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How do you create the perfect kind of content and additions for an MMO that's supposed to last nearly a decade? You can't, really. That's what EverQuest designers Keith Turkowski, Jonathan Caraker, and programmer Alan Krause had to say about the game's continued development. Considering the MMO's aggressive schedule of expansion packs (the fifteenth, Seeds of Destruction, is being readied for release this fall), there have been myriad examples of game systems being implemented and then, either within a matter of days, months or years, proved to be faulty.
The reasons for these faults were many. Sometimes it was through players successfully exploiting a system. Sometimes it was because too many systems did relatively the same thing, causing unnecessary confusion. Sometimes it was simply because of errors in the code. The panel of three spent the majority of the panel listing highly specific reasons why certain systems had to be scrapped, modified, or dealt with.
Ultimately, though, through all their lessons learned with non-scaling statistical modifier systems, attack speed issues, scripted NPC 'shouts,' overpowered trade skill systems, and resist ratings, the discussion made clear several key points for putting together a game to weather the test of time.
Turkowski, who joined the team in 2006, explained adding new content in the following manner. "When we introduce new things we try to tune them as well as we can, but if we're not really sure how it'll work out…we try to be a little bit conservative. Once they're actually out there, and players are getting it…then you can look at them and see how they're integrated into the rest of these systems. If you decide definitely they're not powerful enough, you bump them up a little bit, instead of nerfing it down." He went on to describe how it's better to be conservative when designing new systems, as players will always be more receptive to small tweaks than to large adjustments to an overambitious system.
