What happened?

It's been said that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Over Luclin's development our biggest enemy was time and the battle was fought over many days, even more late nights, and the occasional bad analogy.

Toward the end of Luclin's beta testing, we re-evaluated the list of features that we were planning on having finished. Unfortunately, the Interface wasn't in a state to where it could have realistically been one of them. It just needed too much work to be able to do half the cool things that we wanted it to.

After the expansion was live and the frantic pace slowed down a little, we took a deeper look at what, exactly, it was that we had on our hands.

To be brutally honest, we didn't much like what we saw.

We decided that it would be best to start over and write a more powerful system, which would allow us to do more than we had originally planned. What we really didn't want to do was advertise a fantastic new feature, then deliver something that fell short of people's expectations. We'd rather take the time and do it right.

We think it will be worth the wait. We're being a little cautious when talking about specific features for the interface at this point. While we'd love to release details of all the features it might contain, we don't want to leave anyone disappointed if a feature doesn't make it into the release. (We honestly do try to learn from our mistakes.)


When should we expect it?

EverQuest's interface consists of over 5,000 interface elements spanning 140 screens, tools, and windows. Some may not know this, but GMs and Guides have their own administrative screens in the EverQuest game client. In addition, Designers, Artists, and Animators have some of their tools built right in as well. All of these need to be recreated in the new interface.

Writing a new, solid system and integrating it with that many moving parts is a large and complicated job. It's compounded by the fact that while doing this, we need to make sure that we don't break either of the two existing interfaces. It's definitely an interesting balancing act.

Suffice it to say we have a number of developers and at least one artist working on this and nothing else.


One of the more common rumors is that we're holding it back to include it as a feature exclusive to Planes of Power -- That's not going to be the case.

Once it's nearing completion and is good enough to use for the majority of gameplay, we hope to begin rolling it out to the test server. Barring any unforeseen complications, that stage will begin sometime in the next few months.

When it's complete, the new interface will be released to all players as a standard part of the EverQuest game client.


What about the Bazaar?

The story of the Bazaar follows closely with that of the new interface. As our production cycle neared its end, we realized that we would not have time to complete the features properly before the release of Shadows of Luclin.

Because this is a complicated new trade system, rushing this project could create item and cash bugs (both duplication and loss). So, as with the interface, we decided that it was best to do it the right way.

The Bazaar will include several new windows and other such things, so creating the complete Bazaar has to wait until the new interface system is ready. Completing the Bazaar first would mean developing a number of windows for the old interface and then repeating the work for the new one.

We hope to have the Bazaar available on Test shortly after the new interface is live.


We're definitely sorry to keep you waiting for this. We're hoping that by the time it's finished, you'll agree that it was worth the wait.


- The EverQuest Team