The next EverQuest is officially named: EverQuest Next. Shocked? Nope, me either. EverQuest 3 has a nice ring to it, though.. EQ3… it just sounds nice. Anyway, I was driving to work this morning thinking about EverQuest like I always do (kidding no I’m not) and I started to think about what EQ Next would need in order to really exceed my expectations. We know it’s going to be a sandbox because Smed can’t stop talking about how EverQuest Next will be the next big step forward for sandbox games. So delivering on that would be a great first step.
Next (no pun intended), I need to get the feeling that I’m simply too small to matter in the grand scheme of things, and no matter how hard anyone else tries they need to appear insignificant too. I want Norrath to always be the center of attention, not Bob the Gnome and his guild of 200 sycophants. I want to be overwhelmed. I want to be scared. I want Norrath to be so grand in scope that I can’t possibly comprehend the breadth of what’s out there.
I would be really impressed by a skill-based system. I think even a skill-based archetype system like SWG used would be fine too. I want to swing a sword and become better at using swords, then utilize my experience in that weapon to purchase skill upgrades and work my way up a tree towards more advanced sword moves. Each character should have 250 skill points they can spend toward unlocking abilities. Utilizing points unlocks more abilities. I can spend experience and use up those points anywhere I want to create my personalized character.
Combat can’t be the main focus of the game. The quickest way to my heart is equal emphasis across all playstyles. Crafters, socializers, and combatants should all have equal representation in the design document. I want other things to do besides log in and think of different ways to kill monsters and obtain loot. I want to be able to find a place for myself in a big world, set up a house, meet new people, and swap stories about getting lost. I want people to be able to spend their entire day crafting and make just as much progress or feel just as satisfied as the people who spend their day hunting.
Make the game difficult. I don’t mean hard raid bosses to challenge large groups of people. I don’t mean a harsh death penalty, item loss, or forced grouping. I just want to feel afraid in MMORPGs again. I want to huddle together under the glow of a tavern lantern while I wait for daylight. I want to seriously consider every monster who crosses my path. I don’t want to fight 10 mobs at a time, or constantly be killing.
Knowing I could write a book on the subject, I’ll stop there for now. Please note what wasn’t on my list — namely PvP.  I’m tired of settling on my expectations and thinking, “as long as the game doesn’t have instancing, themepark raids, or meaningless pvp I’ll be okay.” This is EverQuest. EQ was the first real MMORPG to start the trends we see today; it started a generation, and essentially began the MMORPG name. I want EQ to be the first MMORPG we’ve had in a long while to put us back on the right track.
Great read. I wholeheartedly agree on the even playing field for game emphasis. I LOVED crafting and diplomacy in Vanguard and coming from that to a game like wow (raid, token, raid, token .. shiny shoulder pads! repeat) Screw that mess. the current MMO endgame is terrible and stale.
I want epic stories and great social circles and i want to be the best crafter in my guild. I love creating things for others. Sure I wanna quest but I wanna build ships and houses and be the go to guy for my friends for that stuff. And I want to work together with other people … a crafting party if you will. 🙂
Why can’t we be just as important as the guy leading the party to kill a dragon.
Oh and bring back the 2 month storylines from EQ1. Make it REALLy hard to kill that epic guy at the end of the rainbow.
Oh and I think PVP is for the most part lazy Devs not wanting to create truly epic content. “let’s just have them fight each other so we don’t have to write more epic content”
A lot of good points there. I would love to see crafting groups. Group members could each use their skills to increase quality, progress, and counter problems. For larger projects, like ships and houses it should take hours, or days, where you may have to pause and come back later, unless you are in a group to speed the process along. Vanguard had harvesting groups and those were actually pretty fun. You were with other people and seeing those nodes spill out far more resources than you could have gained solo was great. Even after the loot was split you always came out on top.
As for PVP, people should be allowed to attack each other but the biggest reward should really be holding on to strategic advantages. Don’t even add in pvp points for pvp gear.
Few things on my wish list
1. No instances, period. A fully connected world, if my friend is online I want to know that I can go visit him at any time in the world. Remove the invisible barriers that instances create. This includes things like battlegrounds. Zero instances, period.
2. Less information/feedback. I don’t want ?’s and !’s littering the world. The maximum I want to see is an npc’s name, that’s it. Let the player explore the npc’s themselves to see what they have to offer, not visual queues that make no logical sense for being there. This spans into other categories as well. I want the basics, a box with a text feed, a character pane, that’s it. I don’t want to see numbers magically flying around as I damage enemies. Stuff like that takes away from immersion.
3. No flying mounts and I’ll go as far as saying no mounts period. Sure mounts make traveling faster but at the same time it makes your surroundings smaller and less meaningful. The “trip or journey” is taken away since mounts usually mean you don’t have to pay much attention and can just auto run/fly. Also flying mounts make the world in general feel much smaller, again taking away from immersion.
There’s alot of other things I want but those are probably towards the top of my list.
i really hope what your asking can come true but i think its wishful thinking, true sandbox experience is from a bygone age.
even if what you say came true i dont think it will matter because what has changed is the player base
I want long epic quests again with an amazing epic weapon at the end. No instances, No PvP, No Flying Mounts, No Krono, No Station Cash and the list goes on…
Pretty sure EQN won’t be any of the above. First, this is SOE we are talking about, and second, they expect EQN to be a AAA mass-market title. I think we all know what that means, no matter how often Smed says ‘sandbox’.
It will end up being EQNOT.
5 entries ago you wanted everything to be accessible and easy. Look, you can’t have both, either it’s accessible and easy or it’s difficult. If everyone can do it then how are things going to make you ‘feel afraid’?
[…] over at Keen & Graev wrote up a quick post about his wishlist for EverQuest Next and it got me thinking about my absolute ideal experience for the game. Â As my top most […]
Yea, EQNext needs to be hard, I agree. I disagree on the forced grouping. EQ1’s difficulty and fact that you needed a group to get anywhere was what made the best community the MMO scene has EVER seen. No community has been like it sense.
Why? Because in EQ1 trolling the OOC chat with ” LOL UR MAMS GAY! LERN 2 PLAY NUB!” followed 5 minutes later with ” ….these mobs are really hard can anyone help me?” Didnt really work out in your favor. You learned real quick that people were the main attraction in EQ1. Make it hard, make it so hard I need to ask random_gnome_01 near my to help me.
Should there be solo content? Of course, even EQ1 you could solo. However it was nowhere near as worthwhile as grouping, as it should be. You leveled faster grouping, you got things done faster grouping, and thats exactly how it should be.
You make this game like EQ2, or WoW, or RIFT, or any of the other generic MMOs out there, you will get a community like they have. One filled with spammy trolls. I honestly dont care if the gameplay is absolute ass in EQN, if I can be an iksar, and the game is HARD? I’m there.
Agree very much with the idea of epic quests, but I’d like to make another request regarding quests.
No stupid mini-kill, running quests, etc. I love the freedom of just killing random mobs to gain exp without the feeling of being obligated to killed X number of creatures, then run off to the next kill X number of creatures.
Not having mindless and endless number of quests gives freedom back to the player to decide where to spend their time. They can decide to just stay put in a camp or dungeon and really learn the ins and outs of zone without feeling they are supposed to be “done” after finishing a group of quests in a hub.
My guess is this is very unlikely to happen but I can hope right?
I don’t expect to get what I want but my wish list is:
Sandbox to me means I want crafting to matter and exploration interesting. I would like to log on and play for a couple of hours and do zero combat and other players (and especially devs) , who may have different foci, not be surprised.
I am OK with hard but worry that is usually just codeword for requiring a 24 button mouse with great twitch skills.
I hate phasing but don’t mind instancing. They are not preferred, but I don’t mind too much if the occasional zone-in screen/pause increases my performance. I just don’t want where we are on some progression meaning I see a different town than someone else.
It is extremely unlikely I would play a game with non-consensual combat or forced grouping.
EQ is now on my radar in a big way, but promising a totally new progression mechanic is as bold as it comes.
Everytime I think my hobby is dead something happens to give me hope. The Rift f2p business model that just launched shows how you can do f2p the right way.
August 2nd can’t come soon enough.
@ilkrehp: You can be accessible and difficult. Why can’t folks understand Keen’s dream of challenging team based content w/o the gear/pot/augment/enhancement/etc grind?
Why can’t we have great raid content w/o all of the b.s. strings attached?
@Ilkrehp: Difficulty and end-game themepark raids are not the same thing.
@Syncaine: I know its a long-shot, but this was my wish list. I can’t see a real reason to never wish to things to happen.
@KennyG: It is wishful thinking. I can’t deny that. It’s my wish list. Do I expect them all? Nah. One or maybe two? I don’t see why not. The people working on this game are many who developed during the ‘bygone’ era. I believe they are capable of doing it again — capable and willing being two different things.
Everquest Next is going to be Awesome, the team that work on Everquest (dave, terry , the art guys and the whole team are seriously nice people and put all their effort and passion into the game.
Everquest ROCKS!
[…] sure we will be talking about it much more in the not-so-distant future, though I am trying not to pin artificial hopes and dreams on it quite […]
I know i’m gonna sound silly but i’ve seen enough games without those features that i’ve grown to miss ’em. No loading screens between zones, make it a world goddammit! Specifically avoid the neverwinter model it sucks kodo balls. Also, zones sound be zones, open things and not streets in a canyon. A few like that is ok for flavour but most should be open fields, forests etc etc. Point is, if i can see it, i want to climb it.
next, DAY AND NIGHT CYCLES please. i would go as far as seasonal changes but maybe the technology isn’t there just yet to see trees bloom on spring, snow falling in winter and long days of sun in summer. still night and day should be there. so unless the name of the zone is everday/evernight and you have a pretty darn good lore related reason for always being night and day, make sure every place has a day and night cycle. oh and make it be in sync with the actual day and night of planet earth (my personal preference), it’s pretty weird being midday outside my window and dead of night in game, feels funny (to me, others may like it).
also, swimming, and underwater environments. it’s bloody silly to not be able to swim or go underwater. make it relevant. if need be make me go get a swimming or diving skill i don’t care. and make races feel different underwater, some can hold their breath for longer, others swim faster etc etc, it’s ok, mmo’s don’t have to be a democracy, it’s ok for some races to have a slight advantage over others, the players will manage. flavour over equality, if we wanted everyone to be and do everything, we’d play any of the other mmos that are around.
that’s it for me, if they have theese 3 things they’ll be on the right track 😛
BRAVO! Well said. All of it. I am right there with you on every point.
[…] My EverQuest Next Wish List […]
The two things I am hoping for is, 1: bring back real Classes, and none of that everyone can do it all, and we no longer need one another classless system.2: Factions, and John Smedley has stated already they will be ingame.
[…] we shall see. And I am sure that we all have some hopes or wishes. I have teased Keen about investing himself in the idea of the new game, and I see Wolfshead has come out of hibernation to issue a list of […]