Pantheon.