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EverQuest Sequel Gives Voice To NPCs, Original Turns Five

Posted by simoniker on from the crack-is-back dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for its feature discussing plans to give full-audio speech to non-player characters in PC MMORPG sequel EverQuest II. The article points out this is "a first for online role-playing games, which have previously only featured silent characters that interact with players by sending them text chat messages", and elsewhere, a Grimwell Online article mentions a new PC Gamer magazine article specifying "an expected 130 hours of speech across 70,000 lines of dialogue", and revealing that "EQ2 is a $25 million dollar project." This new information comes as EverQuest celebrates its fifth anniversary with a multitude of developer interviews on the official site, as well as the re-activation of all old accounts until April 15th.

3 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shhyeahhh... Rrrrright.... by EvilDonut · · Score: 3, Informative

    The GameSpot article linked in the story was posted yesterday, not april 1st.

  2. *bzzzt* wrong by Kaashar · · Score: 5, Informative

    a first for online role-playing games, which have previously only featured silent characters that interact with players by sending them text chat messages" Excellent research there bosco, unfortunately it's wrong. Earth and Beyond had many NPC characters that spoke to players. The only problem was with a MMOG bringing the voice actors back in every few months to re-do changing lines gets expensive.

  3. Actually this isn't a joke by Tarindel · · Score: 2, Informative

    The was announced yesterday, and there's a movie at Gamespot

    You'll have to be a member (free membership) to get it there, but it's mirrored at other places around the web, including a few fan sites (such as EQii.com).

    I watched it yesterday -- it's quite excellent.