"EverQuest II" to debut in 2003

Parsa writes "This story at Cnet says; A new version of the popular computer game "EverQuest" will make its debut late next year, Sony Online Entertainment said Thursday. Sony Online Entertainment says the next version of the popular computer game will feature a new 3D engine and a tradesman class for "nonconfrontational" character advancement. "

Comments

Why drag your own subscribers away?

[MonkeyBot]

Ultima Online was thinking about having a sequel, but then they decided to focus on their current project instead of developing a whole new system to troubleshoot and work through. That makes sense. I wonder what Everquest's rationale for drawing development away for another project is? Why not focus on the current project instead?

Oh, yay.

[rlangis]

Yeah, well if it's the same game with new graphic models and classes - sorry, they already tried that with SOL. And again, they're SOL if they think I'm going to buy it.

At the very least, I hope they make a different world. Traipsing about Norrath for 2 years was enough for me. Back on good old post-Arthurian Earth for me, thankyouverymuch.

Has anyone else noticed that the recent changes in EQ1 basically make it DAoC v0.75? If all Verant/Sony has to go on is another game's success, why are they even bothering?

Isn't EQ already too "nonconfrontational"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally the reason why I haven't taken an interest (well besides the fact that I'd prefer a OS X version) is because it's already so nonconfrontational. You don't kill other players, you can't even take dead people's stuff. It's like the extra-padded, no sharp edges preschool version of a fantasy game. Now
"nonconfrontational development" - if I wanted that I'd read a book or go get some exercise.
Pretty soon they'll get rid of NPC bad guys and replace them with loveable teletubby-like creatures. Fuckin' A.

OK, lets rant

[EvilBastard]

Like Blizzard and Diablo, pretty much the entire original design team of the game has already left, and this version will be designed and balanced by the people that did such an excellent job on the last two expansions.

Background : The newest expansion was released in December last year. The two big selling points, the special Trade Zone, and the new user interface *still* haven't been added to the game after 5 months, yet they have already announced the next expansion due this December, along with EQ2, EQ for Playstation and the special $40/month "Legends" servers.

The entire live development team was layed off, leaving zones from the expansion before that one still screwed up - the "Plane of Mischief" and "Sleepers Tomb" which have been written off by Verant and won't have any further resources devoted to them, despite long and detailed archives of what is wrong with then

Apart from the Interface and the Bazaar zone, high end guilds are finding that the content in this game is designed for you to spend 2 months equipping 80+ members of your guild with special weapons so you can attack one mob to get one item, which you then use to spend 2 months getting 10 more components to get a key so you can enter the *NEXT* zone, where the cycle will begin again.

Meanwhile, the people who wrote EQ1 have formed their own company and are busy hiring all the talent from Verant, who never signed non-compete clauses.

So Verant is left with under-talented artists who (due to contracts sorted out at the peak of their success) are on $80,000 - $120,000 /year to produce third rate high-poly models that bog down the highest end system any time you get more then 5 of them on the screen.

Meanwhile, their design team is designing encounters that need *70 to 90* people to work in precise co-ordination for 30 minutes, and then act suprised when people start complaining.

To top all this off, they announced that any existing customer from EQ1 who wants to join EQ2 will have to start all over from scratch, and the end result of this is a widespread "Well, when EQ2 comes out, I guess I can finally quit and get this damn monkey off my back"

The sad thing is, they'll probably still sell about 200,000 copies.

Re:Something I'd find innovative

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe change it to something like 'a months worth of play time'...

instead of play for a month.. you play a months worth of time...

there are days... weeks even.. when I dont play on EQ... although every once and a while I go through a 1 week spaz with eq... I dont think paying 10 bucks a month is really worth the 1 week a month I actually play...

maybe make it so that if I login today.. and play or any amount of time... 5 mins to the end of the day... it costs me a days worth of my bought time...

if I dont play again for a month.. but play for a week... then subtract a week from that time... etc etc

I see this as fair... heck I would even pay a few bucks EXTRA (something like 2-3 bucks.. dont even kid me with the huge amount they are charging for their legends service)

this would make people like me al ot more willing to pay for an account. I am sure a lot of people have the same play cycle as I do.. but avoid playing all together because they do not play enough.

Re:Let me get this right...

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

On the old MUD I used to play on EOTL, We had a Pacifists guild. They had their "kill" command revoked. They could duplicate flyers and pass them out for experience... if they were in a room with combat, they could also hold protest "sit-in"s to gain experience. The more pacifists sitting in, the more experience everyone got. They eventually got powers such as halting combat and various other interesting things. Their guild base was a coffee shop.

You can get creative with these things. It shouldn't all be hack and slash! Think of it: Prostitute class. Some people are having net sex anyway, might as well get experience for it! You'd have to deal with VD and stuff. It would be great.

-DG