The Glade 4.0

I always enjoyed doing this too... Much more than 'raiding'...

My advice: Keep your expectations and hopes low. This way there is a stronger chance that you'll be surprised and impressed, rather than disappointed. There is little-to-no chance that any game henceforth will ever bring back the wonderment and excitement of your first MMO.

The gaming industry has changed but, most importantly, we the players have changed. Along with the fact that you can never have another "first time."

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

A lot of people have been vocal and worried about the lack of a holy trinity in this game. A Storybricks (EQN's AI system) dev had this comment to make:

Then I used to find stuff to camp for Rivermist too, we spent a lot of time just the two of us in remote corners of Norrath, Velious, Kunark, and later the Planes. This is probably why I won't be in EQNext, I can't replicate that experience.

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I dunno. I know a lot of people that play tanks that have zero interest in a game without the trinity. They hate playing DPS(I've been finding myself in that same category more and more lately, actually. The hating DPS part. And games that have tried it are pretty **** horrible. Like GW2) and feel they personally don't have a place in EQN. Plus, I've started playing Everquest again and it's pretty much universally hated by the Everquest community that still play in game. They feel SOE isn't making a game for Everquest fans...which is true, they are trying to appeal to as many people as they possibly can(which is a smart business move and the Everquest community has gotten pretty small so catering to them might not be the best plan as long as they continue expanding the original game). Most are worried that if EQN fails, SOE goes with it and the game they love will finally be gone. Which, if the game does fail, will totally happen. Funny that the only thing that has the power to Kill Everquest is a new Everquest game failing. I don't think EQN will fail(it's likely not going to be as huge as some people think it will be), but the perspective of the 14 year Everquest vets is interesting to say the least.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I am also a 14 year Everquest vet but some of us realize that you can't have mechanics from that era and be competitive today. People don't want EQ reskinned, they want a new game.

Also, these comparisons to GW 2 need to stop... Anyone that has played GW2 and has actually taken the time to read up on EQN should immediately be able to see the differences. Just because they have a similarity in that weapon sets determine some of your abilities, that's where it stops.

Making the game that current EQ players "want" is the only sure-fire way to kill SOE.

When I say 14 year vet, I mean people that have actually never let their sub drop. Ever. Those that continue to play and have played ever since the game was released. There are surprisingly a lot of them.



This isn't true for people that still play Everquest. And I would have preferred something closer to this to what we are getting. I don't want a direct copy with better graphics, of course. But I want the soul of the game to be intact. It simply isn't with what they are doing.



From what I've seen and read about EQN, it is a hybrid of Neverwinter and GW2 with destructible environments. Maybe, when they actually have some real gameplay to show with UI and this fabled enemy AI, I might change my mind. Until then, EQN is a Neverwinter/GW2 hybrid where you can break stuff.

I honestly don't think SOE can deliver on all of these promises. Every time I hear them talk about it, all I can think of is Peter Molyneux and Fable.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

The 200k people still playing EverQuest are not a concern to SOE, sorry that stings but it's the truth. They want the millions of people that play Minecraft and LOL.

I don't know why people don't believe SOE when they talk about the enemy AI and logic. There was a working demo of the storybricks system years ago. I'm sure it's way more advanced today.



I think that by getting rid of the rat race to end game, that's exactly what they're doing. They're forcing us to focus more on community and exploration, which is what the original EQ was all about. Do you want current-day EQ playstyle, where people pull entire zones and mow them down in a few casts to get massive exp/aa? Or do you want mercs so you can AFK somewhere and "progress"?

Be honest with yourself. The holy trinity is BORING.

While you are right about exploration and community being at the heart of Everquest, so was end game raiding and camping dungeons for loot. Those two things aren't going to be present in EQN. At least not in any meaningful capacity. Also, have you played any MMOs lately? The MMO community, as a whole, sucks big fat dicks. EQN isn't going to fix that. The Everquest community, before MMOs exploded in popularity with WoW, was a good bunch with some assholes, but everyone was generally helpful or at least not antagonistic(except for rogues and monks. I will always hate people that play these classes in games because of how awful those communities were back in the day). WoW's popularity ruined all of that. Now you have to have the best build, the right gear and achievements to do anything with a public group. Even if you have that, you are forced out of public channels if you don't want to put up with anal spam or other stupid 4chan ****. You can always find a group that suits your style, but those people aren't always going to be around when you want to play and you'll eventually have to deal with that shitty public or not play.



I guess I'm just getting older and I'm not really part of the generation they are aiming at. But I **** hate those people. So much. They are right there with the Call of Duty/console kiddy crowd. Well, not so much the Minecraft people. Those guys are alright. But that is what EQNL is for, not the actual game.

Finally, I like the holy trinity because it gives the game structure. It allows you to focus on a single role to get as good at it as you possibly can and lets you know what you can and cannot do. EQN method of allowing you to be anything anytime just...removes and uniqueness that class based games have. You shouldn't be able to do anything and everything with a single character. I can guarantee you that there will be a mechanically superior builds and people will ridicule you and refuse to group with you if you don't conform to them. It goes back to what I said about communities before. You don't have to group or interact with those people, but if you want to get things done, it will be a lot more difficult than it should be otherwise. Because you can't balance a game with 40+ classes unless all of the abilities are basically the same with different names and then why have classes at all?

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

This goes against pretty much everything the developers have said. Loot is going to be a huge draw (because it goes hand-in-hand with class builds), dungeons are in-game and mostly non-instanced, and there are definitely going to be end game raids. Camping is going to be gone, though, for sure.

They said crafted gear would be as good as dropped gear. So unless I need materials dropped from raid encounters to craft that gear, there will be zero reason to run raids or do dungeons for loot.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Crazy idea: maybe raiding isn't going to focus on loot gains. They also said that crafted gear would "mostly rival" dropped gear. That doesn't mean that dropped gear wouldn't have an advantage, or unique effects of some kind. Like the difference between 10M & 25M raid rewards in WoW.

Article explaining the new deity structure of EQN: http://www.eqnextfans.com/news/25360-am ... quest-next

Unrelated, answer about weapons:

If you are able to do everything by yourself, there's no reason to group with other players. That's why I never cared about WoW or got interested to the extent that I delved into EQ. There's no need for a tank because you can just plow stuff down before it kills you, and there's no need for combat healing because the fight is over before you run out of hit points. You just eat bread to refill your hit points after the fight. This is the dynamic for 90% of game content. Occasionally you do something that requires other people to finish a quest, and then you don't see those **** again. The massively multiplayer aspect of the game is limited to PvP and supporting the auction house where you can purchase ph4t l3wt.

You might be able to make a successful game out of that, but as has been pointed out, the soul of EQ is not there. It's missing what captivated us in the first place.

Comments about the holy trinity shows a deep flaw in one's understanding of EQ and how it worked. I'm not sure any more how many of you played in a top tier guild during your stint in EQ. The vast majority of Glade rangers did not. I did. High end encounters featured a great deal more variety than simple tank and spank while the cleric corps heals. By Planes of Power, it had become sort of a "thing" that other hurdles would arise besides the tank keeping aggro. In fact, that's precisely what made many encounters difficult for the mid tier guilds and stymied their progress.

This is exacerbated by the fact that even in the top tier guilds, most players were cogs in the machine. They were not the individuals called upon to execute whatever tricks were required to win. I was. Despite the fact that I was one of our leading damage dealers, there were many encounters where I didn't chart above the knights, if I appeared on damage meters at all, because I was one of the guys who knew how to "do that thing" that let us win. If my crew and I were doing our jobs right, and we were, everyone else thought it was a simple tank and spank.

The big problem with discussing the holy trinity is what, exactly, constitutes the holy trinity? Was it warrior, cleric, rogue? Well that only worked in EQ if you could pull singles. How about warrior, cleric, enchanter? That doesn't have the damage output to keep a good pace. What you're actually starting to settle on is a holy quartet, and that's not really a bad thing for a game focused on grouping. Especially because, contrary to popular belief, you had several classes that could tank, several classes that could heal, several classes that could deal damage, and so on.

What current games don't seem to understand is the appeal of playing a support class. For instance, WoW has made a focused effort to remove support roles. Tigole had a huge hate-on for enchanters and any form of crowd control, and he made damn sure to make all of the crowd control abilities as restricted and useless as he could get away with. Games that follow have gone further, such as GW2 attempting to remove healers. They're appealing to Talya's desire to be a one-woman wrecking crew. That's fine, there's a place for that, but it's not in the massively multiplayer arena.

I mean, I could play with Talya while she runs around beating everything in the face, but that's not a whole lot of fun for me. She doesn't really need me there, either. I'm just soaking up experience and loot that she would get by herself. Now, I'm probably just as capable of slaughtering everything in sight, so we're both basically **** off and doing our own thing. Why are we playing together?

The only issues EQ really had were that healers weren't terribly exciting to play, and support classes were either completely necessary or totally superfluous depending on the encounter. Complaints about the holy trinity are really just players ***** and moaning about not being able to do everything alone, and needing other players with a different set of abilities. Well if you want to do everything by yourself, go play Skyrim. Massively multiplayer games just aren't for you.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

See, I don't think that answer about weapons is entirely right, Lenas; it was my take-away that a given weapon category has the same skills, regardless of which class (that has access to the weapon) is using it.

So assassin and rogue both get backstab because backstab is a dagger thing, not because it's both an assassin and a rogue thing.

That suggests there are 4 x N weapon abilities, where N is the number of weapon categories they have.

Edit: Digging the new pantheon, for the most part.

I'm a little dubious about having two fire gods; I think moving Solusek (or tapping Fennin, instead) to the Four and using somebody else in the Seraphs as just possessing the domain of knowledge (or knowledge + not-an-element) would have been preferable, to me, at least.

Likewise, I'm not sure why Xegony was arbitrarily replaced. I mean, I can kind of see why the Rathe and the Triumvirate were replaced, as they wanted straight-up elemental gods rather than councils of gods for some elements. I'm kind of sad to see the anagrams go for them, though -- I wouldn't have minded if they made one god each called Rathe and Tarew.

It is kind of exciting, though, to think that they're setting the game in the Age of Heroes, and that we might see crazy things like familiar dieties out there as mortals who are destined to (maybe? Rallying Calls, yo!) ascend to replace or overthrow fallen gods and whatnot.

Anyways, I really like adding travellers to Karana's domain, and despite having played 58 levels of a Tunare ranger, I'm not shedding any tears for her absence.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Since there are no levels, players never reach that god-level status. If a mob or raid is designed for X amount of players, it is going to take that many players, maybe a few less if their character is many tiers above it.

I do not think it's going to be possible to solo past maybe T2 content, at least not in the fashion that you're imaging.

All of that mindless slaughtering you're talking about only happens during the exp grind. Well, what happens when you remove exp? You have to create more engaging and dynamic reasons for grouping people together, and you have to force them to rely on one another.

I'm pretty close to a consistent 14 year vet.

Last I checked, I had 11 years of Vet Rewards on my account, and that's not counting the time I've spent playing on EQMac since.

I also was a top-tier progression raider for about a year, until I didn't have the time anymore.

I'm not seeing the same things as the heart-and-soul of Everquest that you apparently are.

To me, the heart and soul of EQ was (as has been mentioned) community and exploration.

You didn't find maps with everything marked on them, you didn't see exclamation points over heads. You went around the world and talked to NPCs and clicked on things and found interesting locations and stuff.

You build a community because while possible, soloing was hard. Really hard. And not very rewarding. Which meant you grouped, and raided.

Giving players the chance to multi-class to fill a needed roll, with a good bit of exploration, luck and effort doesn't take away role distinctions. It just makes it possible to fill them in different ways.

Take "soft" tanks in EQ1- Rangers, Monks, Zerkers. You weren't "meant" to tank, and tanking cutting edge gear was hard, but if you did your defensive AAs, augged for armor, and used a shield, you were pretty good.

Similarly, there was creative gameplay- crowd control, kiting, rooting. And from what I see of EQN, that's encouraged. Even more encouraged by being able to use the environment (blowing up bridges, making holes, etc.

I really, really hate how every time there's something similar to another MMO, the "oh, it's going to be just like XX because of XXX comes out.

Some things in EQ1 needed updating and changing, and could have been made better. That doesn't mean EQN is going to be a clone of "insert other modern MMO here".

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I really just want some permanent character definition in abilities. I want my guy to be valuable to the group for different reasons than your guy. I want role and ability-based partitioning of the community -- we made a fantastic community built around being a definable subset of the EverQuest Community at large, with its own tips and tricks and strategies to share; I don't want that kind of opportunity to be lost.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

From my reading, your guy will be valuable as an individual.

But not just from what class you choose at the selection screen, but from the decisions you've made and how you've grown that character on the way.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I'm not sure I buy this, though. The decisions I've made as a character are more about content gating/unlocking, than his abilities. I suppose that technically, some of that content gating will be class availability, but do you think that choice X will gate entire roles or methods of play? I don't -- choice X is far more likely to gate one approach to role X while unlocking another approach -- heals vs. lifetaps, perhaps.

More to the point, though, because choices will be gating content, the group of people I find myself adventuring with will likely be a group that has, in broad strokes, at least, made very similar choices when it comes to the major stuff. If our group is probing the depths of an abandoned shrine of Veeshan in Kunark, pillaging and looting it, we will not be dracomancers trained by her own clergy. Thus, I expect to have the majority of the gated ability content in my personal arsenal, as it were, in common with my group members at any given time.

I suppose I could be wrong, but the design approach, attitude towards class and role dependencies, and mottoes in the stuff they've released hasn't lead me to expect it.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Are the decisions you make permanent?

If your guy can fulfill the role your character plays in any given encounter just by moving a few icons around on their skill tree, it still (potentially) eliminates the need for 'my' guy in your group.

Ultimately it makes your character more useful, but it still diminishes the need for community in the way Kaffis is describing.

The EQ class communities were unique in a way that will likely never exist again. It wasn't a very alt-friendly game, because leveling and gearing were so time consuming. When your guild needed certain classes for a raid, they had to recruit those people.

Newer games are so alt-friendly (i.e. easy to play), that if a given class is needed for a raid, someone will just log an alt for that role.

There are pros and cons to both ways of doing things. As much as I loved the class based communities (and loyalties) that EQ had, I honestly could never stick with a game like that again.

EQs community and class/guild/server loyalties were largely a product of how hardcore (I hate that word) the game was.

Playing SWTOR, with 14+ level 55's now, I chuckle every time I see someone complaining about how hard it is to level in that game.

14? Wow. I say "Wow." not because it's hard, but because I can't fathom not getting so utterly bored in the process... even with double xp weekends and cash shop boosts, that's still a lot of repeat planetary questing, isn't it?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Everquest was Everquest. Everquest ceased to be Everquest somewhere around Planes of Power. It may have gotten back to being Everquest, but I'm not sure about that. Everquest 2 did some things amazingly well until it ceased to do those things; in fact, I quit playing entirely when they made classes instead of Roles, Archetypes, and Specializations.

Everquest Next wants to do exciting things, but all I see is a different kind of grind; and I see a grind more open to abuse and community regulation. The game will have a Golden Path in some form or another, and the hardcore PvE people will enforce it.

The reason MMOs don't have communities anymore is not design flaws; it's because MMO communities are a proven toxic substance.

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The Holy Trinity these days tends to mean "tank, healer, DPS" and most people think of it in terms of WoW, not EQ.

The trinity is only a problem when it becomes "holy".

In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with having those as major roles that characters fulfill. They make a framework that can be used to design classes, or to make a character around if there aren't specific classes.

There are, however, 2 problems with the trinity

1: It precludes a 4th role, generally speaking support classes like Enchanters used to be. This one wouldn't be that big a problem, just add them! Unfortunately, the MMO crowd is so addicted to duplicating the same "holy trinity - optimize everything with MS excel - pretend to be 'competitively' raiding to the top" model and freaks out that the same model that lets them beat all the leveling content in 4 days of nonstop gaming at release so they can complain there's not enough raid content freaks out at the idea that it might be necessary to play something besides a tank, healer, or DPS.

2: It tends to promote "holiness" because those same people go out and figure out the "ideal" class to use, and the ideal way to configure that class, and then insist on inspecting everyone and ***** if they don't conform to the ideal - never mind that the calculated "ideal' is based on tank-and-spank encounters that were getting old as a theme 10 years ago. Even if these people understand in practice that they need to use various configurations for various encounters, on the internet it always comes down to oversimplification, plus panic-y screaming that creates the impression of a "community" that demands the same hidebound roles that can be optmized to 8 decimel places and that anything else won't work because ZOMG GW@ or something. (Forget EVE. EVE doesn't exist. It is The Game That Shall Not Be Named, partly because the roles HAVE to be different when its about spaceships shooting railguns at each other, and partly because EVE will rip your intestines out right through your monitor. but I digress...)

What's needed is for game designers to be willing to depart from convention. The same concept can only be used so much. WoW keeps going partly because people keep going back to WoW because if you're going to play WoW, you may as well play WoW and not WoW disguised as something else that you need to buy a new computer to run anyhow.

What's also needed is roles for hybrids. Jacks-of-all-trades should be useful, but not "I do everything myself" killing machines. EQ had one - the bard. Sure the bard could solo like a **** with a good connection, but he couldn't type at the same time. The druid could as well, but they weren't as desirable for healing as clerics.. but then again, they could get you to the dungeon quick. Rangers.. we all know about Rangers. We could tank, sometimes, we could DPS.. and we could root park and we could pull. Balance issues aside, each class had a role, and some of those roles were made by meshing aspects of more than one of the "trinity" roles.

Today's crowd freaks at the idea that a hybrid can work; in their eyes its either suboptimal or it obviates the need for "pure" classes. Everyone thinks "hybrid" means "does everything themselves" or means "GW2" which has become a dirty word.

Take the argument that it "gives the game structure". Yes, it does that. The problem is that advocates for a holy trinity want it to do more than give structure; they want it to force one "right" way of doing everything on everyone where you do one of three roles and if you make any choice that is not the "best" way of doing that then you're a moron and can be treated like total ****.

There's nothing wrong with having room for classes like the EQ warrior, that basically did nothing but tank, but they can't edge out the SK or the Paladin with their versatility. Every build can't be equally good, mechanically, but there should not be any one clear "best" build, and some "not so good" builds" should have clear situational advantages.

Force the players away from the spreadsheets. Break the theoretical ideal.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Everyone in EQN will be a hybrid. They say that one single class is completely viable, but I don't think that people will actually be able to stop themselves from multiclassing. I know I wont be able to. I can think of like 10+ different ranger builds alone. Not to mention other classes with ranger abilities.