Gimme 5 - February, 2004
Answered by: Vex and GM Zilo
IanStorm - There are some cool clothing items that haven't been introduced at any time in game. Sadly only 3D players get new artwork such as clothes. Is there anyway you could bring these clothes that are already part of the game, into actual game play and improve the artwork for 2D users for the clothing items that have made it in, such as fur clothing and formal shirts?
Vex - Creating new wearable items for the 2D client has certain hurdles. Since the artwork must be 2D sprites, and each animation frame must be rendered in every direction for each piece of clothing, the download size quickly balloons. In order to keep client patch times reasonable, we hesitate before creating new 2D wearable artwork and patching it out. With Age of Shadows, we were able to include new weapon artwork on the install CD. It is likely that any new 2D wearables added would similarly be part of an expansion CD, and those who do not install the expansion will instead see defaults that look like existing pieces of clothing.
IanStorm - If you are looking at revamping the guild system in a future publish, could you please consider bringing back the old form of guild titles? Having the word "guild" tacked on, defeats the purpose of some clans or groups.
Vex - We'll add that to the list of things to consider for such a system update. In addition, we would also like to make some real improvements to the guildstone interface itself, to make it easier to manage large guilds. We are also considering suggestions to have guild alliances and limited-duration wars, in addition to some other oft-requested feature improvements.
IanStorm - Thank you for BOD books! They save so much time and item count wise, they are wonderful. Could these be implemented for seeds perhaps?
Vex - We do want to provide an improved interface for managing seed collections. At this time, we do not know how much development effort we will be able to devote to such a task.
IanStorm - Where does the addition of more quests using the quest engine stand?
Vex - From where we stand right now, it seems that development of new quest content carries with it a disproportionately high development and testing cost with respect to the amount of gameplay actually created. The team has discussed many possible options to make questing more of a core gameplay element. Among the things we would like to create is the ability for the engine to create simple quests by combining different pre-designed elements, and a way to update the quest engine without need for additional software engineering and minimal quality assurance testing.
IanStorm - Is there a plan to utilise Ilshenar and Malas more with the upcoming events? They have been dormant and unused for so long, Ilshenar in particular.
GM Zilo - In the last event cycle, we used Ilshenar and Malas in roughly over a third of the events. We kept it pretty well-balanced with Felucca and Trammel. I expect similar numbers with any future events that we do. Both lands have quite a few exotic locations that I'd like to use next time around.