Bi-Weekly Q&A #8

Chris Lena talks about the progression servers with our own Laura Genender

Fresh off her tale of crafting glory on the Progression Servers, Laura got to ask SOE's Chris Lena a few questions about how they've been going and what SOE plans to do with them.

Both of the servers are still going amazingly well with their populations continuing to exceed that of a normal server. I would expect some loss as some players return to their regular play servers and especially once the progression portion is completed. In other words, I still imagine their will be a merge but we are still a long way away.

Currently there are no plans to support transfers of any sort until a server has caught up to the current expansion. At that point it will become a regular server and will be allowed the normal types of transfers.

As long as an expansion comes out before a progression server reaches the newest expansion their will be special criteria that must be met to open that new expansion. For instance their will be content from Prophecy of Ro that must be defeated before The Serpent’s Spine will be opened. If a server “catches up” to the latest expansion then we will most likely make it a normal play server at that point.

It is too soon to make any solid plans for new progression servers of any kind. Since it is so successful I imagine we will do another at some point but not before the current two run their course. There have been some great debates on our forums for other possible special rules versions and we will definitely take those under consideration if we do another Progression server. I, personally, like the idea of using a predetermined timer to open each expansion – maybe 3-6 months each.

As everyone probably knows they don’t let me talk about subscription numbers but I don’t think I will get in trouble for saying that the servers are leaving a strong positive mark on our overall number of EverQuest subscribers. But even without the Progression server 2006 has been a great year for the game.