Is this rocket science??

[fastboy21]

Originally Posted by JackFlash [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do the projections. I doubt the investment would be worth it. I find it hard to believe anyone could recreate the 1000's and 1000's of hours the original devs. and now Nilbog and his volunteers have put in. We're talkin
BIG BUCKS to re-create.

This.

Without the entirely volunteer team's investment of (totally free) time P99 wouldn't be viable. An entirely new game that only gets interest from a small niche of gamers isn't going to be profitable.

It isn't just an EQ problem...most MMOs don't make money and fail. Companies have realized over the last few years that the old model of investing millions into MMO production with the hope of scoring a homerun (i.e the "WoW Killer") just isn't realistic.

Its easier to make a game with low overhead and micro-transactions...and much more likely to be more profitable. Why make EQNext? It is going to take forever and most likely fail. Make Candycrush instead. Stay cheap. Stay profitable.

Brad is aiming at the niche market that he knows well. He will probably hit a homerun, but not as a wow-killer. It will be a homerun with his small niche market....which is what he is aiming for.

[LostCause]

wildstar already tried to make a "hard" mmo look where its at now.

[trite]

Pure speculation but as a software developer, here is what I'm thinking. The easiest path to updated graphics would be if you left all zone and object geometry the same and tried to update individual object models' textures. This would allow for slight visual improvements without any changes to pathing or information about where particular objects should be rendered. This is what Verant did pre-Luclin. Making changes to zone geometry and models requires artists to provide the new content, modifications to whatever tool you use to edit your maps/zones and updates to the database concerning pathing, spawn points, and zone-in locations.

About Daybreak and classic content. I suspect Daybreak has at least one major issue with providing classic content. That is, even if they were forward thinking enough to create snapshots of the client / server code / database on a per patch basis, once the changes for each patch were merged into the development branch those snapshots never got touched again and lack the logic for bug fixes and protocol changes since they were released. If this is the case they could always release a second client with minor changes to account for updates to windows / directx / having two clients installed on the same machine, host a second login server and start developing from the classic branch they chose to use but now you have two different games to maintain.

[Yasi]

Everquest isn't hard or difficult. It takes a lot of time and commitment maybe, but EQ is basically tank and spank, at least the first six or so expansions.

Let's be honest - in most raids, 50% of the People spent their time facing a wall and clicking one button. I remember Rathe Council as a bard mezzing a mob for 2 hours. I actually went taking showers during the fight or made some delicious Spaghetti. The fact that they included /gems later on and the fact that people were able to multibox whole Groups or even raids tells you, that it wasn't/isn't a hard game.

The big difference to newer games is, EQ takes huge amounts of time to level up. And one can consider this hard, but one can also consider it boring due to the fact that you often spend this time at one place killing the same mob over and over again.

The main reason to still Play EQ is nostalgia. And to create a new game for the nostalgia-people would be a very horrible Investment.

[Monty405]

I'm curious how Brad's project will end up.

I am also curious how he can balance a game between reducing the time commitment necessary to progress while keeping the general game play the same as EQ1.

[drktmplr12]

If you are looking for updated textures, that already exists and it does a pretty nice job of updating the environment.

Figuring out what it will take to get a rocket in space is one thing, actually building something to do it is another. If you think creating/modifying geometries in a 16 year old graphics engine with 0 support isn't rocket science, you may be surprised because its pretty close.

To those talking about nostalgia, ect: IMO, the reason people play EQ is to camp pixels for alts or to sell. I would love for anyone to name any mainstream (or not) MMO where you get to do that.

[Yasi]

Diablo 3, WoW.

[maskedmelon]

Sounds like a good community project. Port to unity or unreal, create thousands of new art assets, dump in p99 database and voila! ^^

[Monty405]

You will still have hoards of "luclin v2.0" graphics haters who hate the updated graphics because of 'X' reason.

For the record, I hate luclin models myself.

[drktmplr12]

Originally Posted by Yasi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Diablo 3, WoW.

Diablo 3 isn't an MMO. It's action RP hack and slash and the world isn't persistent. It's no different from Diablo 2 except there is a marketboard.

WoW you do not establish camps. Ever. You go from quest hub to quest hub, by yourself, until you are max level. Then you run dungeons and raids to get no drop items.