Your Thoughts on Everquest Next?

I completely agree with Guy de Alsace on the 'World Immersion' the graphics are what sucks you into the game and makes you feel like you are there. I just don't see that with EQN.

Now, I would not say the game is 'dead to me' .... I will definitely try it out FTP, but if it really is going to look like this, I doubt I will get hooked like I was with EQ1, EQ2.

Could have been worse, at least they hit the middle of the PSS.1/Alaplaya look.

The graphic problems go beyond just the style. I can't look at any of the screenshots without seeing pixels everywhere. The texture resolution is very low ( a common problem with games on consoles ). It destroys immersion; instead of seeing sand, grass, dirt, all I see are pixels.

The pixels are most likely voxels.

I will play around with Landmark. My 6 year old saw the lion and asked if that was a game for him so yhea - that about sums up my enthusiasm. Waiting to see what they have done with trolls before I completely into despair.

You can put higher resolution textures on voxel meshes

Some of the things I really do like though include:

+++ Persistent responsibility for your actions (aka a living faction system) - I really liked this feature. Cannot wait to see how it plays out because my necro (if that option is available) will seek to gain max anti-faction with everything possible exept undead things.
++ World tier structure/archaeology exploration unleashing content.
+ Being able to build things and not just decorate (cannot wait to rebuild Grobb and Inothule)+++.
.


Mild irritants:
- Not a fan of not being able to kill the banker (pvp servers only though): We must have a pvp means and solution to disruption of oppositional faction rally calls/goals. I get that its not good for blue servers but red servers really need a hands off rule on this one.

You didnt say anything about the textures.

Yes I did...Third sentence

That's perfectly acceptable, as everyone is different in their tastes and what 'makes them tick' of course. There are always more visually-oriented people in the word for certain. But there are just as many people who are different as may share that view of things too. For my part, I don't need a certain level of realism for immersion...the gameplay mechanics and the story do far more of that for me. There are many games from DOS days and older console days I still sometimes happily go back and immerse myself in as opposed to looking towards the next great thing graphically, because they're, bottom line, that much fun to play.

At any rate, the crux of my post wasn't to try and sway anyone who doesn't like the graphical style being implemented---I certainly know that's impossible---but rather to simply say, even if you don't care for the style of the package, at least recognize and be excited by the new/fresh approach being attempted here, and its potential implications for other games/IP's going forward. Even if I cared nothing for EQN itself, I still would be hoping it is a success in what it endeavors to do in some measure because of what it could mean down the road for other games that may be more up my alley in terms of style/presentation.

I went into EQN excited...and have come back just resigned. Maybe the game mechanics will make up for the character graphics, but its not likely. Not for me anyway. Graphics are extremely important to my gameplay. Its an immersion thing.

Looks like a great console game.

Doesn't look like it needs a quad core processor, or a high end graphics card.

Or a computer...maybe a mobile phone or console..

It looks amazing so far. Its not even in beta yet so things will change before final release. I'm really excited about this. The graphics are amazing so far. Graphics is just one part of the whole. Sound is just as important. Keeshar's growls are pretty cool. Music is important as well. Jeremy Soule is a game score composing GOD! All these things contribute towards immersivness.

There will be iterating and refining and polishing before the end and we'll be about to see how they do it and we'll even have input through the Roundtable.

I am excited about it. only issues that I find a bit sad is the combat. 8 buttons max with 40 multiclass options? eh.
just shows that basically all games are turning into a 1 hotbar game. one of the few things that I like about eq2 is having many and many abilities, some not worth casting. it gives the chance to verity.
but still like eqnext and gonna be trying it out hopefully

This is a nice summary, but you barely touched on the most important feature. The game will function as an ecological system. There will be no more going through the same dungeon with the exact same mobs in it. That dungeon will become an evolving lair as the inhabitants are killed and new ones move in. There may be little variation in what happens inside Crushbone, but areas away from a power center will have the potential to become very interesting. This is clearly what they are using Story Bricks for. They need to have mobs behave and add virtual quests to the environment to give you credit for participating in the ecology in which ever way you choose. That is maybe more important, there will be more options to participate in the ecology of the world, not just the generated quest lines.

SOE did a good job at building expectations to get folks to SOE live this year. For me it was let down for a few reasons. They really didn't show much gameplay and it's pretty apparent they are no where near a release date (which was something they deceptively built up before SOE live and then typed in the small print at the reveal and tried to talk up this landscape stuff as the EQN game we are getting this year). I'm sure there are a few people that will enjoy messing with landscape but a big meh for most that I know. I really didn't care for the direction of the character graphics, since they scraped much of the game before they should scrap the character art now since they appear to have plenty of time. In the end will see where they go with things as they move forward and hope something good comes out of the hype.