Arguably, the most important aspect of any massively multiplayer online game is the player's relationship with their character. Through thought provoking gameplay or solid balancing, every gamer should have the opportunity to love the class that he or she plays.



Evan Michaels is one of the group of individuals responsible for making the classes in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures fun for players of the game. While we were in Oslo, the Ten Ton Hammer staff sat down with Evan to discuss a few of the more intriguing problems faced in MMOGs today and how AoC is dealing with them. His answers are quite candid, and his enthusiasm for building these classes is really apparent.

It's a really tough situation, when you try to balance both PvP and PvE at the same time. To an extent, as a developer you must make a concerted effort to do your best to balance things, but also realize that you're never going to make everyone happy.Everyone's opinion on PvP balance is different. Of course, it's half the reason people play MMOGs; it's for that back-and-forth, tugging and pulling. I'll admit that I've done my fair share of whining on message boards. I was very talkative on the AO forums about my thoughts on class balance, and I think it's perfectly normal for people to talk.

• Read the Interview here.
• Discuss it here.