New direction for EverQuest II?
One of my biggest complains about EverQuest II is the very fact the game was not fun. Graphics were too much; animations were poor on just about everything; models looked very, very bad; locked encounters forced grouping making solo play unfun; forced “direction” through the game; too many classes; and the list goes on.
A friend passed over an article asking about the very future of EverQuest II. Looks like they are starting to see the light of things — their game plain sucked. As Scott Hartsman put it, “When your designers aren’t playing your game, that means something is deeply, deeply wrong.”
It looks like the EverQuest II team is finally realizing one of their biggest mistakes it trying to get away from EverQuest as much as possible. In trying that, they not only pass over the good aspects of the game, but they also passed over many, upon many learned mistakes and just repeated every single one, and then some, in EverQuest II. EverQuest is history: learn from it, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. This is what Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft, and it was a huge success.
The current game has improved from what I played with in the past, but there are a few things I would like to pass over, in hopes that maybe somebody would listen. If I were to make a direction for the game, I would require the following things to be fixed:
- Remove the “clay” look from characters — even if you have to dummy the graphics
- Speaking of dummying graphics — lessen the graphic requirements. I’ll play EQII if it had the graphics and animation of EQI (PRE-Luclin).
- Narrow down classes, drastically, by adding an a “Talent Tree” type setup so that current class branches can remain there, but overall classes would be less.
- Change all Adventure Packs to Free content.
- Retrograde these new Kunark changes to old world content. The current low level zones are a major turn-offer for any new player; tiny city zones, constant zoning, locked in “newbie island” and so forth.
- Add more colour. Real life is bland, boring; stop trying to mimic it! Add more colour to add more “life” to the game.
- Remove the god damn staring of EQII toons. Every time you walk near an NPC you and he get interlocked in a staring contest and it absolutely bugs the shit out of me!
With these updates and a slow down on expansion releases, EQII might have a future. Only times can tell … as for me, no future in it here. I run a mac now and EQII is strictly Windows only.
