12 Month Cycle

Ladred · 05-22-2007, 04:12 PM

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=14016

So I've been reading this article over at Gamasutra. Without quoting the whole article here, I thought I'd just quote some highlights that I found interesting...

Quote:

The culmination of a shift in thinking at Sony Online Entertainment, Rise of Kunark will be the first EQ2 expansion given a full 12 months to gestate before being released.

Which means to me, that this will be the first expansion to have been in development during the time that eq2flames.com has been up.

Quote:

Hartsman explained: "We have a fixed amount of time to do a thing, where a thing is the expansion. They set the amount of time, they set my staff levels. My team sets what it is that we can accomplish thats going to be fun and polished in that span of time. As long as we can control one variable, we can win the game. And so, what we really do is we plan to have as much fun and quality stuff as we can in there."

I think their timespan expired with the EOF content. Hopefully they nail it with 12 full months to hammer it out.

Quote:

In there, we also have a little bit of time left over to do some R&D.

So there wasn't time before to do R&D on content?.. somehow I believe that.

Quote:

In our case, our big experimentation this time is the concept of having 'superzones'. I don't want to make them sound cheesy, but they're gigantic regions. You could place two, three, or four older EQ2 zones, outdoor zones, and make them as distinct areas inside this one all-encompassing zone.

I'm a fan of the superzone idea, I just hope they have a good progression plan of exploring, transporting around the superzones.

Rinion · 05-22-2007, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ladred

I'm a fan of the superzone idea, I just hope they have a good progression plan of exploring, transporting around the superzones.

I agree, When I started playing again last week Butcher block looked Great, seems like a great improvment over the tiny islands of KoS and mediocre zones of DoF.

Besides more land mass = more room to implement more content *Gasp*

unless people really do like all the cut and paste instancing of KoS and different verisons of the same zones over and over and over again??

Iyeman · 05-22-2007, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ladred

I'm a fan of the superzone idea, I just hope they have a good progression plan of exploring, transporting around the superzones.

and hopefully it wont be superlagzone...

CoLDMTL · 05-22-2007, 06:13 PM

FOR THE LOVE OF BRIAN!!!!!!!!!!

They are gonna create a 'superzone' when the plain zones are so lagged out sometimes it is hardly playable. That smacks of no R&D for sure.

Faxon · 05-25-2007, 06:13 AM

well shit, they better R&D a new server out of their ass or they are gonna be up a creek

Windraa · 05-25-2007, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rinion

*snip*
unless people really do like all the cut and paste instancing of KoS and different verisons of the same zones over and over and over again??

Heh...through most of KoS I had no idea where the hell I was... cut and paste ftl

Thundaarr · 05-25-2007, 07:22 AM

Lucky you... I STILL don't have any idea of where I am half the time :p

Odinn · 05-25-2007, 12:28 PM

Actually, they said the KoS was in development since the beginning of EQ2 (which would have been longer than a year), that is why it was so big (as SOE claimed). There was worse cut and paste there than DoF I think.

I hate the regular instances in that zone, I only went in them when I had to for quest updates.

In order to develop a complete zone, they had better start a year ahead of time. At least they seem to be doing things right lately, EQ2 is getting better.

Red Rock Candy · 05-25-2007, 12:54 PM

A complete expansion once a year sounds dandy.

Nakurus · 05-25-2007, 01:46 PM

Agreed, I wouldn't mind a new expac 1 time a year.. just make like 2-3 adventure packs in between so we still get SOME new content.