SOE Developers Discuss EQ's Future
Sony invited a number of websites to San Diego to meet with the Everquest development team and deluge them with as many questions as we could think of about the game. You will likely see reports pop up on several other sites on this, so hopefully we won’t completely duplicate each other. Much of the conversation revolved around where the game was heading and how much Sony was willing to continue to devote to its continuing development. Because most of the development team was there in front of us for several hours, I felt we were really able to get a true sense of what they were thinking in terms of the game’s recent past and its future.
Note that although I am writing questions and giving answers below, these are my summaries of what was said and are not actual quotes.
How successful was The Legacy of Ykesha, and does this success mean the end of free zones and other additions?
Apparently, Ykesha has been the most successful expansion Everquest has ever put out. They expect sales to be almost one to one players to sales, which basically means that almost everyone who plays Everquest has or will buy Ykesha. The day Ykesha was launched, Everquest set a record of 118,000 simultaneous users, and they have gotten almost all positive feedback on the new froglok race.
A number of us were concerned that the success of Ykesha, which was not a true full sized expansion like Planes of Power, would mean that there would no longer be any free additions to the game. We were assured that free additions would continue both through revamps of existing, underutilized zones and additions of zones that are on the map but not yet available. The team then went on to name the Plane of Hate as a zone that was being revamped right now and Nurga and the Plane of Mischief as ones with planned future revamps. They further said that they are currently working on adding the underwater zone Veksar to the game, which would be a level 50 to 65 zone and would be available via a free download.
Despite its success, the plan seems to be to alternate these download “extensions” with larger scale expansions that need to be purchased in a store. That is both practical and good marketing. Additions that require a lot of artwork are too large for download and must be on a disk, which means expansions like planes of Power that add a lot of new zones really can’t be sold via download. Plus, putting out a box and selling it through stores keeps Everquest’s name on the shelves and in front of the people browsing in the game store for something new to play, which is good marketing.
With Star Wars Galaxies and EQ2 coming out, what will happen with Everquest?
This may come as a surprise to many of you, but the development team does not think that either SWG or EQ2 will have a significant impact on Everquest. In fact they expressed a belief that if anything, those games will likely drive more sales of Everquest. They had a good argument. Despite doom and gloom predictions by many of the players, every new MMORPG that has come out since Everquest, including Asheron’s Call 1 and 2 and Dark Age of Camelot, has in fact increased the sales of Everquest rather than taken away from it. The publicity surrounding those games brings new attention to the whole genre and helps drive the sales of all of the games and expand the whole MMORPG player base. Certainly Star Wars will bring in a new set of players, many of whom may eventually switch over to Everquest.
The team was adamant that Everquest will continue to thrive and expand for years to come and that Everquest 2 and SWG were not expected to pull away current Everquest players, but instead were expected to generate their own audience and also bring back many of the players who had played EQ in the past and gotten tired of it. The general consensus was that most Everquest players had too much time and effort invested in their characters to simply drop them and move on to a new game. As long as they are enjoying the game they are playing, why would they drop it and go play something else? Basically, the gist of their response was that as long as the players stick with Everquest, they will stick with the players.
Surprisingly, Everquest is still growing. I was told that the sale of new Everquest accounts is actually higher today than it was a year ago, and it seems like every month or so they set a new record for simultaneous users. Despite the other projects they are working on or have released, it is clear that Everquest is their core product, and they know enough to make sure it keeps expanding and developing so that their players stay happy and keep playing. Certainly, there were quite a few people in the room whose only job was to work on expanding, tweaking and adding onto Everquest. This definitely did not have the look of a game that was being phased out or abandoned.
What are some of the things we can expect to see in the future with Everquest?
The whole team was really excited about the success of the invasion of Grobb and about the player’s reaction to that invasion. Apparently, this was done using a new quest technology that they quietly introduced with the Planes of Power expansion that lets them set up elaborate computerized events involving multiple zones. They actually characterized this first test of that technology as conservative, saying that the system was capable of quite a bit more than it showed in that event.
This quest technology lets them run a single event across every server at the same time. It also lets the event cover multiple zones, and lets the mobs of the event go from zone to zone, even following the players across the zone lines if necessary. This can let more players participate in an event without straining the zone limits and causing undue lag. Moreover, where before an event of this magnitude needed massive GM involvement, they can now plan out the event beforehand and then let the computer handle most of the details.
Therefore, you can expect to see more of this in the future. The plan is to try to make the world a little more dynamic, and to start to develop an ongoing storyline that the players can participate in. As they pointed out, if they are willing to stage an invasion of one of the game’s starting cities, then there is nothing you can say they won’t do.
Other future plans really revolve around continuing to do what they have been doing over the past year or two. Older zones will get tweaked. New zones will get added. Class balancing will continue. Because of the new dye system, more armor looks are planned. Currently broken or imbalanced areas, such as archery, will be revamped. As you can guess, much of this was left vague, as they did not want to make promises that they would not be able to keep.
I hope this has answered many of the questions you have had about the game and where it is heading. I know I truly got the sense that Sony was as dedicated to the continued success of Everquest now as it has ever been.
