Massively: SOEmote Tech Brings Live Facial Expressions, Voice to EverQuest II Avatars
From Massively:
Roleplaying is the red-headed stepchild of MMO design considerations these days, but at least one studio hasn’t forgotten immersion enthusiasts. Sony Online Entertainment has announced a new EverQuest II feature called SOEmote which converts your webcam input into avatar facial expressions. The suite also gives users the option to modulate their voice to something appropriate for their character.
“Any game that calls itself a roleplaying game absolutely needs this feature. For other games, it’s just a really good idea that your players will want. Pick a character. Pick a class. And then be that character instead of just being yourself. That’s what a roleplaying game is supposed to be,” SOE producer Dave Georgeson explains.
Head to PCGamer for the full interview and a tech demo video.
Tags: Soemote
Trackback from your site.
Comments (121)
Vinyard
| #
EQ2 is saved! Thank you Windstalker and Smokejumper!
Reply
Kwill
| #
What? This was the big announcement — that we can put our own facial expressions on our characters. Great infoz, indeed.
Reply
Anaogi
| #
…
What.
…
Reply
Ironwall
| #
Next month’s super secret announcement: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”
Reply
Trevyn
| #
…
must have
…
so much: NOT.
Reply
Kwill
| #
I play for reasons other than I want to roleplay my character, by the way — my character is pretty much me. I don’t need to disguise my voice, or put some expressions on her face. Are people going to actually look at my expression when we are fighting in Underdepths?
Could they have taken a player poll on this one? How many people want to explore the paperdoll role playing aspect of this game?
No wonder voice chat has been broken, I bet they want to remove it all together so we all use fairy voices or something.
Really, SOE?
Reply
Dark
| #
Was this the big announcement? This sounds like something a FaceBook game would do.
Another huge waste of time and money by SoE, they sure have their priorities straight when their game is broken and practically unplayable.
Reply
cmors
| #
Brilliant, now we can take screenshots of our toons looking disgusted when we run across any /bug that has been ignored while they were implementing SOEmote!
Actually this is kinda neat, but come on, REALLY? I guess I missed the epic thread where the subscribers all demanded this functionality.
Reply
Kwill
| #
OK, so it’s not for combat. It’s for when you are hanging out in the guild hall, or waiting for a group in SS, or pretending to be a stripper in a tavern (see the article).
So, let’s take out the real life stuff of hearing people’s voices, and playing thru our characters, and put the characters back in so people are anonymous again.
VERY different idea for the game.
It’s neat, and I am sure people will come up with cool stuff, but I feel it is completely game changing, and possibly not in a good way.
Also seems like they don’t want to fix this game, just change it into something entirely different, making it more like The Sims or something.
Reply
Shadowed
| #
I play eq for the endgame. And while I think this is really cool technology, I doubt I will use it.
But I am excited that they didn’t entirely change current game play given we had no idea what the announcement was going to be about.
Reply
Taka
| #
Hrm, now I can finally do my troll opera in Neriak! And Frog Fussin’ in Freeport! oh oh and my guild leader can broadcast why we wiped on raid xxx.
Yaaaa.. actually I am not being fully sarcastic. I think this is neat… just hope it actually you know works…. and that the voice modulation doesn’t mutilate articulate and inarticulate voices to shreds so that they are not understandable. Moreso, please allow the modulation to be toggled on/off. My frog enjoys sounding like a bass heavy man, so does my female troll, and my hobbit, and gnome… hahahah.
Reply
Dedith
| #
I also think this is a neat feature for immersion, but there are indeed a ton of bugs that need fixing that I would of preferred placed as higher priority.
Reply
Dethdlr
| #
They mentioned that you could opt out of broadcasting which makes sense. I wonder if you can opt out of receiving as well. This has some great time killing and comedic potential but also some potential for abuse. Hopefully it won’t add too much lag on the receiving end. I’m sure it’ll kill performance on the broadcasting end.
Reply
Kwill
| #
The potential for naughty behavior boggles the mind.
Reply
Sigtyr
| #
This is BIG thing if they manage to get it working well, the roleplayers (and I am one) will LOVE it. It is another development in the trend that the social/decorating/casual target of EQ2 is getting bigger and bigger. And imagine the future with a game that is interactive with functions like this, that has decorating, crafting and social events, then think of the enormous market for stupid facebook games. An interactive social game with decorating and crafting that is NOT second life cybersex would change the online world in the same way the Telegraph machine changed the world, it will not be EQ2 but it will be pretty interesting.
If there is another revelation soon for E3 it will be other character models or hair or something similar. I was hoping for cross server dungeon finder but probably not.
Reply
Dethdlr
| #
Hmm. They have a publish/ranking system for houses. They have a publish/ranking system for dungeons. If they set up an option to record short SOEmote clips, then publish/rank them and let you copy the ones you want to your hotbars, that might actually be pretty funny. 🙂
Reply
Atan
| #
These modulators have very little impact to cpu. But from my experience they frequently get ‘tweaked out’. You know like when you have a ‘cooked’ mp3. And once they tweak out, it usually takes a restart of the voice application to clear it.
I also don’t see that you’ll be able to opt out of it on the receiving in, as its applied before the audio is compressed for transmission.
Reply
Chuina
| #
I have quit Everquest II but I must say, this is a really awesome feature and something that is new to the genre. If they pull it off right.. I will be very impressed!
Reply
Dethdlr
| #
Just saw that it’s in voice chat only, not like a voice emote. That makes a big difference. I was thinking someone would be able to walk up to me and start talking with SOEmote and I’d hear whatever they were saying like I do with normal voice emotes. If it’s in voice chat, that’s considerably different.
Reply
Tarb
| #
I thought it was lame at first but after watching the video it does seem like a cool feature even though I doubt i will use it very much.
Reply
Kwill
| #
The video is well done — but I do wonder what expressions I might have on my face in various occasions!
Reply
Anaogi
| #
This is what they put their resources into?
Seriously?
Who is the blithering fool that gave this priority over a thousand play issues that are constantly getting glossed over?
SOE no baka!!!!!
Reply
Rocky
| #
From a design perspective, this is an amazing idea. I forgot where I heard this, but it’s said that you lose about 90% of meaning from language by just typing. So this is a good idea because the strongest element of a mmo is the social aspect.(While the rpg mechanics don’t have to be bad, alot of depth is lost when making it appeal to a wide audience.) So this system makes it so people can be more social, which will retain players better then most other things. Expect to see a influx of players into the game of people just wanting to try this when it comes out.
Reply
XK
| #
I think it’s an interesting idea, but I assume they are doing it as a test-run for its inclusion in EQ Next, since it seems unlikely to have much impact on EQ2.
Reply
Chronia
| #
Okay first of All I am a roleplayer and I can tell you the emotes and voice chat isn’t what killed rp in EQ2. Most of us don’t even use voice chat, unless you are raiding. It didn’t make things awkward rping a male toon if you are a female player or vice-versa or anything similar, because in most guilds you get to know the person behind the character anyways even in text chat and there is always the option to turn voice chat off and simply not use it! My theory on a couple of things that have killed rp in game are that: a) we had 2 rp servers, one was Lucan D’Lere, and the server merged killed it as an rp server, the other, was Antonia Bayle, which all the raiders have migrated to because of the hardware. There isn’t a server for rp anymore. b) There is no naming policy anymore for people who use names like wordsstrungtogether tomakeaphrase name, people who use common cartoon characters or puppets for their character names etc. For me personally this kills rp and turns me off from rping with a person if they can’t even come up with an original name (yes for some people that’s not easy but there is a reason the game has a random name generator on character select) or use a phrase strung together instead of a real name. c) And last but not least cliques! Everyone that does rp does it privately in their own cliques, largely because there is no safe place for rpers, now that AB is a raid server and LDL doesn’t exist, we get heckled for public rp by other players (more-so, there was always the random jerk before that would create character on an rp server JUST to heckle)! Sure there are rp settings in player housing, but we should be able to rp in public, on the streets of freeport or qeynos or where ever and not get heckled for it and not be able to do anything about it.
All these things have contributed to the gradual death of rp in EQ2. NOT voice chat. You can at least OPT-OUT of voice chat, where as with everything else you’re stuck with what SoE throws at you. Personally, as an rper, I think this was a waste of time, resources and the subscriber’s money! It’s a novelty and while some might use it at first, the shiny newness will soon wear off and it’ll be forgotten. It will do nothing to save our game from it’s ultimate demise, and it certainly is far from game-changing.
I have to agree with some of the comments here, why did SoE waste their time, money and resources on this with out consulting players? Another stupid move by SoE ignoring their player base as to what we want to see done with OUR game. The time they have wasted on this feature could’ve been better spent on fixing what is currently broken in the game, or on developing new content.
Reply
Laecee
| #
@ Chronia: Your Game? I believe its SOE’s game, haha. But in any case, I do not have a Webcam and do not ever plan on getting one so this feature will not affect me one way or the other.
Options and choices are good people! If you dont want to use it don’t.
Reply
skippydippy
| #
Cant help but feel this will be used more in the next everquest game but for now i’m slightly bemused at what use it will be once the comedy value has died down after a week or two.
Again,to me and in MY view its an utter waste of time for EQ2 at least and shows how detached the dev team is.
Reply
bhagpuss
| #
Several years back, when voice chat was added to EQ2, we were told it would have “voice masks” that would allow us to talk as our characters, not as ourselves. It’s been a long time coming but now maybe it’s finally here.
I have never used voice chat. I am entirely happy with hearing my own voice – that’s not the problem. I don’t want to hear a lot of other people gabbing out loud in the very small room I play in. A bunch of ratongas, kerrans and iksars, though… that might just work.
I agree with Laecee above. Even if I never use any of these features I am very glad ithey’re being added and I’d far rather see stuff like this than more of the same stuff we already have.
Reply
Gunthore
| #
I….
/speechless
Reply
Atan
| #
On a side note, the photoshop potential of the pic on this article is enormous…
Reply
Murfalad
| #
Awesome.
No sarcasm either, while I thirst for a graphics engine update, or a total reboot and relevelling of the game I do like this feature, for players who really like their characters it has some serious potential 🙂
Reply
Beefeater
| #
Cool idea, but completely mind blowing why they would focus time and money on making something like this rather than actually fixing the laundry list of bugs and class balance.
I get the feeling that they’ve given up on fixing and improving the game; rather, it’s going to be the testing ground for junk they plan to integrate into EQNext.
Reply
Whystherumgone
| #
@Atan
Smokeblower takes on entirely new meanings.
Reply
Aelias
| #
I understand people would have liked the time devoted to other things but we don’t know how many EQ2 devs were working on this or for how long. This feature and other EQ2 news at E3 could being a lot of new players which I think everyone can agree is a good thing. This game deserves to be played by the masses, it’s just too great.
Also, stepping out of your EQ2 vet shoes and into your nerd ones for a moment: It’s pretty effing sweet that this technology will be in an MMO.
Reply
Zapphod
| #
I agree with Beefeater I think EQ2 is becoming the test bed for EQNext which is good in that we will see new features but bad in that it takes away the focus from sorting out the problems in EQ2.
Reply
Dethdlr
| #
@Atan: Feldon asked me to add a picture to this article for him. I couldn’t resist choosing this one. 🙂
Reply
WannaCybor
| #
YES!! Best Cyborz EVAR NOW!!!!!111!!1
Reply
ragefighter
| #
lol love the picture =p
Reply
epoling
| #
I think this could be really cool. And what people are not thinking about is that it is really groundbreaking. Whether it is just a test for EQNext or not, this is a leap forward in gaming technology. Personally, I see it as a way of getting just that much more immersed in the game. What is better, your friend typing out *smile* or actually seeing them smile? Plus, while only a small one, it does seem to be another step closer to “virtual reality”.
Reply
Kralus
| #
Why SoE insists on wasting their efforts with gimmicky garbage like this is beyond me. This will be “neat” for all of 10 seconds.
Reply
Chronia
| #
@Laecee Without the players there is no Game hence OUR game or the player’s game. SoE can own it, create it, develop it and do what they want with it but without us, the player base, it’s dead in the water, this is why I say “OUR game”.
Reply
Balthazzar
| #
Worst waist of time if they want this garbage then put it in eq2 next and not waist the few resources that they left with eq2.
Reply
miragian
| #
Yes, this might be industry changing (in the long run). But game changing… no it does nothing to change the fact that we have little content, year(s) old bugs that still aren’t address and in general are losing people faster than I think we’re gaining them.
I for one am very disappointed that of all the things they could have announced or tried to do new or change they chose this.
My only hope is it’s outsourced and has little impact on the already seemingly shorthanded overworked dev team.
Reply
Magar
| #
@Miragian: I suspect this is spillback from development work on EQNext. After all, they’re calling it SoEmote, not EQIImote, which means it might be one of those things that Rothgar (who’s now lead programmer for EQNext and used to be lead on EQ2) figured was backwards-compatible with only a little extra work.
Reply
Whilhelmina
| #
oO Really? With everything that is needed, requested, expected, bugged and so on in this game they spend tons of time on a never asked for new “cool stuff (TM)”?
The voice mask was promised years ago, but really, moving your avatar?
My position on Voice Chat is pretty clear and firm:
I loathe, hate, abhor (and so on) Voice Chat. This thing absolutely kills immersion. I want to strangle every single member of hubby’s guild on raiding nights (and no, headsets are not an option, my husband needs to be able to hear our little boy if he needs something and I left the room). I can’t stand to hear somebody speaking within a game.
Voice mask is definatedly a needed option. Having a cute little dark elf speaking with a booming male voice is a bit strange. Having an awfull male Klingon, er… Ogre, speak with a little female voice is a bit shoking. Voice masks, if they work (and if they work for other languages than english) can be a nice addition.
My position on having the character move with what I say in front of a webcam (ok, I don’t have one) is… er… I just can’t imagine a single reason why this would be usefull. In game. As a promotional video or something ok, that can be interesting. But usefull to the game in itself? *rolls eyes*
In short: can’t wait for Elder Scrolls Online.
Reply
Barx
| #
Another useless feature added while there is so much need for attention on the core gameplay and mechanics. I’m sure it’ll work halfway and they’ll stop updating it and supporting it within 3 months like so many other of their fluff features.
Reply
Vortix
| #
How often will we be close enough to others to make seeing this effect worthwhile? This only seems useful if you’re capturing video.
Reply
Vortix
| #
BTW Sigtyr, you can expect someone will find a way to use it for cybersex gestures. That blows your whole dream out of the water.
Reply
Aliscious
| #
IMO, they didn’t do this for the players. It’s not about us, what we want or need, or what the game needs. And it’s only partially about bringing something “revolutionary” to the game and the industry. IMO, this has only to do with making a public impact. Buzz.
Bug fixes aren’t sexy to the outside world. This is.
On a side note, bug fixes are pretty damn sexy to me, but I’m just the wife. New customers are the mistress, and I can’t compete with her.
Reply
milliebii
| #
ROFLMAO, glad I am playing Rift now
Reply
Cellinaire
| #
No sarcasm needed anyway. This is rather a surprise. (‘Cause many people thought this reveal will be related to ProSieben or Dungeon Maker)
as for ‘precious dev time and resources’, well at least we are getting a ‘content expansion’ this year. =)
and why should such a ‘press leak’ be related to class balance and bug fixes? What did you guys expect in the first place, really? Oh naive…
Reply
Dark
| #
Cellinaire who thought it was going to be about class balance and big fixes.. Did you forget your glasses or something..? o.O
Reply
Karith
| #
this is actually gonna be kinda fun, even if it does loose power over time, it will be good for a joke every once in a while.
Reply
Oparis
| #
I am sure, that this feature is a customized third party technology. So let’s hope, that they didn’t spent so much time on implementing it instead of fixing the bunch of existing bugs…
Reply
Steve
| #
But you will have to pay SC to be able to smile, wink, nod, etc etc.
Only comes default with “glower”
Reply
Vortex
| #
My God, this has to be the funniest, and most relatively pointless waste of development time I have ever seen.
Seriously, I don’t know whether to laugh or pity it.
Glad to see the game has gotten “better” since I left.
That picture is absolutely priceless. In fact, I’m gonna make that my signature on the forums and post there so I get banned for it. AWAY!
Reply
Derex
| #
Wonderfull, now everyone who sees my avatar can see how boring the newest Content is! I’m thrilled!
Reply
Katz
| #
Well. I don’t know what to say. I’m flabbergasted.
I will say that the video is well done. I think that some will enjoy this. People who make video stories using the ingame toons for example should find that useful if it works well.
I’m trying to make sense of EQ2’s direction lately. I think right now EQ2 resembles a very severe case of ADHD that is uncontrolled in any way.
It’s like decisions are made…oh that would be way cool!!!!! Do it, do it, do it! But there is no attention to details, practicality, ability for it actually to function in game, or follow through to make it work.
Does anyone else get that impression?
Reply
Cuteypie of Permafrost
| #
It’s a cool feature, it seems (if it works). But even though I’m not and never will be the raider type, I’m pretty sure that my fellow gamemates who are would like something done to their problems before designers and decorators like myself get their wishes.
But then again, they have multiple audiences to please. So I guess it’s just going to have to be “suck it up and get over it” with raiding and other bugs (maybe even some housing ones) for now. 🙁
Reply
Kwill
| #
@katz, yes, it does seem to be ADHD in the decision making, but there is an underlying pattern — the game is trending much more toward having fun playing dollhouse than adventuring. You can dress up your character, dress up your merc, turn your pet and yourself into different forms, and now your character can use your own expressions and an appropriate voice. Housing and stuff for housing is a large part of the marketplace. New stuff comes on the market place almost every day!
Dungeon maker is just another iteration on the same theme (obviously fixing Dungeon Finder isn’t one of their priorities!).
The current direction seems to be all about role playing and living as a different character in a fantasy world, messing around in a sand box but not really doing anything seriously goal oriented.
I agree also that the game seems to be trending towards just trying things for new innovative design, rather than practical development to make the game better.
Reply
iniggo
| #
I do think that this could be a really neat feature , i see people having a lot of fun with the voices.
while i may play around with the voice aspect of this , i do not believe i would use the camera “SOEmote ” feature , my concern would be transmitting constant live video , this opens up potential recordings of my home on Sony’s part and possible hackers/voyeurs intruding into my home. It would depend on if Sony plans on using our own system to interperet our experessions , which would slow down performance , or if they would be streaming our video feeds to do this which will invite other potential problems , both are problematic.
Reply
Onorem
| #
It is a great pic. I tried to use it as an avatar on the forums and had it removed because “Impersonating an employee of SOE is not permitted.”
Then I added space at the bottom to note that (Onorem is not SJ) and had it removed, along with my ability to use external images as avatars, because apparently I was trolling…
Reply
Kralus
| #
they told you not to do something, you did it anyway. I wonder why you had your privileges taken away?
Reply
Onorem
| #
They said I was impersonating an employee, so I changed the image to note that I was not that employee. They didn’t tell me there was anything wrong with the image itself.
Reply
Betony
| #
@Whilhelmina Check out the forums regarding Elder Scrolls Online. Games not yet out and the comments are just like the flaming wire regarding EQ2. I swear some of the comments are just cut and paste from any MMO forum.
It’s facial recognition, right? Not full body recognition. Can’t see anything sexy about a bunch of locker room brains trying to look lascivious with pixel faces.
It’s a pretty cool feature nerd-wise.
Reply
Zaun
| #
First, I applaud Sony in doing something that is truly innovative, and not just the usual stuff in MMOs.
I can see this making for some interesting animation and some cool Youtube videos that can be completely non-MMO related. Heck, I can see a news site having an announcer being an EQ2 character reporting the day’s events or something like that.
Of course when it comes to gameplay, I won’t be using it that much. However, it will still have its place.
Reply
Steve
| #
I can see it now. Everyone standing at a tradeskill station is slightly leaning to one side and snoring.
Reply
Dark
| #
@ Zaun
I’m not sure you can call 5+ year old technology innovative just because it was applied to an MMO. That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it?
Reply
Neftor
| #
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5329/lolfo.jpg
Reply
milliebii
| #
having got up off the floor, some observations.
1. If everyone played in first person they could see each others faces. How many people actually do that these days?
2. Will NPC’s react to your facial expressions. Does anyone really want have to make a face to get the right answer from an NPC?
3. Will sticking your tongue out at a MOB act as a taunt?
If the above are not applicable then it is useless chrome, and a waste of whatever time and money the dev’s spent on it and a waste of CPU cycles at the player end to process the facial recognition.
Also with lag being contributed to by server side bandwidth limits (during large player congregations like public quests)do you really want to be adding to the problem by sending everyone’s facial state back and forth?
Reply
Landiin
| #
Say what you want, its pretty damn cool. Nothing new or ground braking by any means but cool nether the less.
Reply
Aelias
| #
This is both new and groundbreaking being in an MMO. In fact it’s prior uses were to make games, I don’t know of any other title where it was used by the end user. Don’t forget the other “irons” already in the fire regarding EQ2. The real time dev tool. Why would they fix all the bugs now when they are completing a tool to make the process easier on them and us? Content? They said there is going to be an expansion soon, one focused on content. They are making Dungeon Maker more relevant by getting our characters in there. How many other positive changes to DM will also happen to make it work? We still have the E3 announcements on the 4th. Where’s the excitement?
Reply
Steve
| #
A pig with lipstick can be called “cool”, “innovative”, “new” and “groundbreaking” as well.
Reply
Snowdarc
| #
@ Aelias
Come out from under that hat Smoketard,we know it’s you!
Coulda tried to be a teeny bit less obvious LoL.
Why would they fix all the bugs now
That killed me!
Reply
Snowdarc
| #
Content? They said there is going to be an expansion soon, one focused on content
CONTENT? WE DON”T NEED NO STINKING CONTENT!
as long as there is stuff on the marketplace,and i can make my toon pick it’s nose.
Reply
Snowdarc
| #
They are making Dungeon Maker more relevant by getting our characters in there. How many other positive changes to DM will also happen to make it work
How’d that Poet Palace thing treat ya?This is too easy,and i don’t wish to offend anyone besides Smoke,and Brasse,so i’ll just shut up for now.But Damn…
Reply
Snowdarc
| #
Where’s the excitement?
Must.Not.Comment.
A remarkable amount of self restraint on my behalf.
Reply
Jrel
| #
I think it’s cool, but I wouldn’t be spending most of my time watching other people’s facial expressions. Now, it would be really cool if it followed the movement of my arms and hands so I could gesture… =D
Reply
Aelias
| #
@Snowdarc
I wish I was SJ, then I would know what EQN looks like. You aren’t offending anyone, certainly not me, so you are free to speculate on the subject any way you choose.
Reply
milliebii
| #
…. all these “but its cool” responses called to mind the following story.
A man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will be your loving companion for an entire week.” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket.
The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want.” Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”
The man said, “Look, I’m a computer programmer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”
….. seems to fit the situation perfectly.
Reply
Onorem
| #
And now I get a free 2 week vacation courtesy of soe-mod-#whatever
Reply
Thodian
| #
It’s all about choices and options. You don’t need or are required to use them. Cannot (and won’t) understand the problems and hate some players are expressing here.
Reply
Feldon
| #
If itemization, mechanics, class balance, and content are the meat and potatoes of an MMO then what are we getting these days? A steady diet of StationCash eye candy and marshmallow fluff features?
It’s admirable that EQ2 has attracted a diverse playerbase who role play, decorate, play in a casual fashion, etc. EQ2’s housing system has retained a number of people who wanted to leave for Rift, etc.
But having a diverse audience doesnt absolve you of keeping your ducks in a row on the core product. Maybe SOE has decided a portion of their playerbase is more trouble than we’re worth.
Reply
Dark
| #
Woo banned from the official forums for posting in the SoEmote thread. All with legitimate arguments. Except stating that SmokeJumper has lied to us in the past everything I posted was constructive.
Hell even that’s constructive because it’s true isn’t it? Why do I deserve to be banned.. ffs.
Reply
Landiin
| #
@Aelias
Yes it it is new to MMO but its not new, in fact it is old technology and voice fonts I believe in other games so nothing really new about that on either front. Both will be fads and people will quit using them like Battle grounds, dungeon finder and dungeon designer. Only the select few will use them long term and I doubt SOEmote will be use by more then 1% if even that.
Reply
Landiin
| #
If you want to make a post that will criticize in any way at all you need to make a free account and post under it. They are so quick to ban it is just comical now. I’ve been banned on 3 free accounts in one day, you gotta love free accounts.
Reply
Dark
| #
Yeah I’m not sure what I got banned for, they sent me the message of my trolling by calling SJ a liar, but they didn’t actually send me any of the offending posts that supposedly weren’t constructive. :\
Reply
melpheos
| #
For all the haters saying “why are they wasting their time on this and not publish more content or fix the bugs” i will say : THESE ARE DIFFERENT TEAMS !!!
The people developping new technologies are usually not the one fixing the issues or releasing the content.
After watching the video demo of this, i think this is awesome and makes me wants to buy a mic just because of this (i will probably not play with the voice change feature but the facial expression and movement is just great)
Reply
Muspell
| #
– Voicemorphs, Creepy… unless you’re one of those guys who pretends to be a female in-game in which case grats! you are now 100x creepier than before. Also I can already imagine how annoying these will sound during raid, thankfully most use ventrilo, etc and have voice chat disabled.(even then there are people who don’t need voice morphs to sound annoying 🙂
– Facial tracking, Leave it for games that actually take advantage of it or for your young ones desktop software so they can make cute videos for mom & dad.
– Game immersion for EQ2 imo will not be this, if you want players to be more immersed in-game try to really fix itemization, bugs(that have been long overdue for a fix), and perhaps make items dropped in-game look more appealing than the crap in SC marketplace.
– Lastly, listen to the veteran community!
… unfortunately this post as well as any other post that makes 100% sense will only fall on deaf ears.
Reply
Nyna
| #
cool feature!
most of the time playing i have the cam zoomed out so far that I wont see much of it though, also I wonder if the lag of voicechat and what’s happening on screen will work out for most players.
Reply
Gaealiege
| #
Absolutely amazing. Was SOE bought by EA?
Reply
Dark
| #
@ melpheos
Why would you assume different teams did this? I’d say it’s more likely that they hooked into a 3rd parties software to create this or I might agree with you, and regardless that doesn’t mean the EQ2 team didn’t put time into this.
@ Muspell
Yeah voice morphs are kinda creepy.. I can’t help but think anyone I see wanting them is slightly creepy as well.. 🙁
Honestly if I start playing again for whatever reason, if someone is using voice morphs in my group or raid they’re getting kicked and put on my ignore list. >.< (I use TS or Mumble 90% of the time anyways so whatever)
Reply
Tuscan
| #
It’s just a feature that some will like and some will think is a waste of time. I won’t use or probably even notice it because my graphics are usually very low to support raiding. Raiders think every resource should be spent making and fixing raid encounters. Casuals and tradeskillers probably could care less about that. In the end it’s probably wise to keep the game well balanced and continue giving new content and features to all different interests and playstyles of the game.
Reply
Kwill
| #
A friend in my guild demonstrated the voice morphing to me the other day, I guess WoW put out a headset or somoething that does it. His little chipmunk/fairy voice was really, really getting on my nerves. I can’t imagine a raid with more than one of those high squeeky voices.
I hope if people do choose to use them, they will design them such that they will be at least pleasant to listen to.
Reply
Anaogi
| #
Well. Just read the E3 press release for SOE. Found this…
Wizardry Online
Hands-on demo with the new free-to-play MMO based on the classic Wizardry computer games. Produced by Gamepot, this latest game features countless traps and fiendish monsters that will hinder players’ adventures as they cross the most difficult dungeons ever seen. Wizardry Online retains the characteristic elements of the original Wizardry and merges them with modern MMORPG functions.
So.
Reply
Sawzall
| #
Please get this ridiculous picture off of the top fold of EQ2Wire. Post something, anything, to make it go away. And stay off my lawn.
Reply
Zerigo
| #
Ya not EQ2 related, but i think SoEs decision to publish Wizardry online was pretty stupid. I don’t know any one who likes games that feature perma-death. Let alone all the other stupid shit in that game. Games like that drive people away. Ya spend months working on a toon, just so it can get permanently killed by some haxor in pvp, or worse, by your own team mate. EQ1 tried this, and it did not work, i guess soe didnt learn.
Although, i think the gimmick there is going to be a pay to reincarnate your toon system. For the cheap price of 10 bucks, you don’t have to restart…
Reply
Trueflight
| #
the evil me really wants to do mean things with Photoshop and that pic of SmokeJumper
Reply
Steve
| #
@trueflight – no…that’s the good side of you. Your evil side would be saying things like “wow, this SmokeJumper guy has really done a lot for EQ2, SOE and the MMO industry as a whole”.
Reply
Gunthore
| #
@Steve that would be the evil side or the stupid side?
Reply
Dazin
| #
Really? THIS is their big announcement? Sure I was a RPer back in the day before it all but died in EQ2…I really can’t see this doing anything for the game at all. It’s like the /mood and /funmode commands, people try em out once and never use it again.
Reply
Landiin
| #
At 1st the photo was lol but now I find myself praying it has been changed or pushed off screen before the page loads and when it does i cringe because it is still there…
Reply
Anaogi
| #
Yeah…soooo tired of that face now.
Reply
Morgan
| #
Will find a suitable duckface to replace it. 😉
Reply
Steve
| #
@gunthore maybe a little of both. Stupidity is just a tool of evil.
Reply
Gaealiege
| #
The forums are getting pretty Kiara-like nowadays. You post anything slightly sarcastic or negative about this worthless emote system and they’ll have you warned and your post removed within seconds.
Good deal.
Reply
Dark
| #
Or they ban you for absolutely no reason.
The forums were NEVER this bad under Kiara, these mods were specifically told to look for any possible reason to delete comments that were against SoEmote, I’d bet on it.
This is almost worse than PSS1 where 90% of the thread was deleted and I was also banned. -.-
Reply
Gaealiege
| #
I imagine you’re right. I was banned today as well. Apparently highlighting the lack of attention to itemization versus attention to useless features such as this merits a ban.
Reply
Lidet
| #
I know ya can’t KILL a story but can ya kinda … moooove this one along.
It’s like staring into the face of Borg….resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
For the Love of God Montressooor!
Reply
Dethdlr
| #
Well, like this feature or not, I’ll say this much for it, it’s getting them a good bit of press. Searching Google News for SOEmote brings back over 2,400 hits and searching Google for SOEmote brings back over 200,000 hits. Pretty sure that’s more attention than EQ2 has gotten in a long time.
Reply
Onorem
| #
It is press…and I guess I should just be happy for that. Not sure how many new players will be along to test it, or how many will pay a sub, but nothing wrong with press.
It’s neat tech, but I still don’t see why I should care about it when it comes to EQ2.
Reply
Landiin
| #
I give it a month after it goes live before it fades away with the players. But yea as Dethdlr says it is getting the some press for EQ2 although I am not sure it is good press.
Reply
Landiin
| #
Come to think about it, I am afraid it will draw even more of the facebook gamer crowd. While that in it self might bring in more F2P money for SOE but it can’t be any good for the long term health of the game.
Reply
Steve
| #
“Press” and people talking about something does not always equal a good thing.
Reply
Lempo of Everfrost
| #
It is a ‘novelty’ idea, if this were a game with a large amount of player to player interaction it could bring on a big seperation to any competitors. In the state EQ2 is in it will do little for it. Some of the new players will simply want to see it to ooh and aah and they will be gone after the new wears off. Some will be interested enough in the game but then when they see how broken things are and what little effort is being put into fixing anything of substance many of them will leave before investing a lot of time. Then as they continue to neglect the lack of content, the abysmal state of itemization there will be more fallout from established players. In the end this could cause a net loss in players for EQ2, it could bring in a tremendous amount of revenue for SOE in the future, but it will not be for EQ2 and EQ2 will get nothing except less focus and lose another dev or two in return. Nothing good will come to EQ2 from this, there is no real place for it in the game, even for RP’ers I don’t see how it will add a lot. Do you really play zoomed in where you can see facial detail enough to really care about this?
Reply
camelotcrusade
| #
I kept checking my date but it’s still not April 1st. Doesn’t it seem like an April Fool’s joke article? It totally does to me, goofy faces and all. Froglok demo? Really!?
Anyway, I was intrigued by the comment suggesting it’s a plug-in from EQNext development getting a dry run in EQ2. That’s really the only way this feature makes sense to me.
Reply
Muspell
| #
@Deathdlr, you have a valid point but the way I see it is like the difference in eating tabasco and ghost chilli…
Tabasco will offer a quick burn and fades away fast, while the ghost chili will stick with ya.
Sure it will lure people into our community and then they realize oh snap its all fluff and most of the integral bits are for the most part ignored or takes a long while to fix/update they will eventually fade. As a community we know and said it several times… Focus on core gaming fixes/updates and you will see your playerbase grow once again and stick around for years to come.
IF thats what they have planned for us.
Reply
Cuteypie of Permafrost
| #
…..I don’t want to be mean, but should I mention it’s a game? And if you’re still ranting about it and spending money on it, it shows you care and are still playing, doesn’t it?
I think we’re looking at the negative more than the positive.
The best part of this article is Smokejumper looking like a retard. 😉
Reply
Gaealiege
| #
Not quite as retarded as apologistis for SOE look though.
Reply
Gaealiege
| #
Apologists that is.
Reply
Onorem
| #
@cuteypie: WTF does caring and playing have to do with not liking what they are doing with the game? I rant ‘because’ I care. If I didn’t care, I’d have been gone the day they announced ftp for everyone. I am still playing…because I still have a sub paid for with walmart cards on a triple weekend. (I’m probably averaging logging in about 6 times a month to raid. Casual guild and I’m heading to the cabin to fish every other weekend.)
I do care what happens to the game…and I think that SJ is ruining it.
This is neat tech. I hope that everyone who wants to make use of it gets to. (history has shown that several things will be broken on release and it’s never truly going to be functional)
Reply