Brenlo talks EverQuest II's future
Alan 'Brenlo' Crosby, Sony Online Entertainment's Senior Producer for EverQuest II, has dropped an epic forum post on the official boards detailing the future of the long-running MMORPG. For starters, he talks about the game's technical issues, specifically the recent server performance concerns. "Some servers are struggling a bit with the new load created by returning players, Battlegrounds, more items in the database, etc and are not reacting well. This is our engineering team's number one priority<," he said.
He also touches on the much anticipated New Halas zone, indicating that it will finally see the light of day in the next patch and will be well worth the wait in terms of extended content, housing, and art design. Tweaks to the traveling system and itemization will also be made, and, though no specifics were given, feedback was solicited on both accounts. Battleground updates and tweaking are also in the pipeline, as is a new Storyteller UI system that promises to tie together Norrath's many quests in service of a larger, more meaningful story.
Finally, Brenlo hinted at alternate rule set servers, mentioning PvP, permadeath, and progression as possibilities. He also dropped a few hints at the upcoming development cycle for this fiscal year. <"You should see at least one raid each update, of which there are four major updates planned for the next fiscal year. Details of those to follow but I can say they will be a mix of reworked content e.g. Lavastorm revamp, and all new content. Through the next year, we plan to bolster our events as well, eventually having one event each calendar month, providing more entertainment for you,"he said.
