"Endless Tasks" producers review the 12-year game development wind and Rain Road

Time will precipitate, especially for MMORPG. After all, MMO for a player, the growth of time does not mean just new tasks, new storyline and new game content, more of their own memories and experience. MMO is really a virtual world, and the world will become rich as time goes by.　　And there is a game, after 12 years of baptism, there are risks on the way, there is a crisis, there is a long story, so far there is no sign of cessation. How is this game planned? Did the previous 12 have any special effect on the next 12 years? "Endless Task" is already a legend in online gaming, so how does it keep up with good visibility year after year?　　In an interview with foreign media director John Smedley, the president of Sony Entertainment Online, Alan Vancouvering, assistant director of endless tasks, Harvery Burgess, a deputy producer, tried to find out why. Here we have starting from 12 ago: the place to sail "endless task" with the March 16, 1999 official listing. For a fickle market, it is a miracle that endless tasks can survive for so long. What is the power to keep the game updated over the past more than 10 years-17 pieces!　　-and constantly attract new players? If we use which music to compare, you will find that the band will have an outdated day, there is a fall in the list, no longer lead the trend of the day. Often, these bands keep in touch with their loyal fans while maintaining their voices.　　In the end, their bands will regroup and, after many years, come back to the stage with the same sound. An MMO like endless quests is like a once-popular band. Norrath's world has been hit by countless games, including "Wow". Listen carefully to the voices of the fans, as Alan Vancouvering said, "You need to learn to understand the public mind." "Luckily, the development team used the game's internal voting system to learn what most players thought." Having a long community game like endless quests can make many things interesting. Players can describe a problem more accurately, without any taboo, and become more and more basic.　　After all, many of them have spent 10 years here to shape their roles. According to John Smedley, the game has "a lot of players start playing this game when only 20 years old, and now they are 32 years old, they bring their children also brought in." You have to seriously think about the social groups that these people are building, the Guild, or, more precisely, their friends--it's amazing to see this. "Of course, the design of new players is naturally not less." "It's hard not to listen to old users," said Alan, "but we have to recognize that weThere are new players. "What about the old players?" Now, "Endless task" players, according to Smed described as "70% or 80% of the players are average age 38 years old men, they are well-educated, spend a lot of time every week in the game, about 20 hours a week or so." Perhaps higher than this number. They're loyal!　　"The best thing that ever happened to the development team was to develop a mercenary system that would automatically fill in the blanks and help you when you want to risk yourself on a dark, cold rainy night and you can't find anyone else," he said. This does not mean, of course, that endless tasks are flawless. Over the past more than 10 years, endless tasks have been called "endless crashes" because the game client is too big and unstable. The game is blamed for the death of a player.　　Internet game addiction is really an unavoidable topic, and "Endless task" is regarded as the initiator. Sony Entertainment Online and the relationship between players is not always so harmonious. The players now feel sorry for the "more convenient" designs in the game, and even hope that the built-in maps never appear. In the Fippy Darkspaw server, the player even voted against the new way of running the corpse, and eventually the players returned to their former mode. Over the years, developers have learned from past experience how to cater to a player's hobby, instead of designing something that the player doesn't like, for example, "the old stuff is linked to the new one, so it's never going to show up until the new piece comes out." "Over the past 12 years, the biggest challenge of endless tasks has been how to keep players happy in the same virtual world." Players are always on the go, so keeping the freshness and excitement of playing is one of the biggest challenges developers face, especially for those who have developed the game for 12 years.　　"Letting them have something new to play with is probably the biggest challenge," Smedley admits. Other "Endless tasks" over the years, the game spawned many other sister games, Norrath champions, PS2 's endless tasks online: Adventures and the "Endless Task II" on the PC. Many fans think the game has little to do with the previous one, at least very different from the original. Smedley in the interview that we call him "Endless Task II" is obviously a mistake, if possible, the development team may change it.　　Of course, "Endless Task II" does not play like the classic "Endless Task", and now many players think that "endless Task II" is only a replica of the World of Warcraft, but did not know "endless Task II" before the "World of Warcraft" issued. Of course, Sony Entertainment online never thought the game could run for 12 years. The Endless Task II was supposed to be a continuation of the product. After all, "endless tasks" have been in operation for many years and may be about to die, right?"We're sitting here, talking about the 12 anniversary of the game, which is surprising in itself," Smedley said. "I thought the game would be like any other work and lose the market in a few years, but it never occurred to me." So if we can do it again, we'll rename the endless Task II.　　"Well, next?" We talked about the data, the next few steps, and the natural process of the game, and now we have to understand the endless task sequel, the Top secret product of Sony Entertainment online. The details of the game are rarely exposed, and players are not explained in their answers to "World of Warcraft" and the original from Sony Entertainment online. "The sequel will be more accurate than those concepts," Smedley told us, while Sony Entertainment Online felt "really really confident." Players are not going to see "Hentai task 2.5" or a Clone of Warcraft or anything like that. The concept is that the game world will run itself. "We don't want to go back to our predecessors," Smedley cautiously, "What we're going to do is revolutionary, not evolutionary." The game is absolutely unbelievable and it has its own style. What we are going to achieve is a unique style. "Unfortunately, he refused to give us more information," the game features are still confidential. "The Future of endless tasks" If you were you, how would you face the world that has provided tens of thousands of players with 12 years of adventure? Is there a shot in the endless task? One important point to note is that the endless tasks remain more or less the original. The image is also. Many players even boast that they are still playing with the machine that was playing the game 12 years ago. They have upgraded the image engine, and the most frequently upgraded is the role model in the Lucarin movie.　　Only players want more fancy images, they need to upgrade their configuration. Of course, until now, the game can still run on classic machines, and some things are important to the development team. "Every couple of years, we compare the other games," Harvey Burgess told us, "There's one thing that's been going on in our hearts, and that's that we have a lot of players who are going to finish this game from the very beginning, We need to make sure that our players do not need to go outside to upgrade the computer to play our game smoothly. It may be hard to guarantee, but the endless task is the beginning. "The endless task runs smoothly, and Alan agrees:" We have the confidence to compare our original picture with any current game and be satisfied with the result. "There are many plans for the future, such as the recurrence of past tasks and the development of new large copies of the field," he said. Now, the development team has learned a lot from the mistakes of the past, and is more adept at developing the field copy capabilities of many people involved. The film will also continue to be issued on schedule. Each year, the development CorpsThe team prepares a three-year plan, and every year they assume the same thing, "endless tasks" will last for at least three years. Does this mean that the 20th piece of "Endless task" will be realized?　　How incredible it would be. Where will the endless tasks go? The few who are doing are full of confidence in the game. "We will continue to bring interesting content to players and a more dreamy future," he said. We have no shortage of ideas, we have our own way forward. We've been getting stronger. Unless the idea is inconsistent, we will continue to provide the players with what they love. "It's a dream that's been going on for 12 years and I want to come back for another 12 years."