I have finally been granted an exclusive interview with Lineage II Producer Adam "Rust" Davidson! This means that I need
to get questions from the audience again! Adam has decided to stop off at my studio and we are gonna get all the questions you the Lineage Radio audience and people want to hear! The Interview will be broadcasted on Thursday, September 28.
Other than that guys: the questions are in your hands! you can ask about bots, marketing etc! Its all up to you!! I'll be picking some questions trying to get all of them but, I can't gurantee I'll hit everyone so it's important that you phrase your question politely and make sure it's
a topic that catches my eye ;)
--Will we ever see a mainstream marketing campaign for L2?
(game mags, tv commercials, etc)
-- We know that the L2 Epic collection will be at most video game retailers, but will we see it at other major retailers such as wal-mart?
--How much freedom does the NA "development team" have in regards to L2 content for NA and Euro players (not just events), or is it just "what korea wants, we get"?
With all the changes we have been seeing as of late, people are saying that lineage is losing it's hardcore edge that makes it lineage. And has started to develop a World of WarCraft softness.
Do you feel this is so? And what are you doing to keep the hardness that is lineage hardcore?
1. How long does the average investigation last before a ruling is made on the account (concerning violations of third-party software usage)?
2. Are petitons made about mass bot sightings (such as a call of attention to dozens of bots killing themselves on guards in beginning towns) handled on a toon-by-toon basis or are multiple characters investigated at once?
Enough of that ugliness, now for my own curiosity. :D
3. With Franz already hitting heavy traffic status, is there any plan for another European server in the works?
4. What's your favorite pizza topping (if you don't like pizza, you must answer anyway *shakes fist*)
5. What tweaks, if any, are you allowed to make to the North American release of Lineage II without direct approval of the Korean development team?
6. Are there fresh flowers on Mistryl's desk every morning? :o
And lastly
7. Are there any plans to make the Schuttgart territory more appealing to first profession level characters? Currently, the high gating costs render the area relatively out of reach for the Aden kingdom characters.
1. When are we getting the second patch?
2. When is the community server going up
3. What are the plans for lineage now?
4. Have you yourself played lineage?
With all the changes we have been seeing as of late, people are saying that lineage is losing it's hardcore edge that makes it lineage. And has started to develop a World of WarCraft softness.
Do you feel this is so? And what are you doing to keep the hardness that is lineage hardcore?
On the expansions story wise. Are you all planning to tie the story lines of Lineage and Lineage II and make Lineage II like the prequel it seemed when it launched? Or has Lineage II basically become it's own story sharing the same names and races as Lineage but not the same universe.
In light of all the current/past bot problems, when do you plan on changing the banning procedure to help expedite bot removal? In most game site communities ( mmorpg.com for example) this game is almost a joke due to its bot infestation. Something new must be done about it. This problem is turning away new and old players left and right, and a LOT of people are turned off by it before they even join (hell, i almost was).
i think this question hasnt been asked yet.
besides the botting, the future plans, and all really interesting matters that were asked above, there is the major problem of lag, disconnects and critical errors. i put them ALL in just 1 category because all these started after C5 and Franz knocked our doors.
and i know im not the only one having problems. problems i couldnt even think would be so serious before C5.
i know that this question will be answered like "well, its not our problem, check your connection" but i think that majority is facing same problem as me and all i know IRL and play this game.
for the record, had more than 4 dc and more than 10 crit errors the last 7 hours, not to mention the frame-by-frame gaming. not to mention how many times, my character and my party members died.
1. How are GMs trained to respond to petitions by players calling attention to areas of significant bot presense as opposed to individual characters?
2. Have you ever sat in or led a meeting where the experiences of new players are discussed and played out live. For example: setting up a monitor to watch a new player in the first half hour of game play on a current live server (I suggest Franz) and then spending a part of the meeting discussing what a new player's first impressions would be?
3. Have you ever sat in or led a meeting where the topic was "What could turn players away from Lineage II and finding solutions to the problems" or something similar?
4. Are there any plans for European specific marketing of Lineage II?
5. Have you logged into Franz at all since its opening? If so, what are you impressions?
1- Several new games in both Korea and NA (including L2 in korea) are taking advantage of alternate rule servers. In the case of L2 Korea this is in the form of relax servers and non PvP servers, in other cases there are even more alternate servers to appeal to an even broader market.
There is a huge proliferation of private servers in NA, this is mostly due to the fact these servers offer what NC soft doesnt in the realm of alternate rules, such as PvP servers, high rates servers, etc.
Why has NC soft despite overwhelming community demand ever considered creating a server like LoA was in L1 or a few alternate rules servers for relax (like in korea) or even a high rate PvP server?
-Omitted to keep the question short: Alternate rules server are a cheap way to sell a MMO to a wider market, this goes as far back as diablo in battle.net. Different people are looking for a different gameplay experience, this doesnt mean they should be looking for another game but for another server of that same game.
I am aware that the lack of a monthly fee plays a role on peoples choice to play a private server, however I think alternate rules play a more significant role. This is proven by the fact many successful such servers operate on a donation scheme and some gather significant ammounts of money this way.
Furthermore the great success of the C4 PTS was mostly due to offering people a chance to experience a fast paced environment to try a new class/gear setup or simply to have some PvP fun. I know many wish there was a permanent server (without wipes) that played somewhat similarly to C4 PTS.
2- When a big decision is to be made, IE add a new server, who calls the shots? Is the decision made by the L2 team? NC soft NA execs? NC Korea?
3- With everyone looking at L3 in the horizon, does NC soft NA have any plans to enhance communication between the NA and Korean communities to greatly reduce the time it takes for us to get information, media and beta test L3?
4- Recently we had the chance to do a QA with the Korean devs, consider giving a pay rise to whoever came up with that idea and made it happen. I was fairly disappointed with the chosen questions, and even more disappointed with the short and uninformative answers, however this is none the less a great precedent on how things could be done.
Are there any plans to further create oportunities for the NA and korean communities to have more interaction with each other? If so could you reveal some?
1- Several new games in both Korea and NA (including L2 in korea) are taking advantage of alternate rule servers. In the case of L2 Korea this is in the form of relax servers and non PvP servers, in other cases there are even more alternate servers to appeal to an even broader market.
There is a huge proliferation of private servers in NA, this is mostly due to the fact these servers offer what NC soft doesnt in the realm of alternate rules, such as PvP servers, high rates servers, etc.
Why has NC soft despite overwhelming community demand ever considered creating a server like LoA was in L1 or a few alternate rules servers for relax (like in korea) or even a high rate PvP server?
-Omitted to keep the question short: Alternate rules server are a cheap way to sell a MMO to a wider market, this goes as far back as diablo in battle.net. Different people are looking for a different gameplay experience, this doesnt mean they should be looking for another game but for another server of that same game.
I am aware that the lack of a monthly fee plays a role on peoples choice to play a private server, however I think alternate rules play a more significant role. This is proven by the fact many successful such servers operate on a donation scheme and some gather significant ammounts of money this way.
Furthermore the great success of the C4 PTS was mostly due to offering people a chance to experience a fast paced environment to try a new class/gear setup or simply to have some PvP fun. I know many wish there was a permanent server (without wipes) that played somewhat similarly to C4 PTS.
2- When a big decision is to be made, IE add a new server, who calls the shots? Is the decision made by the L2 team? NC soft NA execs? NC Korea?
3- With everyone looking at L3 in the horizon, does NC soft NA have any plans to enhance communication between the NA and Korean communities to greatly reduce the time it takes for us to get information, media and beta test L3?
4- Recently we had the chance to do a QA with the Korean devs, consider giving a pay rise to whoever came up with that idea and made it happen. I was fairly disappointed with the chosen questions, and even more disappointed with the short and uninformative answers, however this is none the less a great precedent on how things could be done.
Are there any plans to further create oportunities for the NA and korean communities to have more interaction with each other? If so could you reveal some?
To add on question of how much can US team do on it's own: Can you do any events, or all events we get are copy+paste from Korea?
Also, how many GM's are working at a same time at different times of the day?
Will we see dwarves getting a boost in vital areas anytime soon? i.e pvp, pve and economical skills? Because as it stands the race itself hasn't evolved since prelude, but rather nerfed each chronicle.
Every month we report thousands of bots and every month you remove thousands of bots and every month there are thousands of new bots. It's a never ending cycle...
Since the introduction of gameguard there hasn't been anything done to the games client to prevent this bot issue. What has delayed you in preventing these third party programs from interacting with the game servers?
After Courage Scrolls got added is there any further plans to make pvp less exp focused. What current addition will be added to the pvp part of the game?
Also will the future pvp system be focused around sieges or you planning to anything different for the pvp experience?
1- Several new games in both Korea and NA (including L2 in korea) are taking advantage of alternate rule servers. In the case of L2 Korea this is in the form of relax servers and non PvP servers, in other cases there are even more alternate servers to appeal to an even broader market.
There is a huge proliferation of private servers in NA, this is mostly due to the fact these servers offer what NC soft doesnt in the realm of alternate rules, such as PvP servers, high rates servers, etc.
Why has NC soft despite overwhelming community demand ever considered creating a server like LoA was in L1 or a few alternate rules servers for relax (like in korea) or even a high rate PvP server?
-Omitted to keep the question short: Alternate rules server are a cheap way to sell a MMO to a wider market, this goes as far back as diablo in battle.net. Different people are looking for a different gameplay experience, this doesnt mean they should be looking for another game but for another server of that same game.
I am aware that the lack of a monthly fee plays a role on peoples choice to play a private server, however I think alternate rules play a more significant role. This is proven by the fact many successful such servers operate on a donation scheme and some gather significant ammounts of money this way.
Furthermore the great success of the C4 PTS was mostly due to offering people a chance to experience a fast paced environment to try a new class/gear setup or simply to have some PvP fun. I know many wish there was a permanent server (without wipes) that played somewhat similarly to C4 PTS.
2- When a big decision is to be made, IE add a new server, who calls the shots? Is the decision made by the L2 team? NC soft NA execs? NC Korea?
3- With everyone looking at L3 in the horizon, does NC soft NA have any plans to enhance communication between the NA and Korean communities to greatly reduce the time it takes for us to get information, media and beta test L3?
4- Recently we had the chance to do a QA with the Korean devs, consider giving a pay rise to whoever came up with that idea and made it happen. I was fairly disappointed with the chosen questions, and even more disappointed with the short and uninformative answers, however this is none the less a great precedent on how things could be done.
Are there any plans to further create oportunities for the NA and korean communities to have more interaction with each other? If so could you reveal some?
- why does ncsoft NA refuse to market l2?
-why does ncsoft NA refuse to have GM's who are not sentient in game and not just spam auto replies of "thanks for playing lineage2", when you have a real issue?
-why doesnt ncsoftNA have a dev team? lack of funds? lack of caring? im curious.
Hope you guys enjoyed it and I hope I was able to shed some light or at least give you a little clarification on the subjects y'all wanted to know about.
Here are the highlights of Rust's interview. Lineage Radio should have a copy of this available soon, so be sure to listen if you want to hear all of the details!
<ul type="square"> We don't have plans to implement server transfers, but we continue to look at the possibility. There is a lot to consider before server transfers can be implemented. Lineage II North America/Europe currently has more subscribers than we have ever had. The Lineage II Epic Collection will give Lineage II a presence in the retail stores, and we will continue to market and advertise the game. Want to see Lineage II re-reviewed by your favorite sites or publications? Let them know! Lineage II will remain focused on providing a "hardcore" PvP experience for our players. In the last year, approximately 50,000 bots have been banned, and we continue to refine our methods and go after these violators. Rust's favorite pizza topping is pepperoni. Thank you to everyone who provided a question for the interview!