It's Official - End of EQNext

actually the more i read about eve, the less interested i am. i really prefer medieval over space ships and i don't even care about owning a sea-going ship as in some other games. i don't care for a game with only pvp, or one that requires me to be in a group just to enjoy exploring it. i prefer to interact as i choose, play as i choose and according to how i feel that day, in a nice world similar to eq2. in fact, of all the games, only two have kept me interested- eq2 and lotro. the rest i have lost interest in after a bit.

Several years ago a group of us started a Permadeath Guild. We played it for several months. Its really tough losing a toon forever. Most of us had several alts leveled to group level to sub in if need be. Game play got real cautious and eventually it just got tedious.

It was an experiment and not really all that fun when you get right down to it. People started dropping out after losing several toons.

I think you need to be a bit of a masochist to enjoy that type of gameplay. It different at the start, but I don't think a permadeath game would make it for long haul. Peeps would just get tired of it.

there are several out there that are considered to be top games, but because of the permadeath feature, i won't play them. they are usually very hard too, harder than a lot of other games. but if i spend time developing a toon, i will be very unhappy if they are killed off and i can't revive them and keep playing

Another thing that occurred to me. Didn't SOE (now DB) say that they were a bit over 2 yrs into a real successor to EQ2? Before certain Managers made them drop it to hare off on a wild goose chase for a new type of game?

I wonder if that work is still on DB's comps? Might give them a bump up on the road to EQ3

Played Hardcore Diablo (original at times). Had friends I met there and we had fun working as a group, but it was SLOW. One step at a time so you wouldn't pull too many mobs, cause if you died, your friends could loot your body but you couldn't, or it was hard. And death was death, whither from lag or monsters or your own stupidity (had a friend playing a paladin with thorns and some charming spell... charm wore off but not the thorns yet, so he attacked it not thinking and impaled himself to his death on the thorns spell... ouch.) Got very tedious and so upsetting when your lvl 79 lvl barbarian died due to lag while fighting.

Eve does not have a permadeath aspect, you have "clones" that activate at your home base, but you do lose whatever it was you were carrying at the time. I spent weeks (or was it more than a month) building up money to buy a nice mining ship so I could go out and earn more money faster. The grind was awful just to get to that point. First day out, a PKer comes along and blasts me to my maker. There went all that work, and my desire to play further. I don't like wasting my time grinding something forever only to lose it the first day.

1) I hate grinding.
2) I hate losing everything I own with no way to reclaim it other than starting from scratch again.
3) I hate grinding

I would rather sit in an empty room staring at the walls in a stupor rather than endure the mind-numbing monotony of grinds...the effect is basically the same, but in my stupor I can at least dream of something better.

In Eve, I didn't mind the space theme, it was an interesting spin on things, if only I could avoid the PvP aspect of things. I play for fun, not competition with people who just like to blow things up. In EQ2, if I die, it's more like I screwed up...it's my fault so no one to blame but me and then try again to do it right. What I sometimes wonder about is who keeps bringing my body back to a rez point where I wake up again. Hmm.....

The end of the next MMO killer is dead?

Where have I heard this before *cough* TITAN *cough*.

We hear this stuff annually at least. People run around, flapping their arms and screaming that the sky is falling. But EQ1 and EQ2 go on.

Every time there has been "another game" that people predict will kill EQ2, a bunch of folks go to play it for a month or six weeks. At that point, they come back, because nothing else has the depth or replayability of EQ2. During the Long Downtime of Death after the Sony hacking incident a while back, I went and tried every other fantasy MMO I could find. The art was terrible (WoW, for ex.). The gameplay was awkward and shallow (everything).

The fact that EQ1 continues, even with its lesser graphics, tells me that there's something about not just Norrath, but about the way the game encourages people to interact with the game environment and each other that has great durability.

Camelot unchained did test something similar to landmark very recently.
It still looks like ape dung tho.

About Pantheon: LOL. "Gief moonez"
The technical trainwreck that Vanguard was, I'm surprised anyone is giving him any money.
I guess everyone deserves 2nd chances. But seeing their page... I can't help but to think "scam".

Honestly, I liked the concept of EQN, but given the fanbase that SoE (Now DBG) has built over the years, it honestly was...groundbreaking...in the negative-way to use that term (As in, the ground literally falling out from under you because it broke).

I'd like to see something more along the lines of a hybrid EQOA-EQ2 (EQOA had a lot of the best aspects of EQ1, with a bit of a personal twist on it -- I actually quit EQ1 for it for a good while, and only really stopped due to lack of ps2 support and content updates). Look @ EQ2 currently; the quests are extremely linear and the sense of adventure is generally draining away, unlike EQ1 which admittedly I would enjoy a lot still if I had the money for a sub and the expac (I'm only one behind though, same as here hilariously)...and after I fix my comp, I am definitely ending my temporary break from here.

The thing with EQ1 and 2 is that they didn't try to appeal to different groups of people. So really, if we get an Eq3 (Or an EQOA2!!) it needs to utilize the best of the two/three previous games and build upon those aspects.

Was a question of time

Nothing new.

I never understood EQNext vision completely.

I was all for dynamically generated dungeons that one could find (that would then disappear from an earthquake in the future) I loved the idea of being able to change the world. BUT..the game just seemed like it was all over the place AND the EQNext website was IMO a train wreck.

maybe they will do an EQ 3 instead

I wanted to help build the Teir'dal Empire as I saw it, or at least help. Partial aboveground and partial below ground and all military defenses everywhere. Oh, and slaves, lots of slaves.

Not surprised about EQ Next.

However Landmark is an interesting game; There is potential for it. EverQuest II really pushed the bar with their housing system and even the dungeon builder. The dungeon builder would be right at home in Landmark. It would still be a ton of work to add character development / progression that keeps people coming back.

Personally I'd love to see a lightweght fantasy based virtual world that looks nicer than Minecraft, that you can return to regularly like people do with Hearthstone, where it's interesting and skill is involved, but there is also a lot of randomness so that you have the elements of replayability that you had in Diablo II and of course when opening Hearthstone's packs.

Looking at Guild Wars 2, you don't have a lot of progression end-game, yet people keep trying to accumulate appearance items and achievements.. which give a sense of completion.

So I could see a lightweight, achievement/collection based character development, with regular "cosmetic" item releases along with "crates" that contain random items to build dungeons. Add some light weight Skyrim style combat maybe, some harvesting... ton of work but nowhere near the same as they aimed for EQ2.

I guess what I'm saying is the older I get the more I like games that I can enjoy 30min to an hour at a time, and feel like I did something. I think that's why Hearthstone is so popular. Landmark has that potential if they allow the players to build dungeons, plus add some worthwhile crafting, a F2P store for cosmetics, and a collection and achievement system to give some sense of progression.