Feldon In furtherance of that less-than-optimistic thread about Destiny of Velious, SgtPmpkn had this to say:
Supposedly this content is already created, as the art/lore/mechanics/etc are mostly complete. Once the base Velious is released, they will tweaks any bugs that arise, but also then be testing the content for the next GU, which would be a larger amount of time, to test and tweak, if they already have the art assets and other items already done.
To which SmokeJumper (EQ2’s Senior Producer) responded:
Yup. That’s the plan. We didn’t want to release everything at once, or else we’d get the “rip through it and leave it behind” syndrome that we’ve had in past years. So we’re releasing some of the dungeons and raids after release…but that doesn’t mean we can just wait to do them until later.
As some of you have said in this thread, the GUs are important also, and we’ve got big plans for what we’d like to do this year in those GUs. We can’t create a “resource debt” by leaving DoV 1 content to be done later. So even though that stuff isn’t in at release, most of it is done already.
That lets us concentrate on other stuff we’ve been dying to do, like improve PvP/BGs and revamp Qeynos & Freeport.
So instead of being packaged with the expansion we’re using GUs to play catch up? Wonderful.
I’m hoping Smokejumper’s comment at the end means they won’t be using the GUs to catch up, but that we’ll have extra big GUs. Then again this is SOE, who’s been doing that for a few expansions now. So who knows?
Double XP Weekend. Starting Tomorrow.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=495220
@zerigo: Ya beat me by less than 30 minutes. 🙂 Info posted.
If the first Game Update comes out 45-60 days after Velious and includes another 2-3 dungeons and maybe a raid zone, I don’t see a problem.
Feldon, do you know if the 2 or 3 dungeons scheduled in the next GU after Velious launches, are supposed to be Hard Mode dungeon (it means that they keep existing dungeons and set a higher difficulty) or are they supposed to be real new dungeons?
I’d bet it would only be HM dungeons, and they would keep anything new for Velious – part 2.
It seems a given that there will be 1 raid or so per a GU since that ~3-4 are apparently finished and awaiting player testing, I’ve not heard anything about dungeons to come though, I’m guessing at ~2 for the entire expac to match SF.
If so I think it’ll be 1 raid at most next GU and no dungeons as they’re doing all the BG and PVP content.
I’m very interested though in what they have planned for Qeynos and Freeport, since its a plan that has been good enough to survive Brenlo’s leaving and still remain high up in the list of to-do things, and it also seems to enthuse everyone who talks about it.
The only cryptic clue we have is perhaps Brenlo talking about wanting to “destroy the cities and turn them into an adventure zone” back in July 2009, or perhaps he was just throwing us a curve ball 😉
Whatever the plan is, I’m sure its not just to put some generic quests in there, dynamic content? level less content?