Brad McQuaid Interview

Allakhazam’s Magical Realm has posted an interview with Brad McQuaid, one of the original creators of the ever-so-popular EverQuest. In the interview, Brad talks about what he would have done differently with the game and even talks a bit about one of its competitors, Dark Age of Camelot. Here’s a taste:

Q: Have you played Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online? If so, how do you feel they compare and contrast to EverQuest?

A: I’ve played both, and I always try to play all of the MMOGs, professionally to see what they are doing and to look for new ideas, and personally because I love these games.

The genre of MMOGs is still so new that each game is expanding the game space far more than they’re competing with each other. For example, despite DAoC’s excellent launch and immediate popularity, it only minimally impacted EverQuest.

This is a good thing, because in my opinion we’re still well within the first or maybe early second generation of these games. The genre has a LONG way to go, and every company who enters this arena is helping build something I’m very interested in — so I’m very supportive of them all. Not only that, I’ve rarely met a developer working on an MMOG who isn’t a great person and also a person in love with MMOGs (as I am). For example, Jeff Butler and I hung out with several of the guys from AO at ECTS this year and had a blast.

As for publicly comparing and contrasting these games with EQ, I could, but I won’t. at VI/SOE it was against my own personal policy and it will stay that way. Right now with MMOGs I feel it’s the ‘˜more the merrier’ each game is great, but could improve, and I know everyone involved wants to see that improvement for the game’s they’re working specifically and for the genre as a whole.