Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolshoi
One thing I'd like to know: What classes do you anticipate will be ready at launch? Cause the FAQ names Berzerker, but one of the articles leaves it out. And I remember there being some questions on whether or not the Inquisitor would be ready by launch. Could you clear this up please?

Zerker -- Unlikely

Inquisitor -- Can't promise, but going to do our best. It's personally a class I want to play and see realized.

That said, we'll be adding content with both the live and expansion teams, and even if we don't make ship, more classes and a bunch of other stuff is planned and will be released both during regular patches by the live team and then the big stuff via expansions (and we're also considering micro-transactions, where you digitially download 'adventure packs', or something in-between an expansion and regularly updated live content (revamps, new areas, etc.). The main thing is your have our promise the price will be reasonable and the content sufficient to justify it being something more than live content but less than a significant expansion (which we plan to ship approximately yearly, will have new continents, new races, cool new features, etc. -- remember, we're the guys who did Kunark and Velious, so we know what an expansion needs to be and we know when in terms of frequency they need to come out -- that combined with live and the possibility of interim 'adventure packs' will help us realize the Vanguard of the future, which as per what I've posted about in the past, we already have TONS planned for this game -- it was designed from the beginning for the future both in terms of content, new mechanics, features, new tech, etc.)

There's a lot of cool stuff coming down the road, plus the tech stuff (64 bit clients, Vista specific clients, dx10, implementing more of unreal 3.0, etc.). I'm serious that we have about 7 years of plans already pretty well laid out with detailed design docs, etc. Again, for us, launch is somewhat arbitrary and Vanguard is about longevity and a never ending adventure. Launch just has to have enough content and features in there, plus polish, etc. to justify people paying for it. Other than that, it's just the beginning point on a long and exciting journey that I hope will last easily a decade. Heck, EQ is going now on 7 years and we, the original designers, never planned for expansions. Vanguard is the opposite -- we went in and created a world, civilizations, game functionality, etc. in a lot of detail (we wanted to do it, and MSFT wanted the docs, and so while it took a little bit of time, in hindsight I'm really glad we did plan all of this stuff out).

Some few people outside of Sigil have seen these docs, these write-ups, the FULL world map (of which Kojan, Thestra, and Qalia are tiny continents relative to places like Avra and others (I'd better not get too specific here, as much as I personally would love to)). And these people can attest to a pretty grand and ambitious plan -- when we're talking huge, seamless, immersive worlds without instancing and an emphasis on meaningful travel, not to mention mounted and ship based combat, RTS style city building, a LOT more use of diplomacy, factions, and the ability to layer our current seamless world which is made of 2km by 2km chunks with just x and y locations with chunks going into the z access, we're talking some cool stuff. Entire cities in the sky, alternate dimensions, playing with our portal system to create non-euclidean worlds, entire 'underdark' style expansions...

It goes on and on


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