http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/18/soe-live-2012-keynote-announcements/

Discuss

It's going to be F2P right from the get go, 

But I bet if you want to play in the real sandbox you'll be able to sub.

I knew it. This announcement deserves the creation of a dedicated forum. All SWG/sandbox players rejoice.

Hopefully a AAA home is on the way.

Its SOE - i believe it when i see it!

http://eq2wire.com/2012/10/18/soe-live-2012-welcome-reception-live-refresh-for-updates/

“I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better that what had come before it. IT was slightly better. What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more Kill 10 Rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’r delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.

What I will commit to is, at the next Fan Faire, not only will you get to see it but you will get to touch it. Most of the EQNext devs are in this room. If you get them drunk enough they might tell you. They’re led by Dave Georgeson. Terry Michaels. Vets from EQ and EQ2. We are remaking Norrath unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but you’ll recognize it. I’m sorry we don’t have anything to show for it, but I wanted to be honest with you and tell you a little bit about it. Keep the faith.”

Originally posted by Thorqemada

Its SOE - i believe it when i see it!

And from my experience with $OE, I'm not pinning a lot of hope on seeing it done right.  It would be great if they do pull it off though.

Originally posted by Ripostethis
Not enough funding to make it a big theme park mmo like Everquest 2 was. Will be something like GW2 , sounds like it will suck and be boring if you are into PVE, but will be based on pvp.

Haha what? How did you reach this conclusion?

Not enough funding? SoE is one of the most successful MMO companies out there. They had the funds to develop Planetside 2's engine from scratch (and it is an AMAZING engine). And how will it be like sandbox? GW2 is the opposite of a sanbox.

And why does sandbox mean PvP? SWG was PvE oriented, as was Asheron's Call.

Christ.

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Originally posted by BruceYee
My question is: How much funding would they need to pull this off? and how long would it take?

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SOE has plenty of money. Not as long as a themepark MMO since the content doesnt need to be as huge as that of themepark. Plus they've been working on it for almost 2 years since they scratched the original work.

Originally posted by senadin

 

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Originally posted by BruceYee
My question is: How much funding would they need to pull this off? and how long would it take?

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SOE has plenty of money. Not as long as a themepark MMO since the content doesnt need to be as huge as that of themepark. Plus they've been working on it for almost 2 years since they scratched the original work.

Ty for the info.

I'd be happy with a game that has all of SWG features(pre CU/NGE) set in the EQ universe with updated graphics.

The thing is tho. If they really want to go the Sandbox route.... they should have tried to get Raph Koster back.

Also, if they gonna abbandon the Quest system, you can no longer really call it EverQuest in my opinion.

Why don't they look at TSW's design and improve on that.

It's not that people are done with questing. It's just that a lot of companies didn't put much effort in it (RIFT's quests for example were downright boring and terrible).

EverQuest 2 had some great, challenging and very fun questlines. Really well designed with great lore. They were always fun to do.

And so are all the missions in TSW. They are great fun to do, because of how it's designed and presented.

Fundamentally Sandbox games be cheaper bcs a Sandbox is much about game systems and player interaction not primary about premade quest and raid content.
So if you have established your sandboxy "Virtual World" the dynamics of player interaction be the biggest motivation.
The fundamentals need to be more fleshed out but the content generation is way cheaper.

If SOE is successfull this time depends on how serious they undertake this journey, how well they treat their game if its life (SOE is traditional bad at that too) and how much serious competiton is out the time EQ Next arrives.

Atm there is only Archeage and if it makes it over the ocean is a question with an unknown answer.
The Indies can not stink against a polished AAA product and CCP is way behind any serious release schedule with WoD.

If SOE does it right this time it could be a niche hit in a quite profitable niche that usually is almost not affected by WoW alike games.

Originally posted by Ripostethis
Not enough funding to make it a big theme park mmo like Everquest 2 was. Will be something like GW2 , sounds like it will suck and be boring if you are into PVE, but will be based on pvp.

EQ2s budget at launch was 12 million dollars and the game was hardly large at launch. One expansion each year made it that way but if you just look on the original areas the game was hardly larger than most other MMOs.

GW2s budget have not been revealed but my guess would be 60-100M$, and unlike SOE ANET actually have competent programmers.

For good and bad, EQ Next will be nothing like GW2. But it will probably be as large as EQ2 and will probably have relatively the same budget (well, $12M then is probably $20M today).

Originally posted by Thorqemada

Fundamentally Sandbox games be cheaper bcs a Sandbox is much about game systems and player interaction not primary about premade quest and raid content.
So if you have established your sandboxy "Virtual World" the dynamics of player interaction be the biggest motivation.
The fundamentals need to be more fleshed out but the content generation is way cheaper.

If SOE is successfull this time depends on how serious they undertake this journey, how well the treat their game if its life (SOE is traditional bad at that too) and how much serious competiton is out the time EQ Next arrives.

Atm there is only Archeage and if it makes it over the ocean is a question with an unknown answer.
The Indies can not stink against a polished AAA product and CCP is way behind any serious release schedule with WoD.

If SOE does it right this time it could be a niche hit in a quite profitable niche that usually is almost not affected by WoW alike games.

Both Rockstar and Bethesda have said that making sandboxes actually cost more. Creating tools for players is not so easy as it sounds, UO already showed that and Lord Brittish have talked a lot about all weird consequenses freedom actually have in a game.

What is cheaper is patching in new content, since the players themselves do a lot of the work but the launchcost will not be lower just because you make a sandbox, no matter what Goblinworks have said.

Skyrim and GTA be giant games that imho do not compare with a mmo that grows over time but also generates income over time.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Ripostethis
Not enough funding to make it a big theme park mmo like Everquest 2 was. Will be something like GW2 , sounds like it will suck and be boring if you are into PVE, but will be based on pvp.

Haha what? How did you reach this conclusion?

Not enough funding? SoE is one of the most successful MMO companies out there. They had the funds to develop Planetside 2's engine from scratch (and it is an AMAZING engine). And how will it be like sandbox? GW2 is the opposite of a sanbox.

And why does sandbox mean PvP? SWG was PvE oriented, as was Asheron's Call.

Christ.

I know the guy who is an accountant for SOE (he was a raider in the guild I am in, in EQ2). They had their budget cut by $10 million for EQ2 next. Original budget was somewhere around $25 million, cut down to $15 million and had to lay off a bunch of developers.

And GW2 is a Sandbox mmo, there is only one major quest line, everything else is from live events, and you roaming the world to find more. They mentioned it will be more based on PVP, and less on PVE. It's going to be a game focusing more so on open world pvp, and less focused on quest lines like the previous 2 Everquests were.

WoW and Everquest 2 are theme park mmos. This is supposed to be a "reimaging" of the Everquest franchise, and they are saying all this fancy talk because the budget isn't there for Everquest like it was before.