Feldon Starting the EverQuest II: Content and Zone Design panel…
Jonathan “Prathun“, Paul “Cronyn” Molina, Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, Carlos “Gninja” Mora
Freeport Revamp
* Freeport: currently North, South East, West
* Freeport, combined is a hub of those 4 zones.
* A lot more entrances and walkways so travel is easier.
* Freeport Combined lore.
Building a Zone
– Concept — bird’s eye sketch
– Documentation — POIs, NPCs
– Implementation — Using the tools to create quests, events, and population
– Revision — Feedback and bug reports from QA and testing, internal playtests
And in the case of irresolvable creative differences, we settle that in the parking lot! 😉 😉
Back to Freeport….
Current status of Freeport
– Huge sprawling zone with no people.
So where is everybody?
– Guild Halls
– Adfenture zones
– Golden Path
– other Starting Cities
What are the barriers?
– Lots of zoning
– Confusing, sprawling layout
– Dearth of relevant content
– Content and city amenities are spread out
Freeport Revitalized
– Less zoning
– N, S, E, W unified hub
– Hoods, Sewers, Sunken City, Sprawl, Ruins accessible from the Freeport main hub.
More accessible
– New amenities for Freeport — Mercenaries
Current Look and Feel of Freeport
Oppressive and hardscrabble.
– Aesthetic of Freeport is generally dirty and rundown
– Evil quest givers take advantage of the player
– Evil ambient population bullies the player
A city of jerks.
Everything Freeport is Brown and Slums.
Citizens of Freeport swindle and bully players.
Can Freeport feel evil without also feeling depressing and oppressive?
New Look for Freeport
– Banners proudly flying in honor of Lucan and Freeport
– Vivid color palette
– Dramatic architecture
Freeport Revitalized screenshot (same as yesterday) — NOT finalized but a concept
New feel for Freeport
– Populace militarized and mobilized
– Citizens follow Lucan’s lead
– Players are incorporated into the oppressive regime
– Players are heroes, not among the downtrodden
Updated content
– Progress the storyline of Freeport
– New quests with new rewards
– Class quests
– Racial traits
– Public quest in Commonlands
Example: in Star Wars, the Empire is not dirty or downtrodden.
– Working for Factions again. Seafury Buccaneers, etc.
– The original lore for the original factions wasn’t really explained. The writs didn’t tell the story. So we’re going to go back to that. Instead of just kill 10 orcs.
– As a ratonga, you should feel awesome for a specific reason. It’s all homogenized. The hoods are so low level most people don’t experience it.
– Racial Quests will scale.
Public Quest in Commonlands
– Ability to mentor so everyone can participate.
Beastlord Prelude events
More race-specific lore and content
– Ratonga storyline
– Freeblood content — explaining where they came from.
– More focus on other races like Trolls
– All races should have something to be proud of
Kaitheel: Freeblood don’t sparkle!!
Still working on the books!!
– Looking to get these all updated to the new book style
– A lot of books in the database you don’t have access to anymore. Want to look at this.
slide: The Fallen Swords Story Overview
slide: Children of War
Signature Lines will continue with each GU release in story arcs.
– Footsteps of Dartain
– The Fallen Swords
Signature lines will remain heroic.
Over the next 6 months
– Returning Goddesses
– Undead vs. Flora
– Holiday themed tradeskill dungeon
– New Mount Contests
Undead vs. Flora
– a fun thing in Nights of the Dead — a dungeon
New Mount Contests
– like Aether races, but include Leapers and Gliders
Q&A Begins
Q: Beastlord specifics?
A: We’re still talking about how you’ll get your first Warders. There will be content that explains those specifically. We haven’t picked the first Warders yet.
Q: Only 1 raid quest this year. Quest has me killing giants but no explanation.
A: A Kunark-like raid progression question? If you guys want it we can look at it.
Q: T2 Guild Hall items don’t render for a long time.
A: Well, that’s an Art/Animation issue.
Q: Flying in Neriak or Maj’dul?
A: I’ll write that one down.
Q: Freeport and Neriak relationship change after revamp?
(devs making noise)
A: Since Neriak started the uprising this could be interesting. Each hood will have an inclusive storyline and a piece of the overall storyline. Longshadow Alley will have its story told.
Q: Dragon Age 1 and 2 have a way to gain and story Lore. Pages, books, etc.
A: Storyline window was supposed to be this. Unfortunately with scheduling we didn’t implement this how we wanted this to be. We’re going to take another look at the Storyline window.
Q: Sentinel’s Fate quest line told the storyline of raiding. Can we have a raiding questline?
A: If that’s something you guys really want, we can do it going forward. With progressive releases of content, the quests will be mostly kill 1 guy since each GU might have 1 raid zone.
Q: With villages becoming instances, will the furniture rewards from racial questlines be retained?
A: We’re looking at what we can salvage. We need to update the quests because things have changed. We still want yo uto ahve access to those furniture rewards. We’re going through every quest that touches on Freeport and evaluating what we’re keeping, updating, and removing. Its a long process we’re still parsing through. There are 569 quests that touch on a Freeport zone. Any HQ or Sig quest are keeping.
We can’t redo all of the adventure zones, hoods, all at the same time so some of that will stay the same.
Q: The opening Ship starting area with the dragon on the water on a ship is gone.
A: We do try to reuse that zone because it was a really dynamic zone.
Q: We can’t use 2 mirrors in the same area in a house. They just black out.
A: The mirror reflections are currently ‘faked’ due to how the engine is built. (see this same question in another panel where Alex says he’s going to fix it).
– Beastlords are part of the expansion.
Q: When you change Freeport, will that change the houses?
A: We have to make sure everyone can still access their house. It might be cleaned up a little bit. Tim our zone lead artist is looking at this. Hoods will be instanced, so that doorway will not lead to your house. There has to be some trimming down of the number of doors to get to your houses.
Q: Returning Goddesses?
A: There are 2 which have never been seen in EQ2 Norrath. Both of them will be making a return.
Q: Are we going to have problems sneaking around Freeport with the changes?
A: Someone gave a really good idea on this. If I’m good aligned, can I get a rentable illusion to sneak into Freeport? We’ll be looking at ways to allow sneaking into Freeport.
Q: Will there be racial questlines for races that previously weren’t in Freeport?
A: Any race that can play in Freeport gets racial quests.
Q: What about betrayers?
A: They aren’t part of the Freeport ecology so they don’t get racial quests there.
Q: Can other races do racial quests?
A: We’ve put a lot of time into quests. What we think we want to do is make this open content, not locked to race.
SmokeJumper: Let’s talk about this.
A: We don’t want bits of storyline are only accessible to each race. Otherwise, you have to be an Arasai to see certain parts of the story, etc.
Q: Well, I could buy a lot of race change potions.
(everyone looking at SmokeJumper)
SmokeJumper: One of the reasons for racial quests is for altaholics. We didn’t set this up to sell a lot of race change potions, but you could.
Q: Are you still keeping NPCs that belittle players?
A: We’re keeping some of that but getting kicked in the face so often was just not good.
Q: Thanks for letting ratonga go back to Temple Street and kill cats.
Q: There used to be a lady in Freeport that was convinced she was Antonia Bayle.
(dev hilarity)
A: She’s still around and she’ll come back.
Q: Beastlords — species specific pets?
A: We’re not sure.
Q: Ratonga should get wood elves as a pet. And to my guild — I’m not wearing pants!
A: You’re going to be able to go out and get Warders by questing. Gotta collect em all! “I choose you!” We’re not using Chokeballs!
Q: Mercenaries collected around the world? Will they drop in raid zones?
A: Majority will be found in the cities — Qeynos and Freeport. Signature and Lore-specific Mercenaries will be found out in the world. But most will be in the cities. Not dropping in a raid zone.
Q: At the end of Sentinel’s Fate, Lucan sticks around when you rescue him rather than leaving. What happened to him?
-explanation-
PANEL END
This was a Live Blog by EQ2Wire.com from SOE Fan Faire 2011 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, NV.
Very excited about the talking points.
As an “altaholic” the idea of fleshing out the heritage some to the oldest races on Norrath makes me hopeful that EQ2 will continue to set the standard of enjoyable MMO’s, no matter how many FREE-TO-PLAY online games sprout up.
AoC and other sword and sorcery games that have gone that route will soon fade.
Thanks for the updates.
Hoods being instanced…is obviously in reference to townships/municipalities like Stonestair Byway & Temple Street…
If so…I wouldn’t really like that at all… O_o
I hope the changes won’t mean that we lose the racial quests we already for Qeynos when they change that later, especially classic ones like “The missing”.
It would also be a real shame to lose the voice acting which was really excellent for the racial quests.
Sellri,
They are instancing the hoods because they will have semi randomized experiences.
Feldon, if you see Prathun again please tell him I said hi!
So well, I supposed we lost our tradeskill instances and our T1 houses… And all the feeling of the suburbs… Sucks.
I’m concerned that they will “throw the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak.