I have always been enthralled by the original EverQuest. Being immersed in the world of Norrath was an experience that changed my life. In the past 16 years that have passed since its release, I have never stopped caring about the world of Norrath and its future. So it gives me no pleasure in saying the following: after two torturous years of SOE and now Daybreak Games showing us nothing of substance since the initial announcement back at SOE Live in 2013, it’s time to burst the methane vaporware balloon known as EverQuest Next.
While not officially dead, EverQuest Next in its original conception is for all intents and purposes dead. The decaying corpse that is EQ Next needs to be buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten. No resurrections please.
If EverQuest Next isn’t already secretly dead or about to be redesigned, then there are plenty of reasons to demand its immediate demise which I will offer in the paragraphs ahead. For those with short attention spans here they are in a nutshell: overly ambitious and bad design, poor planning, poor execution and failure to respect and continue the EverQuest legacy.
Here are some facts:
- SOE and now Daybreak Games has been developing a successor to the original EverQuest since 2009.
- Incredibly, we are now 6 long years into this task with still no MMORPG in sight.
- It took Blizzard just 4 years to develop World of Warcraft.
- The earliest we can expect a new EverQuest is in 2016.
Why on earth is it taking so long?
In this article, I will attempt to chronicle the state of EverQuest Next and the host of problems surrounding this alleged upcoming title. After that, I will offer a deceptively simple solution on how to save the EverQuest franchise.
John Smedley’s Resignation as Daybreak Games CEO
As I was getting this article ready for publication, John Smedley resigned as the CEO of Daybreak Games. Pantheon’s Chief Creative Officer Brad McQuaid who is one of the creators of EverQuest has penned a worthy tribute to John Smedley where he chronicled Smedley’s contributions to EverQuest. No matter what you think about John Smedley and his stewardship of the EverQuest franchise, without him there would be no EverQuest and without EverQuest, there would be no World of Warcraft. Of course, credit should be given where credit is due.
In the article, Brad reveals that both he and John disagreed about the future of the MMORPG genre. Eventually, Brad explains the details of that disagreement where he believed there was still room for a hardcore MMORPG while John believed that it was time to grow the genre and start appealing to younger gamers and newer audiences. Given this new insight, it is now crystal clear to me that it was John Smedley all along who was the impediment to those of us that wanted SOE to finally return to the design values of the original EverQuest and modernize it with state of the art graphics, animations and usability.
Throughout this article, I have placed blame at SOE when in reality it was most likely that John Smedley making all of the decisions and had veto power over the direction of the franchise. I do not blame the employees as every employee must listen to the boss and dance to his tune. It is only fair that the buck must stop with Mr. Smedley. Under his stewardship, the EverQuest franchise never even came close to realizing its full potential. There is no reason that the EverQuest franchise should not be currently enjoying the kind of worldwide success that Blizzard has been having with WoW.
Now that John Smedley is no longer in charge of the future of the EverQuest franchise, I believe the EverQuest franchise actually has a chance for a prosperous future.
The Decline of Public Interest in EverQuest Next
It’s safe to say that interest in EQ Next has pretty much dried up. These days few if any articles are ever written about this proposed MMO. Most EQ Next fan sites have died off and various YouTube e-celebs have run from EQ Next like they are fleeing from a plague.
These days forum posts about EQ Next are more likely to question whether it will ever see the light of day or the competency of SOE now named Daybreak to create a MMO. That’s a sad state of affairs. It seems EQ Next has been unceremoniously banished from the MMO zeitgeist.
Even interest in their Landmark product has ebbed to dangerously low levels. Log on to Twitch.tv and you’ll almost never see anyone except the occasional Daybreak Game dev streaming Landmark. What EQ fans are streaming instead is the amazing EverQuest emulator Project 1999 or gameplay on new wildly popular EQ progression servers.
Now that most of the bandwagon jumpers, MMO tourists and sycophants have left the building, it’s time for some honest analysis. Most avid EQ fans have lost faith that Daybreak Games will deliver the goods and give us EverQuest Next. To see interest in a proposed MMO all but die is a complete and total public relations disaster. To see EQ fans lose all hope of EverQuest being resurrected and updated is frankly depressing. This is a failure of SOE’s management to actual manage public expectations. Instead of under-promising and over-delivering, they over-promised and under-delivered which is a cardinal sin in the video game industry.
The reckless squandering all of that goodwill after the official announcement back at SOE Live in 2013 is a catastrophe that should be taught at Harvard School of Business as a cautionary tale for future MMO CEOs and impresarios to heed.
EQ Next fans — what few are still left — are in the dark. It seems all of the bold and gimmicky promises that EQ Next would be the first crowdsourced MMORPG (i.e. developed with input from the community) have fallen by the wayside. With the exception of a recently released Producer’s Letter penned by EQ Next Jeff Michaels, nothing official has been released by Daybreak Games on the state of EQ Next after the sale of SOE.
There was zero mention of EverQuest Next at E3 Expo in Los Angeles. It is unclear if Daybreak Games even had a booth. This can only mean that the release of EQ Next is not even on the horizon.
What the heck happened?
SOE’s Disloyalty to the EQ Veterans
Despite the occasional lore book and some videos with devs, for the past 2 years very little information has been released about the progress of EverQuest Next. After the big reveal at SOE Live in 2013 where everyone raised a glass of sparkling wine to toast EverQuest Next, the momentum for this MMORPG has evaporated. Part of the problem is that the then SOE CEO John Smedley engaged in a bait and switch scheme. He baited all of the original EverQuest fans with EverQuest Next and instead gave them Landmark — EverQuest meets Minecraft.
In the realm of politics, it is foolish for a political party or candidate to alienate the base in favor of the possibility of attracting new voters. The base are the faithful who have been loyal supporters for years. They are passionate about the party, its values and goals. They get involved, they donate, and they volunteer. They are the true believers and they make things happen for the party.
Too often the base is often taken for granted by rookie political consultations fresh out of university with political science degrees. The election is held and the base doesn’t show up all at the cost of gaining a scant few new voters. The result is usually the same: failure.
SOE made the same rookie mistake with EQ Next. They figured the EQ veterans and hardcore fans would always support them no matter what and instead tried to attract a new generation of video game players weaned on Minecraft. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They were wrong.
The Landmark Gambit
After the grand reveal of EQ Next at SOE Live in Las Vegas in 2013, we all thought that EQ Next would be going into beta within the year. It was also reasonable to think that EQ Next would be released in 2015. Both assumptions proved to be wrong as SOE changed its focus to Landmark. This was a big gamble.
Landmark had four goals:
- It was supposed to be a bridge offering that SOE would use to buy time to create EverQuest Next.
- The creations of Landmark players were going to be used as crowdsourced graphic assets for EverQuest Next.
- Landmark creators would also sell their creations to other Landmark players and SOE would make commissions on the sales.
- SOE had hoped that Landmark would be a success in its own right and would take the world by storm by riding on coattails of the insanely popular Minecraft.
One thing is abundantly clear, the bizarre premise of the hodgepodge that is Landmark failed to capture the imagination of the public. So here we are, two long years later with still no successor to EverQuest.
With no substantive EverQuestiness about it, it’s no secret that I’ve never really liked or cared for Landmark. Making Landmark for EQ fans made as about as much sense as Led Zeppelin releasing a polka album for their diehard fans. SOE dropped the ball with Landmark. By focusing on the development of Landmark instead of EQ Next, they chased away most of the anticipation, buzz and interest that both old and new fans had for EQ Next which was touted as a successor to EverQuest.
Additionally, in the two years that they have been working on Landmark, they could have hired professional zone designers, world builders and artists to create the new Norrath. This is just more evidence that SOE squandered not only resources put precious time.
SOE gambled and lost. The level of hubris at SOE — represented by the ebullient Dave Georgeson — was stratospheric as the powers that be figured that EQ Landmark was going to be the next Minecraft. Obviously, it didn’t turn out that way. Eventually, Sony saw this as well and decided to sell SOE.
EQ Next’s Flawed Design: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It
There are many reasons to be suspicious of EQ Next in its current incarnation. There’s the awful Forgelight engine with it’s washed out colors. There’s the perennially ugly character models that have regrettably become a SOE trademark. There’s the childish superhero movement system. Even the name itself — EverQuest Next — which sounds like something from a sci-fi TV series is horrid. Yet all those things might be tolerable if they hadn’t botched the basic design of this new MMORPG and failed to pay proper homage to the design tenets made popular in the original EverQuest.
The central problem with the design of EQ Next is that SOE ignored proven MMO features and mechanics made popular by the original EverQuest and replaced them with unproven and untested assumptions based on current gaming fads such as MOBAs and Minecraft. Given the proven success of EverQuest and it’s influence on mega-successful MMOs like WoW, doing this was a needless and risky gamble that managed to alienate most of the original fans.
Another problem is that the nihilistic designers of EQ Next gutted most of the intellectual property of the original EverQuest. They did this to ensure that the lore would fit with their tier system and the destructible nature of the voxel system that EQ Next is built on. There were trying to find a way to merge Minecraft with EverQuest and the existing lore was a casualty. In doing so, Norrath had been radically changed and was in effect Norrath in name only.
What SOE did to the existing lore of EverQuest was madness. This would be akin to Disney or some other entertainment company creating a new version of Middle-earth by removing iconic locations and characters and replacing them with new and improved ones. If this kind of blasphemy ever were to happen, I guarantee you the fans of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings would revolt en masse in a spectacle of protest and nerd rage that the world has never seen. You don’t screw with the lore like this and expect to get away with this but this is exactly what the brains at SOE did.
So let’s explore the design flaws of EQ Next in more detail.
Gutting Level Based Advancement
The design of EverQuest Next is inherently flawed because it guts the traditional RPG and MMO character advancement found in EverQuest and replaced it with a simplistic 4 tier level system and a 4 tier gear collection system. This would never have worked. Without an experience based advancement system that includes level based features such as character skills and abilities, zones, mobs, and itemization it would be all but impossible to balance and test all those systems and features. Not only that, with such a limited menu of goals to strive for, players would have soon gotten bored and stopped playing.
All the SOE devs gave us at SOE Live in 2013 was pure theory of how their system would work. They had no evidence to offer that players would respond to their new system.
Although the level based MMO is not perfect, it is still one of the most successful and most fundamental MMO mechanics ever created. In this case, the cure was worse than the disease. But somehow the EQ Next designers knew better despite years of evidence of the proven success of MUDs, level based RPGs, MMORPGs and their own beloved EverQuest.
Level based progression and character advancement is the bread and butter of how fantasy MMORPGs work and it most likely always will be. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it needs to be replaced.
Gutting the Traditional RPG Class System
It wasn’t enough that they gutted the level-based advancement system, the EQ Next designers also foolishly gutted the traditional MMORPG class system with its classic roles and turned it into a MOBA style action game meets Pokémon. The EQ Next designers envisioned that players could create their own classes by collecting new classes and mixing and matching them.
I believe that EQ Next offered far too many class choices and permutations that would have ultimately confounded and confused players. Too much choice can paralyze consumers as Barry Schwartz noted in his excellent book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is is Less.
Regarding choice, classic EverQuest players were offered ample amounts of choice. Class choice was balanced with the provision that most classes had distinct class roles that offer specialized services to their fellow players. The tank, the cleric, the magic users, the rogue, the crowd controller, the bard, the puller all offered the player a diverse menu of choices to suit any player’s fancy. The original EQ even had a healthy offering of hybrid classes such paladins, shadowknights and rangers.
Specialized class roles also offer the player a sense of strong identity and belonging within the virtual world. Contrast this the untested wishy-washy amorphous mix and match class system of EQ Next and we can see why the design of EQ Next was heading into dangerous waters.
The Erosion of Social Cohesion and Class Interdependence
Specialized class roles are one of the most fundamental and greatest attributes of the classic RPG in that they are central to the design concept of class interdependence. Class interdependence is where each class has a certain role to play within an adventuring group which creates a synergistic advantage to all group members where the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
A MMORPG that is designed with class interdependence in mind benefits everyone because it encourages players to group with each other which builds social cohesion. A fantasy virtual world without strong social cohesion and social interaction is not a real virtual world and is nothing more than a single player MMORPG.
The MOBA style design of the EQ Next classes that makes all classes damage dealers with little emphasis on tanking or healing causes me great concern that EQ Next will have any form of class interdependence that was a staple of the original EverQuest and popular MMOs like World of Warcraft.
Not every player wants to play a damage dealing class. Some actually like to play tanks, healers and support roles. Players like these were not welcomed in EQ Next and many voiced strenuous objections to SOE’s rigid one size fits all class design philosophy. Players should be offered classes to play that they can identify with and classes that are an extension of their personality. At least EverQuest had a myriad of classes that could fit almost anyone’s personality.
It is also important to mention that the traditional MMORPG class system is symbiotically tied into level based character advancement system. As classes rise in levels, the class gains more abilities and becomes more unique, grows in stature and utility and expands its relative worth in the virtual world.
Traditional class advancement which allows players to earn more more power, more status, more survivability and more utility is a central motivating factor in why players continue to embrace and support traditional RPG level and class based systems that were found in the original EverQuest.
The Importance of Challenge and Exploration to Advancement
Additional MMO design pillars such as challenge and exploration are also tied to the level advancement system. As the character’s level gets higher, they can enter more exotic zones that have more dangerously and appropriately based challenges. Prohibiting low level players from entering high level zones and ensuring they work for the right to do so is yet another powerful motivating factor that is a fundamental principle of MMORPG design that the EQ Next designers casually discarded.
It just boggles the mind of how the designers of EQ Next were completely prepared to throw all of these solid, time-tested design conventions overboard on the basis of some unproven assumptions. It is nothing short of a stupidity and foolishness to gamble the future of EverQuest on untested theory.
Overly Ambitious Design
While I do not agree with the proposed class system, the advancement system and new lore in EQ Next, I did appreciate the fact that the EQ Next devs promised to make advances in dynamic content and NPC behavior. Both of these new features built onto a classic EverQuest design would have been enough but the EQ Next developers became obsessed with feature creep. It is well known in the industry that feature creep is a silent and deadly killer that has doomed many video games.
The problem with these new and ambitious features is that SOE bit off more than they could chew. Combine that with the risk factor of creating an entirely new and unproven character advancement system and EQ Next was headed for trouble.
What EverQuest 3 Should Be: Challenge, Consequences, Community and Freedom
At last it is time for some ideas on where I think Daybreak Games needs to take the EverQuest franchise.
EverQuest means something different to everyone who played it. For me, the original EverQuest experience was mainly about challenge, community, consequences and freedom. Each one of these design philosophies has been significantly eroded if not completely ignored in most modern fantasy MMORPGs to the ultimate detriment of the genre.
Each of these design pillars symbiotically supported each other and created a cohesive experience that to this day people are still trying to understand and deconstruct. They are the following:
Challenge
The most fundamental requirement of any game is that is provides the player with challenges. Challenges are overcome by the player exhibiting skill. Great challenges are overcome by the player exhibiting mastery. Unfortunately, most MMOs today have abandoned this in favor of giving the player a casual stroll in an amusement park experience. The only challenges these new MMOs provide are at the far end of the spectrum with some hardcore dungeons and raids.
The notion that players should be challenged and that players should develop a high level of skill is a philosophy that should permeate all aspects the player experience from level 1 to the level cap. Challenge can mean being exposed to danger. It can mean having to deal with hardship. It can mean trying to just survive and thrive in an unforgiving world. All of those examples require varying degrees of player skill and mastery of those skills to overcome. EverQuest required players to constantly up their game by increasing the challenge and requiring more skill from players as they advanced in levels.
Without a sufficient injection of challenge, a virtual world becomes little more than a virtual amusement park where players placidly wander around like tourists.
Challenge is a cardinal design virtue that has has been discarded by many MMO developers these days. The tried and true risk versus reward equation now favors reward over risk. When challenge is removed accomplishments became cheap and loot flows like water. Unlike the easy mode MMORPGs of today that offer equality of outcomes, EverQuest offered an unforgiving virtual world fraught with danger that provided equality of opportunity to all.
Progress in EverQuest was never easy and as a result it forced players to find ways to overcome serious challenges. As the player leveled up the challenges became more intense. This had the added effect of making players improve. Attainment of levels gave the player a satisfying sense of well-earned honor, status and respect that is missing in most MMORPGs today.
Community
Another benefit to offering serious challenges is that it forced players to band together to form groups and raids to overcome adversity using their social skills to canvass other players to join existing groups, raids and guilds. This was accomplished when the EQ designers utilizing the theory of class interdependency and created their class system. Class interdependency is when each class is designed with specific roles to compliment other classes, has strengths and weaknesses and when different classes are put together creates a synergy where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Those players who wanted to survive and thrive in Norrath realized they could accomplish more by working together. So just like in the real world, friendships, associations and communities formed out of necessity and this is one of the greatest and most priceless contributions that EverQuest bequeathed to the video game genre.
Few other video games have created a fan base where its players are so socially intertwined that they become lifelong friends and even get married.
Consequences
Every aspect of a player’s virtual existence life in Norrath was predicated on the fact that actions had consequences. EQ’s brutal death penalty is the best example of this. Every player could potentially lose months — if not years — of progress at any time due to failure. This had the effect of making life in Norrath gripping and pulse-pounding experience that has never been equaled by any other MMORPG since.
As noted above, that philosophy of serious consequences for failure also meant that players would seek out other players to mitigate those consequences. Failure is a great teacher. The serious consequences that EQ offered made you improve as a player and promoted a culture of skill, excellence and diligence within the player base.
Freedom
EverQuest had no story arc or narrative. It was very much like a sandbox where the player enjoyed autonomy and self-determination. This lack of an on-rails amusement park experience gave players a true sense of freedom where they could live their virtual lives free from the tyranny of the lore and quest developers who are always telling players where to go and what to do. The EverQuest player experience was essentially self-directed. This gave players a chance to create their own stories and memories free from the constant meddling we see by current MMORPG developers like Blizzard.
Unlike the MMOs of today that have shackled players by providing them a scripted predictable on rails player experience, EverQuest was a virtual world of considerable freedom with few restrictions that is absent from today’s MMORPGS. You could communicate and group with anyone. You could attack any NPC at any time. You could loot corpses of mobs that other players killed. You could purchase items sold by players from vendors. You could give weapons to some NPCs who would equip them. Almost nothing was off limits. Mobs seemed to have more a persistent nature were not leashed and would pursue you. Mob hit points would not miraculously reset if you died or left the zone and returned.
The sense of freedom even carried down to loot. EQ had no level restrictions on loot which is shocking compared to how regimented gear is today with MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.
EverQuest was so wide open that emergent gameplay flourished as players invented and carved out all kinds of unique roles for themselves. Each class had countless ways of being played which allowed EQ to appeal to almost anybody.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one thing new MMORPGs are doing right. Similar to the notion of player freedom is the idea of customization. Players now have more options to express themselves via armor choices and by choosing unique talent builds which reflect their personality and playstyle. This is one area that new MMORPGs have been excelling at and a new EverQuest would certainly do well to incorporate.
Every feature in a new EverQuest should have these question asked of it:
Challenge: Does this feature require player skill to master?
Community: Does this feature help to build community?
Consequences: Are players accountable for their actions? Is the risk versus reward equation balanced?
Freedom: Does this feature enhance the player’s freedom and empower the player’s sense of self-determination?
Signature EverQuest Features Needed for Inclusion in EverQuest 3
To the developers at Daybreak, the recipe for success is very simple and it has been staring at you all along. Daybreak needs to bring back the original hardcore no compromise, no hand holding, balls to the wall design and feature set of EverQuest that started the entire MMORPG ball rolling and unapologetically incorporate it into EverQuest 3.
Here are the core features and mechanics from EverQuest that need to be brought back:
- Bring back the lore complete with all of the gods and goddesses.
- Bring back all the towns and cities.
- Bring back all of the races.
- Bring back all of the classes and embrace class interdependence with unique roles, abilities and spells:
- Core class roles: tanks, damage and healers.
- Supplementary class roles: pullers, crowd control, teleportation, binders, rezzers and buffers.
- Bring back all of the EQ mechanics such as:
- Horizontal experience-based character advancement and leveling system — levels should take weeks if not months to achieve.
- Public dungeons with NO INSTANCING!
- No artificial limits to the number of players that can attend raids.
- Death penalties with experience loss and corpse decay.
- No leashes on mobs. Mob trains!!! The more the merrier!
- Grouping should be encouraged.
- Player freedom:
- Every NPC should be killable and should give experience.
- Allow players to buy items from vendors that were sold by other players.
- Allow players to loot expired NPC/mob corpses.
- A real day and night system where night time is actually dark and dangerous.
- Bring back GMs and live events.
I am not saying that all we need to do is bring back these features and simply re-create the original EverQuest. Rather, these features are the core of the classic EverQuest experience and in my mind should be used as the building blocks for a new, more detailed and expansive EverQuest. After all, these signature features are what distinguishes EverQuest from WoW and the multitude of WoW clones out there. If these features are brought back and used as a foundation, then it is almost impossible for Daybreak Games to screw the new EverQuest up.
If Daybreak still has plans to introduce more dynamic content and responsive NPCs who have needs, goals and aspirations then all the better!
EverQuest Was Not Perfect
Although I respect the masterpiece that is EverQuest and think more highly of it than any other MMO I have ever played, it was not perfect. Every game and every sport has certain flaws and over time players tend to find the flaws in mechanics and exploit them to their advantage.
Here are a few issues with the original EverQuest:
Sometimes It Was Hard to Find a Group
On low population servers and during non-peak times on regular servers it was difficult to find other players to form groups which made players who still wanted to progress to gravitate to soloing. The solution of not being able to find a group is not to let everyone solo which has been the case since World of Warcraft and beyond. One possible answer is to reduce the number of servers and adopt mega servers like Zenimax has done with Elder Scrolls Online. In ESO the mega servers are always bustling with people and it’s fairly easy to find groups. An additional bonus is that towns and cities actually feel alive because they are full of players.
Poor Class Design and Class Penalties
Class design is probably the hardest thing to accomplish in a MMORPG. Due to the reality that every group needs a tank and a healer — most often a warrior and a priest due to their ability to perform their role so perfectly — and due to pure mathematics these two class roles immediately represent 33.3% of the group roles leaving DPS classes and hybrid classes who are far more numerous to compete for the remaining 4 group slots which constitute the other 66.7%. This reality of EQ had the effect of some classes were not as desirable as other classes in groups. This is not the fault of the player playing the class; this is the fault of the class designers who failed to design enough tanking classes, healing classes and grant enough utility for hybrids and DPS classes to be wanted in groups. The solution is obvious but certainly not easy: create an equal number of tank, healers, and DPS classes and ensure that each class has enough utility that makes all classes equally desirable in groups.
Hybrid Classes and Experience Penalties
As implied above, hybrid classes in EverQuest were substandard and most often seen as second string tanks to their richer cousins the pure tank: the warrior. The three hybrids were: paladins, rangers and shadowknights. These hybrids were essentially tank versions of other classes — not good enough to be true tanks and not good enough to be like their parent classes: clerics, druids and necromancers.
To make matters worse, SOE saddled them and certain races with onerous experience penalties that make them very difficult to level. Even today in EverQuest server emulator Project 1999, the experience penalty exists for hybrids. This partially explains why there are so few hybrids in Project 1999. Solution: get rid of experience penalties for races and classes.
Respawning, Spawn Camping and Spawn Contestation
The essence of a fantasy MMORPG is a band of adventurers entering a dungeon and going deeper to complete some objective such as killing a boss mob to take his stuff. This is the classic dungeon crawl which is the Holy Grail of a fantasy virtual world. However, this scenario is not so easily achieved in a virtual world where there are other players and groups within that very same dungeon with similar and competing goals.
Perhaps the Achilles heel of MUDS and MMORPGs and easily the most contentious issue in the original EverQuest (and still today in Project 1999) was the mechanic of mobs respawning in dungeons and the world above dungeons. In every MMORPGs mobs both — generic and named — magically respawn after they are killed. They respawn within a range of one or two levels and thanks to a random number generator the also drop random amounts of coin and loot. For years this mechanic has been the order of the day in MUDS and MMORPGs.
The problem with mob respawning is that player has to suspend their disbelief to accept the fact that a dungeon teeming with vicious orcs can be killed and within a few minutes they can miraculously respawn again at full health and at full power and will complete set of armor and weapons. Where do these orcs come from? Where did they get the weapons and armor from? Were they resurrected? If yes by whom? No MMORPG developer has ever been able to answer these questions.
The respawning dynamic created big headaches for SOE back in the day as players felt shut out of dungeons. Certain locations in EQ dungeons would be claimed by players and groups of players who were “camping” a particular location where a named mob would spawn who dropped common and rare items. This became a big problem as certain people would never leave these locations or they would give them to their friends or guildmates thereby preventing anyone else from having a chance at getting rare drops.
Guilds would park spotter characters at the spawn locations of prestigious world boss mobs to check to see if they had spawned. Often guilds would cause other guilds who were raiding at the time to wipe and then start killing the world boss mobs themselves. This was the cause of a lot of drama.
SOE even tried to remedy this problem by employing the instancing mechanic with the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. Blizzard’s answer to this problem was to make all dungeons instanced which I will explain more about below.
Solutions to this problem are not easy to come by. I would suggest that better staging of respawns might be part of the answer. Another way to remedy this problem would have more random and triggered events happening within the dungeons themselves which helps bring more life and unpredictability into the dungeon environment to distract the player from the checking his clock to see if the mob in the next room is about to spawn.
Regarding competition between guilds for boss mobs, MMO developers like Blizzard have traditionally seen it as a bad thing. I believe that kind of competition is good thing. Competition for raid and world boss mobs was very common in EverQuest and many guilds would race to see if they could take down a these bosses before the other guilds could. Yes, conflict would result but I believe that kind of emotion and drama is healthy for a fantasy virtual world. This competitive aspect added a completely new and exciting dimension to EverQuest that is almost non-existent in MMORPGS like World of Warcraft. A fantasy MMORPG is not supposed to be a fast food drive thru where everything is available 24/7. A fantasy virtual world should be difficult and victory should never be assured or severed to players on a silver platter.
Lack of Content
A big part of the problem is that there just wasn’t enough dungeons in the original EverQuest to adequately satisfy the player population with regards to experience and good loot drops which were essential for characters to improve their gear. The problem was so bad that many players resorted to killing guards and quest NPCs just to get experience. Eventually SOE created more servers to help address the problem but even so, there was still a shortage of droppable gear.
Five years after the release of EverQuest, Blizzard’s solution to this problem was to employ the technique of instancing in every dungeon in World of Warcraft. Instancing is where every group gets their own copy of a dungeon. In essence, it is a private dungeon where other players who are not in the group are not allowed to enter. This technique allows the game designer to view the entire dungeon as a complete experience from the point the group enters at the beginning and exits after the dungeon boss is killed.
Instancing looked revolutionary in the short term because everyone had access to content 24/7 with no competition from other players. The problem is that in the long-term instancing had many deleterious effects.
The problem with instancing is that the cure was worse than the disease. As dungeons became all about killing mobs as fast as possible, dungeons were no longer social places where players would hang out and talk to each other. Killing a boss of a dungeon was no longer special as the very same boss was being potentially killed by hundreds of other players on the same server. This has the effect of eroding the status of killing a boss.
With instancing came other problems, the main one being that too much loot was entering the economy which quickly devalued it. Prestige loot dropped by the mob was also less desirable and less valuable due to the fact that it was no longer rare and as exclusive as it would be if it dropped by a named mob in a public non-instanced dungeon.
Not only has instancing created an obscene glut of loot, it has cheapened the MMORPG experience and created an unhealthy sense of entitlement in today’s players. Instanced dungeons have become all about efficiency and are transactional in nature as the group kills enemies as fast as possible so they can finish their daily quest. Even worse, it has destroyed the social and cooperative fabric of the genre in that players do not even speak to each other while they are inside dungeons. Additionally, the private dungeon on demand scourge of instancing also kills immersion and the notion of persistence.
Daybreak Games needs to avoid the easy fix of instancing and bring back public dungeons.
Some Tips for Daybreak Designers
Tip 1: The Group is the Foundation of the Fantasy MMORPG
Every MMORPG designer is standing on the shoulders of two giants. The first giant is J.R.R. Tolkien who invented the popular RPG template of a group of adventurers on an epic quest exploring a dungeon in his fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. This band of adventurers dubbed the Fellowship of the Ring was comprised of people from different races (wizard, hobbits, men, dwarves and elves) and different skill sets (wizards, fighter, captain, ranger and thief). This is the basis for what we know today as the traditional fantasy RPG groups and the notion of group/class interdependency.
The second giant is Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and founder of TSR. If I have to tell you what Dungeons & Dragons is then you are in the wrong line of work.
Gygax said this in his classic 1987 book: Role-Playing Mastery from Chapter 4: The Group: More Than its Parts:
Group operation and cooperation are at the nucleus of any RPG activity … Despite this, many long-time participants in a single RPG system do not truly understand or appreciate the interrelationships of the varying approaches to the game system or to the dynamics of a group that is balanced and works well as a team.
The highest expression of activity in a MMORPG is the group. The group experience and the community that results is the foundation of the MMORPG.
Tip 2: Unlearn Most of What Blizzard Taught You in World of Warcraft
Some of you probably never played the original EverQuest. Naturally, all of you have played WoW. If I had only one thing to say to you it is this: forget everything you know about the design philosophy of World of Warcraft. In its insatiable lust for profits, Blizzard has all but destroyed the MMORPG genre by trying to make WoW an accessible McMMO to the masses. Blizzard owns that genre now so forget about ever trying to compete with them. Unlearn everything you learned about MMORPGs from WoW.
What you should copy from Blizzard is their high standards with regard to art, animations, usability and polish (attention to detail). Everything else is crap.
Embrace the heart and soul of the original EverQuest. Look at the amazing community it created. Look at the sense of urgency, the danger and the pulse-pounding fear it created when you logged on to your character and entered the world of Norrath. Being part of a world where you could lose the months you invested in your character by falling into a hole in a deep dungeon made it feel real and this is why the original EverQuest experience was so magical and addictive!
I have authored articles on EverQuest that have attempted to explain how and why this venerable MMO captured the hearts and minds of gamers who love fantasy role-playing games. From my perspective, nothing more needs to be said about why the original EverQuest was so amazing and why such a passionate and vibrant community formed around it.
Tip 3: Play EverQuest on Project 1999
Project 1999 is a non-profit series of two servers (PVE and PVP) that faithfully emulate the original EverQuest and its subsequent two expansions with pure fidelity. If you want to know what the true EverQuest experience was like then you absolutely must create a character on Project 1999 and immerse yourself the magnificence and majesty of EverQuest. Community is king on P1999. People actually talk to other players. It is the most amazing experience and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone — especially EverQuest Next game designers.
Quite simply, playing EverQuest on Project 1999 will make you fall in love with Norrath all over again! Special thanks and heartfelt gratitude to Daybreak Games for making an agreement with Project 1999 to continue.
The EverQuest Franchise Needs a Strong Visionary Leader
Who is the evangelist of the EverQuest franchise right now at DayBreak Games? The problem is that nobody is and that is a glaring problem.
I really believe that to make a successful product or video game you need to have someone in command who has a crystal clear vision. You need a mercurial figure who has a burning passion, who believes in what he is doing and who can share that passion with others. You can’t produce something amazing from a mere committee. It is not going to happen.
Daybreak Games needs to hire someone from the MMORPG world that has a Herculean and unapologetic passion for EverQuest. It should be someone that truly understands and believes EverQuest. It needs to be someone that can win over the EQ veterans and at the same time convince new players of the magic that is EverQuest. That someone needs to be a leader that can effectively communicate their vision for EverQuest to the world.
Conclusion
The story of SOE began with the groundbreaking success of EverQuest and then ended with a series of disappointments and lackluster offerings. Throughout their journey, they’ve been distracted by every seductive fork in the road that has led to a dead end. Even with Blizzard’s MMO polish success template revealed to them via World of Warcraft, they still could not produce a popular fantasy MMO if their lives depended on it.
If Daybreak Games continues to adhere to the initial ambitious and misguided design philosophy of EverQuest Next, I predict that this proposed MMORPG has almost no chance of succeeding.
The continued popularity of Project 1999 and the overwhelming success of the new progression servers for the current EverQuest have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is worldwide interest and excitement for a hardcore fantasy virtual world.
I believe gamers are craving a no compromise, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes hardcore EverQuest experience that they are not getting today’s dumbed down, kiddy friendly, everyone’s a winner fantasy MMORPG. While I applaud SOE/Daybreak for trying new things at some point you have to realize that you have the magical formula all along. There’s no need for a New Coke when Classic Coke was loved by millions around the world. There’s no need to improve on a Stradivarius by redesigning the venerable violin. Go with what you know and what works.
The millions of people who played EverQuest over the years have not gone away. We are still here. We are waiting to once again heed the call to battle to venture forth into the magical and dangerous world of Norrath. Sixteen long years later, we and a generation of new gamers are craving an authentic, hardcore MMORPG experience that changed the video game industry and put EverQuest on the map.
Today gamers have grown tired of the unearned heroism and the vapidity of childish video games and instead are supporting hardcore games like Dark Souls that require actual skill and have the effect of giving players an immense and rare sense of satisfaction in victory.
There is but one path that leads to the Holy Grail and that is back to genius and magic of EverQuest itself. It is time for Daybreak Games to stop being ashamed of EverQuest and start embracing everything that made EverQuest great. All you need to do is take the design and lore of original EverQuest, expand and deepen it, add new art, new animations, update the user interface and combine it with the polish of World of Warcraft. Even the early expansions — minus the dreadful Omens of War — could be repeated and released. The entire blueprint and roadmap is there waiting for Daybreak Games.
Now that the future of EverQuest is in the post-Smedley era, this is a time of great opportunity. Daybreak Games needs to listen to the fans and create a successor to EverQuest that is worthy of the name. If they can accomplish that, then all is forgiven. Millions of long-suffering EverQuest fans have waited long enough. It’s time to reboot the reboot. Daybreak Games please create EverQuest 3!
-Wolfshead
I never played Everquest. While lengthy, I found all of that very interesting. As an in-progress professional game designer, thanks for the ideas.
By the way, if you don’t enter the captcha (which I didn’t even scroll far enough to see below the post button) it forgets your entire post which is pretty annoying.
Hi Robert,
Thank you for you kind comments! I have never posted to my blog without being the admin and I appreciate you bringing this CAPTCHA issue to my attention. 🙂
EQ X will prosper when they allow EQ 1 people to port their characters. Why do you expect people who have been leveling a character for 16? years now to give it up.
Its always a pleasure reading your articles as they are well written and I wish I can write half as good as you!
I never played EQ1 but my first MMO was EQ2 back in 2004. EQ2 vanilla was hard game and you had to rely on other people to make progress and this really brought players together and made them behave as well in groups. Since if you were jerk, you quickly got back listed and no one invited you to groups. This obviously introduced elitist too but majority were civil and good people.
I met three of my real life friends in EQ2. We pretty much played EQ2 together for good 5 years and then moved to other games while still coming back to EQ2 expansions etc. During the last year all of us have stopped playing MMOs due to family commitments etc but we still get together for chat when possible. Also most of my “MMO friends” were from EQ2 as well. I never met these people in real life but we still keep in touch on-line. The point here is that I met most of these people when EQ2 was hard and it required a group to play. Once EQ2 went the way of WoW (solo to max level etc) , this kind of strong friendships stopped happening since you don’t really have to interact with people and we all took the path of least resistant. So like you I think, EQ3 needs to be hard and group dependant game if it really want a good community.
Having said all the above, back in 2004 I had lot of spare time. I think I might have played EQ2 for about 40 – 50 hours a week. This wasn’t really healthy as work and personal relationships suffered but without this time commitment I don’t think I would have got much out of the EQ2 back then. On the other hand, if EQ2 didn’t required this time commitment it wouldn’t have been as fun as it was! So its really double edge sword. Anyway I will have to say that EQ3 won’t be a game for me given my current lack of time for MMOs (a daughter on the way soon!) but I am sure people who has the time will love if EQ3 was game as you described.
On side note, do you think its possible to have hard and group focused game but still require less time commitment?
Thank you for your thoughtful comments! I think you hit the nail on the head with what happened to EQ2 when it started to emulate the WoW design philosophy of making everything easier and allowing people to solo to the level cap.
The reality of human nature dictates that we as humans will always take the path of least resistance and take shortcuts to achieve our goals. Given a chance for players to be self-sufficient and solo, most players will take this path even though by doing so they are cheating themselves out of the fruits of cooperation such as camaraderie and friendship.
The MMO game designer who fails to understand this fact of human nature is going to shortchange the players and damage the health of the virtual world. The MMO designer should always be creating mechanics and scenarios that have the effect of bringing people together.
Like a good parent who can’t say “YES” to his children all the time, so too the MMO designer can’t say “YES” to the players all the time. They have to hold firm and resist the temptation of the “customer is always right” mentality.
There is an interesting example of bringing people together is in the design of nightclubs. John Taffer of Bar Rescue on SpikeTV created something called a “butt funnel”. These are purposely designed choke points within the nightclub that force people to come into close contact with each other and make eye contact. This innovation is pure genius and echoes what a MMO game designer must do — bring people together.
http://www.spike.com/video-clips/g6mb3z/bar-rescue-the-butt-funnel
The issue of time commitment is a thorny one. We all have to be realistic about how much time we can devote to a hobby and playing as MMORPG is no different. Just as hobbyists have different levels of commitment and time availability so do MMORPG players.
There certainly are overhead costs that each player must expend just to get in a group. You have to get to the zone where you want to hunt, come prepared with buffs, ood, drink, bandages,etc. The player that has more time obviously does much better than the player with less time and of course they both have the same overhead costs.
We need to be realistic. Not everyone can be a hardcore raider. However, the days of the 6 hour raids in EverQuest are over too.
At some point there has to be some investment on the part of the player if you want to be a part of the world and expect to thrive. Many people think nothing of watching 2 hours of television each night, so I don’t see this is a being a big problem for MMORPGs.
I remember even in the original EQ, I used to log my paladin (a tough class to play with a brutal exp penalty — unknown to me at the time) on before I went to work for about 20 minutes. I killed 3 green mobs and got a bit of experience and logged off. I was happy to have progressed in some small way.
Do we have to create a new EverQuest that is exactly as hardcore as the original EverQuest? No. But as the pendulum has swung so far in the wrong direction of ease, convenience and entitlement we do have to swing the pendulum back to some point in between classic EQ and WoW. I hope this is what Daybreak Games will do with EQ3.
First – I love the idea of Everquest Next, it’s sounds really great. Having a dynamic, destructible world made of voxels is mind blowing and awesome. EQN is not a sequel to Everquest Series, it’s a spinoff. If you don’t like the idea of it, simply don’t play it.
EQN developent is quiet, but IT IS still in making. Devs are quiet, because they are working hard on core mechanics and game world.
Original EQ like MMO concept is overused and world doesn’t really need EQ3 game. You can still play EQ1 and 2, or try hundreds of other MMOs that have similar design.
And remember – EQN is still in development and I can’t wait, it’s going to be an awesome game.
I have no problem with the fact that EQ Next is projected to have destructibility. However, being able to destroy objects, buildings and terrain is really not the core of what MMORPGs are all about. SOE focused too much on merging Minecraft with EverQuest and in the process wasted too much valuable time on something that is more a gimmick than it is a fundamental mechanic.
What I do like about EQ Next is the dynamic content and advanced NPC AI; that is what really excites me.
The problem is that SOE wants to get rid of all the things that made EQ great and replace it with MOBA combat and instead focus on destructibility and dynamic content. To me this is a recipe for disaster. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The original concept of EQ which was essentially a sandbox is not overused. The original EQ in its current form has morphed into something that doesn’t even resemble EQ. I logged on to the current EQ and nobody was talking to anyone in chat. It’s all about soloing with mercenaries.
Most MMORPGs today are following the World of Warcraft amusement park user experience. That is nothing like the original EQ.
It’s easy to say, don’t play EQ Next if you don’t like it but as Brad McQuaid said in a recent blog article, there is really no place for player to go today if you want to experience the authentic EverQuest experience. Those players have been orphaned by a one size fits all approach to making MMOs that forces everyone into playing the same dumbed down MMO. Even the declining numbers of WoW subscribers proves that that does not work anymore.
I never played Everquest but it seems to be preety interesting game. Thanks for the information. 🙂
!0/10
Excellent article.
Thank you.
Just had to say this. The correct spelling is Gygax, not Cygax. Still enjoyed this post!
Hi Jazure, thanks for the heads about the typo. I fixed some other typos and grammar within the article as well. I have been super busy lately and I need to do a better job of proofreading my articles. Thanks again!
Great article as always Wolfshead, I had given up hope on MMOs altogether but your articles reinvigorate me. I Especially love your words regarding the long-term effects of instances on mmorpgs. I will never forget the trains to zone in Karnor’s castle. Also, being a noob and seeing a true high level “uber” god-like figure shout “train to me” as he/she dispatched 10+ mobs in front of an audience of his lower level piers. In Those days, hardwork gave you status in a “real” community. Now, everyone is just another number. So until the devs begin reading your articles and begin to implement the ideas that made Norrath a living breathing world, I shall keep my money in my wallet.
P.s. For those that have never played original EQ, Google “the sleeper” aka kerafrym
That game sure was special
Til next time, keep up the great work Wolf!
Jikekrn (old school Iksar warrior) tunare server Original EVerquest
Hi Kev, it’s for old school players likes you that I keep writing these articles. We are out there. We have not gone away. The MMORPG industry has abandoned us.
I love that phrase “a living and breathing world”. It should be made into a poster and placed in a spot of prominence in every MMORPG studio. That idea should be the Holy Grail for every virtual world designer but alas it is not.
I’m hoping that Daybreak Games will see the light and steer EQ Next in a more traditional direction. I’m also hoping that Brad McQuaid and his team at Visionary Realms will be able to continue the legacy of EverQuest with Pantheon.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! It’s great to hear from you. Don’t give up hope 🙂
* The following text may contain errors in spelling and grammar, since english is not my native language, but I hope it will be clear enough to be understandable. *
Hello from Germany, Mr. Wolfshead,
I got the link to you article from massivelyop and enjoyed the reading although I must confess, that I don’t share your view on this topic, even if there are some points where I am with you.
From my perspective (almost 52 and started my relationships with computers and games/gaming in 1985) SOE had rightly seen, that the world of gaming is changing and that there is no room for another big old-school MMO. To be successful they would have to do again, what EQ had done so many years ago: to fundamentally change the MMO-World.
Times are changing and people change with them. And to be successful you (as a gaming-company) have to adapt. There is a reason, that WoW is still *THE MMO* to this day. Yes, there is a playerbase for retro-style MMOs. But it’s small and you have to contend with a niche-game if you go this way. Yes, this would be a loyal playerbase but in no way the masses you need to build the next *BIG MMO* upon. Camelot Unchained is a good example of this kind of retro-oriented game. It has a loyal but small playerbase and will never be a game for the masses (going Dark Age hardcore PvP only). If the plan is to make a game for the masses (and every major gaming company is aiming for the masses because of $$), you cannot ignore, what the masses want. It’s not 1999 any more. The gamers of this time have mostly become fathers (and in some rare cases mothers), are working for their living and don’t have the time to grind for hours to gain some needed weapon or necklace or take a part in some 8h-raid anymore.
And there is a reason, that Minecraft is as sucessful as it is. Because it has opened a whole new world inside gaming: the world of creativity. Minecraft gave you the possibility to change the world you are gaming in. You can shape it after your visions while you are playing with your friends. One of the strongest lures in every game is the fascination of exploring a new place, a new world. To don’t know what lies before you. MC takes this and generates a whole endless adventure out of it – without need to build dungeons, to design bosses and to have players devour your content faster as you ever can hope to generate it. Of course it has it’s flaws as well as any other game, but since it uses the whole community as develpoper there are always ways to negate them.
EQN was announced to bring this kind of things into the MMO-world. This would have been the next generation MMO. A kind of game, that would be able to lure the masses. You could tell by the hype, that *A LOT* of people were willing to go this way. We (this includes my wife, some friends and myself) among them. No “doing dungeon X” for the 105627th time no eternaly unchanging gameworld. EQN should be able to create a living gameworld, where the player would be part of it and part of the ongoing story. Where it truly matters what the players do.
It seemed to good to be true – and in the end, it was. But not because the vision was wrong. It seems (seeing it from todays point of view) that money was the cause of failure. Perhaps there was not enough money left to make such a big project come true. Landmark seems to be an indicator of it. First announced as only a toolset to create the world of EQN together with the community, SOE/Daybreak soon used it to grab money from the faithful players. First in selling it for a very high price, later in changing it to something between game-editor and game and thereby frustrating builders and players alike. I think they left the path to their visionary EQN because SOE/Daybreak needed some fresh money desperatly.
As of today Landmark is dead because they never delivered the toolset it was meant to be (it’s a toolset with many missing basic tools) and they implemented gaming-elements in a manner, that alienated the builders and never was attractive to gamers. And it has many ways to give even more money to SOE via ingame shop. Buying a toolset for 50-130€ to help create EQN should have been more than enough money for SOE from the players. The community was awesome and ideas for improving landmark and EQN were plenty – and free for SOE. It could have been win/win. SOE would get the creativity and manpower of thousands of enthusiastic gamers and the gamers would get the opportunity to help create a new kind of game. But it seems they waited too long and so the dream ended in desaster.
You wrote at length about community, freedom, challenge and consequence. Yes they all are important things. But not neccesarily in the way old-school hardcore-games are using them. A community depending only on classes and the need for classes in certain ways, is a artifical community and works on a strict ruleset, that is the opposite of freedom of choice. Want to be a part of our group ? – fine – we need a healer (tank whatever). Your char is a mage – sorry, then we dont need you. The holy trinity has not only advantages. Community born from having the same goals or sharing the same opinion about something is a much better kind of community. And in a modern game you should be able to partcipate in the game as a lonly ranger, a little group of three or a guild of twenty.
Challenge is good and consequences of acting in the gameworld also. But this does not mean, that you have to worry about dieing, because if you die, you are screwed up and loose everything. You should think about the consequences of your gameplay. Not helping the locals against the invading goblin-clan, because it’s boring ? Fine. Two days later the settlement has beend burned down and the nearby town is under siege. Good luck to reach any remaing vendor to stock up your provisions ! The challenge would be to play in an ever changing gameworld, overcoming unforeseen obstacles and working to reach a personal goal – whatever this may be.
Gamers nowadays expect more than endless grind, doing the same dungeon over and over and having to play a class mostly because it is needed. They want to immerse themselfs in a world, in which they can express their imagination, in which they can create and be creative. A world they can change – at least a little piece of it. They want challenge, but they dont want mindless grind. They want a community based on freedom of choice. Freedom to play the char and “class” they want, freedom to play it in a way they want. They want a world that is changing because of the players. They want a world that is plausible, because the slain villain stays dead even if you visit his castle the next day. They want a world they can explore and that is changing. They want contend, that is not brought to you by developers making quests and storylines on a small scale. This all was the vision of EQN and it was a vision worth our money.
Sadly – and there you are right – after 2 years I am sure SOE/Daybreak will never be able to bring this vision to life. Even if EQN will be published, it will not be the game they advertised.
Back in the days we played Dark Age of Camelot. There was no questing to speak about. To reach Level 50 you had to grind. Go into the dungeons. Slay monsters mindlessly over and over. We did it. And not with one char only. Hour over hour. And we had fun. Thinking about these times, I don’t think most of the fun was about the game. It was about shared laughter, about doing crazy things, about having fun with one another. Yes, we had a great time together. I have played the same game a few month ago – some retro-server. Just for the old times. Didn’t really enjoy it. It felt strangely hollow. I found a proverb, that matches this experience very good: Nostalgia is the longing for a past, that never existed.
So I hope, that there will be a game some day, that is not going backwards, but has the power to fullfil the vision of something, that was named EQN two years ago but will never come alive in the hands of SOE/Daybreak.
Having said all these things, I would like to say again, that I really enjoyed to read your posting, even if we have very different opinions. Nowadays it’s rare to find such good written texts.
There were only a small amount of people relative to the overall population that were primed and ready to play a game like EQ1 in 1999. Gamers were still a fringe group, not the apparent majority they are today in anyone 40 and under.
When WoW came along, it started out as something akin to EQ1, but with somewhat less chaotic complexity, and quite a bit more polish in the interface and aesthetic. This made it a very easy game for people who had grown bored of EQ after 5 years to jump to, and it was very fulfilling for many of those people, including myself. By the time I quit WoW, right around the time Cataclysm was being released, all of the fun complexity seemed to have been taken out of the game – it was “dumbed down” in order to make it more palatable. Palatable to whom, you may ask? To children. Blizzard rightly saw that pretty much everyone in GenX that was going to play WoW already had done so, and so to capture market share for the next generation, they made the game more and more accessible to children by making it more simplistic, more colorful, and rife with cute things (Pandas were right around the corner.)
So, while they were rendering the game unpalatable to people who had grown up on masochism fests like XCom and Everquest and Star Control, they were simultaneously ensuring millions of dollars of future revenue, successfully capturing a whole generation of players, because face it – pretty much EVERYONE has played WoW at some point.
Now though, it’s 12 years later. Those kids that were turned off by complexity when they were 13 are now 25 and ready for the big leagues. Other desires of the millennial generation (aesthetic choices, social media integration, etc) are not intrinsically bundled with simplicity in gameplay, but the gaming industry as a whole keeps putting out new versions of what is basically WoW, again and again and again – it’s a proven model! Kids will eat it up! And that they do, but this is forsaking the intellectual and emotional progression of all those original WoW kidlets. They’re big people now, and Wolfshead here is describing the kind of game that can capture an adult attention span and keep hold of it for 10 years+. EQ3 is the NATURAL PROGRESSION of the evolution of gamers and what they want in an MMO, along with the additional opportunities for customization and creativity that you allude to in regards to minecraft/landmark. Now is the time for a game like this to happen, before the momentum that WoW has given us is spent, and I really hope that articles like this, discussions like this, and object lessons like the thriving Project 1999 (Generally about 1000 players synchronous across the two P99 servers, and this to play a “15 year old elf sim” as people put it) provide new fuel to companies and investors who are wondering if maybe there truly can be something Beyond Warcraft.
Just have to say, I love me some original X-Com.
Thanks for this, I really enjoyed this article. As someone who spent many hours as an “old school” EQ player with time in Da’Kor and Conquest (curious if anyone remembers those names) I agree 100%.
For me, the biggest thing modern MMOs lack is a meaningful death penalty. In EQ you REALLY didn’t want to die. It resulted in hours and hours of lost time and from corpse recovery and regaining lost xp. This is something I really miss. As much as it was a pain it gave death meaning and rewarded skill. I can’t think of a game since where I really cared if my character died. You just come back to life and go again.
Thanks for your kind comments! I agree 100%.
Having a serious death penalty — even though it is unpopular — is indeed the secret recipe to making a fantasy virtual life exciting, visceral, believable and immersive. Sure we all hate to die when we play a MMORPG but dying with consequences makes us respect the world around us. Failure is a great teacher and we learn from our mistakes and ultimately it makes us better players.
I have to disagree with the suggestion of megaservers. It is a horrible bandaid-fix that only destroys server communities by increasing anonymity by tenfold. The populations become so huge that social pressure plummets and the likelihood of randomly meeting the same person twice drops significantly. It is just another form of instancing. The only way to combat a lack of population is to have efficient tools for social interaction and doing server merges aggressively.
Otherwise yet again a very insightful and enjoyable article.
Agreed. Its the only thing in the article that I didn’t agree with 100%. Megaservers will inevitably hurt the community and remove much of the player accountability that should exist in a good virtual world. I just can’t think of a way to make them work without it doing more harm than good.
As always, thanks for the article Wolfshead. Keep on plugging away! Perhaps one day enough people will take these things to heart and we will see a better breed of MMOs rise once again.
Also looking forward to reading an article about Pantheon! Its the only hope for a real EQ3.
Great article, as a day one subscriber to Everquest, I agree with your entire article. New gamers have no concept of what THE mmo of expirience truly was. Corpse decay and losing all of your hard earned equipment was a real fear. The original was HARD and huge and immersing, which made it amazing but I believe was also some of it’s downfall. I was 19 when it came out and spent every hour possible playing. Sometimes camping until 3 or 4 in the morning and shuffling to work at 7:00. By the time I was well enough equipped and had the skills to join a real raiding guild to get the best equipment, I had a real job and responsibilities and not the time required to devote to a hobby that was like a second job. High risk and low reward only really works if you have plenty of time to invest. Many guild members would pass you by, you would lose raid points if real life interfered and that was when EQ lost its hold on me. I wanted to enjoy what time I could spend playing it, but 2 hours a night was never enough. Despite its many flaws WoW stepped in and solved that problem. I could see real results and actually solo something and raid when I had the time. But over time it grew boring. If there was a middle ground between the two, I think it would be perfect. Bring back the challenge but alleviate the wasted hours of looking for a group and sitting in the bazaar for hours or at the entrance to L Guk LFG.
Great post. I played EQ in 1999, right from the outset with that awful little window on the world UI. That said, I’ll never forget my first run from Kelethin to Orc Hill or through Steamfont Mountains as a young Half Elf Rogue. I had a pile of printed maps by my desk. I camped mobs forever – the eyepatch mob took me from Friday night to Sunday evening in one sitting! My Epic Weapon was awesome. PVP was superb. Meeting an Iksar in Lower Guk when looking for one of my masks at 3am and have him help me without his guild find out. Ssra Temple dragging corpses. The big war in Great Divide. The dragon and giant faction quests. There were just so many epic moments. It was a real world. My first venture into a virtual world and I spent lifetimes in there. Please bring it back in a new shiny world 🙂
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation with friends and fans of the 1999 classic. I sincerely hope that this somehow gains traction. Might have to boot up p99 again after reading this.
I wish they would just do a semi-reboot of the original. I bet it’s hard to explain to new developers and people who didn’t play the original how fun the game was. You can’t just tell them to go buy the game and play it, there is no way to re-create the atmosphere because most of it was from other players. Even with the emulators, there aren’t enough people. The only MMO I’ve played for more than a week since EQ1 is Eve Online, and it doesn’t come close to the same feeling. Just another note, as a pvp server player, I don’t like instanced content ;).
After reading Graig Warder’s comment, I guess I have to agree that I probably would find a straight reboot unplayable since I can’t sink that kind of time into it again. I guess it’s something I can never really get back.
The only thing that I did not see here that is fundamentally important to me in an EQ remake, is the notion of creating economic wealth within the game. I almost never hear anyone talk about this, which baffles me.
One of my favorite things about EQ was that there were no level caps on transferable items (for the most part) and everything you acquired, every new piece of gear had a value to it that could be retrieved on the open market, and most items retained their value for years at a time. Although you would sell and buy pieces to fit a new character you would play, so long as you were smart about your transactions you would never lose money. Playing on a PVP server, “Twinks”, although sometimes annoying, were people that invested and put in time to get the gear, or wealth, that they had. Money was such a hard thing to get and required real effort to earn it. This added such a huge level of realism to the game that has been completely lost in modern MMO’s (even in EQ post Planes of Power, when level caps started being introduced).
Playing through Planes of Power, the highest level character i ever had was 54, even though I logged hundreds of days worth of playing time. Half of my time was spent in the Bazaar or Greater Faydark buying and selling items, and building my wealth. I’d also camp rare items for months, like the pauldrons that dropped from the stone giants in the Erudite continent, just to make money. People couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a max level character despite my alt’s with Fungi tunics and Centi Longswords.
Maybe I am unique in this, but the idea of wealth building is without a doubt the most attractive thing that EQ had. I would be elated if a future iteration would follow suit.
The first EQ was the best second was ok but i think they should bring back the first and make it new with new tec and some new zone even make it in to VR game
OMG OMG OMG I have read quit a few EQ rants over the years but this one nails it.
I played EQ for years, I actually spent time enjoying the content such that after 2 years I had only one toon of level 30 and I was happy.
than each new expansion got dumber, people would go from zip to max lavel then scream there was nothing to do so the Devs were forced to placate them adding high level dungeons and loot and raising the cap were the power gamers would max out ignoring everything that did not further that goal then start screaming again.
getting around was as simple as getting to a teleport tower, the world got small.
gotta minimize “down time”
I played a druid my only toon ever, and I was good at it.
I miss evercrack
I also miss EverQuest miss the relationships with people as you played the game miss the interface it provided I played for many years till sony took it over and it became a mindless grindfest. I wish they would come up with a good mmo that compared to it and no warcraft does not come close. Warcraft is for children and still is hence the popularity. Loved your article if you know of a mmo that might come close let me know I would love to play again.