[EQ2]Scott Hartsman interviewed at Gamasutra

[Cuppycake]

Scott works too hard. I'd rather have a sugar daddy who sits at home and posts on forums all the time. $$$$$$

[Draegan]

If he sits at home all day and does nothing, then you'd have to entertain him all day.

....

Well to each their own I guess.

[Cuppycake]

Alright, this has gotten creepy.

Carry on o' legitimate interview discussion.

[NargorothRiP]

I've been tempted to come to EQII every since Scott started posting on these boards and alot of the positive buzz kept up well past the typical MMO hype you get anytime something new is announced. I played EQ pretty hardcore up to GoD when the combination of a shitastic expansion and getting older simply forced me to quit and get on with other stuff.

WoW was a game I had no intention of playing and ended up playing fairly extensively until 2 months after TBC when i realized the expansion was a damn grind factioning and just burned me out on the game all together. Bounced from CoH back to WoW and even considered Vanguard until that entire debacle.

EQII seems to be the real deal and the direction they are heading I believe is exactly whats needed to draw me back in!!

[Miele]

I risk to sound like a shill, but since I live like 9000 miles away from SoE headquarters, trust me that I'm not.

I left wow for sheer boredom and TBC never really interested me, so I asked my gf if she wanted to give EQ2 another try cause EoF just launched and stuff, she said yes and now I can't have enough of it.

It has flaws, it has small bugs, but nothing that makes you swear at the screen, it's pretty much polished as a MMO can be and has a truckload of content for solo, group and raid (raid is questionable, but if you never did it, there is a lot to tackle).

Itemization has done leaps and bounces ahead in quality and coolness factor, classes are diverse and interesting, the AA are quite nice and mentoring rocks.
I'm trying hard to have a few friends leave wow and give this a try, I know they'd be hooked right away, they just prefer to be bored to tears right now... which is more than simply sad, it's masochistic to say the least.

Ok, stop of the free game promotion.
About the interview, I was quite amazed they have over 150 people working on the game and most of them are players too at all levels. 150 is a pretty beefy team or?

One note: I had in the last 24 hours a big issue with my mailbox as I cannot mail items or even plain text to any of my characters. I got a GM online and spent with him over 30 minutes trying to find out the reason, I wasn't successful, but he/she tried hard and promised me to escalate my petition to a senior GM. It seems I'm the only one serverwide with such a problem (had to know, my usual luck )
If you ask me, that's good CS and for what concerns me I've never had a problem with SoE CS, this just confirmed it. Another point for EQ2 scored.

P.S.: Scott, mail my check at the usual address

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Miele

It has flaws, it has small bugs, but nothing that makes you swear at the screen, it's pretty much polished as a MMO can be and has a truckload of content for solo, group and raid (raid is questionable, but if you never did it, there is a lot to tackle)

With RoK being a 65-80 expansion, I bet there will be TONS of raid content added.

Oh and the check will be a little late, I think I used up all their shill-bucks for theis quarter.

[Kuro]

Originally Posted by Braen

With RoK being a 65-80 expansion, I bet there will be TONS of raid content added.

Oh and the check will be a little late, I think I used up all their shill-bucks for theis quarter.

You better not have, I need to buy more platinumz!!!!!

At least, according to all this in-game mail I have.

[EmiliaEQ]

Originally Posted by Ravensign

Everyone says that you can't recover from a bad launch, but Scott is sure trying to prove them all wrong.

You dont. While you can end up making a "good enjoyable quality game".
It will have 1/2 or 1/4 of the Subs it should because of that shitty launch & bad reviews.

While its not a "subs race" trying to compete with WoW, the reality is there.

[Noah EQ2]

Originally Posted by Braen

With RoK being a 65-80 expansion, I bet there will be TONS of raid content added.

Oh and the check will be a little late, I think I used up all their shill-bucks for theis quarter.

Rofl "tons of raid content"

I wouldn't expect to see more than 2-3 days worth of content per the norm (at 2-4hrs a night). The days of having something to raid nightly (or even just to farm ala ToV) are never going to happen. Not sure why not, but it is not something I foresee eq2 doing.

Just cross your fingers itemization from 70-80 doesn't fuck over your 70th level raid content and thus make all of EoF worthless (AKA KoS... even thou DoF really didn't have shit for items)

More power to enjoying the nostalgia content. I enjoyed the game mostly due to the community I was around and some cool plots. Once the game finally destroyed our team - it was game over. If you are gunning for raid game - get ready to enjoy 2 month turnovers of staff or utter frustration.

<3 - I still love Hartsman and most of his crew. Enjoyed the fanfaires etc... Lyndro was always alittle weird and most of the time MG was hanging on my girl.

[Braen]

Well luckily we aren't looking to be that everyday raid guild. For now.

They have had a year to work on RoK. All the other expansions have been on 6 months cycles. You just might be surprised.

[Cuppycake]

I'm not personally concerned with raid content one bit, but, I'm not that type of player =)

[Sinter1]

Imo Noah should play casually with Mistwalkers

Can't be much worse off currently than WoW raiding was at release...

[Denonia2]

At some point after EverQuest II launched, the team looked up and said, "We are not having fun." The people on the team weren't playing the game and, according to Mr. Hartsman, "That's the kiss of death.".

I believe this very point was brought up on this board by -Boy a few years ao. I wonder if it was hes post who turned the Dev team arround :-)

[kudos]

Originally Posted by Noah EQ2

Just cross your fingers itemization from 70-80 doesn't fuck over your 70th level raid content and thus make all of EoF worthless (AKA KoS... even thou DoF really didn't have shit for items)

I hear people whining on the forums about this and I dont know where it comes from. I thought in pretty much every MMO once a new expansion released then old content becomes worthless. So why are people whining about old content becoming worthless?

[Noah EQ2]

Originally Posted by Braen

Well luckily we aren't looking to be that everyday raid guild. For now.

They have had a year to work on RoK. All the other expansions have been on 6 months cycles. You just might be surprised.

Honestly, I just hope they make Kunark worthly of the original and actually launch a "smooth" product for once. They need that to prove it can be done by SOE. Having a year to do shit sure helps but -- will testing and feedback actually be used during beta phases? Will there be enough time to work out the glaring issues that prevent game play or grossly insult "any" type of player base?

As far as raid content... whether it is going to be a lot or just 3 days of shit... it is 99% cut paste.

Would I go back to EQ2? Im sure there are a few people that could drag me back but most of that game cannot be fixed w/o ripping apart its backbone and rethinking some of the major flaws that still sit on the game today. Most of the flaws are not seen so much at the Group play level but become huge issues when "numbers get bigger" at the raid level.