Well said, Danille. I don't know how they can deliver on anything meaningful next expansion when they still haven't finished this years.
A year or two ago, someone from SoE got on the forums and was asking for some ideas for a new expansion. Obviously there is a development cycle, so those new ideas got tacked on the end. At the time there was a large voice of people communicating that another LDoN type expansion would be great. It would encourage grouping, provide quick missions for people without the time they used to have, and funnel people together. These factors seemed to take place with LDoN. Many pick up groups for missions runs. Now look at the history of LDoN. A great deal of development time went into creating the backbone for instancing. The LDoN expansion itself was quite small. Even though there were a few variations for each instance, they were generically very similar for each theme. Shoot forward to CoTF. It was a very similar situation. HAs are not just an instance of an already completed zone. Each HA has been programmed with a random unique set of tasks that can be completed . . . and the new ability of the HA to actually scale to the highest level of the group. I can imagine that a great deal of time went into creating the backbone for HAs, just as LDoN instances took development time. This is the reason the CoTF expansion had less static content. LDoN had no static content at all! They just added an entrance to the these instances in base EQ zones . . . Innothule Swamp, South Ro, Everfrost Peaks, and Butcherblock Mountains. The development of HAs allows more people to experience the content. At this time, I believe the level range is from 85 to 100. In future expansions, this could expand with level increases . . . 85 to 105 etc. This was an important step for EQ as a whole. Even though CoTF was a smaller expansion that RoF, I'm betting it had the same budget and development cycle. As with LDoN, instances were a key evolution for Everquest and the development of instance was not limited to LDoN, but all future content.
ROF was workable because they had an entire development cycle dedicated to rolling it out, and then almost an entire other cycle to add on to it. However, as posts from the devs said when they started looking at the xpac AFTER COTF, they could not thoroughly develop COTF at the same time they were developing content for ROF to roll out, and as they needed to push out more content quicker for COTF once they were done with ROF, it becomes clear that they can barely keep up with the current development cycle for COTF, while switching BACK to a massive all in one rollout like BEFORE ROF (and without a rolling out of content after they release it - just tweaks). So how do you release an expansion that's bigger than any you've done in years with a no roll out schedule after it, while struggling to keep up with the current development cycle for the xpac you planned to roll out content for? Something had to give. I am hearing that it sounds like because zones are the most intensive time consumers, they're cutting a bit of originality and resources by recycling zones, but primarily they also had to reduce COTF expectations by doing half as much as ROF in subsequent releases.
Drathus, I had never considered what you said, but it intuitively makes sense. Thanks for reminding me of the effort that had to go into place to establish the HA system. It was probably more substantial than we all realize, now that I think on it. The framework is in place now. I doubt the implementation will take as much effort at this point.
One of the main coders for HAs was moved to EQN during the cotf development cycle, so there's still issues with changing them and fixing problems from working on another person's project vs working on your own. See: the rare drops in HAs problem. HAs still need a lot of testing and work, they're not quick and simple to implement. And player reaction on them has been that they don't count as zones, a zone that you can't kill things in doesn't count as a real zone. HAs do offer a great way to grind some exp and earn gear for non-maxed character. Some of them are really cool and fun. But due to reception and problems, I wouldn't expect them to be used as much more than token level scaling group missions in the future.
You hit the nail on the head. By spreading out content development/delivery for most of a year after ROF's initial release, they may have managed to get more out of their reduced development staff for one expansion - but now putting the genie back in the bottle and returning to releasing an entire expansion at once is virtually impossible, unless a) development staff is doubled - one team working the new expansion while the other one works the content promised for the previous expansion, or b) one expansion gets a lot less content, feeding disgruntlement in the player base. Underfoot (the last non-level increase expansion) set a pretty high mark in terms of content that they probably aren't resourced for now. Expanding available development time by releasing content throughout the year - allowing developers to keep put twice as much time as they would have otherwise into an expansion - is a one-time benefit which is really hard to undo. They have really painted themselves into a corner.
Disclaimer: I'm just speculating. The mention of Arx Mentis being related to Sanctus Seru and TBS re-zones sounds to me like they're kicking up the lore on Seru and the Combine Empire conflict from years ago. The TL;DR version is that Seru betrayed Katta and poisoned him causing the fall of the Combine Empire, but Katta didn't die (players learned this when TBS was released I think?) and is/was in hiding thanks to Shissar portals and can now be found in a museum-like setting. Seru thought he died up until now I guess, so the next expansion may be us players defending the Compire Empire from Seru's invasion. The Arx Foris key used to get to Seru roughly translates to "Access Fortress", so Arx Mentis could mean "Access Memory", a zone that might place players in the timeline of Seru's betrayal (possibly from the Void via Zebby yet again?). I dunno, maybe we'll run into Varsoon and get to steal his little ivory cup of doom.
Wouldn't it be interesting if we had to help preserve the timeline from discord, lanys, mayong, take your pick. Maybe we have to allow or assist in the poisoning of the Katta to preserve our timeline while others may be attempting to prevent it to change the future on Norrath. More time travel adventures like SoD?
It would be cool if you must choose a side such as katta, or seru, and then have that affect how certain things will happen for you throughout the expansion. IF we are getting revamped PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give us new orbs we have been using the same TS orbs since TBS think they are due for an overhaul.
Nothing anyone will say can change the path of SOE at this point if indeed TBS is the next expansion remodel. However..... TBS was a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE Expansion! Instance missions from TBS failed and Heroic missions from CoTF have failed... two negatives will not make a positive. SoE should see the repeating trend over the years and accept the fact that instance-missions-for-currency does not work past the first two months. Katta was a huge empty expanse from day 1. You could run for 10 minutes to get to one group and then realize you were blocked by a stupid wall and should have taken the portal to another section first. Then when you get to a portal you had to decode symbols. Buried Sea was a good zone and had a great quest, but I can only imagine how much the new zone with similar size and players will lag in todays EQ. The other zones in TBS had their issues too. Im not sure what people are thinking when they say the colors and designs of TBS were good. Way to many shades of aqua and burnt sierra.... Bob Ross would not have been happy.
Agree - Katta and the revamped Freeport are my two least favorite cities. Understand the desire to create 'immersion,' but practicality should play a role as well.
I was hoping for Unkempt Woods zone would be perfect for zonelines to Jaggedpine forest and what seem like a blocked pathway near druid ring in Ethernere WK
I hope we will eventually see the Unkempt Woods, given the happenings in Jaggedpine last year. I almost said I have faith that we will...but I can't say that with a straight face anymore, sadly. As for a TBS 2 expansion...I didn't mind TBS, so picking up the other thread of lore from there works for me. One thing everyone needs to remember is that The Buried Sea was the last "6 month cycle" expansion we got (all jokes on CotF aside). It was much smaller than its follow-up Secrets of Faydwer, and yet it had a fair bit of content. One things the devs need to remember is...make this next expansion count. It sounds like we will finally get our level increase to 105, and level increase expansions are generally fairly good, so I am trying to look at this as "glass half full".
I really don't have a problem with the development team recycling some zones to pad content for expansions (this is speculation, mind you.) With the amount of people that Sony has assigned to the game, I understand it. Plus, I thought the Velious theme in Rain of Fear was done exceptionally well. I would be happy to see that more, but always make sure to have more new content than old. The best solution is for Sony not to put all their eggs in one basket called EQNext and to allocate a bit more resources to their current moneymaker, which is Everquest, but I'm not a shareholder.
Sony is too big to call Eq1 a moneymaker... the big money in games these days comes from people who spend silly amounts for cash shop items, and from selling alpha/beta "early access" with fancy titles and who knows what Why do you think Landmark exists?
