How do you feel about modern concepts like guns and Ninjas in EverQuest Next?

...Not sure if sarcasm or not.

No sarcasm

My clan is large and one of the things we try to do is add new twist to rpg type games. A few games we have redone is adding guns into Zelda and Mario. Currently working on a few other modifications but the ones we have done have been awesome. Krono Trigger is the current one we are working on making some changes to.

Too obvious man... you need to work on your skills.

You are free to disagree, to each their own.

However, to continue this line of thought deviates from the focus of why this was brought up in the first place - to address a point of things that feel out of place. Yes, the space goats felt out of place initially (Reminiscent of Starcraft - Protoss-esque starships - again, tech), but not nearly as much as pandas, two mismatched pieces of a puzzle not even in the same league.

Mechanical tech is out of place, too much like "modern" life and if I want modern life, I would just step outside. Ninjas are out of place... Before World of Warcraft, I enjoyed playing Champions of Norrath series, even then, no ninjas nor guns - why should either be added now? To what end and where would it end? Also, to what consequence should they be added? Questions to really consider.

That's simply not a valid argument. You might as well be Rick Santorum saying, "If we make gay marriage legal, people will start marrying their pet dogs."

It's a ridiculous strawman argument to imply that the implementation of guns will lead to the implementation of... anything but guns. Guns and ninjas are guns and ninjas. They aren't spaceships or laserbeams or automobiles. To try to associate the latter with the former is disingenuous.

Hell, it isn't even "modern" guns we're talking about. The devs have already said they aren't even considering modern firearms. The guns they are referring to are things like flint lock and bolt action guns, nothing even close to a modern day gun you'd see on the streets.

-Travail.

Be it modern or archaic, a gun is still a gun and carries with it the spirit ties of tech.

I've picked up two sets of the permanent crafting tables - one for my guild hall, and one for the "snowy house" that I'll be sure to buy before Frostfell ends - I'm pretty certain it will disappear until next year like the Nights of the Dead house did: I missed out on that one and don't want to make the same mistake.

Still holding out for some sort of rebate day or bonus, but if nothing's come by Jan 2nd I'll just use the cards I bought during the month long sale.

Loving the double E'ci tokens (though I don't know what the effects of doubling all the bags o' plat from the loyalty tokens will have). Making up my mind which character I want to run though everything for Frostfell fanatic.

I really, really hope we have things like this in Next. I truly love them. It breaks up the monotony of the game - you can kick back, relax or at least work at something different for a while without feeling you're 'wasting' time. People have fun, and that's always a Good Thing(tm) in my book.

I wish they'd go back to more 'single season' gifts. I've got the full music box set from year one. Missed the Bixie snowglobe in year two but eventually bought one (I had to buy a Krono and sell it to get enough plat before someone else picked it up). I've seen two new snow globes this year, but they still have last years.

I'm not sure about all the quest rewards as I haven't done them all yet. The frozen goblins will make lovely lawn ornaments - that may be this years 'special', I don't think they had those last year, but I can't really remember - I wasn't playing a lot this year. Frostfell brought me back.

And how is this different from the 'helicopter' discs for mounts or the other 'Designed by Gnomes' motorcylish hover/helicraft - both 'ground' and 'flying' that Everquest already has? Don't they have 'the spirit ties of tech' in them?

Have you seen a fully built tinkers house? Search for one on the housing boards sometime. Corrugated steel floors and walls. Steam powered engines and gizmos. Gears powering only Gnomes know what everywhere. The mounts I mentioned above. Tech is very much alive and well in the world of Norrath.

What was one post of opinion is now a series of defenses, it's rather amusing to see contenders poke and prod to justify the use of a weapon that doesn't match a fantasy setting. Here's a pro tip, the introduction of a gun (In any form) is a paradigm changer. For the record, a gun is entropy to a muddled fantasy experience.

How many different ways to explain the same thing... I wonder.

A bolt action firearm is a modern firearm still used today. Many hunting rifles are bolt action like my 7mm mag and my 270. Bolt action firearms were the primary rifle in both world wars as well. Please no firearms in everquest next. The flintlock was a weapon used in the revolutionary war and the French revolution and the napoleonic wars much much too modern.

Fantasy worlds in which early firearms are seen such as warhammer and warcraft there is one race the dwarves which could not or would not use magic thus they looked too technology to compete with races which could or would use magic.In warhammer the dwarves were not magical thus developed very early firearms the equivalent of weapon built in our world in the late medieval and renaissance periods. In Warcraft while dwarves were capable of it they did not use it thus looked to technology. Eventually due to world of warcraft they changed there history so that the younger dwarves were beginning to use magic while frowned upon by there elders.

In everquest next everyone can use magic there is no reason firearms would be developed to the point that they would be common.

The gnomes use clockworks which are magical constructs.

The difference, as I see it, is that for the most part those in this discussion who don't want guns have said "I don't want guns in a fantasy setting because I dislike them and find them inappropriate." And Telsa's response has been (paraphrased) "You are some kind of Luddite. Think outside the box! If you don't like guns you must want everything to go back ten years and you obviously don't want anything new!!"

Questionable. I've actually fought in plate armor, and chain, and trained with longswords, maces, axes, two-handed swords and polearms. Higher powered crossbows and longbows were weapons of choice against heavier armor, as well as polearms and long spears and pikes. Hammers and maces were mostly favored because they took less training to use properly and were significantly cheaper than blades.

Because to many of us, guns aren't romantic. And some of us have poetry in our souls and epic journeys on our minds. They are, at best, inelegant.

I didn't think it needed to be on parallel. All things do not need to be equal. Just like all classes don't have to be equal....they need to be individual, so that each brings something different to the table no other does.

I find that visualization to be EXACTLY what I object to. I don't object to guns' function, I object to their aesthetics. They are, as I said before, inelegant.

Much as the Chinese did for centuries, whomever knew how to make fireworks in Middle Earth did not weaponize it. It was a pretty novelty. But in fact I don't believe fireworks are ever mentioned as being made by anyone other than Gandalf. So it may well be a secret that he kept. As for the sapping of Helm's Deep (Which was much more blatant and ugly in the movie than the book) that was the result of a "secret concoction" of Saruman's. There is no evidence from the books that anyone outside of the Istari (the Five Wizards) and Sauron (Who was originally one of the Maiar, the same Order from which the Istari were drawn) had any notion of how to create explosives of any kind. And it is obvious that they, in their wisdom (in Tolkien's mythology they were basically "angels.") kept that dangerous knowledge from getting out.

Oh, and Tolkien made it VERY clear in the books that anyone who tried to use something like that as a weapon was basically evil. Despite the fact that Gandalf had perhaps the greatest knowledge of explosive powders of anyone in the world, only Saruman and Sauron actually use them to wage war.

Gotta say, I find the Pandarens ridiculous too. I quit WoW just before that expansion but my wife kept playing for quite a while. Oh, and I hate Draenei also ) /shrug

*sigh* You don't like and don't want High Fantasy. Everyone who doesn't like it says "It's been done to death. It's old and busted. Move on."

NO.

Do you tell a sci fi fan "Spaceships are so last week." ?

No one has EVER done High Fantasy well EXCEPT Everquest...and they dropped the ball with their third expansion. No one else has ever even come close.

And I will defend High Fantasy unto my dying breath. I will scream to the Heavens and the fact that I might not "win" much is irrelevant. This mishmash that some people call innovative is ugly and soulless and an abomination.

I know you're probably right. I know I'm in the minority. But for a dozen years now I've been settling for what OTHER people want. I may never get what I want...but I sure as hades am going to keep ASKING. And maybe...just maybe...someone will put style and substance before the almighty dollar and trying and failing to keep whiny short-attention-span children happy.

It is NOW. And that is WRONG.

But it is LORE, and it is PRECEDENT, and it is EVERQUEST.

And since scouts already have shuriken as a standard ranged weapon in EQ 2, how much of a jump is it really, to include ninjas? Though if we have ships, we need pirates. Then we can have the endless pirates vs. ninjas threads.

That might even make some good stuff on a PvP server...

This absurd question needs to be closed if not deleted.

It's questions like these that really let us see the things the devs are considering and the direction the game is likely to take. People hoping for that 'throwback' server are probably going to be disappointed.

Wow....and it just keeps beating =P

You didn't listen to what I said. Slow down and reread it. I never said that it's old and busted, but I DID say it has been done to death. Right or wrong, most don't make the distinction between 'high' fantasy and just plain old fantasy. If it has elves and dwarves, it's fantasy. Period.

In a way you are trying to argue the merits of a 1842 Pinot noir when most just see it as another wine. High fantasy might have it's own merits, but to the average gamer anymore...it's just the same old setting with different names for tired old faces. Not saying it's busted, just a tad bit to familiar on first blush.

There are two things wrong with your assumption. First one being that nobody has tried. Many have, in various ways. There were home brewed fantasy mmos done with Neverwinter Nights for example, some of which still run today. Everquest 2 tried apparently. Many games have tried to do fantasy, but there was something always standing in the way.

That brings me to the second problem. Going back to my first point, most gamers lump anything with elves and dwarves into the same category as average fantasy. Now unless you have been living under a rock for the past seven years, you might have heard of a game called 'World of Warcraft'. Which most players think of as fantasy, guns and all. Since it was the big name, any mmo or game that tried to be a commercial success was held up to WoW. It was the game that made mmos popular and all that.

That means that any fantasy game that came out that even remotely was similar to WoW got compared to it. That included Everquest 2. It also means that is what most people are drawing their conclusion as to what fantasy is. Going back to my wine analogy, YOU might care about the intricacies of the wine. But to the average drinker, it might not be all that much different then another wine. EQN has the technology going for it as a selling point, but if you haven't noticed the developers are not trying at all to sell the setting or fantasy angle...not even in the slightest.

Hope i'm making sense, it is 1am here and i'm falling asleep at the keyboard. But I wanted to respond to this anyways (had to retype so many paragraphs).

To be fair, since supposedly this is a reboot lore isn't as strong an argument. But at the same time the elements were in the original, and the developers acknowledge it in the video. That means it happened, and they are taking it into consideration.

To be honest, crossbows wouldn't bother me. I agree with Telsa's sentiment that they could represent tech better then even guns could. But I think flamethrowers or even 'neutron' pack weapons could be interesting if handled well. Blackpowder guns would be hard to sell since as someone pointed out they would have to operate like modern guns to work in a game. But guns running on 'magic' are a different matter, hence why I think flamethrowers and similar type weapons could work.

Frankly I can think of just as many reasons to include as I can to exclude. Maybe when they lock the thread we will have a more definitive answer. I'm not sure which one i'm hoping for.

It will probably be closed at the end of the month. The devs promise a closing statement stating what they intend to do on topics they close. So I guess we will get the, tentatively, final word then on the subject then.