Why not copy WoW?Follow

We were just touching on this in the "Will you purchase Underfoot" thread. As Snailish commented, they have the resources to do all these things to freshen the game but clearly aren't willing to justify the expense and manpower in a game that is slowly contracting.

If there really is a EQ3 or EQ-Next, and if that is where the resources are going now, well... that would just be great, but I have no idea of that is something real or just a pipe dream for people who were unsatisfied with EQ2 and Vanguard.

Well they are making Everquest 3 (Not titled that). So they must think it viable to keep EQ going in some form.

The Smed:

"So you can see there's a lot to wrestle with as we begin laying the foundation for EverQuest 'Next.' As I write this, we have concept artists and game designers working hard in our studio-taking the lessons of the past, the best parts of the present and the most promising ideas for the future-to bring the world of Norrath to a new generation of players, as well as the dedicated legions of fans who made the EverQuest franchise timeless. I hope we'll see you there."

They're still using a game engine that is optimized for DX9 and Windows XP, both of which are vastly outdated. How much do you think they will be able to do without trashing the existing game engine for a new one? You can only patch up an old jalopy for so long before it's time to send it to the scrap heap. They went on a retexturing blitz several years ago that never got finished leaving the world looking inconsistent with many older zones still using the old textures and they even got complaints about some of them, like when they made Nektulos 2.0 where the zone was no longer open and you had to navigate the maze of paths to get anywhere. They opened it back up, but they shouldn't have closed it off like that in the first place, or the "new" Freeport which I still can't stand. Their feeble excuse for changing that was to make things easier to find, but I still can't find anything in that city now and half the NPC's do NOT show up on Find leaving you to search endlessly until you find them on your own so what was the point? A simple retexture of Freeport without changing the map would have gone over a lot better IMHO. It would cost a lot more in resources than many of you seem to think to rewrite the game from the ground up and considering the shrinking player base, it's probably not worth the time and expense.

There was a post on the EQ forums about how people wanted new character models. A dev stated it would take millions of dollars just for the art.I looked for that post but it looks like it has been deleted.

I couldn't imagine what it would take to completely redo the whole game like you are suggesting. Yeah it would be fantastic but there just isn't enough money in EQ anymore.

If they could completely start a new game, like they have mentioned, and offer a few servers to transfer EQ characters over I think that would be ideal. Just have the game pick up from were EQ will end and offer people the chance to still the play the characters they've played for 10 years.

Here is one post mentioning it.

I'll look for the other one were the dev actually stated it.

heh game art is crazy expensive. It's not just the art, it's animation, it's rendering, it's all of that. Plus, since you know that the first iteration isn't going to be 'the one', you have to do all that multiple times before it's 'just right'. And this is the kinda stuff you can't effectively outsource (imagine EQ with the models you see in those Korean/Asian F2P games) because of how particular the Western audience is about their models. Many of the Asian games have similar looking models, yes? Many of the Western games have similar models (more realistic in some ways, not so much in others). If outsourced, it would be much cheaper but the fanbase probably won't like the results (see: EQ2's SOGA models and the reaction they got). Just talking with Chris Bruce (the animation lead on City of Heroes/Villains) kinda gives the idea that this stuff aint cheap. It's not just a bunch of starving college students doing this in their dorm rooms. Also consider possibly having to re-design all the items in the game that interact in any way with the character model.

Remember the last feedback thread they did on the character models they were working on based off the Drakkin model? People panned those to high hell. I'm pretty sure it wasn't free to get those models to that point (even considering using an existing model as a base). Just not worth it to do it for an 11 year old game. Especially since you can't guarantee that expenditure is going to offer any kind of ROI. Better to just do it as the basis for a new game (which I believe is what they're doing). That way, Smed can have all the microtransactions he wants and no one can whine about it (though they will anyway) since it'll technically be a new game (new rules!).