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

In this week’s installment of Ten Ton Hammer Live!, our intrepid hosts track down the elusive David Georgeson, Senior Producer of EverQuest 2 at Sony Online Entertainment. After capture, Jesse Cox and Benjamin J. de la Durantaye pick his brains on upcoming changes to EverQuest 2! Please note that no animals were harmed during the production of this podcast, only people.

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Jesse Cox: Tonight, we are especially proud and happy to be joined by EverQuest II producer and all around super guy, David Georgeson. Dave, welcome to the show.

David Georgeson: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Jesse Cox: First off, congratulations on the producer job. Hopefully, everything is going well, yes?

David Georgeson: Yeah, things are going well. Like I’ve mentioned to a bunch of people in the past, the learning curve is pretty fierce, but it’s a really good team. It’s a great project with depth like nobody can believe, and I’m really excited to be here.

Jesse Cox: Can you tell us a little bit about your past at SOE? Where does one come from to become producer of EverQuest II?

David Georgeson: Well, I’ve been making PC games for over 20 years now. Started way back with SSI on the Gold Box series of Dungeons and Dragons; the very first computer games for Dungeons and Dragons. I have worked at SOE before. I did Planetside with the guys. We put together the world’s only MMOFPS that earned that name. Then I went away and wandered in the wilderness for a while making some other stuff and just recently came back to SOE in February. So, I’ve been producer, director, lead designer on projects for a couple of decades now, and coming back now, they’re trusting me with their big project.  I’m honored to be here and glad to be part of it.

Jesse Cox: Speaking of recently, Sentinel’s Fate launched fairly recently and everyone seems to be having a lot of fun. Dare I ask what is next for EverQuest II?

David Georgeson: Well, sure! The next update comes out…I don’t think that we’ve announced a date, but what the heck, it comes out at the end of the month. We intend to have a lot of really cool stuff coming out with that. Everybody’s aware of New Halas, so Halas is coming back to the game, the barbarian hometown. Beyond that, we have another update before we get to our next expansion pack. There’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing between now and then. A lot of the features haven’t been announced yet, so I’m not going to reveal anything there, but we also want to make the game a lot more successful and open to the people who haven’t played it before. We’re focusing in on a few different things that we haven’t done before as well as pushing the envelope with other features.

We’ve got the Halas stuff, we’ve got a bunch of new raids coming out, we’re continuing to create new dungeons- some of them shared and some of them are instanced, we’ve got technical features coming out, revamping the way that people can travel around through the world, we’re doing a lot to the game. That’s just in the near future. The long term picture, when we get towards the expansion, we’re really doing stuff that’s very different and I think players will get excited about it once we start revealing it.

Jesse Cox: Well, this comes to an incredibly long running joke, but in all seriousness, are there any plans then for a beastlord to be added to the game at some point?

David Georgeson: We know that people would love a beastlord, but honestly, it’s a huge amount of work. So for right now, no, it is not planned, but that doesn’t mean that it’s off the table. It’s something that we keep picking at, figuring out how to get it done.

Putting in races is a tremendous amount of work. When we do Fanfair in August, one of the things that we’re going to be doing a panel on what it takes to put it in a race and what it takes to do all the accoutrements that go with that race and how it’s all put together and showing how difficult it is. Beastlords are particularly nifty because they have their own set of animations and skeletons and other stuff, so it would be a tremendous amount of work. When we weigh the amount of work that it would be for that new race against other stuff that we could do to make the game even cooler, it doesn’t always make it up on the priority list, if that makes sense. A lot of the stuff that we come up with, other than that, is even cooler, so it ends up not making it to the top.

Jesse Cox: That was a very diplomatic answer. That was very good.

David Georgeson: It has the merit of being the truth.

Jesse Cox: That’s exactly right. You were talking about this re-introduction to Halas, and basically, the hint we got was sometime this month, maybe? Before we get into it then, what’s the storyline there? What can players expect?

David Georgeson: Well, I’m not the right guy to ask storyline questions from. A little bit of it I can tell you. It’s a floating island…well; I’m not going to get into it because I’ll screw it up! [laughter] I’ll let the storytellers tell it all. It has a lot to do with gods and why things are there and the Coldain and the Rygor orcs and all the stuff that’s going on. I’m not going to try to mangle that story; I’ll let that come out right. But, Halas itself is very cool. We’re re-establishing the barbarian hometown that was in EQ1, and of course, it’s being rebuilt so it is different. It’s a really good new user experience. I think it’s the best new user experience that is in the game right now. I just spent 5 hours playing it last night and I’m still not quite done with it. I probably have at least another night in it to get to where I want to be. There are all kinds of interesting things that we’re doing with dialogue in story. We’re making a good stab at making people feel more heroic in the beginning of the game, rather than just killing rats. It’s doing a lot with it that, in general, is very rewarding. It’s cool visually; it’s an ice and snow world so there’s a lot of blue! It’s very well done. I’m impressed with what the team has done with it so far.



Benjamin J. de la Durantaye: Is that on Antonica as well? You mentioned something about a floating island. How do players travel there?

David Georgeson: The ways that people get there are either via griffon from Butcherblock or you can create a new character at New Halas.

Jesse Cox: This starting city, is it good aligned characters only?

David Georgeson: Good and neutral. No evil.

Jesse Cox: Evil always misses out, but they’re evil so they get the bragging rights of being cool. Besides this new starting town, is there anything else about the new patch that you can share with us? About the new area, at least?

David Georgeson: The new area, the details I’ll leave for now. I’ve run into all kinds of different quests as I ran through it. There is quite a bit to it; I think there are 60 or so new quests, but in general, the update itself when we roll out New Halas, there are lots of other stuff coming out too. There’s the big travel revamp where we simplify how people get across the world. Right now, you have to do all these pre-requirements to be able to use the druid rings or something. We’re going to have a special event where things are happening in the world where the players themselves get to help change that. Then there’s a much easier interface for using the mariner’s bells and all the other ways you use to travel around the world, so it’s a lot easier to just click and go. That will make it simpler for people to get together for grouping.

We have a couple of raids that are coming out. The Icy Keep raid and the Hole raid, as well as big improvement to the battlegrounds. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the battlegrounds, but we’re going to open up the level range all the way to 30. So there’ll be a lot more people that will be able to participate in the battlegrounds. We’re also doing a lot of balance tweaks and feature improvements in that area to make it more fun. As well as the Shader 3 support, which I know you know about. Then of course, there’s the storyteller window.

Jesse Cox: You realize that, right now, I have a giant list of questions to ask just because of what you said. This is perfect; it saves me a lot of time and effort. So, the Hole? I guarantee you, right now, our listeners are going…gah...the Hole? I have to know. It’s clearly a fan favorite. How reminiscent of the Hole zone in EQ1 is this thing going to be? Battling your way through this dungeon took a long time, but was super fun and is this going to be as deep and involved as the previous incarnation of this thing?

David Georgeson: Yeah, it’s pretty big. In fact, some of the designers are still working on it. Both of the raids support 4 groups of 6 going through it. They’re pretty serious dungeons, level 90 plus; they’re big deals. The whole raid itself builds on the lore from the previous adventure that you remember from EQ1, so Master Yael is still involved in it, and the door between realms is still a big part of it. This time, Master Yael is being a lot more aggressive and has taken over a lot of stuff to protect the door with the reason for doing so will be revealed once you go through the adventure. He’s being extremely overprotective because his realm, the plane of Earth, is really at risk if he doesn’t protect it well. There’s a lot going on there. The dungeon is very, very big, and I think people will have a good time with it.

Benjamin J. de la Durantaye: That’s awesome. That’s enough reason to play EQ2 alone.

Jesse Cox: So you mentioned two new raids. How do they compare to the other raids, difficulty wise?

David Georgeson: Difficulty wise? They’ll be pretty challenging. When you have to have 4 groups together to take on the raid, it’s going to be challenging. Of course, like a lot of this stuff, you can moderate the challenge by how you approach the actual adventure itself. We’re doing a lot of stuff that way to make it a little more flexible so players can play it the way they want to. The Icy raid isn’t exactly Permafrost, but it is spawned from that idea, but there’s a lot that’s involved that might be reminiscent to players that way too.

Jesse Cox: The storyteller system, can you give us some idea what that’s about?

David Georgeson: Yeah, I really like the storyteller arc stuff a lot. When you go through a quest chain right now, there’s a lot to remember. You go through and you talk to npcs and you go through the dialogue options, and there’s a lot of lore that gets written around these adventures and sometimes it keeps out really well in the dialogue and sometimes it doesn’t. Plus, players tend to skip dialogue a lot. What we’re doing with the storytelling arc system is kind of encapsulating what has happened and why it’s important as players progress through these big quest chains. That way, it’s kind of revealed right in the interface when you open up your journal and there are these arcs that reveal themselves as you go through. So you can kind of see and easily remember why what you’re doing is important, what’s cool about it, and when you get to the end of it, you will see that an entire story has unfolded. A lot of that is going to be coming out in the expansion that is coming up, and it will be back-filling into other areas as we get time.