EQII's Dave Georgeson talks battlegrounds, starter cities

Now that this year's E3 is safely in the rear-view mirror, more MMO-centric news from the show is slowly filtering out of outlets around the web as writers are able to collect their interview notes and put fingers to keyboards. One such piece features EverQuest II's Dave Georgeson, the new producer on the long-running fantasy MMORPG, who sat down with Ten Ton Hammer to chat about changes coming soon to the world of Norrath.

Georgeson indicates that the updates will be revealed at this year's SOE Fan Faire. In the meantime, he mentions tweaks to the beloved cities of Freeport and Qeynos, recently removed as starter city options to the chagrin of many veteran players. "I think the business as usual model needs to change. It would be so much better if we can put back some of the richness into the game so we don't have the empty world syndrome. We're going to be offering some new things here in the future that are really going to shake things up a bit," Georgeson says.

He also touches on the problems inherent in the new Battlegrounds system, as well as hints at plans to address it eventually. "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," he says.