:: Updated by Hannar @ 01/20/04 07:35 pm ::

32. Getting Drunk, and other Immersive Aspects


Fri Aug 22, 2003 10:53 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=70087&highlight=#70087

Moorgard wrote:

Okay, I blame Hannar for this... Some of the team just spotted this thread and ran over to ask me if I'd seen the drunk effect yet. I said no. So they showed it to me. I'm not exactly sure which designers came up with this, but they obviously know their booze. The drunk effect is literally nauseating. Everything gets all blurry and moves in and out of focus. Not like it did in EQ; like it does when you're really, really wasted and the barstool suddenly feels like it's made of jello. Maybe they consulted Anyuzer after his birthday--I dunno. But however they did it, the drunk effect is quite... unsettling. But somehow, I think you guys are gonna like it.

Wed Sep 03, 2003 05:22 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=81338&highlight=#81338

Moorgard wrote:

Our weather system is still being worked on, which is why you haven't seen much of it. Plus, screenshots tend to show more if we make it all sunny and stuff.

Thu Sep 18, 2003 02:50 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=91806&highlight=#91806

Moorgard wrote:

Kotaru wrote: I think they said they kicked fishing out.. /cries maybe someone will have the link that confirms this, I forgot where moorgard said this. Moorgard didn't say anything of the sort. Please don't attribute things to Moorgard unless you are prepared to prove he said them. Yes, there is fishing in EQ2.

Wed Oct 01, 2003 07:19 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=103384&highlight=#103384

Moorgard wrote:

Interestingly, the team has spent time debating this very issue. It's actually a lot more complicated than you might think. Given the wide range in size among our various races, chairs become a troublesome art issue. A Gnome sitting in a huge chair looks cute and funny; an Ogre sitting on a tiny stool looks ridiculous and breaks immersion. You could have characters carry a chair with them that fits their race's proportions. But whipping a chair out of your backpack isn't the most logical or immersive experience either. Basically, it's something we're keeping in mind but it's far from a high priority.

12/15/03 12:53 AM
Stratics

Moorgard wrote:

Yes, you can jump.

Tue Feb 24, 2004 12:49 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=219807&highlight=#219807

Moorgard wrote:

RihkotixInvisifists wrote: eq1 day length is 72 minutes. Correct. And it is the same for EQ2.

Tue Feb 24, 2004 01:14 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=219840&highlight=#219840

Moorgard wrote:

I personally find it more immersive to see in-game signs written in in-game languages. I even thought it was cool back when I played the early Ultima games and had to translate all those runes by hand. I can appreciate that some players would prefer signs in a real-world language, but this is a conscious design decision we made. It certainly wasn't done to save us time, because our artists had to create a significant number of racial fonts. This is the design we chose, and it's not something we're going to change.

Wed Feb 25, 2004 02:51 pm
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=221042&highlight=#221042

Moorgard wrote:

The Great Wall is largely a series of steep steps. I'm a fairly tall guy, and these steps were obviously built with a smaller person in mind, because they're narrow and not very deep. It was rather difficult to climb those stairs because I had to adjust my usual way of walking. To add insult to injury, many small Chinese children were flying past me on their way up the Wall. Going down was in many ways just as challenging, since I had to be very careful to not miss any steps. My point is that we're used to stairs being designed and built with an average size person in mind, so our movement up and down them is fairly fluid. But physically speaking, ogres would have just as much trouble going up or down stairs designed for gnomes as gnomes would have going up or down stairs designed for ogres. Thus while the jerkiness you'd see running up stairs in EQ seemed odd sometimes, in many ways it makes sense (whether designed that way intentionally or not). I guess what I'm saying is that before my trip to China, I might have been in favor of smooth movement up and down stairs for all character races. But in practice, it kind of makes sense that your character might have trouble with certain stairs depending on what the size of the character is.

2/4 10:29am
http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=63731602&start=63749701

Moorgard wrote:

Yes, we have falling damage in our game. It's an EverQuest tradition we enjoy.

2/18 10:13am
http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=61611028&start=64522288

Moorgard wrote:

Quote: "I hate that you don't have to keep food on your toon in EQ2. That was one of those things that made EQ different from other games." Okay, okay, just for you it's back in! Well, actually our designers talked about it some more and decided that requiring food helps encourage social interaction between players, so we're putting the food/drink requirement back in. Priests will be able to summon food and drink (feed the body and the soul will follow, after all) and there will be a variety of baking and brewing recipes in game. There will be stat food as well.

:: Updated by Hannar @ 07/03/04 07:51 pm ::

05-18-2004 08:33 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=104212#M104212

Moorgard wrote:

I certainly haven't read any design docs about in-game marriage ceremonies, and I sure ain't plannin' to write any.

05-20-2004 12:13 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=106690#M106690

Moorgard wrote:

Saying that EQ doesn't have atmosphere absolutely boggles me. I still remember the first day I played the game and nearly fell out of my chair when I realized I was actually walking around in a 3D world of limitless adventure. Granted, the game is now five years old and doesn't have the graphics/sound immersive elements that other games might (at least until their upcoming graphics revamp), but the world of Norrath is still an amazingly vibrant place. As for our atmosphere, watch our trailers and you tell me. Ask the people who saw actual gameplay in the cities and tell me if those places didn't feel vibrant and alive. EverQuest II isn't a novel and it isn't a feature film, but we have the advantage of a world filled with thousands of real people interacting with each other at the same time. You can't get that kind of atmosphere in any other entertainment genre.

05-27-2004 09:11 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=117302#M117302

Moorgard wrote:

Kokichi wrote: As far as brandishing goes, I know that there's a /brandish in the game (at least, I'm 90% sure there is). I think one of the lead designers told us that. Yep. You can certainly make a hotkey for it.

06-12-2004 12:40 AM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=131073#M131073

Moorgard wrote:

Ralian wrote: I remember a while back Moorgard was mentioning that the signage in EQ was going to be in some non-worldly language and that the proper names would show up in some sort of mouseover. The reason for this was for internationalization/localization/globalization You remember correctly.

06-14-2004 11:30 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=133080#M133080

Moorgard wrote:

Unfortunately creating special animations for a handful of unique items won't happen due to the amount of work involved. Trust me, when you make an animation and tune it for 32 different character models you want it to be used a lot, not limited to a rare artifact. However, the idea of having certain emotes that can only be activated when holding a specific item (like in the book example) is really cool.

06-20-2004 11:40 AM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=136764#M136764

Moorgard wrote:

At the risk of repeating myself, here is a post that I made in a thread about immersion: The example of the Lord of the Rings films is an excellent one. If you stood outside the theater and asked 1000 moviegoers what their favorite aspect of the film was, I'd be willing to bet that a very small percentage would use the word "immersion" or anything like it. Immersion doesn't sell movie tickets, and it isn't immersion that makes the difference between Attack of the Clones and LotR. You can argue that costumes and set design create immersion, and they are certainly important elements of a film. But you can easily look at big-budget bombs that went to great lengths to make their films visually consistent and appealing yet they blew it at the box office. Why? Because the story sucked. Even the most immersive movie sets--and I'll use LotR as the example again--are facades. They didn't really build Middle Earth; they built stages and used computer graphics to show you relevant portions of it. The creators of those films weren't interested in creating a realistic Middle Earth simulator; they were interested in telling a great story. And setting must serve story, not dictate it. Game design works the same way. Someone could make a fully interactive game world that pays attention to the smallest detail, yet it still might suck. Conversely, many of the greatest games ever created have a very simple and straightforward premise that is non-immersive from a game world perspective, yet players become incredibly immersed in the gameplay. As much as we talk about Norrath as a living, breathing world, we aren't building a virtual world simulator here. We're building sets on which grand stories of adventure take place. While the setting can draw people in, it can't hold them in and of itself; for that we need a strong storyline and fun gameplay that challenges you and draws you deeper into the experience. If you're looking for a world simulator where blades of grass collect dew in the mornings and every leaf on every treee falls realistically in the autumn, then EverQuest II isn't for you. If you want a gorgeous world that provides the setting for some awesome gameplay and exploration with your friends, then this is the game you're looking for. But ultimately you can't judge that by looking at FAQs or reading essays anymore than you can guarantee a movie is going to be good based on trailers or posters in a lobby. The proof is in the pudding, and that's a pretty hard thing to judge until you can taste it for yourself. All that said, we aren't making a game where the only thing you can do for fun is kill stuff. We have lots of levels of social interaction, and those will be expanded over time. But our focus will be on creating a setting for epic adventures.

06-21-2004 11:02 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=137653#M137653

Moorgard wrote:

I haven't counted, but it's a long list. We also have a socials window where you can click on an emote to activate one or make a hotkey out of it.

06-24-2004 01:50 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=139545#M139545

Moorgard wrote:

It isn't worth it for us to create actual languages for orc, gnoll, goblin, or anything else your character doesn't yet understand and translate it accurately. There will be a selection of gibberish dialogue recorded for NPCs you can't understand which you will be able to hear. You'll see their text on screen in racial fonts that do actually correspond to real words. So in theory someone could memorize the fonts and translate what the NPCs say in your head, I guess, although I'd worry for that person's sanity!

:: Updated by Hannar @ 08/01/04 05:41 pm ::

07-23-2004 11:24 PM
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=art&message.id=4583#M4583

Moorgard wrote:

LordPenguin wrote: Care to confirm my suspissions mods? How would I know? I'm just a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.