Behind the scenes with Tradeskill quest design in EverQuest 2

Emily "Domino" Taylor once again takes us behind the scenes to look at crafting in EverQuest 2. Late last week on the official EQ2 blog, she offered up some insights into how crafting and questing have come together in the game. Where once 'questing' for tradeskill folks was just repetitive grindy nonsense, Domino has made a concerted effort to inject some of those great story elements into the crafting experience.

She talks primarily about how she puts quests together. With some the designer goes 'reward first', coming up with an item or skill that she wants to get into the player's hands. Then she works backwards to understand how a stalwart crafter might come upon such an item. With others, like the Epic Tradeskill quests, it's more important to tell a specific story. The details she notes about creating the Epic quests are particularly interesting; read on through to the EQ2 blog for full details.