Hail Saints!

[Chronomis]

It's been a long time since you've seen me around!  I haven't been playing any online games lately, but I still exist!  I'm keeping my eyes on EQ Next and might consider taking up online gaming again if I decide it's decent.  I have some trepidation about SOE's wholehearted support of the free-to-play/microtransaction model, but we'll see.  I definitely won't touch it if it has "enter your credit card number now if you would like to loot this item from the moss snake you just vanquished".

Anyhoo, how are Saints doing these days?

-- Bobbun (Brian)

 

[Cistern-Casey]

Hey, Brian! Glad to see you're still around and kicking. I was thinking about you just a few weeks ago and wondering how you were. Even logged on to EQ to still if you were lurking there, but didn't see you.

Hope you are doing well and hope to see you in a game soon.

Casey

[Stonestriker/Thal]

Hey Bobbun!

Long time no see (for those that are not familiar with Bobbun, he was one of our key players back in RoK, SoV, PoP, etc in EQ.)

I am also keeping an eye on EQ:N and I just talked to Snake and AJ a few days ago and heard they are doing the same.

I also saw Tyrol on EQ a month ago or so, but he was afk when I logged in.  It would be interesting if we could get the EQ band back together in EQ:N, but we will see how it goes. 

One of the big fears that I have on EQ:N (and most new games these days) is a lack of content.  I think a lot of games have allowed the big push to level cap and "end game" content and forgotten that many times, it is the journey that is the most fun, not the destination.  Yes, I agree that once the game is out there, there needs to be some way for new players to "catch up", but at least during release, open content, exploration, and the journey is better for me, rather than a rushed, spoon fed, extremely linear leveling path ("go to this zone at such and such a level", etc, rather than "here are a number of possibilities of things you can do at this level")

EQ had a lot of things wrong with it, but they also got a few things very right.

[Chronomis]

Stonestriker/Thal wrote:

Long time no see (for those that are not familiar with Bobbun, he was one of our key players back in RoK, SoV, PoP, etc in EQ.) I am also keeping an eye on EQ:N and I just talked to Snake and AJ a few days ago and heard they are doing the same. I also saw Tyrol on EQ a month ago or so, but he was afk when I logged in.  It would be interesting if we could get the EQ band back together in EQ:N, but we will see how it goes.  One of the big fears that I have on EQ:N (and most new games these days) is a lack of content.  I think a lot of games have allowed the big push to level cap and "end game" content and forgotten that many times, it is the journey that is the most fun, not the destination.  Yes, I agree that once the game is out there, there needs to be some way for new players to "catch up", but at least during release, open content, exploration, and the journey is better for me, rather than a rushed, spoon fed, extremely linear leveling path ("go to this zone at such and such a level", etc, rather than "here are a number of possibilities of things you can do at this level") EQ had a lot of things wrong with it, but they also got a few things very right.

Well, I sure hope there are a few who remember me.  I have played with STC as recently as Rift, after all.  I also played Vanguard some, though that game flopped and STC couldn't sanction there.  And I played WoW with STC just a bit, about the time Lich King came out.

I have been looking a little bit at what SOE used to call "Everquest Next Landmark", but now just calls "Landmark"--mostly to prevent confusion, I think, as it's definitely not Everquest.  It's basically SOE's response to Minecraft--a mining and construction game.  I think for the purpose of attracting the kind of interest that Minecraft has it's not likely to be a major success, but it is interesting from the perspective that it uses the same engine that is intended for Everquest Next.  The graphics have a much more WoW-ish feel than any Everquest game, with the character graphics cartoonish in a very "Disney" way.  The mechanics of the engine look quite nice, though, with relatively good performance and the best lighting and use of physics that I have seen in a PC-based online game recently (admittedly I haven't picked up a lot of new stuff lately).

Gameplay is anyone's bet.  I haven't seen any MMO in quite some time where all the attention didn't, in the end, go to keeping the "I haven't left my parent's basement at any time in the last six years" crowd interested.  But yes, I definitely hope there's some non-minimax gameplay there worth experiencing.

@Casey:  Not looking to pick WoW back up any time soon, so you may not be seeing me in game for a while.  Probably not EQ either--it's been a couple of years since I played it, I think.  But I definitely look forward to seeing you at some point in some game before too long!

 

[ColeTheo]

Is there really a such thing as "free to play" or is that just a smoke screen?  It seems like if you wanna take advantage of everything a game has to offer you have to pay.  At least that has been my experience.

[Chronomis]

My experience has been somewhat mixed on that, Murlenn, though there does seem to be a lot of "play to win" out there.  I can say that the last time I was in Everquest it had recently gone FTP and it was mostly not play to win at that point--the items you could purchase were mostly not that impactful to gameplay.  They were things like appearance gear, furniture for player housing, mounts, illusions, and so on.  A few things did have minor impact--sometimes an illusion would come with a fairly small damage or stat enhancement.  There were also some extra large containers, which weren't really necessary but could certainly ease inventory cramp for people who carried extra gear around or spent a long time between banking sessions.

On the other hand, SOE also released a purely FTP version of EQ2 some time back (the main EQ2 was still subscription only at that time, I believe), and I was so disgusted with it within a few minutes that I promptly uninstalled.

I've been poking around in Rift (see post in that forum if interested), and while it's FTP at the moment, I haven't seen that it's PTW at this point.  I might change my mind once I see more.

[Stonestriker/Thal]

EQ2 FTP is not that bad anymore.  You can still do ALMOST anything that the subscribers do, but you do miss some benefits.  First off, bonus XP/reward events. Another is loyalty tokens.  Subscribers can get 2 tokens per day, and non subscribers can get 1.  5 tokens get you 75 plat...IF you are a subscriber.  Otherwise, most everything else, including weapons and armor, can be purchase with loyalty tokens. Play every day and you can get a LOT of tokens. Another things if you can not learn the very highest rank of a skill (your combat skills have ranks that make them more powerful the higher level they are).  To me, this means you won't be able to successfully raid the highest content raids as successfully, or without slightly better gear than subscribers.  It doesn't mean you can't, but it just isn't as easy.

 

Finally, the latest expansions must be purchased to use them.  Earlier expansions are included for all players.

 

Oh, one last thing, there are veteran rewards.  Initially, it was a way to keep people subscribing even if they did not play that often.  When it went FTP, event non-subscribers started gaining veteran time.  That said, things got a little too complicated to calculate (veteran time reward for certain expansions/dungeon packs), FTP date, last subscription date etc)...SO...they now calculate your veteran reward date based on the age of your account for EQ2.  That means if you started on day one but quit one month later, you still get the benefit of a full veteran reward (these include mounts, flying mounts, prestige (free) housing, etc.)

 

Just something to think about.

 

Oh, and if you like hearthstone, EQ has a similar game that's been our for years (much earlier than hearthstone) and some of the cards can give you in-game rewards.