Q&A: What's The Future For EverQuest II?

[Martrae]

Q&A: What's The Future For EverQuest II ? In person, Scott Hartsman is an enthusiastic gentleman, talking a mile a minute about his passion: Sony Online Entertainment's PC MMO EverQuest II. Mr. Hartsman joined the team as producer three years, ago, in the wake of the title's somewhat slow launch.

Why the sluggish start? Up against the firestorm that is World of Warcraft, and by Hartsman's own admission laboring under a flawed vision of who would be playing the game, EverQuest II struggled in its first year of live service following its November 2004 launch. Since then, under the direction of Hartsman and people like now-departed lead designer Jason Roberts, the game has fundamentally changed in an effort to recapture the enthusiasm of past and current EverQuest players.

His enthusiasm was mixed with blunt honesty when Gamasutra spoke to him at the recent Sony Online Entertainment Gamers Day event. In a series of conversations over the course of the evening, he shared the reasons behind EQ2's rocky start, the philosophy that turned the team around, and the results of having a longer development cycle for game expansions.

Restoring The Fun Factor?

At some point after EverQuest II launched, the team looked up and said, "We are not having fun." The people on the team weren't playing the game and, according to Mr. Hartsman, "That's the kiss of death.".

For various reasons, the design standpoint when the game was first created was "we can't steal from EverQuest". The game's goal was to move as far away from EQ as they could, to attract new players while leaving the EQ player base more-or-less intact. That resulted in, essentially, a generic fantasy MMOG with some very strange design decisions.

For example, there was a lot of interest in controlling the player's experience, making sure that everyone at X level was exactly the same in a number of ways. This resulted in a feeling of sameness, and not a lot of enthusiasm for grouping. That was a particularly bad cycle, as the game was also absolutely brutal about solo play. "I think when the game first came out I leveled a character up to about 13 or 14 before I threw my hands up and said 'done!'"

That's just one example of a design structure that promoted frustration. There were several elements that fed off of each other: the locked encounter system, the initial class system that had players choosing their final class quite a ways into the game. "When your designers aren't playing your game, that means something is deeply, deeply wrong", Hartsman said - but took pains to point out that no one person or group of persons was responsible for the game at launch.

Morphing Into Something To Be Proud Of?

He explained: "The understanding behind the product was perfectly valid... it just missed the mark. So the initiative became, 'let's make this into a game we want to play.' The result is a title that everyone on the team plays quite a bit, apparently. Mr. Hartsman noted that several of his colleagues run guilds, and two in particular are regularly leading raids and unlocking new content in-game. "That's the sign that you're doing things right."

Scott Hartsman is bullish on the title as it currently stands: "If I didn't think that EverQuest II was worth working on, I wouldn't be working on the game, bluntly. I'm one of those people who needs to be truly into what it is that he's doing. I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't. This game, when it launched, did not have a lot of things that would be required to pull in a sufficient EverQuest-friendly audience. It has in the last three years become that game."

He continued: "Between our studio and the Taiwan studio we've probably had a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy five people work on this game. Every 'generation' of developers has gotten the game better and better and better. If it was just us saying it, it would be one thing. It's reflected in our better review scores. It's rare for review scores to go up over time, especially an MMO. Usually your game launches, you have a review score, and then all of your review scores kind of dance around, maybe go down. Ours actually trend upward for each new expansion... This franchise is improving in value. To us, that means that this game could go on for another ten years."

Free, Pay Content To Up The EQ2 Ante

When he wasn't discussing the game's past, last week Mr. Hartsman was explaining the new Neriak and Darklight Woods areas of EverQuest II. These zones are free content created by the SOE-Taiwan, the Soga studio, and will be patched into the game at no cost to the player later this month. Along with the two new zones, the darkly 'emo' Arasai faerie race will be added to the roster of evil races.

Mr. Hartsman grinned widely as he described the collaboration process between SOE-San Diego and their foreign coworkers, navigating a floating Arasai though the Dark Elf city of Neriak. The visual style and audio environment were specifically designed to evoke the city from the original EverQuest, and onlookers were treated to a number of examples of how the 'old is new again' in the upcoming publish.

While content from the upcoming expansion Rise of Kunark wasn't available to see that evening, Mr. Hartsman was no less excited about that project. 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.

EQ2's previous expansion, Echoes of Faydwer, was the testbed for the company's policy change. Success both critically and with the player base sent a clear message to the company: take the time to do things right, and bring back the EverQuest-ness to EQ2. When the idea for the expansion was being bandied around, Mr. Hartsman was still reluctant to go directly for a 'spiritual sequel'. He consulted the game's staff on the matter, as several of them had worked on the original expansion for EverQuest. The response was overwhelming: let's do this the way we wanted to do it back then.

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."

He continued: "In this case, we have enough time to do ten more levels of content, probably four or five hundred quests, we have enough time to do a full compliment of collection quests. That's a huge thing for EQ2 players, people love collections. And we have time to do a brand new race. So we're doing the Sarnak as a playable race. In there, we also have a little bit of time left over to do some R&D. And the nice thing about expansion cycles that last a whole year is that you get experimentation time. Whereas, if you have a six month cycle you have to go with what you know works. There is no tripping. If you trip, you miss your date."

But what's changing? "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. We're going to have a few of these regions out there, and then each of those regions will have a few zones inside them. What that lets us do is make an expansion where there is less zoning. We're going to have zone names that sound a little foreign to people. "The Jarsath Wastes", "The Kylon Plains" - that kind of thing. Inside of those areas, you'll see Skyfire Mountains, you'll see the Dread Lands, the Lake of Ill Omen. And so those will be full zone-sized areas inside these much larger areas. You can go back and forth and not have to be worrying about zoning the whole time."

Conclusion - More Care, More Of The Time

Indeed, in Gamasutra's recent interview with John Smedley, the SOE president explained the major change in attitude affecting EverQuest II: "The teams have their heads down, they're working hard, and we're learning from past mistakes. In the case of EverQuest II, it's still a very very healthy business for us. In terms of getting it in the public eye, that's the purpose of the free updates; we're trying to target several large-scale free things to add to the world."

Smedley concluded: "We want people to know that we're not just slamming out expansion packs. I think that was a mistaken strategy that we had for a while. It decreased our quality level. The teams, and myself included, just get to the point where you want to be super proud of what you're releasing, and we wanted more time to polish things, and so we said 'the heck with it' and went with it that way." How will this considered approach pay off in terms of buzz and increased subscriptions? Only time will tell.


from: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=14016

[Lyion]

/rant on

They still don't get it, even after Blizzard explained their gameplan for widespread MMO appeal ad nauseum. WOW isn't that different from EQ2. EQ2 has better graphics, a bigger world. It just suffers from suckass design and as they indicated, a severe lack of fun, which can be evidenced by a generic world and a lack of passion.

It reminds me of the last scene of Serenity, when Mal explains the first rule of flying, which is the difference between WOW and EQ2...

You can learn all the math in the 'verse...

but you take a boat in the air that you don't love...

she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds.

This is the difference. SOE are suits. Blizzard are gamers. Mcquaid used to be a gamer, but isn't anymore, but that's a different Vanguard thread...

The basic principles of gaming success. Keep it simple, make it fun. Show your players consistent progress, and have an overt, simple path forward. Know your product. Like your product. I doubt EQ2's original design team ever cared for it, much.

WOW is based on the Warcraft universe, but it doesn't take itself too seriously and is about the player experience. It also understands progression, and doesn't try to be things it is not.

A vision is good. If anyone thinks Blizzard didn't and doesn't have one for WOW, they're crazy. They know where they're going and aren't deviating too much from the path, which is why the game works. It doesn't run on player polls. EQ2 wasn't designed by gamers, it was setup by a bunch of suits trying to determine what sells, who didn't even play the game, as any long term gamer can tell.

Until a gamer takes over and has autonomy to institute a great design doc, EQ2 will still be a mediocre game with some good ideas, but no 'love', and missing a pilot driving the ship. They have done some nice things, but essentially it is covering a turd with chocolate.

They can fix some things to make the game better, but it still will be missing that X factor. Levelling should be fast. Content should be simple at the start and become increasingly, albeit slowly, more complex. Stats are great, but when ones game has more stats than Major league Baseball, it isn't going to be popular, which a real gamer could tell SOE, but not a suit relying on a mile high view of the gaming stratosphere.

Having 10+ classes that are actually four classes, in an effort at trying hard to fool people into thinking they have class depth is moronic. Either have many distinct classes, or scrap the 10+ archetypes and have there be 4 with people allowed to make choices to individualize each one, while allowing for their base abilities, be it tanking, healing, crowd control, or damage. The idiocy with the classes and the fact that SOE has sweated so hard to make them vanilla and gutted is a big part of the game. Balance sucks. Make the game fun, instead. Again, another sign of the lack of passion and the game being run by a 'board' instead of potent, visionary gamers.

I believe Hartsman cares about EQ2 and is a good marketer and professional. However, wanting something to succeed is not 'love'. This is not his baby. Smed is also professional. Neither will touch WOW because they don't 'get it'.

Really, the best way to fix EQ2 would be to hire the Guildwars guys and have them redesign the game to adhere to starting simple, focusing on fun, and making the end slowly more complex and difficult.


Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down...

tells you she's hurting before she keels.

Makes her a home.

[kaharthemad]

most people who dont play it anymore never gave it a fair shake or whined because they could not click on the lfg button.

[Tacks]

Yeah, all 8 million of them...

or the game could just suck

[Reynaldo]

EQ2 is getting alot of great support over on the FOH boards. While that's obviously not the end-all, be-all of what's good, it is a little eye opening since the FOH boards have been a WOW-or-nothing haven for quite some time now.

My problem with EQ2 is that while they say it's a different game, why would I want to replay the same locations and lore I spent 7 years in already.

Are there any trials for EQ2 now or still just the play the fae thing? Or is that gone too? I wouldn't mind giving it a trial again since the last time I did it I was doing LOTRO beta as well.

[Martrae]

http://www.trialoftheisle.com/

It's the general starting area.

[Lyion]

most people who dont play it anymore never gave it a fair shake or whined because they could not click on the lfg button.

Actually, a ton of people bought the game solely due to it's name. That is all SOE should need to get people having fun from day 1. They certainly didn't have that benefit with EQ1.

It's idiotic design to hope people stay around just in case a game gets better later. It needs to have a hook, and draw people in. If it sucks at 20, which EQ2 did both times I played, there is no hook for me. I really wanted to like EQ2, and I tried hard to enjoy it, but in the end it is just a mediocre MMO that has limited appeal, which Smed has as much as admitted.

There is a reason nobody at SOE played their own game, and I doubt it's because the people who developed it could not find groups. That in itself is the crux of the problem with EQ2.

[kaharthemad]

Lyion I love you man, but you spent 90 percent of the time bitching that you could not find a group, then when you found one (with me and mar) you spent 45 minutes out of the hour afk. That could possibly...be the reason you did not enjoy it?

[Lyion]

Hardly. You may want to get the AFK story from the source, sir. I'm the least afk person in the MMO verse, as anyone who has spent time with me here can attest.

The last time I started, there were plenty of newbee's during the EOF release, and the game, while much improved, just really was bland to me. I have 2 mid 30 chars, a mid 40s char and a new level 20ish Fae character. I really want to like EQ2, but to me the levelling experience in EQ2 is just not fun, and enveloping, like it was for me in other games. Grouping is ok, but not like it was in EQ.

I'm glad you enjoy it Kahar, but it's not really fair to accuse me of bitching in EQ2. I rarely ever SAW you ingame. I wanted to like EQ2, but it didn't provide entertainment to me. Sadly, I moreso enjoyed my Vanguard time recently than EQ2, simply because despite the game being bug riddled with a hugely bloated engine and more exploits than a Korean Counterstrike server, there was some fun there.

I think the team is going in the right direction, but there is a reason SOE licensed then bought Vanguard, and if EQ2 was doing that well, they certainly wouldn't have done that.

[Reynaldo]

Question about EQ2...

I'm really liking the trial so far and am wondering about the later game play. Is it similar to EQ1 at all in that there are dungons with nameds that can drop decent items, or are all your items pretty much obtained through quest rewards?

So far all I did was recover some guy's bow and arrows in the newbie area in Qeynos, and it spawned a dynamic fight with a named spider who dropped a couple items. But I guess what I want to know is, can you just explore an area and count on running into some nameds or is it completely useless to ever not be working towards completing a quest (a la Vanguard).

[Martrae]

In general it goes like this.

The best gear in the game (Fabled) is dropped from named mobs in raid zones. The named mobs in non-raid zones drops the next tier down (Legendary). Quested items, while still decent, are generally not going to be the uber items (unless they come from the Heritage Quests, which are a special category).

So:
Fabled - best
Legendary - still really really good
Mastercrafted - Made by players. Some pieces are near Legendary in stats, some aren't.
Treasured - decent
Common - trash

[Lyion]

Just a follow up. I started a character in Neriak and after levelling up to 20, I have to say the game has taken leaps and bounds in improvement.

I'm hoping the rest of the game is as entertaining as the first 20 in Neriak has been.

Rey, I'm playing as either Limit my SK, or Cynay my Coercer on BB.

[Lionking]

Just a follow up. I started a character in Neriak and after levelling up to 20, I have to say the game has taken leaps and bounds in improvement.

I'm hoping the rest of the game is as entertaining as the first 20 in Neriak has been.

Rey, I'm playing as either Limit my SK, or Cynay my Coercer on BB.

Yes sir, the new Darklight Woods / Neriak freebie is very well done. I don't know if you've tried the Faydwer side yet but it's tremendously better than starting on the old island.

[kaharthemad]

having your nuts crushed flat with a wooden hammer is better than the old newbie isle.

[Tacks]

or Cynay my Coercer on BB.

I lol'd

[Insanityfair]

Hardly. You may want to get the AFK story from the source, sir. I'm the least afk person in the MMO verse, as anyone who has spent time with me here can attest.

You...me...PoN wasn't it? You af'd on me and went off a cliff cause I didn't know you were afk?

[Lyion]

I was only gone one moment, and you keeled me!

Moral of the story, never AF IF and AFK!

[Insanityfair]

I was only gone one moment, and you keeled me!

Moral of the story, never AF IF and AFK!

You were gone like 5 minutes!

[Harrison]

Aryylas and I used to take taiwanese corpses during raids and drop them very far away or in holes.

[kaharthemad]

I was only gone one moment, and you keeled me!

ok I think i see the problem. Clearly there isa time dilation around lyion. I remember 30-45 minutes...he says only 5. Same with IF. hmmmmm

[Lyion]

I was only gone one moment, and you keeled me!

ok I think i see the problem. Clearly there isa time dilation around lyion. I remember 30-45 minutes...he says only 5. Same with IF. hmmmmm

IF might have a point...but everyone here knows you are nuts...



The problem was more the latency of her weak ISP, or that she was downloading pr0n in the background or something

[Insanityfair]

I was only gone one moment, and you keeled me!

ok I think i see the problem. Clearly there isa time dilation around lyion. I remember 30-45 minutes...he says only 5. Same with IF. hmmmmm

IF might have a point...but everyone here knows you are nuts...



The problem was more the latency of her weak ISP, or that she was downloading pr0n in the background or something

The fact that you even mention pr0n sounds like a logical explanation for your afk's and inability to know how much time has passed...

[Lyion]

But... The internet is for pr0n!

[kaharthemad]

odd old man...seems that we have 3 people that have grouped with you that say you are an afk machine. or were....

Im just saying...

[Reynaldo]

What's the newest server on EQ2?

Any word on opening up any new ones with the expansion?