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EverQuest Next will feature Ambassador D'Vinn and Fippy Darkpaw
EverQuest Next's 39th round table video is now live, and in it, SOE Senior Brand Manager Omeed Dariani and Senior Game Designer Bill Trost pair up to discuss the EverQuest franchise's nemesis characters and which ones players want to see in EverQuest Next. Ambassador D'Vinn, the Dark Elf NPC who terrorized newbs as the deadly caboose of pretty much every train to the Crushbone zone line in classic EverQuest, won the player poll and will be featured in the upcoming MMO. As to Fippy Darkpaw, Trost promises he, too, will be present in EQN. "I believe in his mission, and I hope someday he succeeds!" Trost joked. The devs also highlighted the alignment of the Dark Elves and the curious nature of NPCs who have agendas independent of the players. Enjoy the full video on YouTube.
GDC Online 2011: A nostalgia trip with the original EverQuest team
This year, GDC Online presented the Hall of Fame award to SOE's classic EverQuest. The game is currently 12 years old, and as legendary presenter Richard Garriott put it, "It perfected the commercial genre" of MMO games. Several members of the original team attended the awards ceremony, and Massively was honored to have a chance to sit and speak with them. Even if you aren't an old school vet, you'll enjoy this trip down memory lane with Brad McQuaid, John Smedley, and the rest of the team. Read on for highlights from the interview.
Q&A with the developers of Koi Pond
Macworld has published a chat with the devs of one of the much-loved Koi Pond. Of course, the weird thing about Koi Pond is that it's more of a nice iPhone demo than anything else -- but just the same, it's cool to hear from designer Bill Trost and engineer Brandon Bogle.They used to work on MMOs for Sony (and now work with a new company called Trion, also developing MMO games), and bought their first Macs specifically to try out the iPhone development program. The program was designed as a water simulator, and the koi were added later (as opposed to many of the devs we've heard from so far, these guys were actually concerned that their app was worth less than $1). And the little stories about feedback on the app are really interesting -- apparently a therapist has used it with Alzheimer's patients as a quick form of therapy.Unfortunately, they won't mention new projects, but they do give some good advice to other iPhone developers: don't consider the unique, device-specific functions of the iPhone secondary. We'd have to agree -- there are several ways the accelerometer and touchscreen can tweak even the most traveled genres and forms of video games and software. Just recreating old Palm and PDA apps isn't good enough -- iPhone-specific apps like Koi Pond are what will really make a splash on the App Store.
