With respect to EQ Next generally I believe the following will be revealed at SOE Live. This is not my ideal game, it is the game I think they're making based on the various hints.

• Player creation tools by end of the year (as noted)
• Think Project Spark with an emphasis on general MMORPG design. Not Foundry (dungeons only, IIRC)
• Players will be able to create dungeons, quest chains, and outdoor areas (areas that connect to major zones).

Like PlayerStudio, this will be a for-profit enterprise. Player-Creators will submit their projects to SOE. SOE will quality control them, rejecting 95% to 99%, and putting the ones that pass QC up for sale for station cash. Older projects will eventually become free, but people willing to pay will get newer content sooner. There will be sometype of Gold Sub where you automatically get a bunch of new projects for the sub price every month. In addition to quests and the usual player studio stuff (new sword art, dishes, etc) artists will also be able to submit buildings or parts of buildings (e.g. Castles).


For the game generally - EVE with an EQ twist and a little bit of theme.

• EVE-like Megaservers with maybe 200 to 250,000 folks per server. Huge land masses for player housing and player content development.
• EVE-like Empire Space "safe" area. Freeport, Qeynos, various non-human cities, etc.
• EVE-like Security system where you can PvP anywhere, but killing in safe areas results in outlaw status. EVE-like multiple levels of security. Qenyos might have max security (I think it's 5.0 in EVE) maximum number of patrols, likelihood of being caught, Freeport might be 4.0 (Sewers 2.0), Places like the Karanas might be 1.0 - few patrols.
• EVE like null-space, large free-for all areas on the varous continents where players can establish kingdomes
• Mix of instanced and non-instanced content. Generally the better gear is coming from the non-instanced content, but there will be instanced content for one-off quests, class quests and the like. Also certain very high-population areas will have public instances (such as newbie areas and the largest towns).
• Complex Housing system allowing for the creation of playertowns in 0.0 Security areas, and establishing your own patrols.

It won't be completely sandbox - in addition to player-made quests:

• There will be newbie quests to run you around - with either a "?" or glowing halo over the newbie quest givers (SOE has to provide someway for people who only played WoW to get playing EQ. EQ players will put up with "?" for newbie quest givers, people who only played WoW are unlikely to put with arriving in a world and having no clue what to do)
• Class quests
• SOE story quests - a middling to fair amount of these often linked to former EQ power items to power up EQ nostalgia. E.g. Manastone Shard might be the result of a long series of quests. Ditto with JBoots. As noted, where the item was removed from game, some low power version with a similiar name will show up in EQN (WOTC did the same thing with lotus petals...).

There won't be
• Quest hubs (beyond the newbie area)

There will also probably be:

• Slow travel (non-POK books) except for the usual suspects. But there will be some cop-out option starting in late beta (like a once per day teleport or somesuch) to "play with friends" after people flip out and ***** endlessly on the forums.
• Flying mounts (Station Cash, Station Cash, Station Cash)
• VG like Crafting
• Something similiar to, yet entirely unlike, VG Diplomacy (e.g. faction manipulation as a seperate game aspect from adventuring but not with a card mini-game or if it is a card mini-game it is a completely different kind of card mini-game)