Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

EverQuest has just seen its tenth birthday, and to honor the occasion we spoke with SOE's Ed Hardin, a longtime player turned Game Designer who has actually been playing EQ for more than ten years, having first picked up the game in Beta 4.

Ed shares a few of his own EQ memories before sharing a little of what the EQ Live Team has been up to in the months since October 2008's Seeds of Destruction expansion (EQ's fifteenth) and tackling a few of the hottest topics in the official forums. That and more awaits you in this exclusive chat with EverQuest Game Designer Ed Hardin, only at Ten Ton Hammer!

Jeff Woleslagle, Ten Ton Hammer: I understand you’ve been playing since beta 4, so you’re definitely a long term EQ player. Could you talk a little bit about how you got into the game and your history with the game?

Ed Hardin, Game Designer, EverQuest: When I was in college I started playing MUDs, just text-based stuff, and actually got really involved and started writing some areas for one of them that I played.

Ten Ton Hammer: So you were a designer before you joined the SOE team?

Ed: Yea, I wasn’t a very good one (laughter), but right after I got out of college, there was a gap there. I was looking around for a game. I’d played Ultima Online, but it didn’t really grab me. I found out about the EverQuest beta and signed up and ended up in beta 4. It was 3D, it was amazing, and it really hooked me right off the bat.

Firiona née Marilyn wasn't available for comment

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you have a favorite class?

Ed: I’m kind of hesitant to say what class I play because I actually get really good feedback that way - no one knows that I’m actually a designer. I’ve played just about every class. I’ve got a cleric I like, I’ve been playing a necro alt a lot lately. My first ever character was a troll shadowknight, and had no idea about the XP penalties - I just wondered why I couldn’t keep up with my friends. (laughter) I have an alt problem; I just keep starting new ones and playing them up to about level 20.

Ten Ton Hammer: Going back to the troll shadowknight experience penalty, that brings up one thing I really wanted to ask you about. EQ was and is harsh by today’s standards. Being a long term player and designer, are you sad about the direction that the industry is taking - being more about casual appeal than hardcore dedication?

Ed: I think so. Original EQ, back when I first started playing it, I didn’t have a job. I’d finished college and I was taking night classes learning networking, so my only time commitment was about 12 hours a week for classes and the rest was EverQuest. It really worked well for me then. But as I’ve grown older and have more responsibilities, the industry’s matured with that as well. I don’t have 8 hours a day to play, and most games don’t require that anymore. Yea, it loses something, but I can’t go back to that, and I think that it’s important that the industry keeps up with its audience.

Ten Ton Hammer: One thing that I personally believe that EQ did a great job with was the downtime, and it was good downtime. I remember riding the boat back and forth from Butcherblock to Freeport and talking to people onboard, and nowadays you don’t have that. No one talks to each other on the zeppelin because there’s really no time. Now that you’re in with the nuts and bolts of the game, was that downtime intentional and important to the experience? Or was it just a remnant of the slower paced dikuMUD way of gaming?

Ed: In a lot of ways it was. The MUD that I worked on, we actually had to slow combat down to save load on the server. But I know that the original designers thought that building in downtime was what helped the community grow because you were forced to talk because, otherwise, there wasn’t anything to do. And I agree. I was certainly more likely to talk to random people then than I am now.

So yea, it was intentional at the time, but the industry has moved away from it. We have in some respects, as well. We’re still slower, we’re not as frenetic. There’s time to know people, but you still have to work at it.