How much of Kunark was leftover from the original release vs new development?

[Abominog]

A question about EQ development history.

Do you think that content in the Kunark expansion was 100% created after the original game was released? Or did it contain some leftover ideas, zones, etc. that didn't weren't finished for the original game and retrooled for the expansion?

This topic crossed my mind when thinking about the similarity and difference between Iksar and the lizardmen of the Feerott and Rathe Mountains. Consider also the Swamp Of No Hope which has a froglok city and the innothule swamp. So in both cases there's a zone of cazic worshipping lizardmen in close proximity to a swamp of frogloks. I wonder if the original plan might have been for the lizardmen to be a playable race in the old world.

How about other dungeons or zones? Is it possible that some of the areas in the original map that don't exist in the game were finished, renamed and used as part of Kunark?

[Gustoo]

Sounds reasonable to me, really.

[Jimjam]

Most of the first few expansions predate the whole game as the world was originally a home brew dnd campaign which got turned into a 3d graphical mud.

[Danth]

The concept and probably some of the basic design for said zones/continents pre-dates the original launch. We know they planned to have additional landmasses called "Velious" and "Kunark." Signs advertising said continents are visible at the Erudin and Freeport docks, respectively.

Very little of the physical world appears to predate release. Kunark assets have more detail and visibly higher allotments for polygon counts/etc. Zone lines are done differently, and so forth.

Danth

[Abominog]

Most of the first few expansions predate the whole game as the world was originally a home brew dnd campaign which got turned into a 3d graphical mud.

Really? I didn't know about the homebrew D&D campaign. I know there's some MUD that the classes were largely lifted from. The name of the MUD escapes me right now. But when I looked into that it seemed like the lore/world of that MUD wasn't used for EQ, just the classes and abilities. If there was a D&D campaign that the lore was based on that would make sense though.

The concept and probably some of the basic design for said zones/continents pre-dates the original launch. We know they planned to have additional landmasses called "Velious" and "Kunark." Signs advertising said continents are visible at the Erudin and Freeport docks, respectively.



Wow, I didn't know that either. I also never noticed the signs on the docks. There are NPCs that mention velious and kunark in the old world but I assume those were added after the original release. There's also research items like "Ice of Velious" which I assume to have been added later.

[Jimjam]

Check the docks in Erudin. Promises passage to Velious iirc. The barbarian lenka in Freepoort seafarers roost also talks of her adventures in velious iirc.

[Orome Luclin]

Hey OP you might enjoy this:
https://www.pcgamer.com/breaking-the-internet-the-story-of-everquest-the-mmo-that-changed-everything/

[greenspectre]

Check the docks in Erudin. Promises passage to Velious iirc. The barbarian lenka in Freepoort seafarers roost also talks of her adventures in velious iirc.

Nice to see Erudin totally made good on those promises and didn't just leave it to the gnom- ohhh wait

[Crawdad]

Really? I didn't know about the homebrew D&D campaign. I know there's some MUD that the classes were largely lifted from. The name of the MUD escapes me right now. But when I looked into that it seemed like the lore/world of that MUD wasn't used for EQ, just the classes and abilities. If there was a D&D campaign that the lore was based on that would make sense though.


The story, world, and characters came from Bill Trost DM'ing for several of the original designers. You can dig around with his name, its pretty interesting to read tidbits about the Plane of Mud or the halfling cleric GM.

[hekk99]

There is a thread somewhere on the forums (maybe in the screenshots board if IIRC) that has a link to or old pictures of a gaming magazine spread on EQ.

The article was a promotion for the upcoming EQ release, and contained detailed descriptions of the races, classes, and had some quotes from Brad McQuaid. In it, McQuaid said that the world would consist of five continents: Odus, Antonica, Faydwer, Kunark, and Velious.

That would suggest, as others have said, that the world was conceptualized well before launch, though it seems that they couldn't finish everything they wanted by the original release.

I've wondered, too, about the differences between the Iksar and the lizardmen of Cazic Thule. Was that planned before release or was it something they went with due to time/budget restrictions at the time? Seems like it may have always been planned that way.

And yes, the Odus docks do advertise passage to Velious. I wonder why that never happened. May have made it too difficult for evil races to use the boat? And in Freeport, Lenka Stoutheart says her ship made the Kunark run in under two weeks (I think; as well as passage to Kunark being advertised on the docks--again, I wonder why it didn't materialize in Freeport).

I remember when Velious came out, the marketing (maybe even on the box) said it was an expansion focusing on higher level (35+) players. I wonder if that was always planned or if they decided that needed to be the case after 2 years of the game being out.

[Thorgrimm]

The Lore was there in generalities

Development is an entirely different ball game

EQ Vanilla at release was still basically in a beta state so it could make money over summer

[Abominog]

Thanks for all the informative posts. That PC Gamer article was a great read.


The article was a promotion for the upcoming EQ release, and contained detailed descriptions of the races, classes, and had some quotes from Brad McQuaid. In it, McQuaid said that the world would consist of five continents: Odus, Antonica, Faydwer, Kunark, and Velious.

That would suggest, as others have said, that the world was conceptualized well before launch, though it seems that they couldn't finish everything they wanted by the original release.

I haven't seen that one but will look for it. As a matter of fact even Odus was only partially finished on release, wasn't it? If I recall it consisted only of Erudin, Toxxulia, Kerra Isle and I guess you could throw in Erud's Crossing. Paineel, The Hole, The Warrens and Stonebrunt were all added later.

[Gustoo]

Yeah erudin was a major ghost town and even with the hole update is barely a complete place.

The McQuaid quote is a reason that this project ends with velious which seems to be closest to intended complete vision before game seems to go sideways.

If I was developing a server for no reason I would make a vanilla + server that fills in the vanilla world to the max, but probably not going to kunark and velious because of how they obsolete the vanilla stuff in an unnatural progression.

[Eredhel]

It can also help to know that after this time period the devs left for other projects. After that EQ development became make it up as you go with lore and expansions.

[Lightbringer55]

I remember when Velious came out, the marketing (maybe even on the box) said it was an expansion focusing on higher level (35+) players. I wonder if that was always planned or if they decided that needed to be the case after 2 years of the game being out.

Probably a combination of both. The fact there were no new races released with Velious allowed them to make it a higher level content expansion while Kunark had the introduction of the Iksar and therefore needed new player zones/content.