Why is EQ2 so slow to change and improve (graphically)

[Scrappe]

Ive been playing EQ2 since Feb of '05. BUT, the only other MMO Ive seriously played was Eve-Online. So even though I've played one other MMO, EQ2 is the only fantasy MMO Ive seriously played. With that in mind, I have a few questions that perhaps some fantasy mmo veterans can respond to. This is specifically in regards to graphics. It seems like EQ2 is very very slow to change and to patch. Why is this? The skeleton revamp was a good idea to both make toons move nicer, but also to normalize armor graphics for the various body types. Yet, after 2 years "of working on it", it got scrapped. I guess because it would have required too much work to seriously implement it. I am told that during 2002, the graphical capability of EQ2 was far higher than it was at release, presumably to make it more low-end puter friendly. After the Youtude video I saw of a 2002 EQ2 demo, I doubt even SLI'd 9800GTXs could run such a game on on Extreme Quality in a raid. I doubt they could even do it in the live watered down version we're playing today. And this is 6 years later. I wonder if, whatever they did to scale the graphics down, put EQ2 devs into a hole with altering the code across the board (for something like a skeletal revamp). (I found the video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HokbrASX-uo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HokbrASX-uo</a> ) I've been looking at the development of the KOTOR MMO. It appears they are going with a pre-designed engine rigged for ease of development and future modification. <a href="http://www.play.net/playdotnet/platform/home.asp" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.play.net/playdotnet/platform/home.asp</a> It also appears to be rigged to cut down on game lag because of the way objects are drawn onscreen. Reading that page made me wonder if EQ2's engine was custom designed to be incredibly beautiful, but perhaps minimal thought was given to system requirements, lag, ease of modification, etc. If so, EQ2 is not only in a hole, but it's in one we'll never get out of because SOE didnt think ahead. I was looking at the armor of other MMO's and their users reactions in their forums. After comparing it to eq2 armor user reactions, I noticed a pattern. For a long, people have been saying that virtually all armor is the same wireframe with a different texture. Even though I've been playing for years, I never realized how true that was because some of those textures are quite elaborate. But to think about it on a grander scale, different armor should have different wireframes. For example, the monk harness vs the vest. A monk can wear either one, but they are physically very different. It's not just a texture remap. Also, the L30 female status clothing vs a plate BP. Some classes can wear either one, but they are physically very different. Now of course the harness and status clothing overwrite your entire look, so perhaps even those few examples are invalid. I'm sure the mages are very tired of the retextured robes, of which there are hundreds. Why is that? Of all classes, mages are most likely to be standing away from the fight. If they want to wear elaborate skin-showing "actual armor", it would be most believable in their case, yet all they get are hundreds of remap'd robes, dozens of remapped vests and fluff armor. When I look at the armor of some games (I wont mention them), I see elaborate detailed physically different choices that really make you stand out. I have to assume that EQ2 has a murky code system that prohibits adding physically unique armor, except where it's absolutely necessary.

[Brook]

<p>Its because at the time the game was first produced they thought we would have 8-9 Ghz processors to run it in the future, but the computer industry went a different direction entrly with multicore platforms. EQ2 was not designed to be optimized for dual core  and to redo it for dual core would require basically a new game engine. The game is 4 years old and it would cost more than its bringing in to make a new engine for the game to run on.</p><p>Even with the restrictions they have to code for because of the game engine they are using, I really think that overall its one of the best looking games out there. </p>

[Cassea]

<cite>Brook wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Its because at the time the game was first produced they thought we would have 8-9 Ghz processors to run it in the future, but the computer industry went a different direction entrly with multicore platforms. EQ2 was not designed to be optimized for dual core  and to redo it for dual core would require basically a new game engine. The game is 4 years old and it would cost more than its bringing in to make a new engine for the game to run on.</p><p>Even with the restrictions they have to code for because of the game engine they are using, I really think that overall its one of the best looking games out there. </p></blockquote>With EQ2 pulling in millions a month in profit I hardly thing they cannot afford to do it. They choose not to do it because it would not bring them in enough revenue to ofset the cost. IMHO we pay a monthly fee for updates so we should get it but the beancounters do not feel the same. Profit is profit and making EQ2 look better would only be done if it would bring in more money.If EQ2 only had 100,000 subscribers (most think they have far more) then this would mean $1,500,000 per month coming in. Now lets say a new engine would cost a cool million. I think they could afford it but from their point of view why would they do this? Why lose a few months profit (yes I know prob half of that income goes back toward employees, bandwidth and equipment) when they would quite possibly not even make back what they spent in a few years time.Now "if" a new engine would bring in new customers then it would be worth it but that is a gamble.

[ke'la]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Brook wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Its because at the time the game was first produced they thought we would have 8-9 Ghz processors to run it in the future, but the computer industry went a different direction entrly with multicore platforms. EQ2 was not designed to be optimized for dual core  and to redo it for dual core would require basically a new game engine. The game is 4 years old and it would cost more than its bringing in to make a new engine for the game to run on.</p><p>Even with the restrictions they have to code for because of the game engine they are using, I really think that overall its one of the best looking games out there. </p></blockquote>With EQ2 pulling in millions a month in profit I hardly thing they cannot afford to do it. They choose not to do it because it would not bring them in enough revenue to ofset the cost. IMHO we pay a monthly fee for updates so we should get it but the beancounters do not feel the same. Profit is profit and making EQ2 look better would only be done if it would bring in more money.If EQ2 only had 100,000 subscribers (most think they have far more) then this would mean $1,500,000 per month coming in. Now lets say a new engine would cost a cool million. I think they could afford it but from their point of view why would they do this? Why lose a few months profit (yes I know prob half of that income goes back toward employees, bandwidth and equipment) when they would quite possibly not even make back what they spent in a few years time.Now "if" a new engine would bring in new customers then it would be worth it but that is a gamble.</blockquote>It's not so much a cost in money, they can just devert devs off of other EQ2 development(say expainsion 6), but doing that for the period of time nessicary to accually revamp the engine the way they need to do so, would cause the game to get very stale, as very little new content will come out. So as long as graphics can compete(wich they can) with most New MMOs graphically then they won't upgrade the engine, and even then it would have to have a very good reason for upgrading like moving to the latest Direct X, which won't happen until way more gammers adopt DX10 or DX11(which MS is already talking about)

[Risiko]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Brook wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Its because at the time the game was first produced they thought we would have 8-9 Ghz processors to run it in the future, but the computer industry went a different direction entrly with multicore platforms. EQ2 was not designed to be optimized for dual core  and to redo it for dual core would require basically a new game engine. The game is 4 years old and it would cost more than its bringing in to make a new engine for the game to run on.</p><p>Even with the restrictions they have to code for because of the game engine they are using, I really think that overall its one of the best looking games out there. </p></blockquote>With EQ2 pulling in millions a month in profit I hardly thing they cannot afford to do it. They choose not to do it because it would not bring them in enough revenue to ofset the cost. IMHO we pay a monthly fee for updates so we should get it but the beancounters do not feel the same. Profit is profit and making EQ2 look better would only be done if it would bring in more money.If EQ2 only had 100,000 subscribers (most think they have far more) then this would mean $1,500,000 per month coming in. Now lets say a new engine would cost a cool million. I think they could afford it but from their point of view why would they do this? Why lose a few months profit (yes I know prob half of that income goes back toward employees, bandwidth and equipment) when they would quite possibly not even make back what they spent in a few years time.Now "if" a new engine would bring in new customers then it would be worth it but that is a gamble.</blockquote><p>I believe it was Smed himself who said in an interview recently that it cost around 30 million dollars to make an up to date MMORPG and closer to 70 million dollars to make a top notch up to date MMORPG.  I don't recall exactly where I saw this interview, but I believe he was talking about how much they were spending to make their new spy themed MMORPG.</p><p>Now while I completely agree with Smed that it costs a LOT of money to make a top notch up to date MMORPG, what I don't agree on is how the industry as a whole believes that they should spend all this money, put a MMORPG out, and then only patch it from then on out.</p><p>To me, if a MMORPG is successful for 4 years, then you should have made a hell of a good profit off of original sales, monthly membership subscriptions, and expansion pack sales.  At the 4 year mark, if your MMORPG is still successful, like Everquest 2 is at this point, then it is time to reinvest in to the product and make a completely redesigned release of the game.  Spend that 30 to 70 million dollars on the product and release it as a major revision update for $50.  If they sold a completely redeveloped from scratch game engine with up to date character models, animations, graphics engine, etc and sold it for $50 as a brand new game edition in stores with appropriate marketing hype, they could bring in an easy million copies sold.  That's 50 million dollars in sales of a new product which would offset the cost of the creation of the new game engine while at the same time bring new gamers as well as old gamers in to the Everquest 2 world.</p><p>Stop patching... Redesign... Redevelop... Rerelease.</p>

[Cassea]

I don't think it would cost 30 million to revamp the game engine. Start up costs are alot higher for a game that does not exist. They have to hire people to write the story, the quests, buy all new equiptment etc... which would not have to be done with a game that already exists.Sure they would have to hire a few graphics designers to redo textures and add the new armor etc.. as well as some more programers to customize the shelf bought game engine. If EQ2 uses a totally in house game engine then it might cost more because they would have to do all the work themselves.Now their statement that they could not get the new skeletal system to work with the existing game engine the way they would like gives a hint that they were going to license an existing system from another company and try and patch it onto EQ2. This leads me to beleive that the EQ2 game engine has not been kept up to date because it was either store bought and never updated by that company or it was a total custom job that was done inhouse for Star Wars Galaxies and retrofited for EQ2.All of this is pure speculation. I would "love" for SOE to be a bit more open in what is going on with EQ2. I fear that they know EQ2 is at a dead end and it's better to string us along to keep us playing and paying for as long as possible. As long as we have "hope" we'll stick with EQ2. Once that hope is gone we'll mentally start looking for the next game to play and since SOE's EQ2 replacement, Vangard, failed as well as their Pirate game... well all replacments seem to come from other companies.Look at the example of EQ1. SOE thought EQ2 would replace EQ1. I don't care what they say now, back then they figured there would be a slow and steady move from EQ1 to EQ2 but that did not happen because they originally made EQ2 too different from EQ1. When they found out that most players did not want a toally new game but rather EQ1 with soloing, new graphics and modern MMORPG features (and a world that was not broken up in little pieces!) they put the EQ back into EQ2 via expansions.EQ2 is different enough to be new but not so different to have been a totally new game. This was not so at release but they have fixed it and it's a great game right now.... the very best MMORPG on the market right now if you ask me. Too bad so many people will not even try it because of WoW and SOE's short sighted ad budget and lack of retail space. They got greedy when they did not want to share box sales with the distributors and they suffer as a result with lack of new players.Now I'm not a total downer here LOLThey can (and will) update some of the graphic engine to put it back on our video cards. This will help more than making it run more on multicore. CPU's are not going to get any slower (even if you only look at one core) and they short term jump back in speed as the 2x 3x and 4x cores first came out was just a temporay bump in the road until Intel and AMD got the yields up. (CPU companys, for those who don't know, test new CPU's and if they do not work at a certain speed they lower the speed until it does work. After a certain time the process they use to make CPU's get's better and more stable and more and more of the faster CPU's come off the line and then they no longer have to sell the slower ones)So EQ2 currently runs pretty good on a 3000mhz CPU core and if you offload all the non-CPU junk back to the video card and the problem is solved. You have a better looking EQ2 that runs alot faster because the CPU is not doing graphics and your graphics card is not sitting around doing nothing.There is hope. I just wish SOE would be a little more open and honest with their plans. Saying things like "we're looking into it" means very little especially after they just stopped looking into a new skeletal system after almost two years.

[ke'la]

<cite>zip wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Brook wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Its because at the time the game was first produced they thought we would have 8-9 Ghz processors to run it in the future, but the computer industry went a different direction entrly with multicore platforms. EQ2 was not designed to be optimized for dual core  and to redo it for dual core would require basically a new game engine. The game is 4 years old and it would cost more than its bringing in to make a new engine for the game to run on.</p><p>Even with the restrictions they have to code for because of the game engine they are using, I really think that overall its one of the best looking games out there. </p></blockquote>With EQ2 pulling in millions a month in profit I hardly thing they cannot afford to do it. They choose not to do it because it would not bring them in enough revenue to ofset the cost. IMHO we pay a monthly fee for updates so we should get it but the beancounters do not feel the same. Profit is profit and making EQ2 look better would only be done if it would bring in more money.If EQ2 only had 100,000 subscribers (most think they have far more) then this would mean $1,500,000 per month coming in. Now lets say a new engine would cost a cool million. I think they could afford it but from their point of view why would they do this? Why lose a few months profit (yes I know prob half of that income goes back toward employees, bandwidth and equipment) when they would quite possibly not even make back what they spent in a few years time.Now "if" a new engine would bring in new customers then it would be worth it but that is a gamble.</blockquote><p>I believe it was Smed himself who said in an interview recently that it cost around 30 million dollars to make an up to date MMORPG and closer to 70 million dollars to make a top notch up to date MMORPG.  I don't recall exactly where I saw this interview, but I believe he was talking about how much they were spending to make their new spy themed MMORPG.</p><p>Now while I completely agree with Smed that it costs a LOT of money to make a top notch up to date MMORPG, what I don't agree on is how the industry as a whole believes that they should spend all this money, put a MMORPG out, and then only patch it from then on out.</p><p>To me, if a MMORPG is successful for 4 years, then you should have made a hell of a good profit off of original sales, monthly membership subscriptions, and expansion pack sales.  At the 4 year mark, if your MMORPG is still successful, like Everquest 2 is at this point, then it is time to reinvest in to the product and make a completely redesigned release of the game.  Spend that 30 to 70 million dollars on the product and release it as a major revision update for $50.  If they sold a completely redeveloped from scratch game engine with up to date character models, animations, graphics engine, etc and sold it for $50 as a brand new game edition in stores with appropriate marketing hype, they could bring in an easy million copies sold.  That's 50 million dollars in sales of a new product which would offset the cost of the creation of the new game engine while at the same time bring new gamers as well as old gamers in to the Everquest 2 world.</p><p>Stop patching... Redesign... Redevelop... Rerelease.</p></blockquote>The problem with making a graphical update, or engine update PART of an expaintion is that not everyone gets expaintions, atleast not right away, as such you would have to leave the old engine and such in as well, making for huge spegetti code problems. Wich is why you could only fly, flying mounts in the Burning Crusade areas of WoW when BC launched. Now if they did a graphical update concurrently with the expainsion release (like the LU13 comabat revamp) then they could advertise the heck out of both and say the Graphic update is free, and as NEW players will buy the expainsion box as it would likly be an All in One anyway, they would still get some of the benifit of the update work. That said it does take alot of time to update a graphics engine, like 2 years or more, so even if they started today it would not likly go in until expainsion 7.

[Brook]

<p>I seem to remember seeing somewhere that the EQ2 engine was a retrofitted Starwars Galaxy game engine. I didnt know it was an inhouse custom job though.</p><p>I doubt it would cost 30 mil to upgrade to a new engine, but it would definatly cost a lot of money and tons of work recoding. </p><p>They are as likely to do an upgrade as I am to buy a new car. My raggy old Jeep gets me where I need to go reliably everytime without fail, it aint pretty but it gets the job done, and if it works why change it?  </p>

[Rorasis]

<cite>kela wrote:</cite><blockquote>{0}</blockquote>Two years to revamp the engine, huh?  Isn't that how long the so-called skeleton revamp was under wraps?  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[Zehl_Ice-Fire]

I love eq2, I think a complete engine/graphic overhaul would do wonders for the game. The new MMOs that come out, to me nothing seems amazing or great about them but the shinier newer graphics.

[Comit]

Conspiracy theory - maybe part of it is that they'd rather keep the dated look so that in the future when EQ3 comes around, it'll look all the more better by comparison <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Lookout]

The burning crusade-only flying mounts in WoW were not due to engine limitations but due to the design of the Azeroth zones' not being built for flying mounts as far as i know.

[tikasa]

New games are coming out and will keep digging into the '' older '' games.    A new one from Studio38 that Moorgaurd and Blackgaurd are working on... Aion looks good enough to seriously hurt WoW and maybe pull some EQ players.   Bottom line is this is not the cult game like EQ1 is.   They need to work to keep it amoung the best or it will die fast.