With Lineage
2
deploying their style="font-style: italic;">High Five
update today on the west servers, Ten Ton Hammer wanted to learn more
about this fan friendly update. style="font-style: italic;">High Five
includes new skills, new raid bosses, 2 revamped hunting zones, and
more, all of which are fan-inspired.  We talked to Steve Chae,
development director of style="font-style: italic;">Lineage 2
for his insights into the game and this latest content update.





Ten
Ton Hammer:
 Hi Steve!



Steve
Chae:
Hello! Thank
you for taking the time for this interview.


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alt="lineage 2 high five"
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Ten
Ton Hammer:
Thank you for
joining us. I look forward to learning more about the upcoming style="font-style: italic;">High Five
update.



Steve
Chae:
We plan on launching
the update February 15th, to get that question out of the
way. Since the last couple of years haven’t really
had any major updates, we took the time to get a lot of feedback from
our players and customers and this is what we’re rolling
out—a patch for the players.



For any major MMORPG, of course it’s important to provide a
lot of major updates, but it’s also important to provide
continuous updates. Instead of having major updates every 1-2
years, we’ve broken them up into monthly or more often than
that even updates. That’s the idea behind style="font-style: italic;">High Five—a
stream of updates for the players, requested by the players.



High
Five
will be appreciated by
the West, but we’ve actually collected data and feedback from
all regions to create this patch. Our hope and our wish is
that the players will play the style="font-style: italic;">High Five
updates and enjoy style="font-style: italic;">Lineage II
now more than ever.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
A quick question
about how the feedback was gathered. From North America to
Asia, did you get different kinds of feedback? Is the West getting a
different version of style="font-style: italic;">High Five,
or is it the same across the board?



Steve
Chae:
What we do in Korea is
that they collect feedback through various channels, such as forum
posts, and any in-game reports or mail we receive. Sometimes
we invite feedback directly in-game as well.  We then go
through it, analyze it, and this is the result. The patch
we’re rolling out is similar on both servers.


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Ten
Ton Hammer:
Of the four major
bullet points that we’re seeing with style="font-style: italic;">High Five
–30 new skills, 7 raid bosses, 2 premium hunting zones, and
the Grand Olympiad enhancements – which of those has been the
most requested?



Steve
Chae:
As far as those bullet
points go, there isn’t one particular feature that we have
focused on. The feedback they got from the players was just to enhance
everything already in the game, and that’s the general
direction we took this patch. We took the existing gameplay
and expanded on it, and made it better. It’s now
more exciting and with the Grand Olympiad, the players will be able to
make it more exciting for themselves!



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Are the features
of High
Five
focusing on veteran
players exclusively? Or is there anything in this update
geared for newer players?



Steve
Chae:
We didn’t
include any specific updates for new users, but with the updates across
the board, even new users will be happier.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Can you tell me
anything about the new hunting zones? We know that one is
indoors and the other outdoors, but do you have any more details to
spare?



Steve
Chae:
The new outdoors zone
is a hunting ground, and the new indoors zone is actually
instanced. They took existing zone ideas and wanted to make
them better and take them a step further. We took the existing content
that players loved and enhanced the difficulty a notch.


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Ten
Ton Hammer:
Regarding the
difficulty, we know that you wanted to kick things up a notch, but you
also wanted to make the content more accessible for more
people. What specifically have you done to make it more
exciting while making it more accessible for newer players to see as
well?



Steve
Chae:
A couple of
things. Current zones will benefit from the class-specific and
balance changes, and we’ve made some of the older group
content slightly easier to make for a more enjoyable
experience. Regarding group play, we found that a lot of
players were having difficulty with the level 79 content. So
we brought that down a fair bit and we’re hoping that this
update brings people together and makes group play a much more viable
option, now that it’s not as stressful.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
For my last
question, regarding the changes you’re making with the Grand
Olympiad, this isn’t going to be a temporary or seasonal
content idea. Can you share any of your future plans for
it? Will there be more quests, or more stadiums?



Steve
Chae:
For the Grand Olympiad
changes being made with this update, the two main goals were to provide
more fair gameplay for users, and also to provide them with more
diverse and a more fun platform to play in. As far as future
plans for the Olympiad, we are definitely making more things for the
future. In the grand scheme of things though, players will
eventually be able to battle cross-server and bring the tight
communities of style="font-style: italic;">Lineage
closer. Look forward to it!



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Thank you very
much for your time, Steve. We look forward to the patch going live
later today!


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To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Lineage II Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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