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Aradune posted:I'm not a fan of maps. Welcome Brad, This and many other player feedback features are of great interest to me as an oldschool mmorpg'er who is also a UX designer by trade. For instance, I strongly believe that there are creative ways to fulfill the accessibility goals that a map would offer without killing immersion. I'm a big proponent of recovering accessibility through careful world and interface design. I believe it's possible to create a compelling product without the spoon feeding we're all so tired of. UX is more than just the UI sitting on top of the game, but how the player touches the world. It's totally within the realm of possibility to produce a product that is decidedly oldschool, but is not perceived as lacking by current benchmarks for usability in the genre. Yes the audience is more targeted, but there are players out there who have never experienced this kind of mmo before. If done carefully it's possible to appeal to them too, contrary to the belief of many product managers. There are a myriad of ways to go about teaching players without plastering vfx arrows all over the screen ^_^ P.S. I for one am looking forward to an oldschool mmo made with modern tools. sinewave fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 08:29
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Rename the thread Everquest Next 2
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Jan 17, 2014 08:30
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Third World Reggin posted:Rename the thread I'd call it The Real Everquest 2, but since we have the man himself posting here, I don't want to make anything awkward. If it would fit, I'd add at the end ", and he's posting ITT!"
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Jan 17, 2014 08:47
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Node posted:I wouldn't put all the blame on Brad for Vanguard (which was and still is an awesome game.) It was pushed out the door and didn't get the resources for post-launch support. So purely out of interest, if Brad wasn't responsible for Vanguard being a massive DOA flop, who was? Are you going to try and blame the publisher for seeing a junkie running a madhouse and pushing release to try and get some money back on their investment?
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Jan 17, 2014 09:59
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Byolante posted:So purely out of interest, if Brad wasn't responsible for Vanguard being a massive DOA flop, who was? Are you going to try and blame the publisher for seeing a junkie running a madhouse and pushing release to try and get some money back on their investment? Out of curiosity, where did this info come from? Was it released somewhere, or purely rumor? I've heard it before, but I'm just interested in how it started.
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Jan 17, 2014 16:50
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It was a forum or blog post many years ago by someone who claimed to be on the development team. He was pretty convincing he was actually on the team but maybe he just didn't like Brad and was disgruntled from being fired or something and was making poo poo up. Who knows.
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Jan 17, 2014 17:11
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As an old school tempered in poo poo Everquest player, everything about this excites me, one thing kinda throwing up a red flag for me from the Kickstarter pitch is this though:quote:•Travel where and when you want to in a non-linear world. One of my biggest beefs with the latest school of MMOs is exactly this in a nutshell. I'm hoping non-linear just means that there'll be interesting diversions everywhere with the planar theme, but I still want a world where you sometimes have to put one foot in front of the other to go places. The 3.5 weeks I played Guild Wars 2 was insufferable due to the way you just blink around the world and barely take any of it in, it's so laser focused it becomes meaningless. Exploring the world itself and having BEEN places is my most cherished memory from EQ and it's world. Whether it was by design or happy coincidence, I've never felt as much satisfaction as I did from some of the treks I've taken in that game.
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Jan 17, 2014 18:03
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hayden. posted:It was a forum or blog post many years ago by someone who claimed to be on the development team. He was pretty convincing he was actually on the team but maybe he just didn't like Brad and was disgruntled from being fired or something and was making poo poo up. Who knows. Curt Schilling's blog post in response to the guy on the FoH forum is what made me think the claims had veracity. It wasn't saying he was a liar or he made things up, just that a guy has serious problems in his personal life and we shouldn't be celebrating that fact purely because a game people were excited for ended up a hot mess as a result. Presumably Brad has cleaned his life up which is a great thing to hear but in the end you have a Dev who's first project he led ended up in a 40m+ trainwreck. If that dev comes back to you with essentially the same product outline as last time (a true successor to EQ1) you should be asking serious and hard questions about why this attempt will be different to the last one, what happened last time and how the dev hopes to avoid those same mistakes this time. edit: To the poster above me, while you were playing guild wars 2 did you work at the exploration achievements and jumping puzzles? They felt rewarding in a way exploration normally desn't.
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Jan 17, 2014 18:09
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They just mean it's not quest-hub to quest-hub, or artificial barriers keeping you from entering/leaving an area. Want to wander into that raid zone alone at level 1? Nothing's stopping you, but good luck with it. They've said the game will have levels, different dungeons will be tuned to different levels, etc. They are going for less levels though, with milestones throughout the level to help it not feel grindy, with the idea being that you'll spend longer at each level and have more dungeons and more options at that level.
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Jan 17, 2014 18:11
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Loving Life Partner posted:As an old school tempered in poo poo Everquest player, everything about this excites me, one thing kinda throwing up a red flag for me from the Kickstarter pitch is this though: I got a feeling this is going to be more like riftways of vanguard. You can teleport pretty far, but there is always something you need to ride to and things you can't teleport to.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:01
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Third World Reggin posted:I got a feeling this is going to be more like riftways of vanguard. You can teleport pretty far, but there is always something you need to ride to and things you can't teleport to. Less riftway-type systems as well. We want the world (and getting around it) to be meaningful. As others posted elsewhere, some of my fondest memories from Eq1 were running through Kithicor at night as a lowbie, or dodging the odd spectre train here and there - you miss out on the feeling of being in a world full of danger when you're just clicking from place to place all the time.
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Jan 17, 2014 20:49
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xZAOx posted:They've said the game will have levels, different dungeons will be tuned to different levels, etc. They are going for less levels though, with milestones throughout the level to help it not feel grindy, with the idea being that you'll spend longer at each level and have more dungeons and more options at that level. MMO devs have said this about their upcoming games at least ever since WoW came out, though. That you won't be doing bear rear end quests and progression won't feel grindy etc. etc. but the games usually end up that way anyway. The Kickstarter pitch video was full of meaningless MMO PR jargon (no offense to the devs) and I'm very curious what they're actually going to do different this time. I'm not holding my breath though. The MMO market is pretty oversaturated with games that promise a new and unique approach to MMOs which in reality is often not the case.
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Jan 17, 2014 20:58
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Loving Life Partner posted:As an old school tempered in poo poo Everquest player, everything about this excites me, one thing kinda throwing up a red flag for me from the Kickstarter pitch is this though: Travelling anywhere in this case means being able to potentially walk (or run for your life) through parts of the world, off rails. If you remember how Eq or Vanguard's worlds were, you'll feel right at home. (And fwiw, I agree with the assessment of GW2 - there's a lot I liked about the game, but you got zipped along places so fast it seemed like there was little opportunity to care about what you were exploring. For me it became a checklist of how many hearts I could get - not 'bad', just not for me, and not the sort of stuff we're going for with Pantheon)
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Jan 17, 2014 21:02
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Nauta posted:MMO devs have said this about their upcoming games at least ever since WoW came out, though. That you won't be doing bear rear end quests and progression won't feel grindy etc. etc. but the games usually end up that way anyway. The Kickstarter pitch video was full of meaningless MMO PR jargon (no offense to the devs) and I'm very curious what they're actually going to do different this time. I'm not holding my breath though. The MMO market is pretty oversaturated with games that promise a new and unique approach to MMOs which in reality is often not the case. No offense taken, constructive feedback positive or negative is always welcome (and encouraged!). If you're familiar with handing in bone chips or orc belts from Eq1, nowadays a lot of MMO's would consider that a quest, complete with !'s above NPC's heads and journal entries. Those hand-ins may take a similar form in Pantheon, but that would be for like faction/rep gains, not a 'quest'. We're going back to eschewing the marker over NPC's heads, and a quest in our game will be more akin to lengthy and more meaningful quests like the original epics from Eq1 - *that's* what we consider a quest. With a focus on quality over quantity, that should give us the time to make better encounters and that.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:08
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Nauta posted:MMO devs have said this about their upcoming games at least ever since WoW came out, though. That you won't be doing bear rear end quests and progression won't feel grindy etc. etc. but the games usually end up that way anyway. The Kickstarter pitch video was full of meaningless MMO PR jargon (no offense to the devs) and I'm very curious what they're actually going to do different this time. I'm not holding my breath though. The MMO market is pretty oversaturated with games that promise a new and unique approach to MMOs which in reality is often not the case. On that note, when the game comes out and if you find out the market for the group-oriented true EQ spitual successor is not as lucrative as you thought, are you going to start WOW-ifying Pantheon to make it easier and more solo friendly? Will you drop the subscription model and go F2P? What are your F2P model plans for when the subscriber numbers aren't supporting the game? Your $250 Kickstarter tier has a $1 yearly sub fee. If/when you go F2P do they get anything to compensate for losing that?
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Jan 17, 2014 21:10
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Ceythos posted:Less riftway-type systems as well. We want the world (and getting around it) to be meaningful. As others posted elsewhere, some of my fondest memories from Eq1 were running through Kithicor at night as a lowbie, or dodging the odd spectre train here and there - you miss out on the feeling of being in a world full of danger when you're just clicking from place to place all the time.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:10
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Or the boat going west to east instead of east to west. Or the boat loading in and moving away before you loaded in. Swimming in the OOT was fun. So you are going to more faction and epic quests then. Will grinding dungeons be more of the way to get experience? Or camps.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:26
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Lemon King posted:Nothing beats my first real adventure in EQ going from GFay to Freeport via the Butcherblock boat to group with others I knew ingame. Yes. You weren't fighting monsters the whole time. You weren't questing. You weren't getting experience or loot. You were just admiring the scenery (hey, for 1999, the Ocean of Tears looked great,) talking with friends or strangers to pass the time, and waiting for your arrival. Like a real adventurer, a real person, in a real world. Of course, it's a virtual world. And that's what Everquest used to be - right now, it's just a video game, like so many other MMORPGs. But to me, it used to feel like another world you lived in. Node fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 21:34
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Definitely. My friend and I still consider the day we finally set out from qeynos to freeport to be one of the most fun times we've had in video games, ever. We got lost in the karana's and pointed the right way by a friendly group at the wizard spires who were waiting on a port, one of us died in highkeep but luckily got a rez from a group in the courtyard, we were about to run through Kith at night but got stopped and sow'd by a friendly shaman who advised us to wait a few minutes for the sun to come up. somehow stumbled into befallen thinking it was the fabled EC tunnel, and were redirected back east, where we finally found a huge group of players and selling-spam, and then at last the promised gates of freeport. The underlying trend that made this adventure seem so large in scope to us? There was no GPS telling us where to go, at every turn we would have hosed up if not for assistance from fellow players, and there was a very real component of in-game danger and things that would gently caress us up easily. I realize that's hard to recreate nowadays when everyone can alt+tab and check a map, (EQ used to crash on alt+tab  ) but in something like WoW, I never, ever feel compelled to talk to other players. In Guild wars 2, I even tried to socialize once or twice, but the entire game was like following a zerg of braindead locusts from one event to the next. I don't think anyone ever responded to me because they were always busy running to do the next thing.On another, unrelated note, that's another problem with pvp in wow or GW2 or whatever: It feels utterly pointless. It's like team sports or wave after wave of players crashing against each other constantly. There didn't ever feel like there was a point or purpose. On something like EQ where I knew losing a fight meant losing equipment, you can bet everyone played far more cautiously and every fight felt like it had much more of a purpose. I know pvp isn't a focal point here, but that's what needs to come back: rewards and consequences, and having fights feel challenging and like they had purpose. I want the game to stop treating everyone like they're the greatest hero the world has ever seen and can effortlessly save the world and single handedly wipe camps. I want something where players need to rely on each other to survive. That's why I put money down towards this: because I want a game that's more of a world that encourages player interactions. Otherwise, I could play any number of single-player games with better combat mechanics. Meow Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 21:47
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Cleric class has been revealed. http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/17/pantheon-reveals-the-cleric/
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Jan 17, 2014 21:54
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Lemon King posted:Nothing beats my first real adventure in EQ going from GFay to Freeport via the Butcherblock boat to group with others I knew ingame. Playing as a dark elf, travelling everywhere was an adventure, lol. Of course I had to be the odd man out with my gaming group and be KOS everywhere :/
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Jan 17, 2014 21:59
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Third World Reggin posted:Or the boat going west to east instead of east to west. Mobs either from overland sources (camps, wandering npc's etc) and dungeon crawls (camping, roving and killing) will be the primary means of exp gain. You won't see a race to finish an instance or dungeon as the primary exp gain like some other games on the market today.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:01
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Node posted:Yes. You weren't fighting monsters the whole time. You weren't questing. You weren't getting experience or loot. You were just admiring the scenery (hey, for 1999, the Ocean of Tears looked great,) talking with friends or strangers to pass the time, and waiting for your arrival. I thought about this post while I ran an errand, and I wondered if I was waxing nostalgia when I posted it. Would I hate waiting and riding on a boat, or trying to find someone to port me across the world today? I came to the conclusion that no, even today, I would not hate it. I didn't hate it back then in 1999 in the dozens of time I had to do so. I don't think I would hate it today. A lot of people would, but I do not believe Pantheon is trying to attempt to appeal to every single gamer in existence - it can't. The 900 pound gorilla called WoW does that, and trying to wrestle it would be futile.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:53
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On the subject of quests and dynamism: EQ was populated with fetch quests, and kill quests, all over the place. What made them distinct was that the player didn't have to be TOLD to collect items before they could. Orc belts and bone chips dropped regardless of whether you knew they were a quest item or not. And the same item was a component of multiple quests in multiple areas. I hope that kind of philosophy can be adopted in a new MMO.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:04
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Noah posted:On the subject of quests and dynamism: EQ was populated with fetch quests, and kill quests, all over the place. What made them distinct was that the player didn't have to be TOLD to collect items before they could. Orc belts and bone chips dropped regardless of whether you knew they were a quest item or not. And the same item was a component of multiple quests in multiple areas. I hope that kind of philosophy can be adopted in a new MMO. Yea, we're big fans of that as well. Some of the fun of original Eq was trying to figure out which items to give which NPC's, as well as figuring out what to say to them in the first place.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:10
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I played EQ on release and played it for years until I got into WoW vanilla beta, some of my most memorable MMO memories come from EQ1. When you re-install EQ1 though you do not rekindle the same memories or same enjoyable feeling, things are never as good as you remember them and you can't re-create those initial experiences. I really liked the old EQ zones like Guk which were drat hard and you were prone to getting swamped, but didn't enjoy camping or corpse retrieval, or getting trained in zones. While I am pro-group content there are times you just can't sit down and play with a group and commit to investing a period of time playing but have time to do things casually on your own for a while, I think games which are not solo friendly in some fashion struggle for support. My favourite part of MMOs is character development and my interest wanes when the character development ends and gear is your only real progression forwards. That to me feels very repetitive and is the major source of burnout. I used to love raiding in MMOs and that has waned significantly over the years. I love hard and challenging content but with most brutal Boss fights boils down to figuring out the pattern to beating the boss then repeating it, I love working that out and bringing the boss down the first time but having to farm the boss over and over and over to get gear for everyone feels like a second job. I think that harks back to my original paragraph that past memories aren't as good as you remember them, I loved my old EQ days but MMOs have evolved since then, people want to see new things, have new experiences. It was why all the WoW clones have failed. I think that is the predicament for new MMOs, it is rare you see one that undertakes next generation concepts. I think there is much to learn from what has come before and there is a lot of good principles from previous MMOs you can adopt. However, most struggle to evolve. The financial model is also another issue. I used to be happy forking out monthly back when hosting costs were horrific, however, that isn't the case any longer and when you pay for expansions you have to ask yourself what content are you actually getting for that monthly contribution. With current subscription MMOs the average user subsidises heavy users and current FTP models the heavy users subsidises the average user. I'd prefer to see some reasonable user pays model which seems fair to everyone. Not sure why this has been so hard to implement.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:32
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Node posted:I thought about this post while I ran an errand, and I wondered if I was waxing nostalgia when I posted it. Would I hate waiting and riding on a boat, or trying to find someone to port me across the world today? I came to the conclusion that no, even today, I would not hate it. I didn't hate it back then in 1999 in the dozens of time I had to do so. I don't think I would hate it today. You're correct, we are pretty up front that we don't to be everything to everyone. It feels like a lot of games have tried to capture that WoW money (read: create the same gaming experience), when it already exists. And on the note of boats, I've spent a lot of time considering that myself over the last 6 months especially. Some of the best friends and memories I made in Eq were from the noncombat things like waiting on the raft in the Oasis (and avoiding Sand Giants or Lockjaw - sometimes unsuccessfully, heh). I personally want to see more stuff like that again.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:34
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Node posted:I thought about this post while I ran an errand, and I wondered if I was waxing nostalgia when I posted it. Would I hate waiting and riding on a boat, or trying to find someone to port me across the world today? I came to the conclusion that no, even today, I would not hate it. I didn't hate it back then in 1999 in the dozens of time I had to do so. I don't think I would hate it today. I never minded the boat ride across the ocean of tears, except for the times the boat vanished unexpectedly and I was in the middle of the ocean... I do not like fast travel, it makes worlds feel small and trivialises getting from point A to point B. However, this only works if you are not forced to have to travel great distances all the time. Ie, when you sailed from one continent to the other, you usually invested a significant amount of time in the new destination, ie going to a new zone which was appropriate for your level. in games where you have instanced dungeons where you only spend 30 minutes in it and they are all over the place then not having quick travel or instant travel would be cumbersome for those games. I think the more you trivialse travel, the less purpose you have in creating great landscapes to explore and travel through.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:42
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Ceythos posted:You're correct, we are pretty up front that we don't to be everything to everyone. It feels like a lot of games have tried to capture that WoW money (read: create the same gaming experience), when it already exists. So it sounds like we have another developer from Visionary Realms here. Welcome, and thanks for posting! Who are you, might I ask? Have you worked on any games we just might know about?
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Jan 18, 2014 01:51
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Noah posted:On the subject of quests and dynamism: EQ was populated with fetch quests, and kill quests, all over the place. What made them distinct was that the player didn't have to be TOLD to collect items before they could. Orc belts and bone chips dropped regardless of whether you knew they were a quest item or not. And the same item was a component of multiple quests in multiple areas. I hope that kind of philosophy can be adopted in a new MMO. I liked hand-in quests, I think the only problem with EQ was actually finding out they existed, it definitely paid to talk to all the NPCs. I really dislike the menial quests a lot of mmos have resorted to dishing out, wading through poo, washing dishes or being an errand boy, it isn't very heroic. Not sure why people would do menial things in-game that they would be loathed to do irl. I am also not a huge fan of the constant slaughtering of animals, I have no problem killing an animal if you need to eat or skin it but I do not like promoting mindless slaughtering of animals. You want to go out and kill bad guys, not play zoo slaughter online.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:56
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Node posted:So it sounds like we have another developer from Visionary Realms here. Welcome, and thanks for posting! Who are you, might I ask? Have you worked on any games we just might know about? Sorry, I guess I forgot to properly introduce myself  I'm Ceythos, one of the game designers on Pantheon. I previously worked on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes over at SoE.And thanks for all the feedback and questions so far!
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Jan 18, 2014 01:58
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Ceythos posted:Sorry, I guess I forgot to properly introduce myself Ah, very cool. Vanguard is such a great game. I wish it was... well, let's just say it deserves more, it was such a pleasure to play back then. I loved boats - I remember being one of the first three to own the basic boat, and second "tier" of boats in that game for obscene amounts of money, which I got from the awesome tradeskilling in that game. Exploring around the world on a boat hit my exploration nerve hard, and gave me goosebumps. Arriving at a continent and sailing down the river to a trade post, or to your house was priceless. The only part about boats that sucked was that you didn't actually sail from continent to continent, you sailed into a portal that took you to the next continent, sort of ruining the seamless world feeling, but I'm getting off track. What aspect of the game did you work on? And will you be working on the same type of thing in Pantheon? Node fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 02:01
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Zvim posted:I liked hand-in quests, I think the only problem with EQ was actually finding out they existed, it definitely paid to talk to all the NPCs. Glad you brought up the animal killing. We intend to keep the loot sensible, so if you're killing animals, you're doing it because you need the skins, meat, teeth, etc for crafting or for a faction hand-in. You wouldn't for example go out to a field and slaughter snakes wholesale and expect to find a breastplate (unless it was a *huuuuuuuge* boss snake or something that had swallowed an adventurer whole). We don't want to create a list of daily quests where you're washing dogs, cleaning up poo, etc like some other games. I'm glad those games exist for those that want that experience, but that's not our aim. *If* we ever had something menial like that, it would be as like penance or atonement as a one-time thing (think of a disgraced paladin from D&D if I can use the comparison - they might have to jump through some hoops to get in good with their deity again) - we certainly wouldn't want to create "ChoreQuest".
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Jan 18, 2014 02:06
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Node posted:Ah, very cool. Vanguard is such a great game. I wish it was... well, let's just say it deserves more, it was such a pleasure to play back then. I loved boats - I remember being one of the first three to own the basic boat, and second "tier" of boats in that game for obscene amounts of money, which I got from the awesome tradeskilling in that game. Exploring around the world on a boat hit my exploration nerve hard, and gave me goosebumps. Arriving at a continent and sailing down the river to a trade post, or to your house was priceless. The only part about boats that sucked was that you didn't actually sail from continent to continent, you sailed into a portal that took you to the next continent, sort of ruining the seamless world feeling, but I'm getting off track. Vanguard was a good game; flawed, but still good at its core. I know, I know - I'm biased, and I'm fine with that It was one of the last MMO's to come out to capture my imagination and immerse me. I haven't tried FFXIV yet, I hear it's not so bad, but I'm getting off track :p I wore a lot of hats on Vanguard - I helped work on several dungeons, some class tweaks (Dread Knight was the last one I worked a bit on), the free-to-play transition, a bit of high level crafting and diplomacy. The last big thing I worked on was the City of Brass dungeon release and some of the concept work for the Cave of Wonders raid dungeon they just released.Two of the biggest things that gave me goosebumps in that game was when I hopped on a flying mount for the first time and explored all the mountains I couldn't reach by foot, and hitting up my sloop and sailing through Khal's harbor out to the ocean at large by night (just needed some piracy...everything's better with pirates). We're all going to be working pretty evenly on Pantheon. The team's small enough that we'll all have input in just about everything this time around. It's actually pretty nice like that, all working together. I'm sure eventually we'll divide the labor a bit further down, but for the time being it's a group effort.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:14
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Ceythos posted:Vanguard was a good game; flawed, but still good at its core. I know, I know - I'm biased, and I'm fine with that Oh yeah, make sure you guys realize that the unique classes you introduced in Vanguard, the Blood Mage and Disciple were awesome to play, and unique (I didn't think you could make a unique class in a mmorpg anymore.) I hope you guys make classes similar to those, because they were cool as hell.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:24
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The new $250 Tier was added.  quote:Paragon’s Pledge – (This is a STAND ALONE tier not included in the tiers following it.) All previous reward tiers plus very early access to the game as a tester. The exceptions for those who pledge this tier are simple. Be ready and able to help us with any type of game testing and be willing to spend time submitting detailed bug reports. As a paragon you will receive mention in the credits, have a special tag on our forums once they are established, and a special icon that you can display next to your character name when the game launches. All of those who participate in this pledge must sign a Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) and cannot work for any other game company. If at anytime we feel it is justified your access can be removed by the development team.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:53
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Haha, is that how far the free microlabor movement has stretched over the years? You can now pay to be a shat upon beta tester?
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Jan 18, 2014 03:05
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The MMO HMO > Pantheon - Where we Wax Nostalgic About Vanguard/EQ1Zvim posted:I do not like fast travel, it makes worlds feel small and trivialises getting from point A to point B. Absolutely; banding together with four friends and running from Qeynos to Freeport at the end of Beta 4 remains one of my fondest memories and made me believe the world was absolutely huge. EQ was not the only game that did travel 'right' either; FFXI was sort of the same way. Teleportation spells were limited to a single job, relatively mid-to-high level, and their success required attunement. Alternative forms of fast travel (Airships, Ships) were expensive, unlocked through in-game progression, and also on their own timers--not on player demand. They were also dangerous in some cases; players using the ships were attacked by undead, pirates, giant squids, and so forth. I guess that sense of 'danger' is what I miss most from games like EQ and FFXI. Death meant something. It didn't mean a minor inconvenience, like repair costs and respawning five minutes away. It meant losing experience and potentially significant time investment, which made me far more averse to death and gave inherent value to exploration. It punished you for not playing intelligently or paying attention when you failed to bind at your new destination before heading off and getting one-shot by a hill giant. MMO players and the information situation are different these days; information regarding paths, strategies to demystify the game are more openly available, and maps are easily found either through an in-game system or opened up a JPEG on an instance of Google Chrome that's sitting on your second monitor. Still, hopefully this game will find a way to bypass these changes and recapture the danger and uncertainty that came with EQ's initial release.
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Jan 18, 2014 03:20
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Loving Life Partner posted:Haha, is that how far the free microlabor movement has stretched over the years? You can now pay to be a shat upon beta tester? Not really, the previous tiers give you alpha and beta access, Paragon costs the same as Pathfinder's pledge but has fewer positions. You would get the opportunity, I would imagine, to get involved pre-alpha. I am not exactly sure the full extent of the phases for MMO development but there a lot of steps. I remember when I got into WoW vanilla the necromancer and death knight classes were removed some time in alpha so never got to see them or have a hand in trying them out or being part of the development process for that. They obviously only want people involved at that level who are actively contributing I would imagine.
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Jan 18, 2014 03:50
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Zvim posted:Not really, the previous tiers give you alpha and beta access, Paragon costs the same as Pathfinder's pledge but has fewer positions. They want their QA cost to be zero so they are trying to get people to buy a spot as unpaid labor in the absolute worst bit of the gaming industry.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:14
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