EverQuest II: The Splitpaw Saga Interview

Gamecloud has conducted an interview with Sony Online’s Scott Hartsman, in which the senior producer reveals a few extra details about their recently released EverQuest II: The Splitpaw Saga adventure pack. Check it out:

Q: What can you tell us about how the second adventure pack came about?

A: These Adventure Packs are a lot like modules on a tabletop RPG. You play through the story, and the adventure has a definite beginning, middle, and end that you can replay if you like. They’re short-term pieces of something fun to do, unlike an Expansion which needs to keep people entertained for weeks or months.

Overall, we were pretty happy with Bloodline Chronicles, we were able to bring Splitpaw Saga a lot closer to what we had envisioned these Adventure Packs to be.

First, we wanted to expand the appeal by making the stories and new types of gameplay available to more people. Using the same gameplay systems that drives our Mentoring feature, we implemented dynamic NPC difficulty scaling such that the new adventure pack could be a fun and rewarding challenge for anyone from levels 20-50.

Second, we were able to spend more time enhancing the dynamic objects that were a popular feature of Bloodline Chronicles. By adding the capacity for objects to be interacted with in even more ways (moving them, stacking them, making them explode), it let the content team get a lot more creative in terms of what kinds of riddles and puzzles they were able to implement.

That combination of changes yielded an experience that really sets a new bar for what engaging content is in an MMO.