This week, Sony Online Entertainment celebrated href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65498" target="_blank">EverQuest’s
tenth anniversary. No matter how you slice it, that's one
seriously
impressive accomplishment. The studio's flagship game may still be
going strong, but that hasn't stopped them from moving into different
areas or even creating a sequel. Despite being the golden child of a
bestselling title, target="_blank">EverQuest
II wasn't always so fondly thought of by
players around the world. It may have had a rough beginning, but
there's no denying it's become a pretty fancy gem in its own
right.  With all the knowledge gained from both EQ and EQ2
(not to mention the multitude of others under SOE's Station Access
umbrella), do you think SOE would be able to pull off an EverQuest III?
If they could, what do you think should be in it?


style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: right; width: 200px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65564" target="_blank"> alt="" src="/image/view/65564/preview"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px;">

EverQuest's
new
mercenaries mean never having to solo again.

To save an ungodly amount of time and drama, we'll accept a few quick
premises. First, that SOE would even create the game. Secondly, that it
magically won't have any effect on the populations and support of EQ
nor EQ2. Finally, we'll assume that money, while not unlimited, isn't a
huge issue either. Most of the time, I don't like making these types of
assumptions, but if I don't in this case, we could literally spend days
doing nothing but arguing about these three points alone. With that out
of the way, let’s get down to it, shall we?



First off, any game with "EverQuest" anywhere in the title has to have
lore. I'm not talking about the tiny bits you've managed to dig up out
of your grandfather's World War II journals. I mean the kind that
scholars would die for. The type of lore an ancient traveler may have
target="_blank">spent
weeks gathering in the ancient Library of Alexandria.



Even in its early years, EverQuest had an impressive amount of history
and myth within it. Now, ten years and two time periods later, its lore
has grown into an unstoppable juggernaut of past glories. This sense of
past would be absolutely mandatory within any future iteration of the
EverQuest franchise.



One aspect of EQ2 I think SOE initially had wrong was the lack of open
land. It was the openness of the zones and ability to readily get
ourselves into far more trouble than we could handle within the
original EverQuest that href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64424" target="_blank">made
exploration so much fun. There was no
sense of being led down a specific path and though we all may have had
more horrific (and thus funny) deaths than we can count because of it,
I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't want to feel that I'm blocked
off from some part of the world just because I'm not supposed to be
there. Let target="_blank">the
corpses piling up along the roadside just on the edge of
some dark and foreboding forest be my first clue, not some arbitrary
barrier.



While I'm on the topics of forests and exploring, there's another item
from EverQuest that would have to be in any new sequel. This area was
so popular in fact that I find it hard to believe that only a handful
of games - the most recent game being Requiem: Bloodymare - have done
it since. What am I talking about? Kithicor Forest. See? For those of
you that are familiar with the area, the hairs on the back of your neck
stood up at the mere mention of it, didn’t they? For those
that may not be familiar with this terrifying zone, let me give you a
little introduction.



In EverQuest, there was a zone called Kithicor Forest. During the
game's daytime cycle there really wasn't anything special about the
zone. You'd kill some orcs or whatever else you could find in there and
go on about your business like every other zone in the game. When the
darkness of night settled across the land though, it became a
horrifying death trap. Suddenly, the guttural calls of low level orcs
were replaced with the distant cackling of extremely powerful undead
creatures wandering through the forest. The inhabitants of the entire
zone completely changed in the blink of an eye.




It may sound like a crazy gimmick, but losing track of time and getting
caught in the middle of Kithicor when the sun fell was no laughing
matter. On those rare instances you were extremely lucky, you could
scurry your way out of there like a rat abandoning a sinking ship to
survive another day. Most of the time though, you're greatest hope was
to just make it close to the zone line before dying so you wouldn't
have to wait until morning to go in and get your corpse. To this day,
in any game, I can't think of a single place that put the fear of the
gods into a player like Kithicor Forest managed to. It (or something
like it) desperately needs to come back.


style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: left; width: 200px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65565" target="_blank"> alt="" src="/image/view/65565/preview"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px;">

Necromancers
can always use more pets.

The death penalty is another thing that should make a return to the
gaming world if we ever find ourselves blessed with an EverQuest III. I
can hear the cries of disdain now, but for each person that's currently
praying for their gods to set me ablaze, there are an equal number of
those praising my words. I know this is becoming an age old argument,
so I won't delve too deeply into it here (though href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/index.php" target="_blank">feel
free to
do so in
our forums), but some of the sting of old-school death
penalties needs
to come back.



Some of the most fun I've had in various games (ok, EQ and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/vanguard" target="_blank">Vanguard)
revolved around the need to recover our corpses after a disastrous
group wipe. The communication, thought sharing, and ingenuity brought
about by those moments are treasured memories I wouldn't give up for
the world. Aside from having the added benefit of greatly reducing the
"Leeroy Jenkins" moments of the world, the death penalties we faced
also helped foster the community we all came to love.



You may not be able to assign the task of community to a group of
developers and send it through a quality assurance department for bug
squashing, but there are tools that can be used. The problem though, is
how do you create a game that forces community interaction without
forcing how a person plays the game? You can slow down the regeneration
on magic power and health to create down time. Add the concept of class
dependency like EverQuest did and you've got yourself a natural formula
for creating a community. Most people in the world, and thus gamers,
can't quietly sit in a room together without eventually talking. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65558" target="_blank">It's
just human nature. There's just a small problem with creating
this type
of community dynamic these days. The majority of us no longer have the
kind of time required href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65551" target="_blank">to
dedicate
that much of our lives to a video
game anymore. Fortunately, I also think the younger generation of today
has other things to do as well, so the old community formula no longer
works in the real world. So what do you do?



That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Personally, I don't think
anyone has come up with the answer yet. Yes, there are plenty of games
that are fun and accessible to the masses, but I spend far more time
soloing in them these days than I ever did in the past. Some of us
aren't the most social creatures in the world and if there's no
pressing need to do so, there are an innumerable amount of days we find
ourselves with no reason to talk to anyone else while playing our game
of choice. I'd be lying if I said I didn't sorely miss the days of
solid community we had in the past. Is it possible for those moments to
ever return? I don't know, but it would definitely be at the top of my
list of requests for EverQuest III.





To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

Comments