Welcome back to EQ II ! How do you feel about coming back to EQ II ?
Quite frankly, I'm delighted to be returning to the team. I've been away for a couple of years, and it seems like things have continued to get better and better in the game. I've been off doing other things in the company, and finally have the opportunity to return to where the excitement lives, in EverQuest II.

What is your job as an EQ II producer?
As a producer, my job covers a wide variety of responsibilities, from hiring, training, planning, live events, figuring out how the team can interface with all of the support groups in the company, responsible for things like bulletin boards, web sites, hardware for servers, patching, marketing, sales, and of course making sure that all of these things fit within our efforts to make the game more fun for you, our players!

What's your background in gaming? I've been playing games since the earliest days... I remember playing Computer Space, spending a lot of quarters feeding the machine. At home, we had an Atari 2600 and an Apple II +, which I did some early programming on in Applesoft, modifying a version of Star Trek in ASCII text that ran on the HP2000 that I used in High School. About that time, they started bringing out games for the Apple II like Temple of Apshai and Warp Factor that I played a lot of, and then some of the early Mac games. During the same time, I was doing a lot of BBS systems games like Adventure, and finally wound up on the GEnie network playing GemStone III. After a couple of years of playing that text based game, I was invited to join the ranks of the GM staff, and then ended up helping the company who ran it set up a billing system and CS department as they moved from being a service provider to GEnie (and CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy) to providing their games directly to the player via the web. After several years at that company, working on GemStone III, DragonRealms, Alliance of Heroes, CyberStrike II, Modus Operandi, and an unreleased title, I moved to Sony Online, working on another game that didn't come out (yet!), but ended up moving on to EverQuest II as one of the producers. I spent about 3 years on EQII before moving on to work as a project manager for all of SOE, and then served a stint as the producer on Free Realms before coming back to EverQuest II.

What's your future vision of EQ II ?
It really isn't about my vision...I'm working with a talented team of individuals who all have a piece of that vision, and we all take input and inspiration from the players as well. My job is to make sure that we can all come together and execute a vision that is fun and challenging, and continues to engage not only our current players, but folks who have never tried EverQuest II before.

What is your most favorite thing you have worked on for EQ II ?
This is a hard question to answer. Each part of the game has special circumstances, exciting memories, and to pick one over another seems unfair, like asking a parent which child is their favorite child.

What do you enjoy the most as a game producer?
Seeing the efforts of the team come to fruition, and the enjoyment that the players take in what we do.

What do you like to do for fun?
I have several hobbies, from computer games, to photography, cooking, and spending time with friends. When I have the opportunity, I like to travel.

Can you tell me your best EQ II story?
There are so many! If I told any stories about things that happened in game, I'd probably get some people in trouble, including myself, so let me stay with a fond memory: within a couple of months before launch, the team was working hard to get a couple of final features in and working properly. It was about 5AM in the morning, the sun was rising, and I saw outside my window a deer on the hill behind our office. It was just a lovely view, and surprising, as we're in a relatively industrial area in San Diego. We certainly get lots of hawks and hummingbirds, but I rarely see mammals around the office other than the dogs that our employees bring in.


Midori "Momochi" McDaniel even sat down with Bruce for an audio Dev Diary, too! You can hear that interview, here!