Lepidus: EverQuest is known for its expansion packs. With Lost Dungeons of Norrath out the door, one immediately suspects we will soon here of another x-pack. Do you have any plans for this, and where do you think the next one should go?
Alan VanCouvering: We have two more expansions planned at this time. While the exact details are still being ironed out, the story line that has been running through the last two expansions, The Legacy of Ykesha and Lost Dungeons of Norrath, will continue. At this early stage there are few specifics I can give you about the content of the next expansion but it will have something for everyone.
Lepidus: 2004 should see the MMO market saturated with big name and flashy new titles like Middle Earth Online, World of WarCraft and your own EverQuest II. What will the key to survival be for the original EverQuest in such a crowded market?
Alan VanCouvering: The more products that enter the market, the more exciting the marketplace becomes! The bar is constantly being raised and we are constantly being challenged - and so far we have met that challenge every time. We will continue to deliver excellent content for our players, expand upon the existing world, and bring our players new and exciting developments both technologically, and in gameplay. Every new game that comes out raises the bar for us and forces us to push our limits. They also give us great new ways to spend any free time we can find.
We also have several large projects that we're currently working on that we'll be unveiling over the next two production cycles. Nothing is impossible for the future of EverQuest.
Lepidus: In the past year you have revamped many zones. Which zones are currently on your to-do list for a little special attention?
Alan VanCouvering: At this time we are working on adding a few more raid level encounters to the Lost Dungeons, one for Elemental Plane capable raids and one for raids capable of dealing with the Plane of Time. These will appear on Stormhammer during our October update, and will move to all live servers shortly thereafter. The nice thing about the tools we created with the Lost Dungeons is that additional content using those tools is a lot easier to update, tune and modify. This allows us an added versatility that wasn't readily available in past expansions.
We're still evaluating the success of the Halls of Betrayal (Chardok B), the Caverns of the Exiled (Soldung C), and the zones that we have recently redesigned. When we know more about how often these zones have been utilized we'll consider additional content along those lines. |
