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

Ten Ton Hammer: From your long-term perspective on EQ, in what other ways has the game fundamentally changed since you started playing?

Ed: Certainly the newbie experience is the easiest thing to notice. When I started, it was, ‘Here’s the world, and we’ve dropped you in it.’ You don’t know what your spells do, you’ve probably got a sword or something that you might be able to autoattack your trainer if you forget the slash on ‘hail’ or something. (laughter) [Ed. note - ‘a’ was mapped to autoattack by default and NPCs could be attacked by players of all levels - which was the immediate undoing of many a new player]. Everything is trying to kill you, and you’re probably going to lose your way because there’s no maps; you’ve just got to go figure it out. There was a lot of mystery there.

Now we tell you how to play our game before you start playing it. We have directed content that’ll teach you things like here’s how to do combat, here’s how you do tradeskills, here’s how to talk to people, here’s how you buy skills and use them. All that stuff that most people would try and say ‘This game’s dumb’ just because they couldn’t figure out how to swim. I actually had a friend who’s only experience with EverQuest was backing up from where he spawned, falling in water, and drowning. (laughter) He never picked it up again. So that happens less, which is a good thing, I think.

The original EverQuest box art by the late Keith Parkinson, from back when men were men and box art was box art.

Ten Ton Hammer: The concept of large-scale, high reward PvE encounters - raids - was one solid innovation that EverQuest gave to every MMO that followed. Alternate advancement (AAs) grew into the talent tree system which is now a staple in just about every MMORPG. Is it painful or does it inspire pride to see these EQ concepts become mainstay MMO concepts?

Ed: I don’t know about painful. There is kind of a ‘Hey, look, that’s something else we did’ when we see our stuff show up in another game. There’s also a certain pride in trying to find a way to do new things, and that’s something we have a good amount of freedom to do: trying something crazy just to see if it’ll work.

Ten Ton Hammer: Your toolset for working on the game is probably pretty established by this point.

Ed: Yes, Excel is pretty good. (laughter) What’s actually really good that isn’t that common in MMOs is that we have almost entirely unfettered script access. So if I need an AI, I can write an AI. It may take a little longer, but I can do it. That’s really freeing and in a lot of ways it’s actually kind of paralyzing because if you don’t have a plan going in, you can literally make anything do anything. So you’ve got to learn how to keep yourself focused and just pick two or three fun things to provide.

Ten Ton Hammer: Looking back at the last expansion, Seeds of Destruction, from October 2008, the mercenary system was the most touted innovation. How has it held up to its billing?

Ed: It was definitely the biggest innovation in that product; in a lot of ways it’s what let us keep EQ EQ. One of our basic platforms is class dependency. At the time, the low level game was fairly impossible to play unless you were a class that could solo. So mercenaries let us make those class-dependent classes - tanks and pure healers - be able to play our low-level game without being dependent on finding someone else. So that was huge, it really was. Honestly, I like it - I like having a merc.

Ten Ton Hammer: But is a merc better than a real person? (laughter)

Ed: They’re dumber than a real person.

Ten Ton Hammer: That can be a good thing!

Ed: On the other hand, they don’t mind if I go afk to do laundry. So that’s pretty nice.

Ten Ton Hammer: In the months since SoD launched, what has the team been up to?

Ed: We’ve been working on a lot of stuff, unfortunately I can’t talk about any of it.

Ten Ton Hammer: It’s good to hear that there’s something in the works though.

Taina Rodriguez, Sony Online Entertainment: We’re just between expansion cycles, you know...

Ten Ton Hammer: So you can confirm an upcoming EQ expansion?

Taina: You can “dot dot dot” that one. (laughter) We can confirm SOE FanFaire, which will be June 25th through the 28th in Vegas at Bally’s Hotel and Casino. There’ll be lot of fun announcements, the third annual community address, we’ll be celebrating the past, present, and future of the franchise... and it won’t be as hot.