Everquest Next

looking forward to it.

Voxels yiiiiir boi!

those animations are atrocious. voxels sound cool though. im all for that

Looks like there's some cool stuff going on there, I hope they can finally mix up this god damn genre.

It seems like such a quaint, distant memory when EverQuest was the king. I bet there are loads of younger WoW players who've never even heard of it.

was it just me or did it look like the engine barely could hold everything together in that first vid?

Another game borrowing WoW's art style. Blergh.

This looks pretty cool actually! I see how you're excited about this chris, didn't you use to play this for like years?

Quote from 2d-chris

you realize that colors have been around for a very long time ... I see absolutely nothing WoW about this

Probably the character with the lion head?

I'm not into that kinda of stuff myself, at least not if executed this way.

Overall graphics is nice btw.

I used to work for the company thats in charge of the AI tech for this. I dont think theyve demo'd it yet. Its pretty bloody special.

Having just read the article properly, I'm really intrigued by some of the things they're proposing. An almost completely destructible world in an RPG let alone an MMORPG is some pretty groundbreaking stuff, yet I have to wonder how they're going to handle it so that the world doesn't become like many Battlefield 3 maps do after an hour of play: like a parking lot.

If I understand the article correctly, it's not just about destruction but growth too. So there'll likely be systems in place for growing new foliage, constructing cities and bridges, etc — which is exciting in itself. Having a world that feels truly dynamic and down to the players' whims could be a huge step forward that finally breaks the genre free of World of Warcraft's shackles. Of course, balancing that alongside compelling quests and some kind of story/structure will be challenging.

As for the graphics, I think it looks awesome. One of EverQuest's biggest competitors is probably going to end up being Elder Scrolls Online, which of course has a very realistic approach to graphics and is doing a lot of interesting stuff itself. So having the complete opposite without going into the downright cartoony realm of WoW could be a great move.

One big thing that stands out as a negative to me: no announcements of a console release. I think to really challenge WoW a modern MMORPG has to be hitting the mainstream consoles too (at least the next-gen ones). Elder Scrolls Online is on consoles, and it's probably going to seriously help it out because Oblivion and especially Skyrim opened up the open-world RPG genre to a lot of new fans. Sony is missing out on a serious opportunity here to take advantage of that new audience if they don't get it on the PS4 at the very least.

Oh, and the Skyrim music composer is doing the soundtrack.