black·guard  (blag' - ärd) n. 1. A thoroughly unprincipled person; a scoundrel. (!)

The EverQuest 2 Community Manager Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder considers the legitimacy of Alternate Advancement (AAs), bards that actually play instruments (imagine that!), and some crafting questions in "Ask SOE #39" at EQ2 Vault.

"Andrew "Tamat" Beegle: Will you guys be introducing AA's (Alternate Abilities) for the high-end players that grind to 60 and get bored out of their minds? Or at least something similar to that, enabling players to advance their characters past the max adventure level?

Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder: We’re absolutely looking into the kinds of things we can do for parallel or post-end game advancement. Adding new character powers is a tricky balancing act. We want to ensure that whatever we put out there is fun, rewarding, and powerful. At the same time, the trick is for us to do so in a way where we do not cause a stratified layer of “you must have all of your extra advancement, or you can no longer play the game,” as that then steers the entire direction of the game toward the hardest of the hardcore, which isn’t desirable for the other 97% of the people who play."

Take a look at the latest EverQuest 2 interview at EQ2 Vault.

Other links you might enjoy:

• EQ2 Community Summit Wrap-Up - Where some of these questions were answered, like, a month ago... duh.
• Other EverQuest 2 News - And by other, we mean older.