Fresh pure classic server opinion?

[Weekapaug]

The reason I asked is I just spent a bunch of time last weekend watching a bunch of dev interviews from fairly recently and one of them was the guy who created Kunark. Said it sat in his desk for a year before it became apparent that they were going to need more content so he pitched it. But from your elaboration, what you describe isn't necessarily mutually exclusive from that, either. I was just curious.

I gather you might dig this dude's channel so here's a link...

https://youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q

It seems he was a junior dev at the time but has continued on in the industry. Started a twitch channel just to hang out and talk about eq and it evolved into him bringing on pretty much everybody. Sounds like he plays on p99 also. These interviews are great tho, if you like longform discussions that go deep.

[cd288]

Yeah I think I’ve watched that channel before it’s pretty good.

Yeah unless that guy is talking about the very beginning of the EQ planning stage he can’t possibly be being honest. Because they references kunark from the beginning so it definitely wasn’t something a junior dev came up with for an expansion later unless were talking like the first year of development before anything was even disclosed to the public

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Weekapaug [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Said it sat in his desk for a year before it became apparent that they were going to need more content so he pitched it. But from your elaboration, what you describe isn't necessarily mutually exclusive from that, either.

No, it fits just fine. From the earliest designs there was intent to have landmasses called "Kunark" and "Velious" but they were cut from initial release and little or nothing was actually built. Fast forward a bit, EQ becomes a commercial success, Verant decides to make an expansion out of the planned-but-shelved Kunark concepts and incorporates some of this dude's ideas into it.

It is flagrantly obvious looking at Kunark zones and art styling that it was created much later than the pre-expansion game given the zones aren't even built the same way, textures and monster models are styled differently, polygon limits are higher, etc. Heck, it was originally described as a dead land that was the original home of the trolls. Seems like all that was carried over from the original concept was the name and not a lot else.

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I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

[starkind]

Fresh pure classic red w/item loot and RZ rules imo.

[Weekapaug]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah I think I’ve watched that channel before it’s pretty good.

Yeah unless that guy is talking about the very beginning of the EQ planning stage he can’t possibly be being honest. Because they references kunark from the beginning so it definitely wasn’t something a junior dev came up with for an expansion later unless were talking like the first year of development before anything was even disclosed to the public

No no, the junior dev is the guy who has the channel. If you watch the Kevin McPherson interview (might recognize the name from Halas) he gets into all of this. Said he came up with Kunark entirely fron scratch because he just did that kind of thing as a pen and paper gamer. Then it just sat in his desk for a year until they decided they were going to need more content.

He also said this surprised everyone. They thought they were going to get 75k players for a year then make a new game. Then when they made Kunark they thought that would be the expansion then they would make a new game. Someone in one of the other interviews said something about that, too but I forget which. Jeff Butler maybe.

[Weekapaug]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

Me too. I'm a huge fan of guk so watched the interview with they guy that designed that on that channel. Might be the same guy that did the spells, but I'm fuzzy. I watched like 9 of these last weekend. Anyway, he said guk was supposed to be one zone but they had to split it into two because at full size nothing at the time could reasonably run it. It's not a stretch to imagine that extended to pretty much every other zone. And how cool it is they pulled off the big outdoor zones.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No, it fits just fine. From the earliest designs there was intent to have landmasses called "Kunark" and "Velious" but they were cut from initial release and little or nothing was actually built. Fast forward a bit, EQ becomes a commercial success, Verant decides to make an expansion out of the planned-but-shelved Kunark concepts and incorporates some of this dude's ideas into it.

It is flagrantly obvious looking at Kunark zones and art styling that it was created much later than the pre-expansion game given the zones aren't even built the same way, textures and monster models are styled differently, polygon limits are higher, etc. Heck, it was originally described as a dead land that was the original home of the trolls. Seems like all that was carried over from the original concept was the name and not a lot else.

------------------------------------

I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

I'll work on finding the stuff I read, because I definitely remember quotes from devs saying they had been working on some Kunark stuff with the intention of including it in the base game and then ended up not having the time to finish it before launch. Like I said in an earlier comment, it's entirely possible that some of the things we saw in Kunark (such as graphical stuff) would not have been present had Kunark launched with the base game; could have used the additional time to flesh things out more.

But yeah there's some Kunark associated content in base original EQ such as factions etc. that didn't get fleshed out till the expansion.

[Danth]

Having extra content planned seems to have been Mcquaid&Co's modus operandi. They did the same thing with Vanguard, planned out quite a bit more landmasses than they actually launched with. Just the latter game failed commercially so none of the extra stuff was ever built for it.

Working on some stuff prior to launch doesn't preclude the possibility that said work was chucked in the trashcan when work on the expansion started in earnest. We could see some of that with Warcraft (a different studio, obviously, but same industry) since some of the un-used assets for original hellfire penninsula and zangarmarsh did actually make it into the release installation, albeit never used in-game. I would have liked to see "original Kunark." One of my complaints with the Kunark we got was it deviated too much from the style of the pre-expansion game.

[Weekapaug]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Having extra content planned seems to have been Mcquaid&Co's modus operandi. They did the same thing with Vanguard, planned out quite a bit more landmasses than they actually launched with. Just the latter game failed commercially so none of the extra stuff was ever built for it.

Working on some stuff prior to launch doesn't preclude the possibility that said work was chucked in the trashcan when work on the expansion started in earnest. We could see some of that with Warcraft (a different studio, obviously, but same industry) since some of the un-used assets for original hellfire penninsula and zangarmarsh did actually make it into the release installation, albeit never used in-game. I would have liked to see "original Kunark." One of my complaints with the Kunark we got was it deviated too much from the style of the pre-expansion game.

I'm just going by what they've actually said in these interviews. I always thought they had a larger plan for rolling out new content, too, but that's not really the impression they give when discussing it.

Haven't heard any of them say they didn't consider it as a possibility, which is why McPherson was asked to get something together early on, but they don't sound like they were really expecting to need it, either. Most sound like it was a bit of a surprise that they did and it was, evidently, a complete surprise to Sony.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Weekapaug [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm just going by what they've actually said in these interviews. I always thought they had a larger plan for rolling out new content, too, but that's not really the impression they give when discussing it.

Probably that reflects the disparate roles of the various individuals within the company. We saw the same during Vanguard's development, where Mcquaid would come onto the forums talking about this or that, and one of the other developers with more hands-on contact would have to correct him that, no, said feature wasn't actually in-game yet.