Originally Posted by MaxDamage
I have a horrible feeling that Planetside 2 was little more than a project (and a gamble on the offchance that it's popular enough) to showcase the fundaments of forgelight before it gets put to serious use in EQ Next. I think a lot of planetsiders are going to look at the features available in EQN (bearing in mind that PS1 had more faces/voices for character customisation, which is still important, even in an mmofps) and feel ripped off.
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EQ1 had its large major money poured into it a decade ago when they upgraded the graphics engine, EQ2 has been going 7 years with only abortive work done (by one person - who was shifted to PS2) on its graphics. Other then that the development has been really just for short term things.
So put in that context the time and money poured into PS2 was substantial, despite being in beta it was the star of the show last year at SOE live.
As a EQ2 player myself I should feel more entitled to feel a bit raw about the resources poured into PS2 (which came from EQ1 and EQ2 and a bit of PS1), but I'm pragmatic I guess as they have to make the biggest bang for the buck.
Originally Posted by MaxDamage
EQ may be their flagship, but their inability to embrace enjoyable PVP made EQ2 a flop long term. There's no room in the market for another MMORPG, especially when SOE takes such pride in its family friendly games design approach in EQ, when evidence is that gamers are pulling in the other direction.
It also will have to compete with TESO.
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EQ2 was never designed for PVP true, but looking at WoW where it was there from day one the majority (guessing 70%) of players chose to play on a server that was PVE. I believe MMO's should have lots of gameplay styles supported in their worlds though (tradeskilling, PVE, dungeon running etc) so it would have helped.
As for EQNext its almost certain to not be anything like EQ1 or EQ2, I got to speak to David Georgeson at last years SOE Live about MMO's. He didn't give away any real secrets for EQNext but his enthusiasm is infectious and I can confirm he's just the same face to face as when on camera (I definitely recommend cornering him if you can at any SOE Live
). When I mentioned about the past few MMO's (KOTOR, Rift, etc) bombing because people had basically already played the same game so became bored of it fast he was definitely on the same page!
I really don't know what he has going for EQNext, something sandboxy is what Smedley has hinted, but they also know that releasing something close to EQ1 and EQ2 will just canabilise players there, and run into the same problems that the current crop of "Me too" MMO's has run into.