Still figuring out what Ello is for… slow at work today, new projects are being specced but this close to the end of the year and a department-wide vacation, not much is getting done. We had a release early this morning which went fairly well. I was barely conscious.
But since I was up so early, I decided to work a little more on Crushbone’s Revenge. I’ve spent so long on this now that it seems like there was never a time when I wasn’t working on it this year. In reality, I started development on it in October, I think, or early November, so it really hasn’t been that long.
Then, this morning, I realized that I could have made my original idea, Crushbone Arena, instead. As I placed encounters in the Shard of Hate, the final location, and noticed how arena-like it appeared, I could have actually joined story and straight combat instead of the rather drawn-out story I have now.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy with how the now renamed Crushbone’s Revenge has come along. Even though I plotted it out (for once) before I started building, the story got more complex as I built it. I didn’t really intend for Retlon Brenclog to become as central to the plot as he has become. I made the Kelethin wood elves more sympathetic than I intended. I expanded the role of “Priestess of Tunare”, whom anyone would recognize as Firiona Vie, EverQuest’s mascot, from an Easter egg to at least a slightly expanded role.
Average playtime for the quest in its currently published state is 37 minutes, though. All this expansion has come at a heavy price in time debt. And the currently published version didn’t have the final encounters, which include a stage to go out and gather allies (though you can get Firiona Vie for free if you don’t want to go searching).
