PlanetSide 2: Welcome to Hossin

More EQN:Rumors

Another list of stuff announced at SOELive source from reddit:

• Holy trinity is dead. No dedicated healers or focused tanks based on combat mechanics.
• Combat model: visceral, active movement orientated gameplay.
• Everyone is responsible for their own safety, and part of the action.
• There is no threat meter/agro/taunting.
• Utility classes will be rewarded for their efforts
• NPC's will figure out your tactics and react. You're gonna want some friends to play with you.
• There is no artificial limitation to the number of classes/abilities you can collect.
• 8 combined abilities. Kind of like choosing your 8 spells in EQ1
• The ownage we saw in the gameplay footage isn't going to be the norm. Those were highly advanced characters.
• There will be a variety of pets. Some permanent and some temporary. Pet AI much smarter in this game
• Newly added weapons also give the game more abilities.
• Lots of abilities don't require a target. Swing a long sword, hit anything in its way
• 4 weapon abilities and 4 character abilities.
• highly customizable. i.e want to kill casters? Multiclass a rogue with a wizard and use Invisibility, backstab, manaburn, spell reflect
• Every time a new class is added to the game we get new abilities that change the strategies used. Keep things fresh.
• Name your custom classes.
• Character abilities are pick and choose. Not weapon abilities
• Customize your class. Choose abilities from any of the classes you possess.
• Play one class, advance another. Don't have to be playing the class you want to work on.
• Collect multiple classes, advance each one. Swap classes outside of combat
• Character abilities: movement, offensive, defensive & utilities. Abilities based on class
  Blademaster: 4 offensive abilities
  Rogue: 2 offensive 2 utility
  Wizard: 2 movement 1 defense 1 offense
  Tempest: 2 movement 1 offense 1 utility
• Classes that use the same weapons have different animations so you can tell what class somebody is by watching them move
• Your weapons determine your 4 abilities.
• No weapon swapping during combat
• Class determines your armor/weapon options
• Warrior animations inspired by the Incredible Hulk.
• Warrior destructive and strong. Leap, whirlwind, shield bash.

EQN: Grails Vs Pillars

When SOE announced Everquest Next over the weekend one topic was the four Holy Grails the game philosophy is built on. These are:

1# Change the core game

MMO's have been doing the same thing since Ultima Online. SOE want to do something different and make something new.

The reality is they are just going to clone the system from Guildwars 2 or going back further Star Trek Online. Using weapons to fill out your skill bar and create more of a action based combat.

The class system is a mix between Guildwars 1 and Rift.

But compared to the Everquest series the core game has been changed.

There is a ton of new information appearing about there being no grind / levels or even XP from mobs which is some real core game changes.

2# Destructibility

Looks, sounds, and should be amazing. Just control the trolls. This is a real core game change.

3# A life of consequence

AI doing more than wondering around and  players choices meaning something and effecting the world. This paired with Grail two is needed.

4# Permanent Change

This isn't tied to Grail two cause that would just be insane. Just imagine as every single block is removed from the game leaving nothing but a picture of Peter Molyneux grinning back. This Grail is more about dynamic events and how the end results will stick, not reset a hour later when no ones around.

All this just reminds me of the hype Bioware had for their Old Republic:

MMOs are built on three pillars: exploration, combat, and progression. At BioWare and LucasArts, we believe most MMOs ignore an important fourth pillar: story. Our mission is to create the best story-driven games in the world, and we believe that the compelling, interactive storylines in The Old Republic are a significant innovation in the MMO genre.

Glad to see that SOE isn't piling all there game onto one support pillar because as we saw in The Old Republic, if that pillar breaks, you need the other 3 to fall back on.

Everquest Next: Rumor Mill

Source, a guy on reddit talking to a dev at SOELive Pool Party. So these aren't confimed features but still a very interesting find:

WORLD

• Seamless world - no zones
• The land mass shown was not Antonica, it was just a land mass. I asked if Kelethin existed and he shrugged as if he could not answer. BUT IF THEY HAVE CRUSHBONE (concept art) THEY MUST HAVE KELETHIN RIGHT?!
• I asked about the limitations I had read about with the Light Forge engine in regards to water (rivers) and square-ish maps, his response was that it was a heavily modified version so there will be fluids in the game.
• No oceans, 'yet'.
• There will not be 2 factions (ie alliance/horde), or 2 sides (evil/good).

CHARACTERS

• There will be 8 starting classes, the one you pick you basically get for free. The other classes you will be able collect. I am assuming these 8 will be a part of the 40 planned classes (more of which will be shown tomorrow in the classes panel). Their plan is to release new classes as the years progress. It was also mentioned that some classes will be extremely hard to obtain.
• No levels - referred to as `tiers', the 'zones' will be tiered with certain level mobs and usually will be higher tiered the deeper you go in that specific area. In order to tier up you will have to complete certain objectives; one example given is say completing a specific set of armor would tier you up.
• 8 max total abilities at any given time. 4 per weapon, and 4 per class. He mentioned something about all 8 being from weapons if you were say duel wielding, but I may have misunderstood him here.
• There is NO XP from mob killing, no grinding, etc etc. Essentially what we're looking at is a set of objectives and how we go about completing those objectives will be up to us. It was said that one may be able to tier up without even having to fight.
• RANGERS ARE A CONFIRMED CLASS
• Cannot progress both a paladin and a shadow knight at the same time. Basically you have to do bad things to get friendly with the SK people so you can up the SK skills, but you have to do good things to get in nice with the paladin folks to get trained in paladin things. You can however, do bad things and get the SK class, then redeem yourself and get the paladin class, but in doing so you may no longer be able to talk to the SK people and continue your progression with that class.
• I asked about death; they cannot talk about death. All he said was "it's cool and we think you'll like it".

ITEMS

• All items will be bind on equip (or pickup, not sure). He said that he loved the idea of non-bind weapons but they ruin the economy.
• the game will be heavily based on gear, he loves gear and loves the hunt for gear. One example he gave us is say you were a Rogue that wanted to get the wizard's teleport spell - well once you obtain the teleport spell and use it, you most likely would not have enough stamina/mana/whatever to do your backstab, so you would want to gear that class specifically for this task by obtaining a weapon that returned stamina/mana/whatever on teleport.
• Crafted items and dropped items (say from raids) will be of equal value many times. This is all dependent on the class, spec, etc though. He basically said there is a big emphasis on crafting and they want their goods to be competitive.

COMBAT

• NO AUTO ATTACK, I asked if was similar to NW's combat system and he said it was similar, but more advanced.
• The demo shown was more of a `tech demo' for the destructible environment. None of the NPCs were even pathing (the small ones were not even attacking back).
• BOWS are in the game (more on that tomorrow apparently).

MISC

• I asked if there was a large majority of the game that they were not showing us (maybe due to lack of polish etc etc) and he said yes.
• Crafting was compared to SWG, but better
• There are currently 70-90 devs (don't remember the exact number) on the dev team for EQN.

Everquest Next: Characters Video

What is Everquest Next ?

To sum it up:

Everquest Next is Guildwars 2 & Minecraft

Today we got our first look at Everquest Next at SOELive. What was shown was something that looked very much like Planetside 2, Guildwars 2, Minecraft & Wildstar.

Just one big difference, the world is made out of Voxels not Cubes, but Voxels like we had over a decade ago. So the entire environment is destroyable. As you saw the demo characters fight monsters, parts of the world were being destroyed.

The first thing that came to me when I saw this, is that the entire world is going to be trash after 30 mins of launch. They did say the world would heal itself.

Glaring flaws to one side, the effect was amazing cool. Most of the destruction was covered in thick clouds of dust so you couldn't see the world subtraction but it was the same as letting off tnt in minecraft. At one point the players were knocked into a underground cavern ( with a edit of video ).

The game will have a procedural generated underworld where you can dig down and discover caverns ruins and lava pits. This part is very much like Minecraft except that the world resets it self with earthquakes, generating new areas and removing old. This gameplay will be fantastic as its no longer just lets go into a cave, kill something, walk out the way you came in.

The player graphics were slightly disappointing to start with. They look very much like Free-Realms / Wildstar. Very cartoon, large eyes and didn't really fit into the world. By the end of it I had accepted that this is what they would look like. I was hoping for more like the supposed leaked image a while back which was a realistic detailed character.

The lion guy though was AWESOME !



As for the Guildwars 2 style parts, the game has 8 classes to choose from. Then out in the game you can find another 40 classes to learn. At any time you can combine these classes to make new completely unique class. This is very much like Guildwars 1 skill system. Also each class can use certain weapons which give more abilities like Guildwars 2.

Another Guildwars 2 feature is the public quest style system. They are describing it much like the original Guildwars 2 videos did. Being able to shape the world depending on the outcome. In guildwars 2 this did happen, just the encounters were designed so they could be reset. Everquest Next system sounded like they were going to take much longer to complete and the end result is permanent. What was described was a camp, becoming a village, the players had quests to remove mobs from the forest which they did but this caused a war in which ended with a siege of the village. Once complete the rally point ( public quest ) would move to a new location. They want people to be able to say to new players, ' I defended this place, the reason its here is because I was there '

They also talked about Mob AI. Not having set spawn points where they idle around but instead every mob ends up having things they like and dislike. Orcs as there example disliked Towns and Guards, but liked adventures and roads. So the orcs would travel around and setup camps where they liked.

The players could remove the orcs by wiping them off the face of the world or telling guards about the orc location and lastly by just not going that way any more until its safe.

Once again a interesting idea and it will be good to see it in action with a billion players.

Later this year Everquest Next: Landmark will be released. This is almost a pure minecraft game in the engine. The point being to let players help build the world for Everquest. Players will get the same easy to use world building tools to sculpt there patch in the world. If the creations are popular they will be added to the final game. Also structures and player made items will be sold on the market place in much the same way stuff is created for Dota 2 and TF2.

My thoughts on this are, if EQN ( Everquest Next ) is free to play then go ahead. I myself would be even temped to submit content to the game.

Anyway, by the end, I was very excited. This is going to be a new MMO experience with idea borrowed from some of my Fav games and I am sorry to all the other MMO's coming, I am no longer interested .....  Well I might still be interested in Archeage but that's about it.

Jeremy Soule doing the music to Everquest Next

Because really, who else would you get these days.

Still if Direct Song offers a signed CD I know I won't be buying it. Almost 1 year since ordering the Guildwars 2 soundtrack and Direct Song is still dicking around and making excuses as to why it hasn't shipped. Feels like the company is a fraud.