New content in AO and the work involved.

[Wrangeline]

I have to admit, I'm a bit curious about this. Back in the early days of AO, the devs would create a lot of content out of nothing and would do so without it seeming like it took forever. In the last years, new content has often been copy-paste of some form or another and it seems to take forever to get done.

Just as a comparison, I was wondering how many devs were working on AO when Shadowlands was released and how much time they spent on creating that expansion. These days we got like.. 6-7 devs? How many did AO have back then?

When you look at AO before and after SL, you see that the amount of content in terms of mobs, quests, zones, items, perk-system and such stuff, almost doubled with the release of SL. They couldn't have spent so much time on it either. Shadowlands came a bit out of the blue as I remember it and I was surprised at the AMOUNT of unique content the devs had created since Notum Wars expansion pack.

I mean, how long would it take for the current devs to create an expansion pack that offers as many new and unique zones, mobs, quests, items and such as SL did, without copy-pasting anything? I'm guessing minimum 5 years

So how many devs did AO have back then? How much time did they spend on SL? Where are these illustrious people working these days? >.<

[Honorbound]

So how many devs did AO have back then? How much time did they spend on SL? Where are these illustrious people working these days? >.<

At/around the time of release, I think FunCom pretty much WAS Anarchy Online (and The Longest Journey, or even that was after AO?), so I'd guess everyone they had at the time; dozens of people, anything between 30-50, maybe even (a lot) more.

As for where are these people now? Working on AoC and TSW, obviously (and maybe on the smaller scale projects like Pets vs. Monsters and, erm, that PvP arena game, wait, Bloodlines or what the heck), and I'm sure many have left the company over the years too (considering how the current AO staff mostly consists of ex players turned devs, most likely havng replaced the "old" devs who have left).

[Xyphos]

afaik, there's only 6ish members left on the AO team.
Macrosun & Kintaii come to mind off the top of my head,
at least 1 graphics designer, 1 person working on the new engine,
1 person converting old code to be compatible VS2010,
and (now minus 1?) Content Designer

it seems the project has shrunk to about the size when it was first conceived;

"Hey man, wanna help make a game?"
"How long we going to run it for?"
"...about 2 years."

[hokutonoken]

back in the old days...Vetern works hard.....today vets adn non vets...but stuff from "ingame" store^_=....probalbe a lot of devs working on that idea...expanding the "ingame" store ^_=

[Kintaii]

There were full teams working on SL back in the day - If I recall correctly it was somewhere around 50+, though I can't say for certain since I wasn't actually there. It was a LOT more than we've got now, that's for sure.

A lot of the difficulty in creating content these days has come in us wanting to do it *right*. I think a lotta folks look back at the Shadowlands launch with slightly rosy glasses - Remember that not all of the zones were finished, there were practically no quest lines, the content that *was* there was typically bugged and ended up with such utterly *delightful* design decisions like turn spirits, tier armour, ingots and hecklers. :P When you talk about the amount of content that SL contains, better questions are "How much of it was well-designed?" or "How much of that content is actually used?" or "How buggy was it when it launched?"

We take more time these days in making stuff because we're a smaller team, yes - We don't have the manpower on the project that an expansion like SL had simply because... well, it's been eight years since SL launched; the team just isn't as large. But a bigger part of it is in ensuring that the content we make is actually worth the time it takes to make it. We can spend three years cranking out a bunch of "stuff" just for "stuff's sake", but what's the point?

I think people view SL as a lot more impressive than it actually was at launch because of all of the stuff that's been added *to* it over the years. SL is a HUGE expansion, don't get me wrong, but in terms of good system/gameplay design.... how long did you guys grind hecklers until Inferno missions came in? How many of those random items you've picked up in SL have you ever actually used for anything other than shop food? What armour from SL do you just *have to have* outside of Beast loot? How many ingots are still sitting in a backpack somewhere in your bank because you were storing 'em up for your friendly neighborhood Trader before we realized they had to be nerfed? How many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud? SL was certainly large in scope, but... just because something's bigger doesn't mean its better.

Also, for questions regarding who all is working on AO at the moment, I keep a fairly complete dev roster over in our Forums Social Guidelines page, complete with links to the forums accounts for all of the devs (that have them).

[Xyphos]

How many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud?

....still havent gotten a shroud to drop in the 6 years I've been playing
but then again, I don't camp hardcore; just kill everything, loot and move on.

[sultryvoltron]

We can spend three years cranking out a bunch of "stuff" just for "stuff's sake", but what's the point?

Good question... why DID you make the new PvP zone?

[Gatester]

How many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud? SL was certainly large in scope, but... just because something's bigger doesn't mean its better.

How difficult is it to make a slight change to the rate of drops though? Things being just rare enough for mindless farming to profit from it and the majority of players being unable to access the content without shelling out large amounts of credits is never a good thing.

Good question... why DID you make the new PvP zone?

Because pvpers asked for it. The question now is why don't the PVPers PVP in the zone THEY asked for?

Simple answer, there aren't any greens/gimps there for them to farm, which goes to show you something about the people who ask for things. Those of us who like to pvp have a place to pvp, its called Borealis.

[Wrangeline]

50+ devs? O.O
Jeez, that's a lot of people

[Wrangeline]

Because pvpers asked for it. The question now is why don't the PVPers PVP in the zone THEY asked for?

Simple answer, there aren't any greens/gimps there for them to farm, which goes to show you something about the people who ask for things. Those of us who like to pvp have a place to pvp, its called Borealis.

This is just wrong, from start to finish.

[Plaything]

A lot of the difficulty in creating content these days has come in us wanting to do it *right*.

--skip

How many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud?

Am I correct in assumption that the current team has now been thinking over increasing droprate of JEPP/Spirit Shroud for a while in their perpetual desire to make it *just right*?

[Warhammer]

THow many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud? SL was certainly large in scope, but... just because something's bigger doesn't mean its better.

Hmm, while I dont recall the number of hours, I can say that my first shroud took a little over 800 Notum Scourge kills and the second around 350. Thats alot of hours though, considering that during the time I tried to get my first shroud, Notum Scourges were severely bugged and spawned under the ice. Which basicly forced me to wait for the (rather frequent, remember the weekly resets?) server downs / restarts or zone crashes to get a fresh set of mobs.

After more and more people wanted a shroud and thus enough protests, it was possible to petition for help to beam them out of the ice until this bug was fixed - I suppose it helps when the staff suffers from the bugs too.

The JEPP farming for my adv took me 7x~6hrs too. Glorious times... at least it wasnt as lonely in the game as it is now.

[Kintaii]

Am I correct in assumption that the current team has now been thinking over increasing droprate of JEPP/Spirit Shroud for a while in their perpetual desire to make it *just right*?

I thought we *did*, at least on the JEPP - Not certain on the Spirit Shroud but I know we've discussed it internally at least, and I coulda sworn I upped the drop chance on the JEPP myself. Been a while, lots has happened since, kinda hard to remember. >.@

[Boltgun]

I am sure that quality controle got better. I do not look back at sl with rosy glasses. It was broken everywhere, and classic ao too. From LE we could feel that there were tech studies and code review going on, stuff that takes time but really enhance your work. I don't mind less content when they are well done.

Classic was the time of bearded devs who couldn't write anything but code, hated feedback and acted surprided when it crash and burn on live. Good times.

[Wrangeline]

Oh lord, I remember the incredible drama that happened when FC opened up SL access to high level zones without the need to finish questlines for rings.

It used to be that people had to complete ring quest in nasc, ely, scheol, adonis and penumbra in order to get to inferno if you were 220, for example. So everyone did that.

Then FC removed the need for people to do these questlines and gave characters above specific levels the rings for free from Ergo.

Players whined like crazy because in just one single move, FC had invalidated so much of the work they had gone through to get to Inferno and such.

Personally I think the current system is a lot better than the old system where people had to complete ring-quests in all zones. I just think it would have been a good idea if the devs went with that approach from the start, rather than having to change it later

[lainbr]

How many hours have you spent camping that damn JEPP/Spirit Shroud?

700 Notum Scourges in a row on a MP. And no, I got no Spirit Shroud :x

[Riawn]

This is just wrong, from start to finish.

but still true, you must admit.

[Gatester]

This is just wrong, from start to finish.

And how is it wrong? Players were complaining that they had no area to actively seek pvp in between battlestation rounds, and were complaining that they didn't have a "team free" pvp area that they could go all out against anyone, even their own faction. The players were also complaining about waiting in lines when they wanted to just jump right into pvp. It is obviously not the pvmers who would complain about such things, it would be pvpers.

What is your justification for the creation of this playfield if mine is wrong from start to finish? I think you have a lot more to say than "You are wrong because I say so."


In the end, the pvpers have a playfield meeting their demands, but without pvmers to farm a lot of those "pvpers" refuse to participate in the playfield.

[-Stage-]

I think LoX was the best-designed expansion for AO. Its was followed by a time of great in-game activity in which I was never short of stuff to do, and people are still playing that content despite the population issues. Its a shame its success wasn't followed by additional booster packs to give people stuff to do in the game.

[Chrys]

Because pvpers asked for it. The question now is why don't the PVPers PVP in the zone THEY asked for?

Simple answer, there aren't any greens/gimps there for them to farm, which goes to show you something about the people who ask for things. Those of us who like to pvp have a place to pvp, its called Borealis.

I think that's unfair, the problem with getting people to PVP is that you need a whole economy to drive it, with phats/gear/cred/xp the same like you do in all the new MMOs out these days. AO doesn't have that except for VPs which haven't had any love in years thanks to the enormous fuss and sense of entitlement pure PVMers threw in its early days.

And for newbie friendly PVP you need toons significantly tougher so they're not all instasplat if newbies wanna try it out. AO's pace of PVP is extremely fast because of ARflation, specials and perks on non-overlapping recharge cycles and so on. Compare that with new games like WAR / RIFT / AION where the first time you PVP you only have about 4 active skills and even teaming up 3-4 vs 1 it still can take a while to kill even an enemy.

Of course personally I like the fast pace of PVP in AO but I can see why almost everything is getting nerfed across the board in the "balance" patch.