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Tagged News: tradeskills

Tuesday, November 13th
Developer Journals

We polish off our behind the curtain look at EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark with the final set of four entries from tradeskills game designer Emily "Domino" Taylor. In the final entries she takes us from Halloween to yesterday, the very eve of the expansion's launch.

A special thanks to Emily for her detailed articles.

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Tomorrow's the big day; I was starting to think it would never arrive, but we've made it at last! The Rise of Kunark release, my very first expansion and the fourth expansion for EverQuest II. Of course, I've only seen the other three expansions as a player, not from the development side, but this one seems pretty solid to me and Gallenite has been telling us the same thing. Each day for the past week and a bit he's emailed around a graph showing how many bugs for the expansion are still open for the dev team and for QA, and every day that number has fallen dramatically, until at the start of this weekend we were down to two digits, and by today I imagine there were almost none at all. (Of course, many of the QA queue bugs might not be bugs any longer, just waiting to be tested and signed off.) I know that in my own bug queue there's been very little left for this expansion in the past few days, and mostly pretty minor things like spelling errors or inconsistencies in status reduction amounts in furniture, etc.

Read it all after the jump.

Tuesday, November 6th
Developer Journals

EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark Tradeskills designer Emily "Domino" Taylor continues her epic series of developer diaries, exclusively here on WarCry. Today, in entries from October 16th and 25th, we get an update on both the development of the expansion and the antics of SOE.

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Only ten days to go till the cut-off date for finishing up new content. I'd say 8 working days, but I suspect quite a few people, myself included, will be working all ten! I know there were a number of people in the office last weekend -- though it was freezing cold, I'm definitely going to try and work at home next weekend instead.

More after the leap.

Wednesday, October 31st
Developer Journals

Emily "Domino" Taylor, the Tradeskills game designer for EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark, continues to pen a series of journals for the site that recount the course of development for her.

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Once that minor crisis was under control, I realized I still needed to add the coin reward to the writs. This reward - we call them "coinpurses" -- is supposed to cover the fuel costs plus just a little bit extra. Of course, in order to create the coinpurses, therefore, I have to finalize the fuel costs. So the next detour was testing and setting fuel costs, and while I was looking at it, adding them in to the merchant lists of the normal fuel vendors around the world.

Read more after the jump.

Tuesday, October 23rd
Developer Journals

Emily "Domino" Taylor gets back to work with two more entries in her series of journals that focus on her role on the design of EQII's tradeskills. The game is rapidly nearly the deployment of its next expansion, Rise of Kunark.

A special note to the entire SOE San Diego team whose office and homes are close to the California wildfires. Our thoughts are with you.

Today being Wednesday (how did that happen already, I ask myself) we had a design team lunch, at a Thai place this time. We placed our orders and they asked us how hot we wanted them, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 was the hottest. I picked pad thai at what I thought was a safe rating of 3, but it turned out to be definitely borderline. I'm such a wimp when it comes to spicy food, but I wasn't the only one who'd ordered a 3 and was struggling a bit! Except MissDoomCookie, who ordered 6 and said she could have happily gone hotter. Next time I think I'm going for a 1!

Read more after the jump.

Tuesday, October 16th
Developer Journals

Emily "Domino" Taylor returns with her second installment of her EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark developer diary series. Every Tuesday, we bring you chronological focused behind the scenes diaries on a specific aspect of the expansion pack. This wee and last have focused on Taylor and Tradeskills.

Today was supposed to be reaction art redesign day; however, I was only able to spend a couple hours looking at them (mostly spent making a spreadsheet of what they are now, and trying to get my head around the best solution for what they should be). Around mid morning Haohmaru, aka Tim our lead environment artist, stopped by to let me know that I should browse through the placeable objects art has now completed for the Kunark zones and assemble a list of what I'd like to have globalized so they will be available as house items.

Read more after the jump.