When I first started playing Everquest II over three years ago, it was with a large tinge of regret that I hadn’t been there from the beginning. Everquest II is my perfect game almost, until you get to the reasons why it isn’t (I’m glaring at you insurmountable, AA grind that I’m unwilling to devote my free time to and to ignore other things in my life for). As a game, Everquest II has amazing stories and collections, a never ending set of quests, tired of leveling in one zone? Then it is possible to hop on over to another zone and level.
Then last year at SOE they announced that the next Everquest game would be ready for unveiling and that SOE Live attendees would get to see the game first. Well, they broke that promise when they showed the game to select media outlets at E3 in Los Angeles in June of this year. Then those same journalists all turned around and awarded Everquest Next the game of the year at E3. Mind you, they couldn’t explain why but hey we were supposed to blindly take them at their word. My “trust” for these “news” outlets and blogs, and in these “journalists” evaporated instantly. I firmly believe that Sony bought and paid for those awards for game of the year.
Yesterday was the long awaited reveal of Everquest Next. I watched, heck so did my husband who took an extended lunch break to do so, and we were bitterly disappointed over all. Upfront I will tell you I wanted to fall in love with what was revealed yesterday, I wanted to be there at the beginning of the next game in the spectacular franchise that is Everquest, and most of all I wanted to see what amazing things had so impressed those so-called game journalists at E3 a month and a half ago.
Instead, what was revealed were some incredibly cool features with a lot of CRAP thrown in the blender and then poured into the Everquest universe. And the cherry on top of that blender of crap? There was no announcement of a target date for release or even beta. In essence, what we got was a “here’s what we’ve been working on the last six years please tell us how amazing we are” presentation.
First the good things I think Sony nailed correctly:
- Norrath isn’t just a surface world, but rather is a world of many layers all of which have a story to tell
- The weather and time effects were beautiful
- the few lands they showed were beautiful, especially Feerrot
- Facial expressions were nice
- World that changes based on actions taken in the game, especially important over time but may have long term consequence for new players entering the game
And now where I think Sony just looked around the industry and said “Oh that works, let’s do that!”:
- REINVENTING THE LORE: wait what? No just HELL NO
- limited skills: Guild Wars 1 (and in case you didn’t make the leap this means they will be able to bring the game to the PS4)
- change your weapon, change you skills: Guild Wars 2
- play the way you want to play concept: The Secret World
- Telegraphing moves (i.e. where the NPC weapon strike is going to hit): Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World
- cell shading art direction: every other damn high fantasy mmo on the market almost
- no quest hubs; dynamic, public, organic, or whatever the word of the day is for these type of events: Guild Wars 2
- Kerran art style: really? Thanks for giving us a Charr rip-off almost identical to the Charr in Guild Wars 2
- Dumbing down drastically what it means to play and understand an MMO
Those are just the first thing that pop into my head and onto the screen as I type this. Then came the announcement of Everquest Next: Landmark which is basically you the player being given the development kit to aid Sony in creating Everquest Next. Landmark will release in Winter 2013. Sounds cool doesn’t it?
And then you realize that you are being given a game to basically be Sony’s unpaid intern staff. Thanks, but no thanks. Want my talent to design, or the top most talented fifty designers out there waiting for a chance to show off what they can do while making a salary and receiving benefits? Then hire the staff needed to complete the damn game! Why not just say hey, we are too lazy to make it ourselves but you the players design whatever you want for lore, quests, building, etc. and we here at Sony will provide the tools, servers, and technical support to back it up? Oh wait, that’s basically what they said.
I don’t want an Everquest world where only the most popular choices make it into the final game. A Norrath where it is possible that Ratonga are not present? Oh did I forget to mention, that only the popular choices made by players in polls and such will make it into the final product of Everquest Next.
Overall, I’m so extremely disappointed in what was presented yesterday. I shouldn’t have been, Sony has already disappointed me twice already this year with Wizardry Online and Dragon’s Prophet. The only positive from the reveal was the announcement that there would be offline stories and that the first book was available for download, The Last Stand of the Teir’Dal by Michael Alexander Drake. I wish that Everquest and Everquest II were provided the same courtesy of e-books and/or real books to flesh out their stories, settings, characters, and lore.
I’m sure the whole team has worked very hard on the game, and will continue to do so, but there was nothing truly new, innovative, or ground breaking revealed yesterday. If I want to go play another cartoonish, high fantasy MMO then I’ll go back to World of Warcraft. At least Blizzard retains control of their game’s direction and doesn’t expect the players to build the world for them.
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