Yeah, I had limited interest in EQN due to my disappointment with EQ2, then as soon as I saw images for EQN I never bothered looking at it again - the graphical style was hideous to me an I knew I would not beable to deal with it.
Yeah I don't know what the hell they were smoking. When they first announced that they were going to make an EQ Next, there were some animations leaked on the internet and it looked amazing! It was very high end graphics, slick, realistic looking yet styled to look fantasy. Then they scrapped the whole thing and started again and it became a Pixar movie with MOBA combat. And now THAT is scrapped. SOE had serious issues.
I loved the feedback system on the sorceror(?) , with a healer in the party i was able to one shot myself eventually because my nukes would do so much dmg, it was a very interesting mechanic.
Yeah the classes in that game were the best I've ever seen, by far. I played most of them to 50. With the Bard you could make your own songs. You give the song a name and there are slots for song components - Melody, Verses, Chorus, Bridge, Lyrics, etc. And you choose which component to put in those slots, and it would boost various things for you and the group, like spell damage, or melee damage, or mana cost, or it would be a damage shield etc. It was so good, and the songs were in addition to all the usual abilities.
Sorc had amazing burst damage and AoE. Although the best burst damage was the Druid! They had quite good heals, quite good direct damage, and quite good dots. But they had these Phenomena points which slowly built up over time, and you could spend them on huge nukes / dots / heals. Most people saved them for emergencies or boss fights but you could use them sparingly all the time and still have enough left over emergencies.
I really hope Pantheon has great classes like that.