Epic Weapon Quests and Why We Haven't Seen Them

Savanja · 11-13-2007, 01:32 AM

Ten Ton Hammer had a quick chat with EQ2 Senior Producer Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman regarding the Epic Weapon Quests we all so wanted to see. Find out what they are, how they work, and why we really, REALLY want them.If you were wondering why you hadn't heard anything about them yet, well, Scott will tell us why!Please visit Ten Ton Hammer for the scoop!

Calthine · 11-13-2007, 01:59 AM

That's big news! Thanks Savanja!

Eriol · 11-13-2007, 03:23 AM

Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. SMILEY

Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week.

Argul · 11-13-2007, 04:13 AM

Hmm, at least we got some news on that. Thanks for posting! SMILEY

Spaceweed · 11-13-2007, 11:57 AM

Hmm, a week lost due the fires means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic , but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies , and expect us to swallow it.Anyway, I'm a returning player from the original beta and looking forward to the game now it has some decent content SMILEY

A lot to be said for letting a game 'mature' before playing it. Just a shame new games can't start from launch, with the equivalent of the game 'plus' at least 2 expansions worth of stuff to do. Would go a long way towards keeping a thriving community happy for a much longer period of time.I know I wouldn't have left easily 2 years ago, had the above been true.

Ama · 11-13-2007, 12:06 PM

Thanks for the info about the epic weapons Sav. It is dissapointing that they arn't going to be in the game at launch time, but it is understandable. Just hope things go smoothly and the epic weapons are what we were promised.

SenorPhrog · 11-13-2007, 12:08 PM

Eriol wrote:

Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. " />

Lol... I do but there is no way I'm calling them out on that. Great interview Sav!

TheSpin · 11-13-2007, 12:15 PM

Lets just say, theoretically, that they were going to dedicate that entire week to epics. Now they can't just take a week off from everything else they had going on so they have to fit in time to work on epics between other projects.

That could easily convert 1 weeks worth of work into a couple months.

Kidd1112 · 11-13-2007, 12:23 PM

finally some answers about epics

Twsly76 · 11-13-2007, 12:32 PM

so 11 months in the making, they loose 1 week and everything falls behind? Typical...

Cyanbane · 11-13-2007, 12:35 PM

Nice interview, strait and to the point.I added to our news.

Meinen · 11-13-2007, 12:57 PM

seems kinda silly to add it after the holidays for epics to be put in place...its gonna take all of, what, 3weeks (3wks if they have lives i mean) for most hardcore players to get to 80. Oh well, what can ya do?

Valadhiel · 11-13-2007, 01:00 PM

Yea I find it kinda silly too, but like you said there's nothing that we can do bout it.

110euph · 11-13-2007, 01:06 PM

I remember, from the first set of Epics (1.0) in EQ1, there were at least PICTURES of the weapons... what they would look like, if not stat blocks, available on the net. Would this be possible? C'mon, we're desperate for anything right about now! =) Thanks!Edited: fixed spelling

evhallion · 11-13-2007, 01:09 PM

Spaceweed wrote:

Hmm, a week lost due the fires means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic , but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies , and expect us to swallow it.

Yea I'm with you Spaceweed I'm finding that hard to swallow too. 1 week = 2 months? I am a fan of not putting things out til they are finished but this..... Since I'm not from the UK i'm not sure if I have a "fanny" but i'm sure that if I do it's blowing smoke rings after reading that.

It's been rumored that the epic weapon quests are no longer going to be a part of the Rise of Kunark expansion, is this true?

"With the fires we had here in San Diego we had our office shut down and we had a lot of folks displaced for a little while. When we came back we evaluated where we were with all the epics and where everything was sitting with the rest of the expansion. The decision we had to make was, what happens if we get this all out at the same time and do we have any alternatives? "

"What we were faced with was a bug count in which nothing had been touched in a week. When we are in our bug fix mode, the team is capable of fixing anywhere between 13 to 17 hundred bugs in a week, so losing a week is a big thing. At the end of the day it came down to well, we obviously need to focus on the overall launch of our expansion first. Epic weapons are something that yes, we've got a number of them in the bag, but the choice we had to make was, do we launch a game with 1500 bugs and epics that are 75% awesome and 25% less than awesome, or do we launch a game that's going to be as clean as we can make it and then push the epics out on an update? "

"So what it looks like right now is our updates are going to be launching just after the holiday season. We are very intentionally not wanting to rush them out the door at the expense of the quality of the both the epics and the expansion launch. "

Elrohan · 11-13-2007, 01:12 PM

I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD!

Savanja · 11-13-2007, 01:14 PM

It is disappointing. So many were looking forward to them.As for the delay, well, I can only speculate, but my thoughts would be, the team will be busy with launch details for a few weeks, Then of course the holidays are always busy for people in general. At this point, they KNOW they will be delayed, perhaps the thought is that they will take their time and get in some extra effort?

ke'la · 11-13-2007, 04:50 PM

Eriol wrote:

Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. " width="15" height="15" />Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week.

Well think about it for a second, once it was taken out of the to do list for the expaintion they stoped working on it, the fires where 2 weeks ago and the fire shut them down for a week so that is 3 weeks of accuall Work on them that is not getting done, and consitering the next week is going to be devoted to chasing verious bugs, they probly won't start working on them again until sometime next week, if not the week after, so IF they do the work in "crunch time" mode they might get them to the point of testing some where between Dec 11 and Dec 18th. That is to late to get it into the "Frostfell" Live Update, wich means it won't be able to go into the game(eventhough complete) until the following update in Jan.

Prodigus · 11-13-2007, 05:02 PM

Elrohan@Blackburrow wrote:

I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD!

Same here.Thanks for the interview.

Teak · 11-13-2007, 08:15 PM

I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse.

In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on.

/shrug

Siodenne · 11-14-2007, 12:39 AM

I would rather have them take their time and do a great job on the epics instead of rushing it personally. That being said yeah it seems like a lot of time however you have the holidays, and then there are the pesky bugs that are going to show up now that didn't during beta simply because they didn't have the numbers of folks running around on beta that are going to be playing live. RoK is a HUGE expansion and as such I'm sure they've dedicated some folks to squashing/fixing/changing stuff that the live server players will run into/complain about. You know how it goes . . so and so isn't happy because their class can't blah, blah, blah posts that we'll see for weeks after the launch.

I'll just sit and patiently await the epics weapons release.

Greedly · 11-14-2007, 04:12 AM

sadly sounds like a ploy to keep people around since there are entire guilds that go back to other games once they have beat end-game =/

ke'la · 11-14-2007, 05:16 AM

Teeke@Blackburrow wrote:

I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse.
In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on.
/shrug

You do know that Box are and the Text that is printed on the box are 2 completly differant things, and it would be real easy befor the box got to the printers to remove the line about the epics, remember they did know that there would be no epics 3 weeks ago, thats enough time to change the Text on the boxes(though it could account for the large numbers of delays)

Lodrelhai · 11-14-2007, 06:44 AM

I don't know how long box art for an international release takes, but having worked for a national magazine, I know we had everything for it, all articles, ads, art, etc, finalized and into printing 2 weeks in advance of mailing. So yeah, I'd think they could adjust the boxes in about that time, especially considering that whoever does the box art and write-ups would probably not be the same people who're working on creating the content itself.I can also easily believe that one week of work lost equates to two months, or more, of delay for content. Figure it wasn't just epic weapons that weren't worked on that week - everything was dropped. All the quest, zone, guild, tradeskill, mount, etc content for a new expansion was left untouched for a week. And when they're able to get back to it, there's other issues coming up all the time which are added to that list of things to do - some of it takes higher priority than the stuff that was skipped that week. So they decided leave off the epics until after launch, which means they're not losing 1 week of work on those, but 3-4. All that time they're spending trying to catch up on that lost week while still keeping up-to-date with the normal work required for a launch. Now that the expansion is live, those bugs that no amount of betaing can find because things respond differently when there's 15 people in a zone vs 138 people get to be found and worked on too.It adds up. I'm betting there's more than a few things that were launched without final tweaks in place - still playable, but not exactly what was intended. I'm willing to be patient - gives us something to look forward to. And I'm certainly happier that they come right out and tell us "it's not in game yet" than if they let us search endlessly for the quest starters, and then slipped them in on a later update. Anyone else remember the froglok fiasco?

Spiritunico · 11-14-2007, 09:22 AM

Thank you for this article, its good to see that epic weapons are on their way if a little delayed.

I'm guessing the art is probably done with the quests themselves presenting the huge work mountain to climb so it would be really nice to see a Friday feature on the new epic weapons to give us something to drool over until the quests go live. ^_^

I wonder if we will see the return of the old epic look revised for EQ2s better graphics engine, or will the new epics be totally different?

denmom · 11-14-2007, 09:43 AM

As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather.

Spiritunico · 11-14-2007, 09:49 AM

Pheep@Unrest wrote:

As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather.

Well said Pheep.

quamdar · 11-15-2007, 10:05 PM

honestly IF they get it out in 2 months i will be happy. realistically i don't see them coming out that soon because i seriously doubt that the delay from the fires is the only reason they didn't make it into the expansion. i hope i'm wrong though.

Xelyen · 11-15-2007, 10:41 PM

Those who are playing RoK just for the promise of the return of epic weapons quests are missing out on the rest of a fantastic expansion. There should be enough content and new instances/drops to hunt to keep even the hardcore gamers busy for at least a couple months.

Thank you dev team for being up front and making realistic time hacks for a quality product instead of pushing something halfassed to appease the fanbois.

Steve11418 · 11-15-2007, 11:41 PM

For those not familiar with software developmentDepending on how many resources were working on epics… 1 week delay can easily blow out to a few months.A. As previously said the 1 week delay was on everything. So if 25% of the staff were working on epics, then dropping that content would still leave a shortfall of 50% to catch up on… which would mean the ‘epic staff’ would require 3 weeks to catch the rest of the development up.B. Let’s assume that SOE actually have work planed after the release and are not all going on holidays. (Skeletal revamp, Guild housing etc) So the resources are probably already allocated to other stuff.C. After any release you have to hold developers and QA staff back for warranty purposes. To fix all those problems that you find (that were missed).D. Implementing something as large as epics into the game probably requires QA to run substantial regression cycle which in itself could be weeks. (Instead of testing it with everything else during ROK regression)So a smart project manager would probably delay the Epics and roll it out with something else so as to piggy back it onto another testing regression cycle (perhaps for the skeletal revamp?). Thus saving time and money for more cool content for us.Just ask yourself… if you were the Test manager and were asked to make sure 24 quest lines (maybe 500 quests), 500 quest reward and 48 weapons (fabled and legendary) all worked as designed. And to make sure that none of the present content was affected (mobs used for updates, quest givers, clickable, collectables, carftables, specific zone instances, drops etc) that the quest lines touched.Easy to do if you were testing everything for ROK to start with plus Beta looking at them. Not so easy to do on its own and without Beta.

11-13-2007, 01:32 AM	#1
Savanja Fansite Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 397	Ten Ton Hammer had a quick chat with EQ2 Senior Producer Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman regarding the Epic Weapon Quests we all so wanted to see. Find out what they are, how they work, and why we really, REALLY want them.If you were wondering why you hadn't heard anything about them yet, well, Scott will tell us why!Please visit Ten Ton Hammer for the scoop! __________________ ~Savanja~

11-13-2007, 01:59 AM	#2
Calthine ZAM EQII Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 7,439	That's big news! Thanks Savanja! __________________ Please visit my non-gaming Blog! or follow me on Twitter!

11-13-2007, 03:23 AM	#3
Eriol Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,125	Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week. __________________ Eriol Ancalagon A Summoner's Fall into Darkness

11-13-2007, 11:57 AM	#5
Spaceweed Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: BDTBL Posts: 197	Hmm, a week lost due the fires means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic , but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies , and expect us to swallow it.Anyway, I'm a returning player from the original beta and looking forward to the game now it has some decent content A lot to be said for letting a game 'mature' before playing it. Just a shame new games can't start from launch, with the equivalent of the game 'plus' at least 2 expansions worth of stuff to do. Would go a long way towards keeping a thriving community happy for a much longer period of time.I know I wouldn't have left easily 2 years ago, had the above been true. __________________ ____________________________________________ 'You can please some of the people all of the time, and you can please all of the people some of the time, but, you can't please all of the people all of the time.'

11-13-2007, 12:06 PM	#6
Ama General Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 2,833	Thanks for the info about the epic weapons Sav. It is dissapointing that they arn't going to be in the game at launch time, but it is understandable. Just hope things go smoothly and the epic weapons are what we were promised. __________________

11-13-2007, 04:13 AM	#4
Argul Server: Lucan DLere Guild: Parasitic Rank: Secret Squirrel Lord Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Orlando, FL Posts: 463	Hmm, at least we got some news on that. Thanks for posting!

11-13-2007, 12:08 PM	#7
SenorPhrog Ten Ton Hammer Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: The Fourth Wall Posts: 1,041	Eriol wrote: Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. " /> Lol... I do but there is no way I'm calling them out on that. Great interview Sav! __________________

11-13-2007, 12:15 PM	#8
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	Lets just say, theoretically, that they were going to dedicate that entire week to epics. Now they can't just take a week off from everything else they had going on so they have to fit in time to work on epics between other projects. That could easily convert 1 weeks worth of work into a couple months.

11-13-2007, 12:23 PM	#9
Kidd1112 Loremaster Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 9	finally some answers about epics __________________

11-13-2007, 12:32 PM	#10
Twsly76 Loremaster Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 34	so 11 months in the making, they loose 1 week and everything falls behind? Typical...

11-13-2007, 12:35 PM	#11
Cyanbane Guildm8s.com Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Atlanta, Ga. Posts: 260	Nice interview, strait and to the point.I added to our news. __________________ Come discuss EQ2 at GuildM8s (formerly EQ2-Daily)!

11-13-2007, 12:57 PM	#12
Meinen Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 342	seems kinda silly to add it after the holidays for epics to be put in place...its gonna take all of, what, 3weeks (3wks if they have lives i mean) for most hardcore players to get to 80. Oh well, what can ya do?

11-13-2007, 01:00 PM	#13
Valadhiel Loremaster Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 2	Yea I find it kinda silly too, but like you said there's nothing that we can do bout it.

11-13-2007, 01:06 PM	#14
110euph Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Chillicothe, Ohio Posts: 182	I remember, from the first set of Epics (1.0) in EQ1, there were at least PICTURES of the weapons... what they would look like, if not stat blocks, available on the net. Would this be possible? C'mon, we're desperate for anything right about now! =) Thanks!Edited: fixed spelling __________________ Iscani Emeraldflame Chancellor of Antonicas Nameless Resident geek

11-13-2007, 01:09 PM	#15
evhallion Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 330	Spaceweed wrote: Hmm, a week lost due the fires means a 2 month delay to the epics?Call me a cynic , but it seems they were never going to make it into the expansion from a long way previously. I'm all for adding 'finished' content at the first attempt, but don't try to blow fairy smoke up our fannies , and expect us to swallow it. Yea I'm with you Spaceweed I'm finding that hard to swallow too. 1 week = 2 months? I am a fan of not putting things out til they are finished but this..... Since I'm not from the UK i'm not sure if I have a "fanny" but i'm sure that if I do it's blowing smoke rings after reading that. It's been rumored that the epic weapon quests are no longer going to be a part of the Rise of Kunark expansion, is this true? "With the fires we had here in San Diego we had our office shut down and we had a lot of folks displaced for a little while. When we came back we evaluated where we were with all the epics and where everything was sitting with the rest of the expansion. The decision we had to make was, what happens if we get this all out at the same time and do we have any alternatives? " "What we were faced with was a bug count in which nothing had been touched in a week. When we are in our bug fix mode, the team is capable of fixing anywhere between 13 to 17 hundred bugs in a week, so losing a week is a big thing. At the end of the day it came down to well, we obviously need to focus on the overall launch of our expansion first. Epic weapons are something that yes, we've got a number of them in the bag, but the choice we had to make was, do we launch a game with 1500 bugs and epics that are 75% awesome and 25% less than awesome, or do we launch a game that's going to be as clean as we can make it and then push the epics out on an update? " "So what it looks like right now is our updates are going to be launching just after the holiday season. We are very intentionally not wanting to rush them out the door at the expense of the quality of the both the epics and the expansion launch. " __________________

11-13-2007, 01:12 PM	#16
Elrohan Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 30	I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD! __________________

11-13-2007, 01:14 PM	#17
Savanja Fansite Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 397	It is disappointing. So many were looking forward to them.As for the delay, well, I can only speculate, but my thoughts would be, the team will be busy with launch details for a few weeks, Then of course the holidays are always busy for people in general. At this point, they KNOW they will be delayed, perhaps the thought is that they will take their time and get in some extra effort? __________________ ~Savanja~

11-13-2007, 04:50 PM	#18
ke'la Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,445	Eriol wrote: Does anybody remember who it was on a panel in Atlanta FF (2006) that said that they'd never do eq2 epics because he remembered how much work it was to do epic 1.5 & 2.0 for everybody in eq1? Not complaining, just wanting to know who to poke once in a while. " width="15" height="15" />Fairly expected news, so not good or bad IMO.Working in a mid-size software development company, I really do boggle at 1300 bugs per week though. WOW! Our QA and development managers could only WISH for that type of rate (though they're also glad we don't have quite that rate of bugs). I think we'd need like 4-5 times as much staff at LEAST, though I'm sure our releases would push through faster./em walks away, shaking his head in wonder at 1300 bugs a week. Well think about it for a second, once it was taken out of the to do list for the expaintion they stoped working on it, the fires where 2 weeks ago and the fire shut them down for a week so that is 3 weeks of accuall Work on them that is not getting done, and consitering the next week is going to be devoted to chasing verious bugs, they probly won't start working on them again until sometime next week, if not the week after, so IF they do the work in "crunch time" mode they might get them to the point of testing some where between Dec 11 and Dec 18th. That is to late to get it into the "Frostfell" Live Update, wich means it won't be able to go into the game(eventhough complete) until the following update in Jan. __________________

11-13-2007, 05:02 PM	#19
Prodigus Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 278	Elrohan@Blackburrow wrote: I'm just glad they're going to include them PERIOD! Same here.Thanks for the interview. __________________ More info then you probably care to know lol

11-13-2007, 08:15 PM	#20
Teak Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 61	I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse. In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on. /shrug __________________ Teakken: halfling, 92 warden/92 carpenter, Freeport Teak: ratonga, 92 fury, Freeport Teeke: froglok monk, 92, Freeport Pikk: froglok bruiser, 92, Freeport Teakkup: fae guardian, 92, Freeport --- Teakken, halfling warden, 90, Everfrost Teeke, froglok monk, 90, Everfrost

11-14-2007, 12:39 AM	#21
Siodenne Server: Blackburrow Guild: Monolith Rank: Member Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: USA Posts: 58	I would rather have them take their time and do a great job on the epics instead of rushing it personally. That being said yeah it seems like a lot of time however you have the holidays, and then there are the pesky bugs that are going to show up now that didn't during beta simply because they didn't have the numbers of folks running around on beta that are going to be playing live. RoK is a HUGE expansion and as such I'm sure they've dedicated some folks to squashing/fixing/changing stuff that the live server players will run into/complain about. You know how it goes . . so and so isn't happy because their class can't blah, blah, blah posts that we'll see for weeks after the launch. I'll just sit and patiently await the epics weapons release. __________________

11-14-2007, 04:12 AM	#22
Greedly Server: Befallen Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 2	sadly sounds like a ploy to keep people around since there are entire guilds that go back to other games once they have beat end-game =/

11-14-2007, 05:16 AM	#23
ke'la Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,445	Teeke@Blackburrow wrote: I don't fully buy it. How long ago do you suppose the box art was done for the expansion? After the box art is "approved" they have to then have it printed on several hundred thousand boxes. Now I would think that process wouldn't take extremely long... few days or so for the actual creation of the boxes... but don't you think it would have all been finalized a couple months ago? Yet, there is no mention of the epics on the box. Kind of like they knew it wasn't going to happen and the fires were just a convenient excuse. In the end, I don't actually care. I can wait a couple months. I'll have fun exploring the lands and other stuff. And in a couple months when I'm done with that I can then concentrate more on the epic questing. I just don't like being lied to, and it seems to me that is what is going on. /shrug You do know that Box are and the Text that is printed on the box are 2 completly differant things, and it would be real easy befor the box got to the printers to remove the line about the epics, remember they did know that there would be no epics 3 weeks ago, thats enough time to change the Text on the boxes(though it could account for the large numbers of delays) __________________

11-14-2007, 06:44 AM	#24
Lodrelhai Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,271	I don't know how long box art for an international release takes, but having worked for a national magazine, I know we had everything for it, all articles, ads, art, etc, finalized and into printing 2 weeks in advance of mailing. So yeah, I'd think they could adjust the boxes in about that time, especially considering that whoever does the box art and write-ups would probably not be the same people who're working on creating the content itself.I can also easily believe that one week of work lost equates to two months, or more, of delay for content. Figure it wasn't just epic weapons that weren't worked on that week - everything was dropped. All the quest, zone, guild, tradeskill, mount, etc content for a new expansion was left untouched for a week. And when they're able to get back to it, there's other issues coming up all the time which are added to that list of things to do - some of it takes higher priority than the stuff that was skipped that week. So they decided leave off the epics until after launch, which means they're not losing 1 week of work on those, but 3-4. All that time they're spending trying to catch up on that lost week while still keeping up-to-date with the normal work required for a launch. Now that the expansion is live, those bugs that no amount of betaing can find because things respond differently when there's 15 people in a zone vs 138 people get to be found and worked on too.It adds up. I'm betting there's more than a few things that were launched without final tweaks in place - still playable, but not exactly what was intended. I'm willing to be patient - gives us something to look forward to. And I'm certainly happier that they come right out and tell us "it's not in game yet" than if they let us search endlessly for the quest starters, and then slipped them in on a later update. Anyone else remember the froglok fiasco?

11-14-2007, 09:22 AM	#25
Spiritunico General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 59	Thank you for this article, its good to see that epic weapons are on their way if a little delayed. I'm guessing the art is probably done with the quests themselves presenting the huge work mountain to climb so it would be really nice to see a Friday feature on the new epic weapons to give us something to drool over until the quests go live. ^_^ I wonder if we will see the return of the old epic look revised for EQ2s better graphics engine, or will the new epics be totally different? __________________

11-14-2007, 09:43 AM	#26
denmom Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Paradigm Clutch: Never shift reality without one... Posts: 2,490	As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather. __________________ What I do when not playing EQ2: Paradigm Clutch

11-14-2007, 09:49 AM	#27
Spiritunico General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 59	Pheep@Unrest wrote: As for the fires...Some employees lost their homes. Some were in evacuation centers. Some were in hotels. There's the stress, worry, pain, upset, emotional upheaval.Yes, the fires shut down the office for a week, but it was two or three weeks before people could move out of the evacuation centers and back to their homes. Dealing with the damage that the fires left behind, physical and emotional, will wear down a person.I live in San Diego, and the Qualcomm Stadium, the main evac center, was lit up bright for nearly two weeks after SOE employees went back to work.Most of the dev team lives in North County, hardest hit by the fires. Some even blogged about being evacuated, have photos of the fires and the smoke and devastation.All this happened and you're going to begrudge them a week off from work. Blame them and claim "Liar!" because you do not have the empathy to even consider how wild fires could impact working.If you've not been through a county-wide wild fire, if you've not been through evacuation and the loss of your home, you don't know what it can do to you. The effects can last for weeks, even months afterwards.And yes, I've been there. The 2003 fires in San Diego. One was literally blocks away but was turned by the efforts of the fire fighters and the change in weather. Well said Pheep. __________________

11-15-2007, 10:05 PM	#28
quamdar Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 610	honestly IF they get it out in 2 months i will be happy. realistically i don't see them coming out that soon because i seriously doubt that the delay from the fires is the only reason they didn't make it into the expansion. i hope i'm wrong though. __________________ quamdar crushbone server

11-15-2007, 10:41 PM	#29
Xelyen Server: Everfrost Guild: Lex Talionis Rank: Leader/Officer alts Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 10	Those who are playing RoK just for the promise of the return of epic weapons quests are missing out on the rest of a fantastic expansion. There should be enough content and new instances/drops to hunt to keep even the hardcore gamers busy for at least a couple months. Thank you dev team for being up front and making realistic time hacks for a quality product instead of pushing something halfassed to appease the fanbois.

11-15-2007, 11:41 PM	#30
Steve11418 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 145	For those not familiar with software developmentDepending on how many resources were working on epics… 1 week delay can easily blow out to a few months.A. As previously said the 1 week delay was on everything. So if 25% of the staff were working on epics, then dropping that content would still leave a shortfall of 50% to catch up on… which would mean the ‘epic staff’ would require 3 weeks to catch the rest of the development up.B. Let’s assume that SOE actually have work planed after the release and are not all going on holidays. (Skeletal revamp, Guild housing etc) So the resources are probably already allocated to other stuff.C. After any release you have to hold developers and QA staff back for warranty purposes. To fix all those problems that you find (that were missed).D. Implementing something as large as epics into the game probably requires QA to run substantial regression cycle which in itself could be weeks. (Instead of testing it with everything else during ROK regression)So a smart project manager would probably delay the Epics and roll it out with something else so as to piggy back it onto another testing regression cycle (perhaps for the skeletal revamp?). Thus saving time and money for more cool content for us.Just ask yourself… if you were the Test manager and were asked to make sure 24 quest lines (maybe 500 quests), 500 quest reward and 48 weapons (fabled and legendary) all worked as designed. And to make sure that none of the present content was affected (mobs used for updates, quest givers, clickable, collectables, carftables, specific zone instances, drops etc) that the quest lines touched.Easy to do if you were testing everything for ROK to start with plus Beta looking at them. Not so easy to do on its own and without Beta.