Georgeson Talks About Future Content

Director of Development Dave Georgeson explains the update plans going forward.

The EverQuest Franchise Director of Development Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson took to the forums last Friday to explain how the EQ and EQII teams are tackling updates going forward.

We’ve decided to release regular improvements every week, then every month we’ll push something cool to you. Beyond that, we’re focusing the rest of our efforts into making great expansions!

Here’s a bit more detail:

What sorts of things will come out weekly?
These will be things like straight-up feature refinements, holiday events, short adventures, or pretty much anything that doesn’t merit being in the expansion or being a big monthly highlight. But something of this sort comes every week.
What sorts of things will you deliver monthly?
Each month, we’re going to do something interesting and fun, like aging a cool existing dungeon up to end-game levels and itemization, or adding a series of quests for players to find and explore. Maybe even a new zone sweeper or random world event, or that sort of thing. Something new and fun to experience with friends and guildies.
How will this impact the quality of the expansion?
We’re putting a huge emphasis on how important the expansion pack is to you. The feedback on that has been almost universal. “Make Our Expansion Matter.” So that’s what we intend to do.
Is SOE locked into this schedule? Do we mean EVERY week and EVERY month?
Answer: Yes, we mean it. We’re going to work hard to make it happen regularly and dependably.

We like this new strategy as a whole. The EQ and EQII team Producers (Thom and Holly) have created detailed schedules of how the rhythm of this stuff will play out across the coming months. And my reaction, as a player of these games, is that it all sounds pretty fantastic.

Again, this doesn’t reduce the amount of content we’re delivering to you. The EQ and EQII dev teams are robust in size and are constantly overhauling tools so that higher quality content can be created in even less time, so we can deliver even more. They work tirelessly throughout the year making our Norraths better because we (the dev teams and SOE) all love these worlds.

But what do you think? Does this sound like fun to you too?

  • Weekly and monthly improvements and adventures
  • Major focus on the annual expansion content and story

For the full announcement and to give your feedback, head over to either the EverQuest or EverQuest II forums.

Comments

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Like the idea
# Feb 04 2014 at 1:56 PM Rating: Decent
It's a shame that some games are being phased out, but that's what happens in business. I like the fact that resources are going to be allocated to the more popular games and hopefully these new plans pan out.
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# Feb 04 2014 at 12:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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Great looking team!

Thanks for all the work you do on EQ Smiley: nod

EQ2 team I'm sure you make a lot of people happy as well

I love to watch Dave on interviews. You can tell he is a great guy who is passionate about his work.
Concerns / elations
# Feb 04 2014 at 11:55 AM Rating: Good
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First off, I want to say this sounds very nice. The possibility of them bringing improvements every week instead of monthly means that the patches will be smaller and less bugs to work out each time they need to do emergency patches (hypothetically). It might also mean they are looking to clean up the coding, basically dusting off the files a bit more, which would cut down lag and help the game function better. (Would be amazing if they started to revamp the original zones a little bit too, making them more current. Lot of things to bring back into line with them).

Now for my concerns:
weekly updates... You do realize that there are still mobs that will spawn up to 2 days after the server is up and takes 3-4 days to re-spawn right? That means we would actually be losing spawns with the update schedule, as if some of these aren't heavily camped as it is, now it'll be even harder to get them, let alone the rare drops they are wanted for ( Yes, I am talking certain epic mobs as well as certain loot mobs, IE. Venril, Dagarn, Cragbeast Queen, Named in PoFear, Xygoz (the dragon in Veeshan's peak, not sure if I got the name right) and a plethora of others) They all have either scripted or 3 days+ timers, doing weekly will have serious impacts on these.
Custom UI users:
ok, so I am not a user of custom UI's, however I know plenty that are. Bringing improvements each week will more than likely see updates to UI files, which will make it hard for UI makers to keep up, or for users to keep up, gonna be a lot of downtime for these folk.

These are just examples that I've thought about and what others have talked about. Would appreciate any constructive ideas or information about this. Thank you
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Concerns / elations
# Feb 04 2014 at 5:59 PM Rating: Decent
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I know for sure Venril spawns upon server coming back up along with PoF Golems and some other epic related mobs in PoF. I honestly don't know about the other mobs you mentioned. I just know they aren't epic related.

They started putting in common sense stuff with the last patch regarding the PoS keys and Sirran the Lunatic. I hope they continue that sort of thing with other patches. Maybe epic mobs that drop epic loot every time so people won't need to kill the same mob 15 times to get a certain drop. Or adjusting the spawn rates for those mobs you mentioned so that they do spawn when the server comes back up and maybe spawn more often. My same old wishlist though. So nothing new.
Concerns / elations
# Feb 04 2014 at 2:41 PM Rating: Decent
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DarkVendetta wrote:
Now for my concerns:
weekly updates... You do realize that there are still mobs that will spawn up to 2 days after the server is up and takes 3-4 days to re-spawn right? That means we would actually be losing spawns with the update schedule, as if some of these aren't heavily camped as it is, now it'll be even harder to get them, let alone the rare drops they are wanted for ( Yes, I am talking certain epic mobs as well as certain loot mobs, IE. Venril, Dagarn, Cragbeast Queen, Named in PoFear, Xygoz (the dragon in Veeshan's peak, not sure if I got the name right) and a plethora of others) They all have either scripted or 3 days+ timers, doing weekly will have serious impacts on these.

I am sure that much of what they will be doing will be hot-fixes (ie: no server downtime)

DarkVendetta wrote:

Custom UI users:
ok, so I am not a user of custom UI's, however I know plenty that are. Bringing improvements each week will more than likely see updates to UI files, which will make it hard for UI makers to keep up, or for users to keep up, gonna be a lot of downtime for these folk.

These are just examples that I've thought about and what others have talked about. Would appreciate any constructive ideas or information about this. Thank you

SparxxUI is always up-to-date (shameless plug)
Concerns / elations
# Feb 05 2014 at 5:31 AM Rating: Good
The One and Only Sparxx wrote:
I am sure that much of what they will be doing will be hot-fixes (ie: no server downtime)


Most likely, they will patch that stuff in during the monthly patch and have it set to activate on a certain day. It's very unlikely that this would result in additional downtime.
Concerns / elations
# Feb 04 2014 at 2:27 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Custom UI users:
ok, so I am not a user of custom UI's, however I know plenty that are. Bringing improvements each week will more than likely see updates to UI files, which will make it hard for UI makers to keep up, or for users to keep up, gonna be a lot of downtime for these folk.
Do realize that most updates are NOT going to impact the UI. So we should be just fine. If there were lots of UI updates then they should be for the better and change would be needed.

-Tobin - Bertox
Concerns / elations
# Feb 04 2014 at 7:01 PM Rating: Good
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I do realize this is usually the case, but there have been plenty of fixes in the past year or 2 that have had small impacts on the ui files(not including expansion based updates). In any case, I was just relaying some concerns along(we all know people like to get in without interruptions to their drugs, I mean their games).

As for the Mob spawns I mentioned and the answer above, there are plenty of instances where this would be true. And the issue wasn't about server up, but more about consecutive spawning cycles vs a reset each time a patch was made, which would eventually limit possible spawn numbers overall. Yes there have been smart improvements on timers, as they did away with the 7 day mob spawn timers a long while back (which is good considering this would make them virtually unattainable except if they were up on server up lol).
don't think about server up, cause usually everything is camped for that point, think of the after spawns.
However, if its just hot fixes and updates with servers locked and not going down, yes, this wouldn't really be an issue. (all depends how they do it).
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weekly??
# Feb 04 2014 at 11:29 AM Rating: Default
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For any one that has played EQ for a few years and longer, this weekly improvements only means this: 2 patches a week !!! 1 patch to give improvements and another patch to fix the first patch. The new ideas from the DEV looks like a lot of down time.
Skeptical
# Feb 04 2014 at 9:23 AM Rating: Decent
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I will have to see it to believe it. That really would be nice. Kinda tired of seeing the whole one patch a month or less that has been going on. If the servers came down on a weekly basis it would also give more people chances to get named mobs. That alone would make what they are doing beneficial.
Ketchup
# Feb 04 2014 at 9:21 AM Rating: Decent
As per the Discworld series, dwarfs need ketchup for their rat kabobs !. Will recipes be part of the weekly or monthly updates ?
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