Developers Talk about Game and More - Part 3 with the Devs - News - EQ

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Developers Talk about Game and More - Part 3 with the Devs

Feb 3, 2012

Developers talk to Magelo about VoA, Customer Service and more

Yesterday in our three-part series, we got to know a little more about the developers behind EverQuest.

In today's Q&A, we got to ask several game questions. These questions came from the community on the forums as well as from the staff of Magelo. Come with us as we talk about Veil of Alaris, general game development questions, how EverQuest will celebrate its 13th birthday, and customer service.

General Game Questions

Q: We all know that EverQuest focuses highly on group content. For some players, this content is currently locked behind missions. Given that previously progression-locked zones are unlocked with every expansion, are there any plans to include missions?

Thom: Typically, when we unlock, we unlock from a few expansions ago. We would consider unlocking some. I believe Underfoot would be due. We don't have a timeline, but it is something we would consider doing.

Q: Many players have jived about how broken the autofollow system is. Are there any plans to revamp this system?

Adam: Not at this time. It's a larger project than it sounds, because it's based on our whole pathing system (which has some problems).

Thom: Part of the vast, extensive nature of EverQuest content. Just in terms of static zones- well over 500- but if we add in instance zones, we're talking thousands. That sort of content doesn't exist anywhere else that I am aware of. So if we were to look into pathing, that would be something really, really big.

Q: Another big announcement recently was your cheater crackdown. What types of cheating are you specifically cracking down upon?

Adam: We very specifically don't want to release that at this time., because we'll tell people how to have an easier time getting around it.

Thom: Pretty much anyone cheating.

Q: So in short, you've designed a system to detect someone going beyond the game's design?

Adam, Thom: Yup

Q: Are you able to comment as to how long the crackdown has been in force?

Adam: About eight weeks.

Thom: We began implementing this right after the Veil of Alaris launch.

Adam: Yeah, we took a lot of time to watch the data, and figure out where we might be getting some false positives.We tried to clear out as much of that as is possible before doing anything. So we just watched it for a little bit, and watched the cheaters a little bit. And then we said, "Okay, we're confident enough. Now we're going to start getting people for it."

We're confident we're no longer getting false positives.

Q: Are there any plans (now or in the future) to add AoE Lurch for Enchanters?

Adam: No. The existing spell is too powerful, so no. So we do not plan to add it now. We do not plan to add it later. We do not want to make an overpowered ability an AOE overpowered ability. The answer is a very strong “NO.”

Veil of Alaris

Q: How does it feel to release VoA?

Adam: It is great. We put much work to it and it is gratifying to send it off into the world.

Q: What excites you the most about VoA?

Adam: We have a very strong storyline, and feel that we gave players many opportunities to experience that story.

Q: We are seeing a number of concerns about VoA, particularly a bug which prevents completion. Are fixes in the pipeline, and if so what will be focused on first?

Adam: We do continue to look and see if we can fix various issues.

Q: We have seen a couple of complaints that the tracking system causes a certain imbalance where VoA is concerned, are there any plans to address this, and if so, what is in your pipeline?

Adam: I would need information on how it creates an imbalance to answer this.

Customer Service

Q: Recently there has been quite a rumbling on the forums about petitions. Apparently the queue has been full and many petitions are auto-closing. Is this in the pipeline?

Eric: You have many situations that lead to petitions. For example, someone may accidentally click on 5 of something where they only wanted one. And so the GM staff goes in and tries to help the player. So on that, they're really really good.

But of course, around the holiday time, people take time off. The queue grew to a size that was a little bit larger than usual. And when support time began to be impacted, we had to make a decision. We had to say, "For cases of player error, we might have to turn some of these down."

Now for anything where it was the game still bugging, we still did that. We were focusing more on the immediate and pressing issues than, say, "Oh, I forgot to click this."

It's something every business has to go through. You try to help everyone. But sometimes, you have to focus on the more important things.

This is completely addressed now. Our petition times are back down to where they are normally at and we've started completely helping people once again.

Q: So this was temporary, and you had to triage your tickets?

Eric: Yes.

EverQuest's 13th Birthday

Q: EverQuest turns 13 in March, how do you intend to celebrate?

Adam: We hope to give a batch of extra content for everybody. Everybody who's a member will get it. March 14th is when we'll have our patch for that stuff, and we're hoping it's fun. Just keep thinking about "thirteen".

Thom: Yeah, we have a nice theme of "Thirteen" that we're delivering with the content.

We hope you have enjoyed our series as we covered so many aspects of the game and it's developers.

A big thank you goes out to Thom Terrazas, Adam Bell and Eric Cleaver for taking the time to sit down and talk with us. Also, a big thanks to Linda Carlson and the SoE team for helping us arrange this unique opportunity.

We will have more Q&A's coming in the near future, so watch this space!