Turbine Entertainment Retrospective Interview

Warcry was able to track down several members of Turbine Entertainment for a retrospective interview about the company's beginnings. There doesn't seem to be any mention of newer games like Dungeons & Dragons Online or Middle-Earth Online, but they do talk extensively about Asheron's Call. Here's a snip:
DEMARRIS: We developed AC before hardware cards for video. This meant we had to sort the polygons without Z-buffering. It was incredibly difficult to do. For example, when you are near a building, we actually cut the player into pieces to draw him. You can notice this if you stand half inside and half outside.

FOSTER: The original vision for AC was massive, with in-game political systems, complex dungeon ecologies, and on and on. Cutting away at the game, while still keeping a solid, fun center intact, was tough.

HUXTER: I think the worst thing was knowing we had this amazing idea, and amazing people, but just not ENOUGH people. Flying by the seat of our pants, with absolute faith that we were working on the next best thing, we had an amazing atmosphere going. The intensity of it at times was hard to believe. I recall one day, a federal holiday, I came in to work on some animation and when I got in the whole art department was in working. Every one of us. That's how we felt about Asheron's Call.