Online Game Pioneers - An Interview with Funcom's Gaute Godager Part 2 a Interviews at MMORPG.com

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• Trappin Member UncommonPosts: 66

  September 2015 edited September 2015

  Gaute: And the same goes for EQ. That was a game balanced around high-level gameplay—a game that you had to spend hours and hours and hours playing. I played a spell caster. Every time I cast a spell, I spent mana points, but there were absolutely no mana potions in the game. There was nothing you could buy to replenish your mana. The only way to regain mana was to sit down and read your spell book, which took up to five minutes to regain your full mana. You could kill one beast, but then you had to sit down and read your spell book. The spell book was a full screen page, so you saw nothing for five minutes except your spell icons while you waited for your mana to replenish. It was really hardcore and balanced around playing in a group because you were really poor and puny by yourself. (...) The only reason UO and EQ were successful, in my opinion, was that they were first and people just accepted what they were given."

  - Soloing in EQ was nearly impossible for most classes. Joining a guild and finding a decent pickup group and dungeon crawling places like Mistmoore and Runnyeye was incredible fun. -EQ was successful because humans enjoy team sports and teamwork and challenging endeavors.

  a game that you had to spend hours and hours and hours playing.

  -Generally speaking, how does medding and staring at a spell book differ from hours and hours and hours of tedious tasks in AO? -Farming CRU was a ridiculous PITA when AI expansion pack launched. Farming AI generals for viral bots ain't fun, that's for sure. -Grinding AI experience required many, many hours of tedious work and really wasn't very interesting if our Org. teams didn't make the mothership ship "beam-up" - or were simply left out of the invite process.

  Gaute: I'm much more of an organizational development guy. I build organizations, I build companies, and I build relationships."

  Gaute never communicated nor built a relationship with the player community - he just wasn't interested. After reading his responses it never was about us gamers - It was about Gaute getting his "hit," and failing that? The AO community and Funcom's disappointing "revenue stream" were just sore reminders that he'd never be a "famous worldwide celebrity game developer" that hit the MMOG jackpot.