Posted by: SOE | April 15, 2008

Game Update 44!

Tuesday morning and it’s Game Update 44 day! For the design team, that means most of the work is in the past — we had checked in all our changes weeks ago, and fixed up all the bugs by last week, so we’re already well focused on GU45 content. For the engineering folks, however, today is a much busier day. MissDoomCookie and I are usually the early birds of the team and are generally in the office by 8 am most days. On Game Update days Kirstie beats us in however — and better yet, she sometimes brings in muffins and bagels for the others working on the update, which this morning means leftovers: a very yummy pumpkin muffin for me.
 

The past month has been quite full, and also full of changes in various ways. It started out on quite an exciting note: the 9th anniversary of the original launch of EverQuest, which started it all. I was working for Sony Pictures Entertainment at the time, so it wasn’t till 2001 that I was introduced to EverQuest, when one of their marketing team came to visit the office I was based in and worked out of our location for a few months marketing the Rise of Kunark in Asia Pacific. And that was the start of a beautiful relationship — not with the marketing guy, but with Norrath, and of courses with many of the friends I made in Norrath too — a relationship that ultimately led me to work on EverQuest II, 7 years later. The company put on a barbeque out in the parking lot, and there was much rejoicing, beer, and food.
 

This past month has also seen some sad changes though, as a few of the design team have decided to move on to other things. Some have just moved to other projects within SOE for a change of pace, others have accepted external offers, and in both cases the changes are an excellent opportunity for them, but it’s still a little sad to see empty desks appear. However, we are interviewing for replacements at the moment, and I hope we will soon find some great new folks to bring the team back to full size once more!

 

Most exciting for me personally this month was the approval of my visa renewal! My US work visa was due to expire at the end of this month, so I was much relieved to be told that the extension for another year has been approved by the Department of Immigration. It appears that I get to work on tradeskills for another year at least, which makes me very happy, and hopefully makes everyone else happy too - particularly weaponsmiths, as I’m working on some improvements to their weapons this month. I am, of course, still a scary immigrant; the banks still don’t trust me much, and the instructions on the visa paperwork refers to me in the friendly terms of “the alien” all over the place. “The alien must keep this portion of the card with his or her passport at all times”. Jindrack wanted to know if I have my own starship too. I wish! For now, I’ll just have to make do with visiting the Temple of Life in North Qeynos.
 

Emily “Domino” Taylor

 

Posted in EverQuest II, EverQuest II Developers, EverQuest II Players, MMO Games, SOE Games

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Responses

Awesome post xD

Josgar hides from “The Alien”.

By: Josgar on April 18, 2008
at 9:52 pm

Hi Domino!

I am so thrilled that your visa has been extended for another year. If there was ever a time where it was necessary, this is it! I am a BIG fan of the tradskill professions and since you have taken over it has only gotten better. Well, not better as much as AMAZING! :-D

With another year of these incredible updates to look forward to, I am positive that I will still be here when you announce the extension of your visa for yet another year!

While your reading this, how about making some changes for the Provisioner’s. I would love to see some advanced type potions that would give bonuses like speed increase, a small EXP bonus (like 10-15% for 30min) or other things that would make them more useful and allow them to use rares. In any case, keep up the great work!

Thanks,
Taiven

By: Taiven on April 18, 2008
at 10:18 pm

hows about alchemist created wall paint, jeweler crafted clocks, and carpenter created wall segments in a variety of styles…all house items. the wall segments would be good to get rid of the high item count ppl rack up using bookshelves.

By: Darknesss on April 19, 2008
at 3:36 am

Big congratz on not being kicked out of the country for another year! Is it really an up-in-the-air thing every year? Ack, how scary…

I hope it’s not as iffy as you make it sound, Dom. You’ve brought us crafters so much joy since you arrived!

*gets back to work on Danak Shipyards faction*

By: Tock on April 19, 2008
at 9:05 am

*HUGS*

Here is to hoping that your desk is never one of the empty ones!

((Still hoping for a return of the harvesting writs, though all the REAL crafters in my guild would sacrifice alts for you in a heartbeat!))

Thank you & keep having fun

~Arbreth

By: arbreth on April 19, 2008
at 6:23 pm

I love your diaries, Domino. Yes, plural because I remember reading one about your work on Rise of Kunark. It was on… Warcry? I really don’t remember now except that it was in one of the big fan sites.

Anyway, the reason I love it is because you give it a more human feel to the whole development.

Can’t wait to see more of your posts. :)

By: Kahlef on April 20, 2008
at 5:00 pm

Gratz on the Visa extension.. now tell your home country to let me back in! :(

Got kicked out due to no extension. *cries*

By: SpyderBite on April 21, 2008
at 12:21 am

Yay for tradeskill updates. We need more of them. Alchies need some lovin’ too, though I may be a bit biased, having been one since early ‘05.

By the way, I loved the crafting epic (except the library in maj’dul part which I did before you patched it a day or two afterwards. I died 9 or so times in there and spent hours ninjaing around for 30 minutes at a time just to die while trying to find the last update. God, I hated that place so much).

Making all the crafters need others to help them finish their quest and thereby establishing connections with other crafters was a brilliant move that almost made me forget the seething fury I felt when we lost cross-class reliancy way way back during LU18 or some such. Crafting these days is a bit of a solo adventure, which saddens me somewhat, so I was glad to finally see something knitting the community a little more together instead of making us more and more self-reliant. Similarly, I like how there are also the occasional item that has to be made through the comission system, helping form relations between adventurers and crafters as well. There’s not been much of those since the pre-DoF days when ebon armor was uber and rubicite was godlike (ps: I’m still waiting for a recipe book for my Laensteel Powder. It’s been sitting in my bank vault in Nettleville since mid 2005)

I’m hoping we will start to see more craftables that will be useful for more than just the adventurers that are currently levelling up and would otherwise ditch the item as soon as they level x9 in a tier. That, and things to encourage crafters to work together (*cough*crafting’raids’*cough*) as well as useful stuff for even those at levelcap.

My wishlist aside, thanks for your continued efforts towards improving crafting and congrats on the new visa :)

Oh, one more thing. I filed a /feedback with it a long time ago, but playerissued work orders. Kinda like a reverse broker thing where you post stuff you want (made) as well as price you’re offering (which would be taken by the work order merchant until the order was completed or cancelled). Having the ability to see all the spells and items people wanted crafted would be something both my crafters would love as well as the adventurers of mine who would be comissioning things nonstop. Please, pretty please with sugar on top? I’ll give you my soul.

Thanks again, and another yay for crafting updates
Laeen D’alchemien.

By: Laeen on April 21, 2008
at 7:03 am

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