Everquest Next – after watching the full reveal

Today i watched the full reveal presentation of Everquest, so i am able to share some new opinions. Of course, the professional bloggers i linked to yesterday did a very good job of summarizing what’s been shown to their readers. I’d like to take what Dave Georgeson called the four holy grails of EQ Next.

Changing the core game: In this part, Georgeson talked about the EQ Next Multiclass system where every class has different abilities with each weapon (we know that 4 abilities are determined by the weapon you choose) and choice of class skills (the other 4 abilities in your build). It seems they wanted a change from playing Dungeons and Dragons with levelups, skilltrees and so on to a new, broader way of being able to multiclass and finding classes and skills in the world.

There is really not much new to that- we have that, as Bhagpuss wrote on Inventory Full, we have this weapon/multiclass system in TSW, GW2 and Rift to some extent, the skill collection was a part of Guild Wars 1 many players enjoyed. I mean, sure, why not build up on something not-so-new-but-rare and make it work better? Not saying this is a bad thing, i like it actually.

What i don’t like so much is the low counts of usable abilities right now. Four are used by your weapon, another four are free to build. I assume there’ll be passive abilities, as well, and i sure hope they are designed more alike to TSW than to GW2.

Destructibility: The voxel thing. So battles leave their marks on the environment- and the environment “heals” with time. That’s a nice gimmick which makes its way up to a nice feature when combined with the procedurally generated underworld. I like to sway around while playing- just now i only wanted to kill 10 rats, when i pounded one of them through the floor of the basement they dwell in and happened on a underworldy dungeon. That’s a real nice feature for me. Also, the fights feel very much alive.

A life of consequence: Now, that’s cryptic. Here’s talk about the mob AI- that they’re armed with likes and dislikes and might move around under certain circumstances instead of spawning on the same spot every time.

I think that’s a double-edged sword here. First of all, this could be some kind of hyperbole. Like i wrote yesterday, Guild Wars 2 described a quite similar scenario, although they didn’t hide that these movements and changes are part of a scripted experience aka dynamic event. If every mob has these likes & dislikes and moves around, this could lead to some very dynamic events- and this time for real. If SOE is bold enough to make strong mobs move around, we could see the end of level zones (EQ Next doesn’t seem to have levels, but TSW doesn’t have them, either. Try going to Egypt after the tutorial.) and the return of something nice: danger. It would be nice to be surprised by a mob too strong for me and having to run away. The last time that happened to me and caught me by surprise was with Vanguards free-roaming elite mobs.

Permanent Change: What we have here is the public quest/living story thing. So there are these rallying calls where the players have to do something- for example build up a village. There are crafting tasks as well as fighting tasks to be performed. These rallying calls take up to several months of real time to finish by the playerbase and once a rallying call is finished, its results stay in the world.

I like that idea. Yes, it might be only a crossover of public quests and living story, but at least SOE seems to be willing to make the happening event (living story) have something to do with what’s done (public quest) instead of making people grind minigames.

However, i like the look of EQ Next- the stylized graphics look just fine and work better for me than, say, Vanguard’s and EQ2’s style- especially considering their character models.

Now, there’s just one question- where did they hide the sandbox? I’m sure what they presented could be one, but they didn’t make it clear where to find it. The combat looks nice, the world with its day/night cycle as well, and if they incorporate many choices in their permanent change and consequence- parts and really enable players to go where they want and stick to their preferred play-style it could work out well. But they didn’t make it clear, in my opinion. There’s just this one thing…

Everquest Next Landmark. I’ll just go ahead and summarize it as “Minecraft as a MMO” here, as i’m sure you read about it- if you didn’t, there’s a good article over at Massively.

Now, that’s a sandbox. Players are able to build what they want, there’s an added social layer, even guilds and there seems to be some kind of adventuring. But in essence, it seems to be the game for crafters.

All in all, i’m still looking forward to their intentions in regards to crafting and player-driven economy, and i still hold to the assumption that SOE got their hands on something great- but i still feel what we know is a little hollow. If we define “sandbox”- and we could define this term in one thousand ways- with the words “driven by player-to-player interactions”, then we still don’t know much about EQN being the big new shiny sandbox MMO.

EQ Next reveal

So, voxels. We now know something about Everquest Next. I’ll keep myself short on the reveals itself, there are features for your reading pleasure over at Massively, Rock Paper Shotgun, mmorpg.com and ZAM.

To summarize what i got from the reveals:

• Norrath, the world of Everquest Next, is voxel based. Quite like Minecraft, i hear. The thing is that this leads to destructible environment, caves you can explore/find and a changing world. It seems characters can start to dig anywhere they want and might find something underneath the surface of the world. Also, fights leave their mark in the world.
• Mobs will have some form of AI, they’ll function with a list of likes and dislikes and might for instance reposition themselves when their current spot strikes them as too risky.
• Questing will happen without exclamation marks, you happen to witness stuff in the world and choose to participate. There’ll also be public quests that last for months.
• Skill sets function quite like in Guild Wars 2: you get 4 abilities depending on your weapon and 4 abilities you can choose from a pool of abilities available to your classes.
• You can multiclass, but classes seem to have to be found in the world, as well.
• There are no levels, so you can play with your friends at any time
• Characters will be able to vault over obstacles, slide down inclines, or jump up and grab a ledge to pull up

So, that’s what i got from the reveal. First, let me mention that all these articles i linked above seem to have their roots in a presentation the authors saw at E3 earlier this year and yesterday an embargo was lifted so they could write up their impressions.

As far as the reveals go, i know they sound crazy and like a true innovation in MMORPGs, but i’m still cautious. If you recall my wants and needs for finding a new mmo home, here we have a feature list that concentrates on the world part, and it is done well. Norrath next seems to be a truly changing world and SOE seems to have found the RPG again. With EQ Next Landmark, which seems to be some kind of toolset for players to build stuff that might find its way in EQ Next, SOE seems to have the point of having something to return to, as well.

What’s missing for me, is something about crafting and trade. They didn’t say anything about that yet, and there are some clues one could follow allowing the assumption that crafting will be a solid experience in EQ Next (EQ2’s crafting is viewed as one of the better systems and there is a designer on board in EQN that changed EQ2’s system for the better), so i guess information on crafting and trade is still to come.

Here’s my main gripe, though: when you leave out the voxels, what’s revealed so far could just be Guild Wars 2 again. I’m not saying they are the same, but ArenaNet used almost the same descriptions for their game: changing world (“living story”), random encounters and “obvious” quests (dynamic events), mobs changing their behaviour as well as a living world.

There is something in all the information we got, something underlying everything, that makes me believe SOE. Maybe it’s that i think the message players have been sending for some years by now has reached SOE- MMORPG fans want better worlds instead of better games. Get the MMO-players instead of the “three month crowd” and you have a winner.

It seems to me SOE is aiming high, they seem to know that the time might be right for a new massive hit in the mmorpg space if you try to innovate and succeed in giving MMORPG players what they want- and judging by all we know, they might pull it off. Color me intrigued.

The first bit of Everquest Next from SOE live

…is it’s main theme presented yesterday and composed by Jeremy Soule.

While Belghast is a tad disappointed, i tend to agree with Syp– it sounds “everquesty” enough for me, although i’d have to confess i’ve not really followed the current Everquests and am not really a MMORPG-soundtrack enthusiast.