Kannkor
Ogre
I've had a bunch of people ask me about my thoughts on Everquest Next and SOELive in general. So... here are my thoughts. Keep in mind, I generally have a pretty strong opinion on things, and this really is just my opinion.
Lets start off with SOELive.
SOELive:
The best part of SOELive is meeting and chatting with other players... Especially those who also wore my "Ogre" shirt..
This truly was the best part of SOELive, and I generally dislike people.
Lets skip to the worst part of SOELive... the lines. To get into anything popular (like eqn keynote) required you to wait in line for hours. But, at least if you did it with people you know, or around people, you could chat it up for a few hours and it was acceptable (except for that guy who thought he should shower in cologne).
You then have keynotes, panels etc. Being this was my first SOELive, I'm not sure how common this is, but if you went to the keynotes, they gave you all information about all games, so the rest of the panels were people repeating the exact same thing over.
Then we had the Everquest Next panel, where it was a repeat of the keynote, with questions. In short, any information they didn't give out in the keynote, the response was 'not willing to disclose that information at this time'. Well, people just didn't understand this, so you had people asking the same question 20 times, with the same response of 'not willing to discuss at this time'.
In short, SOELive is all about the player experience, meeting other players etc. This is what made my SOELive experience great.
Everquest Next
It's impossible for ANYONE to really make too many claims this early on about this game, because it's still extremely early in development. However... everyone wants to give their opinion on it... so why not.. Just keep in mind, it's a lot of speculation on what each person believes will happen, vs knowing.
EQN claims to have four major differences, or 'Holy Grails' that separate them from every other MMO in history. Now... I know companies want to hype their games, but be reasonable. So lets take a look at these claims.
1) Changing the core game - "Old" way - Pick 1 class, gain new abilities. EQN way - You are all the classes, and you can pick whichever abilities you want, called 'multi-classing'.
** This isn't really anything "new". Many games have had the ability to have more than 1 class. Usually called Subclasses etc. However, was it to this extent where you could have all 40 classes? No. So yes, it may push the concept further, but is it really some new, ground breaking idea? No, not to me it isn't.
2) Destructibility. Let me quote smokejumper... "We can literally blow up anything, anytime, anywhere". (Quote is from the keynote).
** I'm sure your first thought is "OMFG that would be so amazing", shortly followed by "this is going to take griefing to a whole new level". Don't worry though, in the very next panel, they clarified that not everything can be blown up. So YOU aren't part of the "We" in "we can literally blow up anything...". From what we seen, this world will have the most destructibility of any game I've personally played. Like the multiclass thing, are they taking the concept and pushing it further? Yes, is it a new idea? No, it's not.
** The world regenerates, so if you destroy something, it will come back over time. (No idea what 'over time' actually means, could mean 10s, 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days). They showed a very tiny bit of combat, and, basically at the end of combat, the entire area was rubble. Which leads me to this question, after 1 person goes through an area, it's only going to be rubble from then on, OR it will regenerate so quickly, it will be back to 'normal'.
3) A life of Consequence - Emergent AI.
** In short, they built Skynet. NPCs are suppose to "learn" and adapt. I have very little to say here, because we were just told what 'could' happen. It's hard to comment on what could happen in the future. Lets take a quick look at the two claims that stand out in my head.
** Environment claims: NPCs (such as Orcs) don't have 'spawn' points, they are.. .. (spawned at a point? ha) then they will use what AI they have, to determine where to go, instead of always going to point X. Again, there's no way to really comment on this, because it's a claim that we can't see yet. I can foresee some problems, and some great ideas coming from it. Best I can assume, is they have thought of both.
** NPC claims: NPCs have the ability to LEARN while fighting you. 'Harder' mobs will generally just have a better or 'faster' response time to learning to what you are doing. The concept seems great, but more than likely it's based on a few simple things that humans can exploit. Again... I'm making shit up simply to comment on it based on what I *think* is going to happen. If a mob learns you are doing a lot of physical attacks, maybe it gains some immunity to physical damage, so you switch to magical, then after x time, he switches his immunities. As humans... this is easy to deal with. Generally speaking, once the 'system' is figured out, we can exploit it to our benefit. Only do ___ to the AI until it does ___, then we can ___ and it will ___. Having said that, it could be full on Skynet and take over the world on day 1 and crash the servers so you can't even log in.
4) Permanent Change - Rally Calls. Events that happen in-game that effect the world. Such as building of a new city.
** These events can take months. The example they used was the building of a new city. I personally just compared it to an EQ2 PQ (public quest), that lasts a lot longer. You can 'help' them out by doing mini-quests. If they need wood, go collect wood. If they need you to defend creatures attacking, go defend. Etc etc.
** This is also where the 'full destructibility' fails. Lets say it's the building of a city you hate. You would do anything possible to prevent it... well, you can't. You can't destroy this city at all (I suspect this holds true for all cities, but that's me guessing). They did say you could 'try' to prevent building of the city by not taking part in the event at all (this is where primalz would roll his eyes). The second way, was if the city needed wood, to go collect all the wood yourself so the city can't get it. For some reason, I just don't see this as being possible... and from their comments immediately after, it sounded like if a city needed wood and there was none, they would switch to wanting stone (or some other mineral) instead.
** Interesting concept - Can't really comment on how people will have interact/enjoy these.
So...for me, these four 'holy grails'... aren't very holy...
So far, there isn't a UI at all, so no comment there.
Then we come to what I believe is the most important part... Combat.
They only showed 2 'classes' and 2 'races'. Warrior and Wizard (or whatever they were actually called). Keep in mind, with no UI, it's hard to tell exactly what is normal combat, what is abilities, what is countering etc etc.
I get the idea they want to make sure the game is playable on the PS4, so they have that in mind while developing things. The combat looks very... non-mmo style. It reminds me of Diablo 3, and others have said it reminds them of tera/nwn (I haven't played either of these 2, so can't comment). During the display of combat, it looked like each class was only using 3-4 abilities. This could be all that is done, or all that the class has, or all the 'abilities' one can have at a time, it's really unknown at this point. There didn't seem to be any 'targeting' in the game, however without a UI... who can one really tell.
They said very clearly, this will not be a game where you sit and watch your hotbars for abilities to come off cool down etc. So to me, that just means very limited ability select (such as Diablo 3, having 5 abilities), or most things are passively added to your 'autoattack'.
I don't really have an opinion on their combat system, because I haven't seen enough of it yet. I think it will make, or break the game.
Overall thoughts:
Game visually looks stunning. A+.
Combat System - Unknown, will be make or break.
There is nothing 'new' in this game. It takes existing ideas and uses more of them (destructibility, much, much more of it, for example), but I lack seeing what is actually NEW about this game.
Because of the press/hype/etc, I do believe the game will do very well at launch, will it sustain? Two things will tell me that, their combat mechanics, and if the game is released too early. Unfortunately majority of games released now a days, are done so because of budget reasons, and not when the game is completed.
If they have a good combat system, and release the game when it's 'polished', or 'mostly complete' (keeping in mind an mmo isn't ever complete), then it has the possibility of being a very successful game. For me, there just isn't anything 'new', which makes their claims fall short. Only time will tell how things turn out.
Last, and maybe most important, my experience with a prostitute while in Vegas.
I'm walking to my hotel room through the mall, it's around 2-3am. I have my super sexy Ogre tshirt on, and this girl stops me to say Hi. Now, this is a pretty common occurrence when you strut your stuff as an Ogre, but this time it felt a little off. First, there were two chicks, and 1 turned and ran (which is also a common occurrence when an Ogre talks to a girl). She thought she'd be all slick and ask me some questions... but I out smarted her!
Where you going? -> To my room.
Where is your room? -> In a hotel.
Which hotel? -> One of them.
Then, she pulled out the big plays, she called me "Mr. Ogre" (cause my shirt says Ogre).
Sadly it ended there... I assume she caught up to her friend, and they were both crushed they didn't get to take me home.
P.S. This turned out way longer than I had expected... and I didn't re-read it or proof read it...
Lets start off with SOELive.
SOELive:
The best part of SOELive is meeting and chatting with other players... Especially those who also wore my "Ogre" shirt..
This truly was the best part of SOELive, and I generally dislike people.Lets skip to the worst part of SOELive... the lines. To get into anything popular (like eqn keynote) required you to wait in line for hours. But, at least if you did it with people you know, or around people, you could chat it up for a few hours and it was acceptable (except for that guy who thought he should shower in cologne).
You then have keynotes, panels etc. Being this was my first SOELive, I'm not sure how common this is, but if you went to the keynotes, they gave you all information about all games, so the rest of the panels were people repeating the exact same thing over.
Then we had the Everquest Next panel, where it was a repeat of the keynote, with questions. In short, any information they didn't give out in the keynote, the response was 'not willing to disclose that information at this time'. Well, people just didn't understand this, so you had people asking the same question 20 times, with the same response of 'not willing to discuss at this time'.
In short, SOELive is all about the player experience, meeting other players etc. This is what made my SOELive experience great.
Everquest Next
It's impossible for ANYONE to really make too many claims this early on about this game, because it's still extremely early in development. However... everyone wants to give their opinion on it... so why not.. Just keep in mind, it's a lot of speculation on what each person believes will happen, vs knowing.
EQN claims to have four major differences, or 'Holy Grails' that separate them from every other MMO in history. Now... I know companies want to hype their games, but be reasonable. So lets take a look at these claims.
1) Changing the core game - "Old" way - Pick 1 class, gain new abilities. EQN way - You are all the classes, and you can pick whichever abilities you want, called 'multi-classing'.
** This isn't really anything "new". Many games have had the ability to have more than 1 class. Usually called Subclasses etc. However, was it to this extent where you could have all 40 classes? No. So yes, it may push the concept further, but is it really some new, ground breaking idea? No, not to me it isn't.
2) Destructibility. Let me quote smokejumper... "We can literally blow up anything, anytime, anywhere". (Quote is from the keynote).
** I'm sure your first thought is "OMFG that would be so amazing", shortly followed by "this is going to take griefing to a whole new level". Don't worry though, in the very next panel, they clarified that not everything can be blown up. So YOU aren't part of the "We" in "we can literally blow up anything...". From what we seen, this world will have the most destructibility of any game I've personally played. Like the multiclass thing, are they taking the concept and pushing it further? Yes, is it a new idea? No, it's not.
** The world regenerates, so if you destroy something, it will come back over time. (No idea what 'over time' actually means, could mean 10s, 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days). They showed a very tiny bit of combat, and, basically at the end of combat, the entire area was rubble. Which leads me to this question, after 1 person goes through an area, it's only going to be rubble from then on, OR it will regenerate so quickly, it will be back to 'normal'.
3) A life of Consequence - Emergent AI.
** In short, they built Skynet. NPCs are suppose to "learn" and adapt. I have very little to say here, because we were just told what 'could' happen. It's hard to comment on what could happen in the future. Lets take a quick look at the two claims that stand out in my head.
** Environment claims: NPCs (such as Orcs) don't have 'spawn' points, they are.. .. (spawned at a point? ha) then they will use what AI they have, to determine where to go, instead of always going to point X. Again, there's no way to really comment on this, because it's a claim that we can't see yet. I can foresee some problems, and some great ideas coming from it. Best I can assume, is they have thought of both.
** NPC claims: NPCs have the ability to LEARN while fighting you. 'Harder' mobs will generally just have a better or 'faster' response time to learning to what you are doing. The concept seems great, but more than likely it's based on a few simple things that humans can exploit. Again... I'm making shit up simply to comment on it based on what I *think* is going to happen. If a mob learns you are doing a lot of physical attacks, maybe it gains some immunity to physical damage, so you switch to magical, then after x time, he switches his immunities. As humans... this is easy to deal with. Generally speaking, once the 'system' is figured out, we can exploit it to our benefit. Only do ___ to the AI until it does ___, then we can ___ and it will ___. Having said that, it could be full on Skynet and take over the world on day 1 and crash the servers so you can't even log in.
4) Permanent Change - Rally Calls. Events that happen in-game that effect the world. Such as building of a new city.
** These events can take months. The example they used was the building of a new city. I personally just compared it to an EQ2 PQ (public quest), that lasts a lot longer. You can 'help' them out by doing mini-quests. If they need wood, go collect wood. If they need you to defend creatures attacking, go defend. Etc etc.
** This is also where the 'full destructibility' fails. Lets say it's the building of a city you hate. You would do anything possible to prevent it... well, you can't. You can't destroy this city at all (I suspect this holds true for all cities, but that's me guessing). They did say you could 'try' to prevent building of the city by not taking part in the event at all (this is where primalz would roll his eyes). The second way, was if the city needed wood, to go collect all the wood yourself so the city can't get it. For some reason, I just don't see this as being possible... and from their comments immediately after, it sounded like if a city needed wood and there was none, they would switch to wanting stone (or some other mineral) instead.
** Interesting concept - Can't really comment on how people will have interact/enjoy these.
So...for me, these four 'holy grails'... aren't very holy...
So far, there isn't a UI at all, so no comment there.
Then we come to what I believe is the most important part... Combat.
They only showed 2 'classes' and 2 'races'. Warrior and Wizard (or whatever they were actually called). Keep in mind, with no UI, it's hard to tell exactly what is normal combat, what is abilities, what is countering etc etc.
I get the idea they want to make sure the game is playable on the PS4, so they have that in mind while developing things. The combat looks very... non-mmo style. It reminds me of Diablo 3, and others have said it reminds them of tera/nwn (I haven't played either of these 2, so can't comment). During the display of combat, it looked like each class was only using 3-4 abilities. This could be all that is done, or all that the class has, or all the 'abilities' one can have at a time, it's really unknown at this point. There didn't seem to be any 'targeting' in the game, however without a UI... who can one really tell.
They said very clearly, this will not be a game where you sit and watch your hotbars for abilities to come off cool down etc. So to me, that just means very limited ability select (such as Diablo 3, having 5 abilities), or most things are passively added to your 'autoattack'.
I don't really have an opinion on their combat system, because I haven't seen enough of it yet. I think it will make, or break the game.
Overall thoughts:
Game visually looks stunning. A+.
Combat System - Unknown, will be make or break.
There is nothing 'new' in this game. It takes existing ideas and uses more of them (destructibility, much, much more of it, for example), but I lack seeing what is actually NEW about this game.
Because of the press/hype/etc, I do believe the game will do very well at launch, will it sustain? Two things will tell me that, their combat mechanics, and if the game is released too early. Unfortunately majority of games released now a days, are done so because of budget reasons, and not when the game is completed.
If they have a good combat system, and release the game when it's 'polished', or 'mostly complete' (keeping in mind an mmo isn't ever complete), then it has the possibility of being a very successful game. For me, there just isn't anything 'new', which makes their claims fall short. Only time will tell how things turn out.
Last, and maybe most important, my experience with a prostitute while in Vegas.
I'm walking to my hotel room through the mall, it's around 2-3am. I have my super sexy Ogre tshirt on, and this girl stops me to say Hi. Now, this is a pretty common occurrence when you strut your stuff as an Ogre, but this time it felt a little off. First, there were two chicks, and 1 turned and ran (which is also a common occurrence when an Ogre talks to a girl). She thought she'd be all slick and ask me some questions... but I out smarted her!
Where you going? -> To my room.
Where is your room? -> In a hotel.
Which hotel? -> One of them.
Then, she pulled out the big plays, she called me "Mr. Ogre" (cause my shirt says Ogre).
Sadly it ended there... I assume she caught up to her friend, and they were both crushed they didn't get to take me home.
P.S. This turned out way longer than I had expected... and I didn't re-read it or proof read it...
