Fan Faire 2010: John Smedley and the SOE crew talk EverQuest Next

I'm with you, EQLive will always be my first and dearest MMO. The one which all others will be judged by till the end of my days. I'm really hoping EQ Next will be able to embody the awe and true massive feel of EQ which I don't think any modern MMO has been able to come close to addressing as well as allowing you to feel powerful but not god-like. The fear of death and knowing there will be repercussions for poor choices was one of my favorite features of EQLive and something which almost all modern MMO's have pushed to the way side in an attempt to expand their market share.

To: aurickle

No, this was at Bally's in Vegas, not the Hilton. 2,000 people and it was much smaller than in the past.

Agree it looks really low-budget, like they rented a ancient public elementary school auditorium!

I went to Fan Faire two years ago. They take over pretty much the entire Las Vegas Hilton convention center. Smaller events take place in regular conference rooms within the center. That's where this was, which is why it looks low budget.

However, they also have one big hall with elaborate booths to demo all their current and well-into-development games. (For example, at the one I went to they had thematic booths for EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, The Agency, etc. The booth for The Agency looked all sleek with ultra modern couches and chairs while the booth for Free Realms heavily favored things like giant mushrooms.)

They also use the largest hall for the keynote event which takes place Sunday evening. This is the big production with giant screens and such.

So while Fan Faire is nowhere near the budget that's thrown at Blizzcon, SoE also doesn't have the gigantic cash infusion from the massive player base that Blizzard enjoys. SoE still puts on a very good convention, though.

As for this particular panel, remember that it was not so much as a reveal of EQ Next but rather a chance for the devs to interact with the player base in order to get feedback about what players are looking for from the game. At the same time, they teased some info, but it's all still in the design phase. The fact that SoE wanted to interact with the players as opposed to just talk at them is why this took place in a smaller room without a lot of fan fair. (pun intended)

I'm sure that tonight's keynote will be more along the lines of the big budget reveal that you were looking for. But it will be one headline among many, since they'll talk about the major news for all their games at that event.

Then again the color adds more of a fantasy feel which is really what it is, life adventuring through a huge fantasy world.

Ok, that made no sense as EQ2 was a re-imagining. Whatever, I don't care enough to clarify my thoughts.

EQ2 wasn't a re-imagining, it's a whole new chunk of narrative in a different time in Norrath's history.

Who said those were EQ's roots? You're such an ignorant troll and represent precisely what I'm talking about when I say that the WoW generation understands nothing about the fundamentals that made MMORPG's so great.

Ryan listed some of the roots already. Stop injecting what you read on the hater blogs or lists of things that made EQ a more serious, slower, and hardcore game as "bad things about EQ" and thinking that they were the roots.

Amen. Going back to its roots is exactly what the EQ franchise and this industry need.

True dat. Todays MMO industry has suffered an unsurmountable amount of pussyfication, thanks in great deal to wow going all mainstream and handing out epics and loot and bosskills like so much candy.

MMOs used to be about a bunch of guys banding together, throwing themselves in raids agasint seemingly unsurmountable odds and besting anythng the devs could thwo at them through ahrd work and patience.

Nowadays we have normal modes and heroic modes *rolls eyes*.

You mean going back to spending hours doing corpse runs and constantly worrying whether the stuff that I spend hundreds of hours getting will be lost?

I'm sure glad the MMO industry left that behind.