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PARTY HEARTY
Senior Producer Scott Hartsman Helps us Celebrate Role-Playing Legend EverQuest II's Birthday in Style
Every MMO player - and even millions who've never laid hand on a keyboard, let alone accessed a broadband connection - knows the name EverQuest II. It's only the all-encompassing, casual play-oriented, addiction-spawning sequel to the fantasy epic that first put massively multiplayer gaming on the map. Currently celebrating its first birthday (the title officially launched November 9, 2004), Sony Online Entertainment's pride and joy isn't just the best thing to happen to role-players in years. The world-famous saga is also a testament to great game design, and a groundbreaking interactive property in its own right.
Ask yourself: How many games do you still play year in and year out after successive follow-ups are released? (Note: Asheron's Call fans, you're officially excluded from this poll.) And yet both EverQuest and EverQuest II still run concurrently, drawing hundreds of thousands of subscribers each month. What's more, it isn't your average everyday Internet-only outing which features full voice-overs, including contributions by actors Christopher Lee (Lucan D'Lere) and Heather Graham (Antonia Bayle). Or, for that matter, a massive base of dedicated fans, numerous A-grade add-on adventures/expansion packs, and mounds of love from the gaming community
As our gift to you, the players, in honor of this special occasion, we bring you an exclusive interview with senior producer Scott Hartsman. He, of course, promises bigger and better things as the game heads into its terrible twos.
LQGaming Services:: To what do you attribute the fact that EverQuest and EverQuest II are still running and thriving side by side?
Scott Hartsman: They're both very deep and engrossing worlds… Two different flavors of gameplay tied together by a common history. Both games still support any number of varieties of play (soloing, grouping, raiding… you name it), and they're both highly approachable in terms of the world and the communities who play them.
LQGaming Services:: How much migration have you found, if any, between the two games' player communities?
SH: There's definitely a certain amount of it that goes on. A decent number of people definitely enjoy playing part-time in both games. People seem to enjoy the idea of playing both in their past, or their own future, depending on one's perspective. :)
It's kind of funny - We have EQ raiders who come to play EQ2 when they want to relax with some soloing or grouping, and likewise have EQ2 raiders who come to EQ to do the same thing.
"We have EQ raiders who come to play EQ2 when they want to relax with some soloing or grouping, and likewise have EQ2 raiders who come to EQ to do the same thing"
LQGaming Services:: What do you feel you've managed to accomplish with the title? What do you feel could use some adjusting/fixing in the future with it?
SH: Not to brag (it's not bragging if I'm just complimenting the work others have done!), but the teams who all contribute to the success of EQ2 have accomplished more in the past year than I ever thought would be possible for anyone, anywhere, in any game. A few highlights:
* Launched a game in multiple languages, the first to do as in-depth character voices as we did.
* Shipped two adventure packs, one of which pioneered the use of movable objects as gameplay in an MMO.
* Shipped out first expansion, Desert of Flames, to both critical and player acclaim.
* First game to let you check out the coolness that is your character and your items, and chat with your guild, all on the web, on EQ2Players.com.
* Shipped an alternate set of character models for those who prefer some of the more Asian-themed fantasy.
* Gave people the ability to actually become creatures and fight it out with their friends.
* Developed what has to be the most comprehensive and coolest guild system anywhere (with levels, secured shared storage, personal and guild histories, and tons of other features.)
* Ran a critically acclaimed Halloween event, complete with its own haunted house with prizes.
* And all this while significantly improving the game through sixteen major live updates and countless minor ones.
It's been a fun year! There's still more work to do. Things to look forward to in the future:
* We'd really like our game to be more accessible to more types of computers. EQ2 was really built from the ground up to run on the best hardware out there.
* Improvements to dungeons to make them more fun and rewarding, the first prototypes of which went live in our most recent update.
* Rumor has it there might, in fact, be another expansion pack some time in the future.
* I hear there may have been some development down the way of bringing PvP to the EQ2 world.
LQGaming Services:: With the advent of titles like Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, what steps are you taking to make sure EverQuest II remains every bit as entertaining and competitive?
SH: We're making sure that the team is able to do exactly what we want to do: Develop new things for the world, while being able to quickly react to what's going on in the game and make improvements there as necessary. We need to play in both spaces at the same time – what's coming up six, nine, twelve months from now, as well as what people are experiencing day-to-day. It's a delicate juggling act, and the passion of the devs is what makes our efforts stand out.
LQGaming Services:: Why are you confident that the game – with the slew of fantasy MMOs coming on the horizon – will retain its status as one of the premier online-only offerings?
SH: It takes a lot to get a first-rate MMO off the ground. Anyone coming up right now has a lot to catch up on, as EQ and EQ2 have both pushed the boundaries in terms of innovation, each in their own way. They're still the best place to go once a person makes the decision that they really want a long-term experience in a world they can really get attached to, and more people choose them every day.
LQGaming Services:: Recent adventures/expansions such as Desert of Flames and Splitpaw Saga have introduced new realms, quests... What other additions do you have planned in the near future? What sorts of locales, adventures, storylines and enemies will they introduce?
SH: We can't get into too many specifics, but there are a few themes that we'll be expanding on in the future. Namely, what happened with the Gods in the Norrathian pantheon, and what really happened with the shattering of the world. As it stands now in EQ2, the dragons are telling people the story from their point of view. As highly intelligent creatures, sometimes they have agendas of their own.
LQGaming Services:: Is it feasible we'll see an EverQuest III on the horizon anytime soon? If so, is it likely to arrive sooner than EQ2 did on the heels of the original EverQuest?
SH: In this world, anything's possible. We could skip directly to EverQuest IV just to see if people are paying attention. That might be interesting...
LQGaming Services:: With EverQuest II, Sony had originally been shooting to appeal to more casual gamers. Have you found that these folks flocked to the game? Or is your audience a different sort of gamer entirely?
SH: EQ2 definitely attracts its fair share of casual gamers, but our primary draw is, obviously, those who've had a fondness for the EverQuest universe at some point in the past.
It's always a challenge for us to communicate to potential users that making a game that's friendly to casual play doesn't need to preclude world depth or challenge of content. In a world as large as EQ2's there is plenty of room for both.
Lots of gamers hear "casual friendly" and they think "You mean Easy? No thanks," when it's actually possible to make a game that has interesting things to do for people across the spectrum.
Yet another of the interesting balancing acts we seem to be so fond of. :)
LQGaming Services:: What's the secret to continuing to be able to produce original, exciting quests and add-ons year after year after year?
SH: Making sure that we play the same game everyone else is. It's as true now as it was five years ago: There is absolutely no substitute for actually playing your own game, just the same as any other player. A game shines when people do, and really shows through in all kinds of undesirable ways when people don't.
"We added some server-wide channels that people are automatically joined to based on their level. You'll be logged into one when you're online. Use them! Help someone. Get help on something."
LQGaming Services:: How dedicated are the folks on the development team: Do you spend every waking hour playing?
SH: The teams working on EQ2 run the whole spectrum between ultra-casual and ultra-hardcore. I can name at least a dozen people in the post-50 raiding game, 20 others who play huge amounts of time but aren't in the raid game, and another few dozen who enjoy playing, but only have the time to play a few hours a week.
LQGaming Services:: Where do ideas for many of the concepts/features/characters introduced in the game come from? Any movies/books/games serve as sources of inspiration?
SH: Lots of them come from people's experiences with tabletop RPGs. Much of the original world and history of EverQuest was originally conceived and brought over that way.
For the humorous bits, anything that any of us have ever seen, heard, or listened to is fair game. There are more than a few slightly-obscured references in the game. We try to not go overboard on these and keep them tasteful, but they are there, and we occasionally get appreciative comments from people who stumble on them.
LQGaming Services:: Any features in particular you plan on rolling out soon that you feel fans will be especially pleased with?
SH: There’s one convenience feature that we've always wanted to have in, definitely. At the time we launched, due to some internal data structure things that I won't bore you with, it wasn't possible for us to offer a way for people to see which NPCs have quests for them. Hailing every NPC in town every few levels, especially with towns our size, really isn't that much fun.
We look forward to letting people have the option of seeing who has quests for them and when. Hunting around town for the person you needed to talk to, when you have dozens of quests in your journal, is really not quite that adventurous.
LQGaming Services:: Speaking of, how fond are you of the player community? How do they continue to surprise and delight you?
SH: Let's see... Most of my friends are members of the player community in one way or another. My girlfriend (who works at SOE) is also a hardcore player.
I rather expect that even if I wasn't fond of them, I wouldn't be able to say much about it.
It's a good thing I like them.
More seriously, I've always been a huge proponent of the community aspect of these games, well before I came to SOE. Guilds, server communities, the game community as a whole coming together at our Fan Faires… They're what keep people playing, much more so than anything any developer could put into a game. The biggest surprise happens every time we have a fan faire. Just when I thought we were running out of countries for people to arrive from, someone else shows up from even farther away.
The next surprise of that type may well have to be the first Martian to arrive, which I expect to occur at the 2009 Fan Faire.
As for the specific amount of delight, that would mostly depend on whether or not they came armed.
LQGaming Services:: Any playing tips you'd care to offer readers?
SH: Last update, we added some server-wide channels that people are automatically joined to based on their level. You'll be logged into one when you're online. Use them! Help someone. Get help on something. Sure, there's people who see new public channels and immediately react with: "lame." But even those people wouldn't be playing if they didn't have friends, and they had to make 'em somewhere. :)
LQGaming Services:: Pop quiz: Tell us something fans would never guess about the game or its designers from playing it.
SH: Every single person who works on EQ2 is fluent in multiple languages, exceptionally attractive, has a personal magnetism beyond what most mortals can withstand before falling under their sway for all eternity, has at least one award from either a writing, artistic, or scientific organization, and are all independently wealthy, but continue pouring our hearts and souls into this game just to donate our salaries to charity.
It's not true, but I bet you no one would ever guess that.
We did used to have a rocket scientist on the team, though. That was neat.
LQGaming Services:: EQ2's general addictiveness: Think, in the future, the game will inspire so much devotion in fans the government will have to ban the amount of time players can play, as was done in China?
SH: It's an interesting legal issue. And one that I'm wholly unqualified to comment on, of course. However, watch that not stop me… at least a little.
If this becomes an issue for us in any locale, we'd very likely be able to adapt the built-in Parental Controls in a way that simply only allowed sessions of a certain amount of time within a specific time period.
If it came down to it, I think we could make use of some of the basic parts that SOE already has in place.
LQGaming Services:: If you could have one power your character in EQ2 possesses in real life, it'd be what and why?
SH: Feign Death… No contest.
<knocking on door>
"Scott, are you coming to the three o' clock benefits review?" (Which, coincidentially, I am skipping out of right now to write this.)
<no answer>
"Scott?" <peeks in>
"Damn. He's dead again. That's the third time this week. All right. We'll have it without him."
- Scott Steinberg
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