EverQuest II Screenshots & Interview

As promised, Warcry has released this week’s final set of EverQuest II screenshots, as well as a short interview with Sony’s Steve “Moorgard” Danuser. A snippet to follow:

Q: It seems many different MMORPGs have a different system for experience distribution while grouped. Often some give bonuses to groups. Sometimes experience is gauged based on the amount of damage you do, thus leaving healers in the cold. This applies to both PvP and PvE. How will EQ2 distribute experience for groups and for more passive characters, such as healers?

A: Experience is divided evenly among members of a group regardless of profession or the amount of damage you do to the opponent. Support roles such as healing or power replenishment are just as vital to the success of a good party as doing damage, so they should be rewarded appropriately.

Grouping is encouraged through our experience system. Rather than giving an encounter a set amount of experience and dividing it by the number of people in the group, we essentially add additional experience for every member in the group. Since downtime is greatly reduced in a large group and you will be able to defeat opponents at a faster pace, larger groups gain experience at a much faster rate than anyone can alone. But even smaller groups provide lots of action and excellent experience gain.