Everquest has just released its 30th expansion, Laurion's Song, which takes players to the previously unexplored Realm of Heroes, the final destination for Norrath's most heroic adventurers both good and not-so-good. The Realm of Heroes has long been mysteriously closed off until now, and players will venture into the memories of legendary heroes to uncover clues about what's been happening to the Realm. This Everquest expansion introduces seven new zones, new raid content, additional abilities and AAs, and an all-new Alternate Personas system that allows players to swap classes on the same character.
In an exclusive interview with Game ZXC, Design Manager Adam Bell, Lead Artist Kevin Lydy, and Head of Studio Jennifer Chan went in-depth on their creative process for Laurion's Song, and they detailed the various new features and content that players will find in the game's 30th expansion. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Everquest 2 Devs Talk Ballads of Zimara Content
Game ZXC sits down with Everquest 2 developers to talk about new features in the game's latest expansion, Ballads of Zimara.
Q: In this expansion, players travel to the various zones via portals into “memory bubbles.” Are you interested in leveraging this format again for future content?
Bell: In a way, it's an idea we've used before, and I see no reason why we won't use it again.
I think it’s a great way to introduce areas that don’t need to tie in with the existing landscape geographically.
Bell: A lot of the past content like Monster Missions are pretty much exactly that: they’re memories or retellings of a story and a lot of our missions are retellings of a story. So it's the same sort of thing.
Q: You pay careful attention to performance when developing these expansions, though hardware has come a long way in 25 years. Is this due to engine limitations, or are you trying to keep hardware requirements consistent with what they were at launch?
Bell: It's pretty much both. A lot of our customers are on older machines and newer machines, and our engine is older so it's not as affected by the graphics cards, it is more processor-bound so the big fancy graphics cards don't affect our engine as much as the CPU does. Although CPUs have grown, they've not necessarily grown as fast as graphics cards have.
Lydy: That's always going to be a concern, too, because it's so easy to make more than to communicate the same thing with less. It would be so easy for environments to be completely realized to the point where you're at probably five frames a second on the best machine that you bought yesterday. It's always been a concern, and I'm sure it will always be a concern.
Bell: Absolutely. I’m not saying we don't get any benefit from the better graphics cards, it's just that our engine doesn't get as much as newer ones might.
Q: One of the new features with the expansion is the Alternate Persona system. Could you talk about what your motivation was for adding it, and how it’ll affect gameplay for players?
Chan: We're always looking for new ways for people to experience the game – not completely new ways – but asking, “How can we change up that experience a little bit and get more mileage out of the vastness of the game that it is?” Because certainly, we ship new expansions, but we don't want people to just be in the new expansions, we want people to actually get to experience the content that we've been developing and releasing for the past almost 25 years now.
I know a lot of times, people only focus on new things and then pretend everything beforehand doesn't exist. We can't do that. A lot of these places have such an impact on the story in the world that we do want people to go back and to re-experience some of these things, because people talk all the time about what it was, but until you experience it, it's like, “Oh, now I get the impact of what happened here.”
Additionally, we know that some of the community really love to build alts, You look at your account and it's like, “I need more character slots because I don't have enough alts.” We want to support you, but how can we do that without just opening up more character slots? This is one way to do that while also allowing for people who are on the fence about whether they really want to start an alt or not. This is a way to ease them in. This experience will allow you to keep all your gear that you have and your bags and your money and all that stuff, and be able to reuse it on another similar archetype class.
Because a lot of the archetype gear works on all classes in that archetype, right? So if you're going out and you're playing a Magician, there's going to be a lot of parts in the world where your gear will be the same as a wizard. They share a lot of the same gear archetypes. So it’s a way to help people who are like “Do I really want us to start a new character?” or “I really like all my gear and I don't want to have to reacquire all my gear, but I really want to experience it as another class and see how that plays.” So it's definitely a way to ease people in and it's also another way for people that are all about alts to be able to get a character of all classes.
Bell: And a side advantage is that it shares achievements and other progress, so you'll have the same achievements completed.
Chan: Yeah, you don’t have to reflag for a lot of the dungeons.
Q: How did the player feedback factor into the development of this expansion? Have there been things that players have been talking about that you tried to target for this expansion?
Bell: A small part that I considered, but didn’t put too much stock in, was that the last few expansions have been upgrades of existing zones, and players wanted to see new zones. So that was one of the points.
This is a whole bunch of new zones. The only one that has anything to do with those that already exist is Nokk and even then it's sort of combining parts of two different zones together, so it's unique in that way.
Q: The new expansion is adding some new Alternative Advancements. Are there any that come to mind that you’d like to talk about?
Bell: We've been getting feedback for a bit that particular melee classes have been a little behind in the curve of damage and “usefulness” where a lot of their role is just to do damage and they weren't doing enough. So we made a point to give some extra to Monks, Berserkers, and Rogues to try to help at least a step on the way to getting them caught up. We actually do have plans to backfill that a little bit, at least a few expansions back, to help them along the way where they said they've had a problem. We also did a similar help for Wizards, and we do have plans to do a little more for those four classes.
Though it did not make the expansion, we have stuff that did make the expansion and we have more coming soon.
Q: There’s some new raid content arriving with the expansion. I’m not sure how much you’re prepared to spoil, but are there any interesting mechanics or anything you’d like to talk about regarding these new encounters?
Bell: One of my favorites is one in Plane of Mischief – I mentioned before that there are heroes that weren't part of the normal story, there are other heroes in the Realm of Heroes. One of those heroes stole a gem from Bristlebane, so there's a whole raid in the Plane of Mischief where there's a bunch of game-like stuff happening. You have to deal with Hot Potato and Simon Says while you're in the middle of a raid where they’re trying to stop you from stealing the gem from Bristlebane.
Q: You’ve worked on a variety of interesting zones and stories for this expansion. Do you have any favorites this time around that stick out to you?
Lydy: For me, it's Pal’Lomen. The behind the scenes construction of it is unusual and really clever. The aesthetics came out really, really neat. Beyond that, We've had the advantage of working with some new folks this year who brought a real fresh insight and inspiration, and that that zone was heavily influenced by one of those new people. It's exciting to think about as they mature, where we will go in terms of techniques in executing these things? So I like the zone and I'm excited by what it represents.
Bell: I think for me, the overall just idea of giving a story for how Defiant equipment came into the game. I thought that little idea was a really great thing, and also the idea of telling a story about someone who, even if he did something good, isn’t someone you would consider good. I thought the Shadow Knight was an interesting idea.
Q: When developing new content, how do you strike a balance between appealing to fans of the classic Everquest experience, while keeping in mind how the genre has evolved over the years?
Bell: That's where we try to cherry pick ideas from the newer stuff. As you said, we’re keeping an eye on our core user group. Our core user group likes Everquest. They like that it’s harder, and that it's not terribly easy like WoW, and that you've got to know a lot and do a lot to play the game. So although we have made the game easier, we also have kept from making it too easy on purpose, because our core group really doesn't want that.
Q: Nearly 25 years later, Everquest still hosts many dedicated players. Why do you feel that Everquest players prefer to spend their time in Norrath?
Bell: The community. The community that they’ve built and that we’ve helped to keep together that we always do our best not to disrupt.
Q: Any final thoughts you’d like to share?
Bell: It sounds trite, but still, thank you guys for playing for almost 25 years here. You keep us going, and we enjoy telling you stories.
Lydy: Amen to that. Please keep playing so we get to keep doing this.
[END]
Everquest is available on PC.
