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Interview With Vanguard  Producer, Thom Terrazas

by Dalmarus
January 8th, 2008

Interviews

• Part 1: The Riftway System
• Part 2: Flying Mounts
• Part 3: Necromancers
• Part 4: The Ancient Port Warehouse Riftway System

Part 1: The Riftway System

Dalmarus: With the addition of the Riftway System some time ago, traveling the lands of Telon has certainly become a much more friendly experience to the player with limited play time. Are there any plans to add even more stones to some of the more remote locations of either Thestra or Qalia? If so, will they be on their own network, or will they be incorporated into the existing three?

Thom: We actually plan on revamping the riftway system a bit to make it a little more user friendly. Right now it can be sort of confusing (especially if you don’t have a riftway map handy) and there are regions of the world that don’t have proper riftway access. We plan on addressing that in our next update – we can give more details as we get a little closer to it.

Dalmarus: Is there any lore behind the decision to have the Riftway System split into three networks? Was it meant to be designed as an early guide on appropriate content level areas? If not, can you explain why the sites within each network are grouped as they are?

Thom: Originally, it was designed to be tiered into different approximate level ranges. As I said above though, we’re going to be retooling the way the riftways work a bit in the not too distant future.

Dalmarus: While the majority of the Riftway Stones are set in very useful areas, the stone at Pankor Zhi seems like an odd choice. Are there any plans to complete the Dark Elf city and add appropriate content to justify the stone's location? Are there plans to move this or any other stone in the possible future?

Thom: Over the course of the next several updates we’ll be reevaluating some of the underused areas in the game. Right now there aren’t currently plans to revamp Pankor Zhi but after we’ve given it a more thorough evaluation we’ll see. You will probably see some stones moved around though – or rather, more stones added.

Dalmarus: Is there any discussion of adding in class specific ports/gates similar to the Wizard and Druid of EQ1? If so, would they be tied into the Riftway System, or would they be a separate set within themselves?

Thom: Yes ~ This is being discussed at this moment actually. We will be doing an evaluation of classes for the game overall but this is one reason to make sure that we fit abilities of this nature to the correct class.