Moorgard has a blog. I just discovered it after checking up on Aggro Me and his latest thoughts on the announced changes to Everquest II. I thought it was neat when I checked the dates on his first posts, and they read 12/16/2005. Very cool.
If you don’t know who Moorgard is, let me explain: he’s a developer for Everquest II, the MMORPG that currently consumes my computer time at home. Moorgard was the Community Relations Manager for EQ2 for the first couple of years, and now he’s moved up the chain to do real work in game design (something that was a dream of mine as an undergraduate CS student).
I’ve always admired the job Moorgard did as Community Relations Manager. It was his job to talk to the gaming community, interact with them, gather their opinions, disseminate information, and try – somehow – to keep the peace. He had a job that I classify as the Kobayashi Maru of game design jobs, meaning: the No-Win Scenario. There’s simply no way anything he could ever say would please the community as a whole. There are too many whiners, bitchers and complainers. But he did his job professionally and with restraint. He did his best to explain to people what the developers were doing, what they had in mind, why changes were made, and what direction they were trying to go in. He did it through all the flames and beratings.
It will be neat to see how his blog turns out.
Meanwhile, I Agree With Aggro
Scott Hartsman’s Producer’s Letter for December spelled out some really great changes for Everquest II, namely a really solid PvP framework and an overhaul of the way class selection is handled for levels 1-20. Personally, I love the changes and applaud them. The class changes seem really good to me, and every reason for them is covered in Aggro’s post. Same goes for the PvP stuff. Aggro covered the reasons well. I totally agree with him.
It’s a promising time to be an Everquest 2 subscriber.