Dev Said talks with OneEye and Gets Details about the Update

I managed to get an interview with OneEye about today's update. Honestly, this is my first interview with a Game Developer and I tried my best to ask questions that both you and I wanted to know the answers to. Personally, I don't think they turned out too bad :) Though if I do get another chance to talk with OneEye, I might try and get a little more insight into what goes on in the brain of a Mono-optic Game Designer ;)

Don't worry, though. DevSaid does not disappoint. With all the rumors and the hype surrounding the update, I focused on what you guys wanted to know more about--what's in the update?!? I managed to find out some info about why the delay in the update as well as what new content to expect. Masks, a party island for Dev Q&A, and even some info about where some of the new items may come from. By all means, read on! You know you're curious ;)

DevSaid (DS): Thank you, OneEye, for taking the time to sit down and answer some of our questions. Let's start with the most obvious question. You said that you were ready to release the update just before your vacation. However, the decision was made to delay it since you didn't want any bugs from your additions to hurt the game while you were gone. Now that you're back, we were kept waiting for just a little while longer. Why the additional time?

OneEye (OE): There were several things that we wanted to further test and we had to schedule the update around some other things we have going on around here.

DS: In our last update about the update, we were told we could expect new quests, new monsters, more taskmasters, lots of new items, and even some new book quests like the rock trolls near josody one. Were there more things that you've added since then for this update?

OE: We've made a new Party Island accessible all the time from Lotor's Summer Palace, increased the party size to 20 and of course did lots of work tracking down the server lag issue. Player stat and ranking pages were also revamped and should be deployed shortly after the update.

Party Island will be used for several upcoming events, including an in-game Developer Question and Answer session.

DS: What about those new quests? Any hints about those that you might want to share? Quest-specific goodies, for instance?

OE: As always, I'll say that you'll just have to go out and explore :) . I will say that as well as adding new quests we've also fixed several issues with older quests that may have been blocking players from finishing them. If you were stuck on a certain quest, go back and try it again.

DS: In a recent post, you've said that you've been able to track the lag and server stability down to an issue in the memory garbage collection.

How has the progress on that fix been? What kind of improvement to the lag can we expect?

OE: We've done a lot of work to track down where the server is doing the garbage collection. For those who don't know this is the process of a program cleaning up memory. With a 'managed' language, the developers don't fully control when this happens, so the clean-up can happen at inopportune or non-appropriate times. The work we did controls when the collection, making the server much smarter.

DS: The token special during June was a nice and unexpected touch. Will there be more specials that we can look forward to?

OE: Sure, we are always looking to provide more bang for the buck. We talk all the time about how to reduce the average users cost to play the game. I hope we can make an announcement regarding our long term plans in the very near future.

DS: You mentioned that we could expect some monster masks to be available in the store. Besides the masks, are there other things that will be added to the store this time around? What about in the near future?

OE: Right now there are 4 monster packs, the basic pack, the deluxe pack, the avatar pack and the Dragon pack. Each mask has really cool creatures the player can polymorph into. The deluxe for example has an Ettin, a Horned Devil, an Ogre, a Rock Troll, an Eye of Valekar a Giant Skeleton, a Demon and a Storm Giant. Cool Stuff.

In the future I'm sure we will have more fun items, for example, I'm pretty sure we will do some more holiday themed house packs - Halloween and Christmas are right around the corner!

DS: A few players have been concerned about the end-game content. Will this update bring more content to those high levelers still looking for a challenge?

OE: Yes - there are also 157 new items in this update, many aimed at the high level players. Dragon drops for example have been enhanced with many of these newer items.

DS: What about low to mid level players? What things can they look forward to in this update?

OE: There are several new quests and item that target the mid-level player as well.

DS: The Warden Mage armor set and the Ancient Sword of Agon are two of the most powerful and contraversial possessions players can get in the game nowadays. Since they have been introduced, there's been many threads and many posts about how they impact gameplay. How do you think these items fit in the overall balance? Do they need to be adjusted or are they just right?

OE: Both the Warden and ASoA have been adjusted slightly with this update. This adjustment brings them more into line with their difficulty to be acquired.

DS: Pvp has always been a hot button issue concerning updates. Are you satisified with the pvp game? Are there things that you may want to change to the way Pvp works in the future?

OE: A PvP battle always has a winner and a loser. The loser is never going to be happy with the situation - so you are starting from the standpoint of 50% of the people involved in PvP being unhappy. I think that players are as balanced as they have ever been, but I also think there is room for improvement. We may have a few things up are sleeves to make PvP even more fun and exciting in the near future.

DS: How's Mukarramma? We haven't seem him lately.

OE: Check him after the update. Good luck in trying to beat him :) .