Everquest Next Details

[liquest]

• There are no levels in EverQuest Next. Progression is based on tiers and horizontal gameplay. There are 40 classes to “obtain,” and each is advanced individually once obtained.
  
• Player stats are called attributes. Equipment will not provide attributes. Additional attributes will be extremely rare and will require tremendous effort to modify. All attributes will have impactful meaning for all classes.
  
• Discovering new classes will occur at varying rates and occur through quest type events and may be restricted by player behavior and the impact of emergent AI.
  
• Armor (and the ability to craft intricate armor components) will be a major form of character customization, and many custom items will be recognizable on sight.
  
• The ability hotbar will have a maximum of 4 weapon skills and 4 class skills at any given time.
  
• Each class comes with 4 class specific skills.
  
• Crafting skill will not be advanced by repeatedly making the same item over and over.
  
• Crafting components remain useful based on their properties, not on a crafting level.
  
• Rallying Calls (public quests) will be ongoing until players on a specific server complete each stage.
  
• Player housing will be in game, but no details are available yet.
  
• There are at least 6 starting races: High Elf, Dark Elf, Human, Kerra, Dwarf and Ogre – there will be more, but as of yet unannounced.
  
• Old school style mage pets are in EverQuest Next
  
• Gear system provides 5 visual slots (chest, back, etc.), but each slot is made up of individual components that may also be swapped out.
  
• Homage will be paid to the EverQuest franchise through locations, armor – an example used was the Flowing Black Robe.
  
• Families of armor can alter your look – not just cloaks, but quivers, etc.
  
• Exploration will yield a variety of useful items: i.e. resources, recipes, collections, etc.
  
• Storylines will be important, the world will evolve, its occupants will be relatable. In short, “everything matters.”
  
• Parts of the environment that are destroyed will be regenerated over time, the speed of which will be determined by population and the extent of the damage done.
  
• Gravity will be deadly – every action has a consequence, the same with unsafe travel.
  
• The world is vast; travel will require a time investment and a money investment.

[brclements87@gmail.com]

so its world of war craft... mixxed with d3

[Kingly_Krab]

Yes, exactly, and Disney thrown in there.

[jsr]

This is probably the first time since UO released that I'm thinking a game changer might be on the horizon. I hope they can deliver on their vision.

Either way this will probably be a basket case on release

[liquest]

I feel like this could be the game that makes it all or breaks it all. All depending on how the execute this game it could completely ruin WoW. All of these things putting into the game is all high tech compared to everything out now.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by liquest

All depending on how the execute this game it could completely ruin WoW.

This has been said so many times before, I lost count

There was time when I desperately wanted WoW to fail cause WoW was indirectly responsible to killing EQ1 and my guild.
But eventually I realized that it doesn't matter. Until SOE remains SOE they cannot beat Blizzard.
It will take a new, non-profit driven (at least not at SOE corporate level) game-company to create a REVOLUTIONARY product.
Until them, any other MMO out there is just another EQ/WoW hybrid clone.

[trevius]

Originally Posted by brclements87@gmail.com

so its world of war craft... mixxed with d3

Originally Posted by Kingly_Krab

Yes, exactly, and Disney thrown in there.

Don't forget that Minecraft is mixed in there as well!

Seriously though, I do think they have potential to make the first true Next-Gen game since MMOs were first created. I definitely have my doubts on whether they will be able to pull it off or not, but I try to think positive. I bet even the haters have all signed up for beta, and if you haven't yet, you are potentially missing out on something revolutionary.

When I watched the debut for EQNext, I thought that its destructible world system looked extremely similar to an amazing terrain engine I have been keeping an eye on named Voxel Farm. As it turns out, that is because the SOE Forgelight Engine is built on top of the Voxel Farm engine!

http://voxelfarm.com/vfweb/index.html

The Creator of Voxel Farm, Miguel Cepero, wrote about it in his blog here:
http://voxelfarm.com/vfweb/blog.html
(Note that his blog page has a kinda annoying default view, but you can click the Classic or Sidebar view on the top bar to see the list of blogs better.)

Miguel's work is amazing and has been done by him on his own over the past several years. You can check out the videos on his engine to see exactly what it is capable of here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/MCeperoG

Basically one of SOE's "Grails" for EQNext was completely developed by Miguel, and SOE has redone the graphics and adjusted it to make it look the way they want. I was really impressed thinking SOE duplicated Miguel's work so well until I found out that they just licensed it heh. Still, Miguel seems really impressed with what SOE has done with it so far in a short time, and from reading his blogs, he sounds like he would be tough to impress like that.

The Voxel Farm engine is capable of so much more than what they have shown in the EQNext videos. If you watch the monthly progress videos he has been posting, you can see a lot of cool features SOE didn't show, but that may end up in the game.

Either way, I am eager to try out EQNext: Landmark, if only to play around with a version of the amazing Voxel Farm engine

They have the money, tools, technology and resources to make an amazing game. Now, if they only got the creative freedom that will most likely be required to make a game like this fun.