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Everquest Coming To the PS2

Posted by Hemos on from the can-i-fight-as-a-bear dept.

Boone^ writes "CNET's News.com is reporting that Sony is launching their online network with a bang as the most addictive, non-narcotic drug to ever grace a computer screen will now come to you in full NTSC quality courtesy of the PS2. Currently the release date for both the online network and "EverQuest Online Adventure" are TBA." The article points out part of the reason for introduction will be to drive sales of the Ps2 ethernet adaptor. Now, I haven't played since the Kunark expansion, but I'm hoping this version takes advantage of the Ps2's graphic capabilites, rather then what I've seen on EQ before.

3 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Synchronization. by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 2, Informative

    Surely it all depends on what the client side does? If all you end up doing is sending character data, co-ordinates etc why should it be particularily difficult?

    The way real-time game synchronization usually works is to take advantage of the fact that copies of the game on identical platforms will behave exactly the same way, given identical input. This lets you only transmit a very small number of state changes between machines in a multi-player game, with the automatic update of the rest of the world keeping most things in sync.

    This starts to break down when you have platforms that handle math substantially differently (x86 and MIPS, in this case). Your world-update calculations will produce slightly different results, which will evolve into very large changes if you don't send corrective information every so often.

    You can build a game to be resistant to this kind of drift, and to correct this kind of drift, but the usual result is that you have to send considerably more data during updates, with the game possibly becoming more sensitive to latency as well.

    1. Re:Synchronization. by jgerman · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heh I'd have modded you up if you put the link to that documentary, /.'s search engine blows sometimes ;)

      --
      I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
  2. Some facts by ajs · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. This is not EverQuest as you may know it. This world will not overlap with standard EverQuest. There will be a limited race/class selection, and the world will not require zoning. You will also not get to interact with the rest of the EverQuest player base
    2. EverQuest in its current form has much improved graphics over what you're used to from the days of Kunark (which was release something like 2 years ago).
    3. If you haven't tried EQ since Kunark, you're missing much more than just graphics. There's a new playable class (Beastlord), a new race (Vah Shir: the cat people), post-60 advancement, new types of quests and scripted events (zone-wide wars, ring quests/scripts), chat channels (user created), and many more nifty features that older EQ players may want to come back and try out.
    If you decide to come back, come look me up. I'm on 7th Hammer, and play Miskaton or Deepone.