EverQuest II Interview

Ten Ton Hammer caught up with EverQuest II producer Dave Georgeson during this year's E3 for a quick interview about the recent Halas Reborn content update, as well as what we should expect from the future of the MMORPG sequel.
Players have had a love/hate relationship with instanced dungeons and while these have been making it in game heavily, there are still those who much rather see static and contested dungeons in game. Will the trend of instances continue? Dave will have to leave that up to incoming feedback it seems (I'd love to make a lot of scaling content so that you can replay it, just have fun, and have more toys to play with in the toybox but the reactions are always really mixed and sometimes really negative. It's something that we really need to feel out with the players before making a decision.) This leaves players to voice their own opinions and hopefully we'll be seeing a healthy mix of both instanced and contested dungeons in the future.

Probably the biggest news of the year has been the implementation of Battlegrounds which have been well received for the most part. Dave mentions that while people like them, not enough people are playing them. (I think that people who are just casually going in are getting worked by people who have a lot of PvP gear and because of that we are seeing that people aren't going in without a full board commitment. Because not a lot of new people are going in we basically have the same set of people playing over and over again. Battlegrounds is a really good feature and we will continue to support it, we like it a lot; it's just under performing for the amount of effort we put into it. I don't like to throw things away, I'd rather fix it and we'll get to that eventually.) I believe Dave hit the nail squarely on the head with this as Battlegrounds are a great feature but far too scary for the casual PvPer.