Feldon The ‘Future of EverQuest II’ webcast has concluded, and we have been left with more questions than answers. The webcast at a glance:
- the Qeynos Revamp
- a hint of the Sleeper’s Tomb (GU65) and Kerafyrm (2013)
- the next Expansion (December?) — more levels, more Prestige Points, includes a totally new area of Norrath rather than revisiting a part of the original EverQuest
- Play-as-your-Character in Dungeon Maker (using a feature called Level Agnostic Dungeons)
- On-the-Fly Beta Testing
- using Quest Items from your Quest Journal instead of fishing around in your inventory
- the Scope of the Marketplace (even the EQ2 team admits that more items should be available or craftable in-game)
- Softball player questions about Progression server, Armor dyes, temporary NPCs, and the Meatbeast
Qeynos Revamp
Much like the Freeport Revamp last December, we’re updating the art assets of Qeynos. We’re splitting it into two zones — North and South Qeynos become the Capital District, Elddar Grove and Qeynos Harbor become the Provinces.
The neighborhoods will be used much as they were used in Freeport as adventure zones. Class, Racial, and Story quests at regular level intervals starting at level 20. Some quests will be below level 20. A lot of the existing quests have been retained. The storylines have been updated and made present-tense.
They’re hoping to release some before-and-after screenshots in the next couple of weeks (before E3).
“I believe it took 2-3 years to make Qeynos originally, so we didn’t want to tear all that down. We wanted to make sure we’re building upon it.” There are a lot of texture improvements. Flying is not possible, and it’s not a starting city.
Actually, the EQ2 team in the next month will be looking some at the four starting cities (Gorowyn/Timorous Deep, Faydwer, New Halas, and Neriak) and doing some polish and also tweaking some of the quest drops.
Sleepers Tomb
The next Game Update (GU65) after Qeynos will have Raid and Heroic Group content. “Dragons and stuff”.
Kerafyrm?
We do expect next year to have the final confrontation with Kerafyrm.
Holly: “That’s the plan and it’s a big plan. We’re really looking forward to seeing the story through.”
Dave: “I know how the Age’s End prophecy is supposed to end. I know the big plot line. What’s going to be fun is seeing how you move through all the different areas before we get to that final event.”
Expansion
It’s a content expansion, not a features pack. To be released this year. You’ll be visiting an area of Norrath that no-one has visited before. Dave: “In fact it’s barely even been mentioned.” Holly: “You’re going to see some new characters that have been referenced in the past that have not been seen in either EverQuest game.”
Dave: “We’ll have more information after E3, and leading up to the Qeynos revamp.”
Holly: “It will be levels. It will be prestige abilities. What you would expect from a content expansion from us.”
Then Dave hinted at some big feature which the team seems to be evaluating…
Dave: “Plus some other stuff we may be able to talk about soon.”
Holly: “Later.”
Dave: “It would be cool if we can do that.”
Play as Your Character in Dungeon Maker
Holly: “In December, we allowed the ability to play as your character in a very rudimentary way on Test server. We took a look at that and, even as a team and in our own tests, we felt that we had to do something more. One of our resident geniuses David “Maevianiu” Kish, our Assistant Lead, had previously imagined what he called Level Agnostic Dungeons.”
Holly: “What that means is, ultimately you can go into any dungeon at any level with a group, so for example, I could at level 20 group with a level 70. We could play and get equal rewards that are appropriate for our levels. It would feel solid, fun, and good. No-one would be at a disadvantage or an extraordinary advantage.”
Dave: “So it’s tweaking the number values as you do damage or cast spells, bringing you up or down to meet at a middle point when you’re doing the Dungeon Maker stuff?”
Holly: “Yeah it’s crazy.”
Dave: “So there are just a few variables in those equations.”
Holly: “Just a few.” “We’ve got a few test areas now. We applied it first to Dungeon Maker, given we wanted players to play as a character.” “I’m hoping we’ll have this on Test and Test Copy next week.”
A Dungeon Maker contest will be starting tomorrow for building dungeons, specifically Poet’s Palace.
We’re hoping to launch Play-as-a-Character mid-June, which is about the time that the contest will end. There will be cool prizes for both designing and running these Poet’s Palace-based dungeons.
On-The-Fly Beta Testing
Dave: “We’ve been talking a lot recently about ‘What is EverQuest 2? What do we want players to be experiencing? What sort of things do we want to change in the way that we deliver content?'”
Dave (to Holly): “You’ve been developing tools to more rapidly iterate.”
Holly: “Both Akil ‘Lyndro‘ Hooper, Lead Designer, and myself have come back to Sony after some time away (as have you, Dave). There were a couple of things that seemed sort of alarming to us in that historically, where we’ve been in the past, Testing is a rapid iteration process. If you go onto a Beta server and there’s a problem, (the developers) can quickly change a few variables, have the players test it on the fly. EQ2 hasn’t had that ability thus far, and now it does. Our programming team has come up with a tool called the ‘Beta Test Tool’.”
Dave: “We’ll get Marketing involved to come up with a cool name.”
Holly: “What we noticed through testing Skyshrine on Test Copy was the amazing participation. We want to encourage that participation. We understand that one of the frustrations, especially if you’re coming in as a group or a raid, or even testing quests…”
Holly: “To have our devs on-server, if you’re finding issues, they can be online and change something immediately as soon as we see a report of an issue and it’s fixed for you, and we get better feedback.”
Holly: “[We can change on-the-fly] broken quests, typos, raid issues, spell problems, everything.”
Dave: “So I can say, I’d rather have 4 orcs in this encounter instead of 3 and just on-the-fly change it?”
Holly: “Yes.”
Dave: “That’s kick ass.”
Holly: “Changing spells, raid scripts, mob spells. It’s crazy.”
Dave: “So testers on Test server can give feedback live to a dev, right there, they can change it on the spot.”
Holly: “Historically, it was ‘Sorry it’s broken, we can’t proceed with the test, please come back in a day or two when we get it updated.’ That will be a thing of the past.”
Dave: “Do you know if there’s any other MMOs that do this?”
Holly: “I don’t believe so.”
Dave: “I’m not asking you if there are any. Do you know of any? I don’t think there are.”
Show Not Tell
Wherever possible, the team is using animations, voiceovers, and interaction to tell stories rather than walls of dialogue and quest text.
Quest Item Usage from Quest Journal Window
Quests that require the use of an item — a bauble, a pet leash, a potion, etc. will now have that item icon appear in the Quest Journal, and you’ll be able to click on that item from the Quest Journal and have it activate. No more fishing in your inventory to find the right item needed to update a quest.
The Scope of the Marketplace
Dave: “We’ve spent a lot of time talking recently about the StationCash Marketplace. We have a lot of really cool stuff on the marketplace. But… we’d like to have less on the Marketplace and more in the game, right?”
Holly: “Yes. Ultimately, I think we recognize that there are some crazy amazing armor, weapons, etc. that, again ‘We are players too.’ We often ask ourselves, ‘Why couldn’t a player make this themselves?’ We’re not ignorant to that. So we have been looking into options of how we can offer similar or the same items to the players so they can make them themselves. We don’t have a specific timeline. We want to make sure it’s going to be a benefit to the players.”
Dave: “To be clear, we’re looking into ways to take stuff off the Marketplace and setting it up so that players can make it instead.”
Holly: “We obviously have a plan in advance of what we’re going to do with the Marketplace. It’s a big brainstorming activity where the team gets together to think about ‘What would I want to buy?'”
…
Dave: “We’re working on introducing more items directly into the game, rather than just putting it all on the Marketplace.”
Player Questions
Q: What is the possibility of an EQ2 Classic Server (time-locked Progression)?
Holly: “We have a huge list of priorities we want to tackle, and we haven’t seen that as…we’re obviously responding to the players, that’s our first priority. It’s not on our immediate list of things to do. It’s always something interesting to look at. It’s certainly not on our schedule with an immediate time frame.”
Q: Now that we have Adventure potions on the marketplace, are we going to get Crafting ones as well?
Holly: “I was talking to the design team before this webcast and I was actually talking to them, and we’re trying to imagine exactly what would that mean. It’s certainly not that we’re against it. We’re trying to figure out exactly what would a Tradeskill potion mean?…Send us your thoughts!”
Q: We’d like to see more Character Customization, visible jewelry, tinting for armor, Decorator choices, cheaper homes, premium housing, etc.
Holly: We periodically look at the different categories on the Marketplace to see if we can add new items, and we certainly haven’t abandoned appearance jewelry. Also, I think we can look at customizing walls, floors, etc. in the Prestige housing.
Dave: I know from way back talking to our Art Director Tim that there are some serious technical challenges with that and how housing works if we were going to do something like that. It’s not a simple thing.
Q: Is it possible to create NPCs that give you quests and actually join your group?
Holly: Temporary mercenaries are a cool idea and something we could look into. Having an NPC with a motivation who joins you for a short time would play into our ‘Show don’t Tell’ philosophy. If it acts like a mercenary, it would probably take up a player slot.
Q: Do you think the Meatbeast will ever return as a Beastlord warder?
Holly: “This is an ongoing controversy/argument on the team. There is an equal camp who says Yea…”
Dave: “There’s no controversy!”
Holly: “and an equal camp who says Nay.”
Dave: “That’s the right answer.”
Holly (points to herself) “Yea camp.” (points to Dave) “Nay camp.”
Dave: “It’s definitely a Hate-Love thing.”
Holly: “So, no answer until there’s a resolution to the argument.”
Dave: “It’s probably going to be a cage match with lots of death and blood.”
Wrapping Up
Holly: In the next few weeks we’re going to be putting out Qeynos for testing. We’d love to get the same amount of participation we had previously and in Skyshrine. Please come out and test it.
Dave: One last little thing. We have a press leak going out on the 30th, and there’s a big announcement happening on the first day of E3. It’s all related to EQ2. Watch out for it.
Holly has a speaking style which is, how can I say, challenging to transcribe. She tends to change directions mid-sentence multiple times. I’m not sure how you would transcribe this:
Holly: “Continuing on from Qeynos, and also from Skyshrine, uh we’re hoping, uh, well we will, uh, the next instance will be, not instance specifically, instances of the storyline, instance”
And I cannot believe that none of the player questions with any depth were asked. Armor dyes, crafting potions, and progression servers? Really?
A real shame about the Baubleshire getting turned into an adventure zone. I’d really hoped the villages could have been preserved and improved as places you could live.
Biggest thing I took away was that the next content update will be an expansion pack.
The big deal last year was ‘content will be in GU and features in Expansion Packs’ That was the entire premise upon which AOD was sold.
Seems to me that from this presentation, we are going full circle with that big con and we are back to paying for content once again.
As a ps, my assumption may be wrong, it may just be that the staff at SOE have as much problem with the changes introduced by Georgeson and they still use GU and Expac interchangeably.
If Qeynos hits test by the end of June and live by the end of July then a October GU65 and December expansion are possible.
A 30-min show on the future of EQ2, I was really looking forward to that. After 5 min, I was bored. Who cares about Qeynos Revamp, test server improvements or more immersive audio effects ? All these things are marginal. The next game update and expansion pack were the core subjects and they wrapped it up in 2 min.
Really bad news is that progression servers are not on the agenda at this time. I think EQ2 really needs that. But at least we got a clear answer on the subject.
“Dave: One last little thing. We have a press leak going out on the 30th”
That dastardly leaker, taunting poor Dave by telling him a week in advance.
How to make all those that are angry about the Qeynos revamp MORE angry? Just take the most controversial points and say “definately NO”:
“The neighborhoods will be used much as they were used in Freeport as adventure zones
Flying is not possible, and it’s not a starting city.”
*sight*
And really? A building contest for dungeons? After absolutely no update at all on said dungeons and none of the fix promised by our awesome $J in beta, what do they do? fix something, imrpove? no! create a bloody contest!
*wants to hang some red names*
Holly was hard to understand, at best.
What I took away was quenos gets the freeport treatment to the burbs. I am sorry for the guys in quenos, tried to warn them this was headed their way. I swear the dev team does not listen. There goes any hope of the starting isles ever coming back.
Sounds like we are getting an xpac with some combat content.
I been of playing swtor and I just canceled that sub, coming back to eq2 got a lot to get caught up on for the past 6 months.
That on-the-fly beta testing sure sounds interesting. It would give unprecedented power to the test server population if one could suggest an idea and have it be implemented on the spot. Of course, it also brings the danger that ideas which “seemed good at the moment” will be implemented without any vetting process. Will they be writing them down to evaluate them later? Hmm…
Hopefully the SJ tease about the press leak isn’t something lame.
Whenever he says that something will be cool, I get scared.
Thanks for the summary Feldon, with Holly’s inability to publically speak well and all the background noise I really had issues listening to the webcast last night.
Was also disappointed by which and the number of player questions answered. I mentioned that in the chat when it ended and got the response of “we ran out of time”. I told them it’d be nice if they answered the rest on the forums then, but considering Holly’s inability to login to the forums, that likely won’t happen.
So the May update plans were not so much what we’ll be updating in the game for May but the future updates you might see someday we’ll be working on in May. Not that I could care less about any of the things listed in the May update plans, but “We’re hoping to launch Play-as-a-Character mid-June.” I know everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for that one… How much resources have been wasted on Dungeon Maker and Dungeon Finder and now play as your own toon in DM? More than I can pretend is a reasonable amount for how extremely rare their use will ever be.
I agree with Camelotcrusade … changing things on the fly sounds good, but could end up being a disaster if things aren’t thought through carefully before changes are made. Changes often have inadvertent consequences and break odd parts of the game, too, so there’s another concern.
I wish they would fix Dungeon Finder. I would use it if it worked! I don’t understand this obsession with Dungeon Maker. I suppose the team still holds out hope that we will all suddenly love it. Do they hope it will save the grouping game? I can tell DM is still not too popular because the dungeon maker drops still sell for so little on the broker — like one copper for most of them.
As to the announcement on the 30th, my guess is it’s going to be about eqNext. Yawn.
Thanks for the transcript Feldon; I can’t stand listening to the actual webcasts with them.
It sounds to me like they’re planning on taking some of the older (and probably less well selling) marketplace appearance stuff and make it available. At the same time they’ll probably still be coming out with new stuff, including new game-affecting items like the solo stuff they just came up with. I laughed at their poll results… over 50% for group/raid they say, and yet they don’t bother breaking it actually down into SA, A, D, SD like their poll had. No worries about them doing it because they’re “players,” I’m sure they have some other way of getting people to buy stuff in mind.
Hey, no need to judge stoners. They talk how to forget sometimes!
Seems her mind is trying to catch up so she can word it right and get the story straight without revealing too much. How often has that happened?
Anyway, I’m looking forward to see how they decide to branch out the story. Maybe that Cek’Arctor quest giver in SkyShrine who keeps turning into a Kromzek is actually helping Grendish to initiate a coup against the King by destroying Dracur’s Peaceful Past …
“This is none of your affair!”
Oh come on, we know any question with depth isn’t going to be answered 😉
Dave: “It’s probably going to be a cage match with lots of death and blood.”
Am I the only one who would pay good money to watch that…?
Two comments.
Expansion: You’ll be visiting an area of Norrath that no-one has visited before.
I’m glad to hear this. I understand that the old EQ players like their nostalgic moments of visiting their old stomping grounds. I’m just glad that this time around the EQ2 devs will be able to give us something new instead of having one hand tied behind their back based on what the place used to be like. 🙂
On-The-Fly Beta Testing
First off, let me say that I’m basing my opinion on my almost 30 years of programming experience, not any firsthand knowledge. That said, here’s my take on this new tool.
The “in the trenches” designers and coders have always had to deal with the fact that if they found a bug while testing an encounter, they had to make a note of it, go back to the source code/design tool, check out the section that needed fixed, make the change, check the change back in, wait for the next build to go through, then wait for that to be deployed to the beta/test/test-copy/whatever server (a several day process). Then they could see if the bug fix they did actually solved the problem. The designers probably went to the coders and asked if there were any way to shorten this cycle. The coders came up with the On-The-Fly Beta tool as an answer.
The people actually using the tool are most likely looking for a faster way to fix bugs found in encounters. For example, if we pull encounter X a certain way, two of the mobs start fighting each other and all we have to do is watch them kill each other. Without this tool, it took days between each try at fixing this. With this tool, they can tweak how the encounter works and pull it again to see if that worked. Rinse and repeat a few times and you’ve taken a few weeks and shortened it to a few hours.
Fast forward to yesterday’s webcast. What you have are two high level people talking about a low level tool that chances are, they’ve never used themselves. So Windstalker describes that you can make changes to the encounters and Smokejumper uses an example of changing the amount of Orcs. Windstalker confirms that the tool can be used for those types of things. The coders were probably cringing when they heard that since that’s no where near what the tool was designed to do. That would be a design decision. Design decisions shouldn’t be made on the fly and I highly doubt that’s what the tool was made for. It was made so that if the design, when implemented, doesn’t work like it was designed, the developers can tweak it so it works like it was intended without waiting days for each change to be implemented.
So basically what I’m trying to say in as verbose a manner as possible (lol) is that the testers shouldn’t have this unbridled impact on content as someone suggested since that’s not what the tool was made for and not how the devs intend on using it. It was just described that way by two managers who don’t really know what it is or how it works so they tried to put it into terms that they understand better.
At least that’s my opinion on it. I could be wrong. 🙂
Certainly some things must be balanced. But it can give quite a positive impression to be able to fix bugs within minutes.
As far as the orcs example, GMs already have the ability to despawn, reset, and respawn encounters. If the test and test copy servers are like development servers now since the 12 hour maintenance than they can fire up the dev tools, change a scripted file, publish it, then despawn and respawn. One could hope. 😉
It is probably more limited than Holly described.
Yeah, changing the amount or type of mobs in an encounter doesn’t sound like the intent although it can probably be done as well. Bug fixing on the fly rather than redesign on the fly would make a whole lot more sense. Pretty sure that’s what they were going for.
Dethdlr: I agree, I’m glad to finally hear that we might/should be getting an original expansion. In fact, one of the questions I had submitted for this webcast was “Whenever DoV is officially played out, can we PLEASE get an original expansion *not* based on EverQuest lands? I have played EQ (and still do) since 1998 but I’m tired of seeing EQ in my EQ2 now and want to see something purely original to EQ2 (like Mara was).”
The short version is that DoV made me officially sick and tired of them butchering my EQ1 memories.
All I got was Holly saying “It’s crazy.”
And yeah, those are pretty disappointing player questions. Obviously not as many people paying attention to the webcasts anymore. I didn’t even bother…
@Cyliena. I feel the same way! I gave up hope with the Kurns Tower debacle that the could ever even come close to doing an eq1 zone justice. Give us some original eq2 lands!!! But please for the love of all things eq2….do not ever bring back “the void” shit!!!!
A new part of Norrath will be good for a change.
I like and use the Dungeon Maker and chances are I’ll like and use it even more with those changes.
I was apprehensive about the Freeport revamp, being a dyed-in-the-wool Freeportian but it turned out well and I prefer the revamped version. I was never fond of Qeynos in the first place so I’m looking forward to seeing the changes.
The heroic and raid content I have no interest in – won’t get to that for a couple or three years. I’m just now finishing the TSO dungeons for the first time.
The quest UI change sounds good. I prefer that system in MMOs that have it.
Overall, sounds ok to me overall but chances are my focus MMO for the summer will be The Secret World until GW2 launches and then it’ll be GW2 for a good while. I probably won’t spend much time with most of this stuff until some time after it’s happened.
Whystherumgone: Yeah I totally feel ya there.. both with them not doing EQ zones justice and please no more void. 😉 The only EQ2 version of an EQ zone I felt was done very well was Unrest. The rest range from “okay” to “you did WHAT?!?!”.
The Only thing that makes me sad is There is no reason to bring EQ2 to E3 for any kind of announcement. The Only announcements at E3 should involve New games Such as Planetside 2 and Everquest Next. Which I’m sure when Dave teased on his twitter, everyone was hoping for EQ Next. To know that the announcement on the first day of E3 is going to be about EQ2, is disappointing at best.
Drat, I didn’t know they were taking player questions, and I’m already sick of the progression server debates, if they do it fine, but I just don’t see it improving the game walling away another portion of the playerbase.
I loved TSO, but that was the first time, redoing old content wouldn’t have that wow factor me.
I’d like to have asked if we would see a X2 raid again (desperately needed for guilds who are struggling to get a X4 together).
Or if we could see some challenging content appear before the end cap?
Graphics updates, although there I’m pretty sure I’m beating a dead horse 🙁
In a positive light, I would say a new expansion with new content in a totally new area should be nice. I am looking forward to that.
Taking things off the marketplace and making them available in game is really a good move. Hopefully they will be player crafted, as suggested by this.
When Dungeon Maker came out a lot of people were clamoring to be able to play their own character. They are getting it now, and hopefully it will make it more popular.
I liked the Freeport revamp. I never used the neighborhoods anyway, and it was ugly looking. A tyrant like the overlord should have a gleaming seat of power. I am looking forward to Qeynos.
Getting quest stuff out of our bags? A really great thing! It should have been done a long time ago, but now is better than never.
(Note: I wish they had said we would be getting more real content sooner, and a few other things, but what do I gain by dwelling on the negative? *smile*)
wwwww
Theres enough content in right now to hold me and my group till the next big thing later this year. But i do feel for the people who are done or only have POW to raid since they’ve cleared everything else.
Looking forward to the Qeynos revamp. it will give me a reason to visit the city again beyond the handful of holiday times. I moved out of there a long time ago and now live in Maj’dul. Though i cant understand why they dont return freeport and qeynos to starting cities.
No mention yet again of Western Wastes either.
Still nothing about PvP. 🙁
I miss the freeport and qeynos starting cities…
Would be nice to have the isle back for 1-10 than from 10-20 maybe add a decent quest hub in Commonlands and Antonica that’s not all spread over the zone and rewarding garbage in today’s standards.
But with the amount of dev’s they got left this is probably not an effective use of resources.
hell even if they added a new neutral starting city (two factions, evil and good, in 1 city) I would be happy, dont feel like rolling a new character cause I played all the content too many times. The sense of adventure turned into a chore.
An echoes of faydwer style expansion would be sweet. new starting area and adventure zones all up to new raids.
I wish they would deepen the crafting system. I love to craft, sell things, and make money. They have slowly ruined the experience for me. Automatic harvesting, crafting potions, and the removal of most of the interdependence on other classes is really a shame. Leveling is also very fast. Seems a lot of people have maxed out several crafting classes on their accounts, which has eroded the demand for products over time. There also is a large imbalance among the various classes with some being able to make items that are very consumable and in demand and other classes who can not sell much of anything. The amount of platinum entering the world is also insane.
How about some new crafting concepts and more types of resources to make crafting more varied and interesting. Rare recipes, being able to improve recipes, discovering recipes, ect… Something that would reward players who decide to make this their focus. Star Wars Galaxies was awesome for crafting, especially before the NGE.
In recent years, Everquest 2 just seems to be a giant dumb down, similar to what they have done over time with the original Everquest. I think this interview shows that they really do not take their game very seriously and really does not reflect well on SoE.
Is this what we have to look forward to in Everquest Next?
SOoo … Today is the day, we’re waiting for the press leak ^^
yup^
Been waiting all week for what I can guess is going to be some lame thing I don’t care about. At this time all I hope is that since they took devs from EQ and EQ2 that they will make EQN a nice game that’s worthy of the name. but the direction that eq2 is going in makes me wonder.
tbh the entire MMO scene is dead set on dumb down at this time, I fear that in a few years MMO’s will just be glorified chat rooms where you left click mobs that instantly die and drop the best loots. hell why even drop loot why not make loot lvl based so nobody is left out! your lvl 90? you automatically have the best gear. this will make it so the people who play 3 mins a week get the same experience as those that play 5 hours a night!!
/end sarcastic rant/
Still no Press leak today huh? Wonder whats up? I mean it is only 130pm over in San Diego land so maybe it hasnt hit yet?