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 EQ2|CVG Interview mit Details zu Reittieren
Veröffentlicht von: Cuilean am 28. Juli 2004 um 02:24 Uhr
CVG haben den zweiten Teil ihres vierteiligen Interviews mit EQ2 Producer Andy Sites veröffentlicht. Neben allenfalls marginal interessanten Informationen zum momentanen Ablauf der Beta und einigen allgemein gehaltenen Hintergrundsinformationen findet sich jedoch folgendes interessante Detail am Ende des zweiten Teils:
Reittiere sind rassenspezifisch. Gnome, Halbling und Zwerge reiten auf Wölfen, die mittelgroßen Rassen reiten auf Pferden und für die großen Rassen spielen die Entwickler zur Zeit mit dem Gedanken, Elefanten oder Nashörner als Reittiere zu implementieren. Eine Entscheidung sei noch nicht getroffen, allerdings werde es sich um sehr große Kreaturen handeln.
Das komplette englischsprachige Interview gibt es hier und hier, Teil drei und vier sollen die nächsten Tage folgen....
... und im entsprechenden Forenthread könnt Ihr euch gerne darüber auslassen.
Original Interview 1
Veröffentlicht von: Gryphus am 28. Juli 2004 - 11:34 Uhr
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| INTERVIEW: EVERQUEST II, PART ONE
Exclusive: Adventuring with the producer on Sony Online Entertainment`s massive MMORPG sequel
17:41 Whether you happen to casually keep an eye on MMORPG land - you know, like feigning ignorance but secretly a sorcerer in the making crafting a +4 Staff of Goblin Slaying - or indeed wear your hardcore MMORPG geek hat with pride and openly discuss agility bonuses in the local boozer, you will have found the name "EverQuest II" quite simply unavoidable.
It`s the sequel to one of the biggest massively multiplayer online role-playing games of all time after all, so interest is understandable. It catches the eye, pulls it out and rolls it around a bit, promises a shedload of fantasy-fuelled adventure, guarantees the forming of friendships across great divides and will no doubt see that most cringe-worthy thing of all - the MMORPG wedding.
EverQuest II is currently in beta and is expected to launch before the year is out. Which means there`s still plenty of time then to corner Sony Online Entertainment for a chat about what`s coming. We recently cast a Charm spell on EQ2 producer Andy Sites and got him to blab.
Interview conducted by Paul Presley.
How many people are currently in the beta right now?
Sites: Right now, including all the people at the company and their friends and family, we`ve got about six hundred in the beta test.
What would you say you`ve learnt most from it so far?
Sites: Aside from all the bugs we`ve been fixing you mean? We`ve found that a lot of the things that people had been complaining about - the encounters, the reduction on raiding sizes, for example... People had been saying that because something didn`t work that way in EverQuest, it was therefore going to be bad.
We`ve found that once people actually started playing the game and see the changes they complained about before trying them, they find they actually really like them. We`d found that just with the game in general there had been a lot of people that didn`t really expect that they`d even want to play the game.
We found that if we could just get them to sit down and try it even for an hour it completely changed their perspective.
How hard has it been to get them to try it?
Sites: Back at the EQ Fan Faire in April there were so many people that were saying they had no interest in EQII because they didn`t feel we could create a game that would be any different to EQ. We sat them down, they tried it and were like, `Oh my god! This isn`t what I was expecting at all!`
The big thing is that change isn`t necessarily bad. Just because players have been used to doing things a certain way for five years in EverQuest, it doesn`t mean that changing it will be a bad thing. Just getting them to try it out though, that`s the key. That`s the biggest thing we`ve had to figure out.
How much are you expecting the overall game to change from your initial designs once the beta test runs its course?
Sites: Based on what we as a company have seen in the past, we`re expecting it to change significantly. There are a lot of the systems and areas, such as the tutorial and the introductory part of the game on the Isle Of Refuge, that we feel we`ve now refined to a point where it`s not likely to change a whole lot. But the big areas that probably will change are things like the encounter systems, the population sizes of the dungeons.
All the things that require lots of sets of eyes to go through and look at and experience before we can say definitively say something needs to change. The worst thing a development team can do is get used to something and then just change it for the sake of it. One of the problems any team has is when they create something phenomenal, see it every day and become jaded towards it and then feel it needs changing as a result when that`s not necessarily the right thing.
So by letting people into the beta it`s been really nice just to see their reactions to things. You get completely unbiased opinions at that point.
Where do you draw the line between changing something because lots of people ask for it and you as the developer saying, `no, we really think it`s best if it stays as it is`?
Sites: First and foremost, as much as we`re making a game that we love, we need to make a game that the public are going to love more. We love the game with a passion, but if we`re the only ones that like a system and 90 percent of the public don`t understand or like it, then it`s going to change.
A lot of it comes from going through the feedback. If lots and lots of people are complaining about something then we`ll try to improve it. It`s a subjective process but that is what the beta is for, to get all that information.
There aren`t many people in the world with more subjective views than gamers, most of them different...
Sites: One thing we have found out is that it doesn`t matter what we do, we`ll never please everyone. We found that out in EverQuest. You can give people a million dollars each and someone will complain they have to pay tax on it.
When, for you guys, is `finished`?
Sites: When the game is fun, which again is a subjective part of the process. We have in-game polling forms that come up asking you about your experience, ratings on a scale of one to ten. When we start getting those back with consistently high numbers that`s when we`ll consider ourselves close to being able to ship the game. But it is subjective.
We`re not going to be forcing this game out the door though just for the sake of meeting fiscal needs. We`ve been stating that all along. This is going to be the game that`s the sequel to the game that made the company what it is today. So we want the game to be a worthy successor to EverQuest.
That feeling of independence, not beholden to shareholders and publishers, must be invigorating?
Sites: Yeah. I have quite a few friends who work for companies at EA and Microsoft and they`re all beholden to shareholders for the most part. We feel very lucky that we can work on a game that`s not going to go out until it`s ready to do so. That said, we do want to get the game done!
We`ve been working on it for four years now and we definitely can`t wait for the moment people can start playing it. That`s the most rewarding part. EverQuest for instance now has hundreds of thousands of people playing the game and that`s great, especially seeing them at Fan Faires and so on.
When you see that sheer devotion that people have to your products, how much does that become a burden of responsibility when you design future games?
Sites: Oh it`s huge. When we were making EverQuest we couldn`t even comprehend the level of dedication the players would have. It was just a million project and we were really only making a game that we liked. Then it launched and we were like `Oh my god! People REALLY love this game!` and our development process definitely changed as a result.
Check back for part two of our EverQuest II interview tomorrow! |
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Original Interview 2
Veröffentlicht von: Gryphus am 28. Juli 2004 - 11:34 Uhr
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| INTERVIEW: EVERQUEST II, PART TWO
Exclusive: Our chat with producer on the MMORPG sequel Andy Sites continues
14:48 Today we continue to discuss massively multiplayer role-playing game sequel EverQuest 2 with producer Andy Sites in part two of our exclusive interview. If you happen to have missed part one, then you can read that here. Parts three and four are to follow in the next two days. In the meantime, read on...
Interview conducted by Paul Presley.
One of the problems a lot of MMOGs have is having these great big worlds with nothing happening in them...
Sites: Right. Actually, when we first started making the game we had planned on this grand world, this great expanse of space. We started planning this giant dungeon but discovered that you know what, it`s not fun running for fifteen minutes and not finding anything. So we ended up pulling the size and scope in and focussing on the content in the different areas.
That`s where we`re at right now, players are walking through the city and having characters calling out to them, based on what they`ve done and what quests they can do, instead of having to run for ten or fifteen minutes at a time just to try and find something to do.
What sort of things?
Sites: There are simple things like a little girl chasing her cat around the city knocking stuff over, or big things like the Freeport militia marching through the city, giving speeches to the citizens. It`s all things that will help make the world seem more alive.
How much work does that entail?
Sites: We actually have 34 designers on the project, so we have groups of these guys that are just dedicated to adding events like these to the cities.
Do events like that happen outside the cities as well?
Sites: They will do, but the way that we`re designing the content is from character creation on outwards. So we`re putting all our focus on the cities right now, then slowly working our way outwards so that when the beta testers come in, they`re not finding they have nothing to do because, say, we decided to design all the high-level dungeons before we worked on the starting cities.
Are you able to keep tabs on how far the testers have explored into the game and how far ahead you need to be designing?
Sites: Oh yeah. The way the beta test is being run right now means that we basically `rope off` the areas that we want people to be testing in. Right now players can create their characters, go to both Qeynos and Freeport, the outer lands in the common areas outside in Antonica and access two of the dungeons in each of those areas. This way we get very focussed testing and feedback and can get those areas refined. Then, once those are ready for `prime time`, we start opening up the next zones further and further away.
The zones are all planned in advance and then left to the players. How possible is it for you on the server side to jump into zones when players enter them and direct the NPC`s actions on the fly, in a sort of `dungeon master` role?
Sites: We can do that, although mostly the zones are scripted in such a way as to be completely self-contained and capable of handling things. Once everything has been tested and refined, very rarely will we need to have people go in and watch the players and change things on the fly. Still, we have that option at our disposal if we need it.
How big are the cities in total?
Sites: Each of the cities are made of eighteen zones, each consisting of the town centre, the villages or neighbourhoods which is where you start out and where each player has his or her own apartment.
The houses are given out automatically to each new player?
Sites: Right. When you create a character you`re given a little one or two room apartment within which you can place furniture, hang stuff on the walls and customise the interior. When you get into a larger guild or group and start pooling your money you can then buy larger structures within the actual city, decorated with your guild`s emblems. When people walk by they`ll be able to see who the badass guilds are.
In terms of overall size, how does EQ 2 compare to EQ?
Sites: It`s slightly smaller in size than EQ, but the first game has had five years of development work adding to it. The only reason they have a larger physical size is because they have loads of really huge zones left over from the earlier expansions. Like Kunark. That has huge, empty zones simply because we didn`t then have the ability to populate them completely. So, we have slightly smaller areas, but lots, lots more content in them.
What sort of mass transit systems are there?
Sites: We have boats for travelling between the shattered islands that make up the world. We`ll also have player mounts that are racially specific. So the humans and the mid-size races will have horses, the gnomes and halflings and dwarves will ride wolves, and we haven`t decided on what to have the larger races riding, although we`re thinking about things like rhinos or elephants. Very large creatures.
Check back tomorrow for part three of our EQ 2 interview. |
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Innovation
