EverQuest Interview

WarCry has conducted an interview with EverQuest lead designer Ryan Barker about the game's recent ten-year milestone and how the MMORPG industry has changed over the last decade.
WC: How do you think the MMOG market has changed since EQ first exploded the genre's popularity? How has the game evolved with it?

Ryan: The market is much more casual player friendly then it was when EQ was first launched. Things like corpse loss, massive week long rare spawns and such aren't tolerated in the new order of MMO design. I look back at those things with slightly rose colored classes in that they're great things to get together and talk about with your buddies, but it's always more or less "oh man, remember how much that sucked!" I think it's good that we've moved beyond that. We've definitely made efforts to make the game more appealing to a broader range of play styles. But we've also made it a point to continue to cater a portion of our content to the higher end players that really enjoy a difficult challenge at the same time.
There was something thrilling about the 6-hour corpse runs in the Plane of Fear, though.