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Such a disappointment that EQ Next was canceled a bit back

komplanen

Member
I was just thinking the other day where the heck has this game fallen :-(

MMORPG genre dying is something I never thought would happen, but now there's not even EQ-Next to look forward to.
 
I love MMOs so much, or so I thought. I spent thousands of hours in FFXI and WoW. Now I try every MMO that's released but quit rather quickly. I don't know if it's the quality of the games or if my interests have just changed that much. Now I try not to get my hopes up about any announced MMOs as there seems to see such a small chance that they'll ever see the light of day.
 
I'm really sad I paid $100 for landmark, played maybe 3 hours, and never touched it again. I'm a dumbass.

Now I hear they are shutting the whole thing down too.
 

Comandr

Member
Thank god EQN got cancelled. It looked NOTHING like what I've come to expect from the Everquest franchise. No reason whatsoever to even associate what they were producing with the Everquest name. Pantheon will be the true successor.
 

StudioTan

Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
I'm really sad I paid $100 for landmark, played maybe 3 hours, and never touched it again. I'm a dumbass.

Now I hear they are shutting the whole thing down too.

Yep, same here. Really regret that purchase.
 

120v

Member
haven't followed EQ Next but i hope the old style MMOs make a comeback someday. (er, maybe not, sank way too much time into those games. but i digress....)

the genre just isnt profitable anymore but maybe that's a good thing. drain the swamp and all that
 
haven't followed EQ Next but i hope the old style MMOs make a comeback someday. (er, maybe not, sank way too much time into those games. but i digress....)

the genre just isnt profitable anymore but maybe that's a good thing. drain the swamp and all that

There's plenty of room to make profit in MMOs still if you accept that MMOs are fairly niche and the big ones are exceptions that prove the rule.

MMO history is a handful of games that could stabilize above a million subscriptions and a bunch that had to exist on less than 500k. That's still the case today, it's just companies wised up.
 

JetBlackPanda

Gold Member
I am really interested in a MMO with Combat and gameplay like disblo. I thought I saw one coming but I can't for the life of me remember the name? Is there one or am I imaging this?
 

DirtyCase

Member
I want an mmo that harkens back to Star Wars Galaxies pre-relaunch but in a more modern and sensible way.

To me thats what EQN represented. Oh well.

Maybe if they add in base building into Star Citizen by 2025 it will be the MMORPG I've been waiting for.

This last comment is for the most part a bad joke
 

Nicko

Member
I was really gearing myself up for diving into that game as Everquest is still one of my all time favorite experiences. I was there from day one in March of 99 and I was absolutely swept away in one of the most game changing experiences ever. I played Ultima but Everquest was a totally different animal for me.

I am happy that the game continues on, I've been back here and there and while the core game has changed there is still a charm that lives in the soul of that game that is unlike any other, at least for me.

But yea, noticed Landmark was closing down and while I never did get to that... It reminded me that EQN isn't happening and I'm really saddened by that, I was really jacked up to play a brand new Everquest.

Totally feel the same OP. Deeply saddened to see the closure of what could have been a huge leap forward for MMOs.

I too was there day 1! I was 13 at the time, and while I enjoyed UO before it, the beginning of Everquest was easily the most exciting and wonderous gaming experience I have ever had. The anticipation and mystery behind an entire uncharted virtual world was an experience that I fear will never come again.

My best childhood friend actually still plays EQ2 daily, and is the highest level/DPS Conjurer in the entire game (Zindrik). With the way things are looking for daybreak, I worry that the final days of both games are in the not-to-distant future...
 

Kyne

Member
It's a shame it had to be dropped, but don't count Daybreak out just yet. Something big is in the works.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
I was just thinking about this game yesterday. I found that Landmarks is still going on, so figured EQ Next must be still in the making. Too bad it's not :(.
 

kcxiv

Member
And H1Z1 has also been functionally abandoned, only King of the Kill gets support, the survival mode is completely unplayable. It's a shame. But they aren't long for the world as a dev, IMO.
This is 100 percent false. H1z1 the survival part has gotten tons of love lately. Daybreak went out of their way and hired 2 AAA developers to put in charge of the project. One guy was the former Co-Founder of Gearbox and the other dude was some guy from EA i think? I know the Gearbox guy's name is Landon Montgomery https://www.linkedin.com/in/landon-montgomery-326484115 . He even went as far as to say that it was down to Blizzard or Daybreak and he choose Daybreak because he likes to fix things not be content with a ship thats already on cruise control.

The new Dev team has done a hell of a job fixing all the shit that the previous dev team fucked up. (they hired an almost whole new team to fix the game). The game was struggling really fucking bad for a while no doubt about it, it got down to about 900 people playing but recently it has skyrocketed back up to about 7000 people during peak hours and they have added nothing new yet, just fixing all the shit that was broken. They are also making another zone for the Survival part of it that is not going to be the same one for King of the Kill. They recently said, its going to be modified quite a bit. They have also been redoing basebuilding to be more modular in the ark/rush vein. I know a little of what im talking about as i have about 3200 hours played in the game. http://steamcommunity.com/id/kcxiv/

Anyways, the game has a long ways to go, but these new guys have done a hell of a job fixing such a broken ass game.
 

kcxiv

Member
Fucking Georgeson ruined EQ. RIP.
Thats why daybreak fired him and alot of the old guys who were basically out of idea's. IT was time for the new blood to take over.

I played the living shit out of Everquest so hardcore for 7 years. I was completely addicted. I have way way way way way way to many hours logged into that game. I used to love Raiding soo damned much. It was like 80 percent of the reason i played.
 

Maledict

Member
Here's hoping that Pantheon ends up being the game it wants to be. I can only play through so many more EQ1 progression servers ;-; That or please sell the IP to someone who gives a damn.

Hahahahaha.

Anyone expecting Pantheon to be a good game (or heck, even a game) is higher than a kite. It's led by Brad McQuaid and his team is mostly a group of fundamentalist christians who have as much to do with mmo design as I do. But they tell good bible stories!

After the complete and utter disaster than was Vanguard, both as a game but also how he treated his employees, why would anyone ever possibly believe this guys lies again?
 

Bizazedo

Member
I came so close to buying Landmark and dropping significant coin down. Dodged that bullet.

Probably would've replaced Brink as my biggest regret.
 

mrlion

Member
The reveal was very exciting and the team seemed to be really motivated. What went wrong exactly?

What went wrong exactly?

Landmark...that's what went wrong. It was really crappy and with a ridiculous package "deals" just to play an incomplete game didn't help the game much either. It was also buggy as hell and slow. Since the engine is (or was supposed to be) the same as EQ Next it just wasn't ready to be released to the public.
 
I was skeptical from the beginning. I remember writing here (and on MMORPG.com) that this idea that they would release landmark and then build player creations into Everquest Next was a pipe dream. A well designed level is really difficult, and just banking on that players could make compelling dungeons and content for them to copy paste into Everquest Next. It seemed unrealistic to me.
I did end up buying Landmark during a sale because I was curious, but playing for less than 2 minutes I realized this was not going to be made. I was absolutely shocked how little there was in Landmark. It was barely anything and it controlled like absolute shit.

I've never been a fan of Everquest and I have never been a fan of Everquests legacy leading up to WoW and the quest themed MMORPG genre. I believe Ultima and SWG was the path forward. EQ / WoW took MMOs down a wrong path.



Is Black Desert Online any good?

Depends on what your idea of good is. It's a sandbox solo-grinder with an excellent action combat system. If this is appealing to you, then it is very good. If you want a instanced dungeon/raid experience like games like WoW, best stay away. You might want to give ESO a shot- Everyone is saying it's become a much much better game since the One Tamriel Update. Could also try Blade & Soul or Revelation Online.
 
I played Everquest Online Adventures for PS2 for almost 10 years. It was amazing what they were able to accomplish with a 8mb memory card. I wish they would release a F2P version on PS4.
 

friz898

Member
Hahahahaha.

Anyone expecting Pantheon to be a good game (or heck, even a game) is higher than a kite. It's led by Brad Waddell and his team is mostly a group of fundamentalist christians who have as much to do with mmo design as I do. But they tell good bible stories!

After the complete and utter disaster than was Vanguard, both as a game but also how he treated his employees, why would anyone ever possibly believe this guys lies again?


Huh, What? I was just lurking this thread, and was already up to date on all the things discussed here, but I had to quote you and ask for maybe clarification. Without googling to see if that guys exists, did you mean Quaid?

Also, since I posted, there was talk of ESO a few posts -- I wanted to second that it strongly reminds me of EQ just in the sense of playing 1st player view like Skyrim and it totally being immersive in that regard.
 

Maledict

Member
Huh, What? I was just lurking this thread, and was already up to date on all the things discussed here, but I had to quote you and ask for maybe clarification. Without googling to see if that guys exists, did you mean Quaid?

Also, since I posted, there was talk of ESO a few posts -- I wanted to second that it strongly reminds me of EQ just in the sense of playing 1st player view like Skyrim and it totally being immersive in that regard.

Yes, absolutely my mistake the name - no idea why the other Brads name crept in.

Pantheon is a joke. Brad is a joke. The guy already had one shot at making a 'true EQ successor' - Vanguard. That failed absolutely, was built on a foundation of lies, and ended up with him stealing prescription drugs from the desks of co-workers and then having to fire all his staff in the parking lot (but not having the courage to do it to their faces himself). All of this was out in the public domain when vanguard collapsed, at sites like f13 and other places. The game was truly fucking awful, and after being bailed out by Sony to get it to release ended up being shut down years ago. Both in terms of design and execution is was sheer crap, and one of the buggiest products ever to make it to market.

He's now back making exactly the same promises and pushing exactly the same rubbish as he did last time, only this time around he doesn't even have the budget to make the game. He's a con artist who fucked over his own staff badly and released one of the worse western MMOs there has been. He plays on nostalgia and Everquest memories to get money but hasn't delivered on that once. The trailers and videos for Pantheon are full of stock art assets, and anyone thinking it's going to be good (or heck, even released in final form) should do some research before handing this guy a penny of their money.
 

friz898

Member
Yes, absolutely my mistake the name - no idea why the other Brads name crept in.

Pantheon is a joke. Brad is a joke. The guy already had one shot at making a 'true EQ successor' - Vanguard. That failed absolutely, was built on a foundation of lies, and ended up with him stealing prescription drugs from the desks of co-workers and then having to fire all his staff in the parking lot (but not having the courage to do it to their faces himself). All of this was out in the public domain when vanguard collapsed, at sites like f13 and other places. The game was truly fucking awful, and after being bailed out by Sony to get it to release ended up being shut down years ago. Both in terms of design and execution is was sheer crap, and one of the buggiest products ever to make it to market.

He's now back making exactly the same promises and pushing exactly the same rubbish as he did last time, only this time around he doesn't even have the budget to make the game. He's a con artist who fucked over his own staff badly and released one of the worse western MMOs there has been. He plays on nostalgia and Everquest memories to get money but hasn't delivered on that once. The trailers and videos for Pantheon are full of stock art assets, and anyone thinking it's going to be good (or heck, even released in final form) should do some research before handing this guy a penny of their money.

Ya, I read the whole story. Mostly the very detailed one that was on a blog or whatever that got fired. I don't know if it was before or after SOE bought it, but I did try it once SOE got it, and it was actually pretty fun for like 15-20 levels and then lol it was exactly how I guess it had been before they were trying to fix it.

As for Brad letting everybody down, ya, I didn't back it because of Brad's rep, but I am kinda hoping he has more money this time or learned from his mistakes. Not to be pro-Brad, just because I'm hungry for what he's trying to make. I made a comment last week that maybe Smedley, now that he cancelled his new game, will go join him, and somehow they can recreate the "Vision".
 

The Dude

Member
Vanguard didn't take off but I didn't think it was to to terrible, I just remember being heavily invested in my other mmos at the time
 

Spuck-uk

Banned
I firmly believe there is still market share for a new, high quality MMO to enter and make money.

Cost of production is such a big factor. Producing enough content for a AAA MMO would cost such a massive amount of money, and how are you going to get that cash when 90%+ of the games in the genre crash and burn?

Plus you always have the spectre of WoW looming over you with 14 years of content under its belt.
 

Spuck-uk

Banned
Yea I just miss when MMOs had slower times. Groups lookin for healer, group lookin for puller, tank, cc, I mean all the new mmos just seem so cookie cutter and so simplistic which is why they're not even options.

I miss when you not just played a class, you lived it and had to be good at it..

Rose tinted glasses. Most classic MMOs had incredibly simple mechanics for most classes.

I was in a progression WoW guild once upon a time in Burning Crusade, and boy was pressing '1' over and over again on my Warlock while staying awake not a challenge.
 

The Dude

Member
Rose tinted glasses. Most classic MMOs had incredibly simple mechanics for most classes.

I was in a progression WoW guild once upon a time in Burning Crusade, and boy was pressing '1' over and over again on my Warlock while staying awake not a challenge.

There's so much more to it than the mechanics. You had to be aware of everything in EQ raids, nothing was a one button push when you bad a full group of people.. But there's so much more to it all than combat and mechanics.

Besides I've been back to EQ in recent years and it's just as enjoyable as it always was
 

Sylas

Member
EQN was the biggest MMO heartbreak I've ever had. It was followed closet by Revival--but one look at their goals and popularity and I knew they were doomed to fail. Honestly, if you can't do something like the worldbuilding of FFXIV, the exploration of GW2 (plus some more... more to it) and the combat of EQ I would, personally, prefer something like Neverwinter Nights. At least then I could customize my experience as much as I want and still get that massive group-play setting.
 

Maledict

Member
There's so much more to it than the mechanics. You had to be aware of everything in EQ raids, nothing was a one button push when you bad a full group of people.. But there's so much more to it all than combat and mechanics.

Besides I've been back to EQ in recent years and it's just as enjoyable as it always was

I'm sorry, but as a raid leader for a high end EQ raiding guild for 3 expansions that's a complete load of rubbish. The vast majority of players could have been replaced by a woodpecker hitting a key repeatedly and we would have been fine. Bearing in mind the insane size of EQ raids for the first few expansions, the notion that 70+ people had to be aware of what was going on in Vex Thall is just not true.

In later years, as raids got smaller and mechanics got more complicated, knowledge definitely had to increase / but that's not the golden era Brad is talking about, or players reference. Vanilla through to Planes of Power is what most people list as the golden era of EQ, and raising back then was unbelievably simple for the vast majority of classes. Press one button, hidden behind pillar to avoid an aoE with a massive timer, resume pressing one button.

One of the reasons WoW destroyed EQ on launch, and attracted all those raiding guilds to move over, was how much better and more complicated even callus WoW raids were. Onyxia was a revelation - a dragon fight where the dragon actually flew!
 

theDeeDubs

Member
Pantheon looks nonspammy. I like it. I miss MMOs like EQ and FFXI with autoattack combat. Will definitely roll a shaman when it comes out.
 

BizzyBum

Member
Yea I just miss when MMOs had slower times. Groups lookin for healer, group lookin for puller, tank, cc, I mean all the new mmos just seem so cookie cutter and so simplistic which is why they're not even options.

I miss when you not just played a class, you lived it and had to be good at it..

Dude, SWG was the best at this. I remember waiting in a line of like 30 people outside the Coruscant starport for those buffs that lasted for a few hours. Everyone formed perfect lines, no one cut, everyone tipped at the end, and it was just some cool downtime where you waited around and talked to your guild or the other people waiting in line. I mean fuck, there was an entire class dedicated to dancing in a cantina to buff people. Boy do I miss pre-CU SWG.

Depends on what your idea of good is. It's a sandbox solo-grinder with an excellent action combat system. If this is appealing to you, then it is very good. If you want a instanced dungeon/raid experience like games like WoW, best stay away. You might want to give ESO a shot- Everyone is saying it's become a much much better game since the One Tamriel Update. Could also try Blade & Soul or Revelation Online.

Yeah, I'm tired of the themepark raid/dungeon experience. I want an MMO where they throw me into some massive world and I can do whatever I want, but I also want something popular that's fun to play.

I've been playing ESO on the PC off and on since launch. I enjoy it but it's pretty linear.
 
Yeah, as someone who isn't that big in to MMOs, but really likes them in theory, EQ Next was the only new one I was really looking forward to (after Wildstar disappointed). The emergent system of a lived in world and voxel destruction and the combat all looked great. Really bummed it didn't work out.

As for the future, I see a lot of people testing out ideas in the VR MMO space lately which is really interesting. It will be a LONG time before anything like that even reaches the capability to be near the player base levels of today's MMOs, but that smaller scale, new control dynamic, and enhanced social capability are all forcing people to really rethink the genre from the ground up which I think is healthy.
 

TheYanger

Member
Fuck that, I absolutely loved EQ2.

Whether you loved it or not it was a failure and absolutely not the game anyone wanted as a sequel to EverQuest. It went all in on the wow-like design and stripped out absolutely everything that made EQ unique, overloaded with mechanics in place of emergent strategy and gameplay, EQ2 is the epitome of overdesigned.

Literally targetting a bat and seeing "Hey these other 4 bats are linked to this bat, you cannot separate them" or glowing collectibles on the floor for the sake of collectibles (which I actually liked, but it was awkward as fuck), crafting that was obtuse for no reason, a class system that was distilled to the worst imaginable level (choose one of 4, then one of 8, then one of 16 or whatever, so you have no ability to even know what your class is like when you start a character, and it also made the early levels completely the same no matter what every time). The entire heroic opportunity system being an awkward joke. The spammiest combat on earth, even still the number of hotkeys to play EQ2 is insane. Setting the game into a world so far removed from the norrath people loved that calling it Norrath and trying to evoke nostalgia for people and places just ringed completely hollow - Why is this place called Freeport if it's not even vaguely similar to freeport? Why do I care about the Commonlands if it's just exploded islands with boats everywhere. Speaking of: The boats. What a dumb system.

Can't forget that it looked like actual dogshit and couldn't even run on a PC anyone owned at the time, and then wasn't designed for multicore processors so it actually didn't run much better as newer cpus and gpus were coming out for quite a while. This last complaint I levvy at EQ1 as well, ever since Luclin when they revamped the models the game lost a lot of its visual charm, (and I think most classic players share this sentiment). The original EQ1 models and especially texture work were some of the best of all time, none of their other products or revamps have come close. As much as it was a technical showboat when it released (EQ1 was a beast graphically), the first designs were much more wow than EQ2 - bold textures and bright colors that stood out and made models with less polys than I can count on my hands and toes look amazing. EQ2 took this to the Nth degree with the ugliest high poly models I can even remember. Ever. EverQuest's redone models were so bad that their failure is one of the things that you could tell prevented Blizz from redoing wow's models for YEARS - just the fear that they would fuck it up like Sony did. It is literally impossible to make your new model character look as good as your original model ones, aside from polycount, that's embarassing.

This:
ht6H0eM.png


Should not turn into This:
0AGBzq4.png


And then the sequel should not double down on badness to turn it into THIS
CKaIehk.jpg


And that's being as nice as possible by picking human, god forbid I pick troll or ogre, where they literally changed their entire design from completely awesome fatties that scratched their asses for fun and looked insane, to actual generic drivel.
god. Sorry, EQ2 has triggered me all over again. It's far from the worst MMO out there, it's not even 'bad' but holy shit is it wrong.
 
Literally targetting a bat and seeing "Hey these other 4 bats are linked to this bat, you cannot separate them"

Is that a bad feature? I never played EQ or EQ2 but I love this feature in FFXIV. Really annoying when you don't know which mobs chain-aggro in other MMOs like WoW especially if you're the tank and it's your first run.
 

Anno

Member
Is that a bad feature? I never played EQ or EQ2 but I love this feature in FFXIV. Really annoying when you don't know which mobs chain-aggro in other MMOs like WoW especially if you're the tank and it's your first run.

It's pretty bad and ends up feeling really artificial. And like he said, takes away all of the emergent systems that EQ allowed with pulling and splitting groups. Actually that's what I disliked most about EQ2 as a successor to EQ - any of the cool shit where people broke the game was taken out. Enough of it was taken out of EQ1, no need to double down on that.
 

TheYanger

Member
Is that a bad feature? I never played EQ or EQ2 but I love this feature in FFXIV. Really annoying when you don't know which mobs chain-aggro in other MMOs like WoW especially if you're the tank and it's your first run.

It's completely artificial. In EverQuest an entire archetype was unintended but became critical to the game around pulling effectively and splitting mobs up and such so that you wouldn't get giant packs. Also, yes I agree it's annoying when things are 'linked' artificially in other games too, but that was never the case in EQ, it was always just proximity and 'yell' distance for the mobs, which although you can't see, you could learn to judge - almost like it's more immersive to have to eyeball a situation and think about it. I know from the thread Anno and I both played monks in EQ, for example, if splitting/pulling hadn't become an important role, it would've literally just been another flavor of melee dps, what's the point? Instead, I would join a group and often spend 80%of my time in that group running off by myself splitting patrols or whatever else. It was a skill and it was aweosme.
 
Hahahahaha.

Anyone expecting Pantheon to be a good game (or heck, even a game) is higher than a kite. It's led by Brad McQuaid and his team is mostly a group of fundamentalist christians who have as much to do with mmo design as I do. But they tell good bible stories!

After the complete and utter disaster than was Vanguard, both as a game but also how he treated his employees, why would anyone ever possibly believe this guys lies again?


After what Brad did to the staff of Vanguard...seriously screw Brad "we cant use the word demon in our fantasy game because it offends my christian sensibilities" mcquaid.

Im loving Black Desert
 
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