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Interview conducted by Paul Presley.

One of the problems a lot of MMOGs have is having these great big worlds with nothing happening in them...

Sites: Right. Actually, when we first started making the game we had planned on this grand world, this great expanse of space. We started planning this giant dungeon but discovered that you know what, it's not fun running for fifteen minutes and not finding anything. So we ended up pulling the size and scope in and focussing on the content in the different areas.

That's where we're at right now, players are walking through the city and having characters calling out to them, based on what they've done and what quests they can do, instead of having to run for ten or fifteen minutes at a time just to try and find something to do.

What sort of things?

Sites: There are simple things like a little girl chasing her cat around the city knocking stuff over, or big things like the Freeport militia marching through the city, giving speeches to the citizens. It's all things that will help make the world seem more alive.

How much work does that entail?

Sites: We actually have 34 designers on the project, so we have groups of these guys that are just dedicated to adding events like these to the cities.

Do events like that happen outside the cities as well?

Sites: They will do, but the way that we're designing the content is from character creation on outwards. So we're putting all our focus on the cities right now, then slowly working our way outwards so that when the beta testers come in, they're not finding they have nothing to do because, say, we decided to design all the high-level dungeons before we worked on the starting cities.

Are you able to keep tabs on how far the testers have explored into the game and how far ahead you need to be designing?

Sites: Oh yeah. The way the beta test is being run right now means that we basically 'rope off' the areas that we want people to be testing in. Right now players can create their characters, go to both

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Qeynos and Freeport, the outer lands in the common areas outside in Antonica and access two of the dungeons in each of those areas. This way we get very focussed testing and feedback and can get those areas refined. Then, once those are ready for 'prime time', we start opening up the next zones further and further away.

The zones are all planned in advance and then left to the players. How possible is it for you on the server side to jump into zones when players enter them and direct the NPC's actions on the fly, in a sort of 'dungeon master' role?

Sites: We can do that, although mostly the zones are scripted in such a way as to be completely self-contained and capable of handling things. Once everything has been tested and refined, very rarely will we need to have people go in and watch the players and change things on the fly. Still, we have that option at our disposal if we need it.

How big are the cities in total?

Sites: Each of the cities are made of eighteen zones, each consisting of the town centre, the villages or neighbourhoods which is where you start out and where each player has his or her own apartment.

The houses are given out automatically to each new player?

Sites: Right. When you create a character you're given a little one or two room apartment within which you can place furniture, hang stuff on the walls and customise the interior. When you get into a larger guild or group and start pooling your money you can then buy larger structures within the actual city, decorated with your guild's emblems. When people walk by they'll be able to see who the badass guilds are.

In terms of overall size, how does EQ 2 compare to EQ?

Sites: It's slightly smaller in size than EQ, but the first game has had five years of development work adding to it. The only reason they have a larger physical size is because they have loads of really huge zones left over from the earlier expansions. Like Kunark. That has huge, empty zones simply because we didn't then have the ability to populate them completely. So, we have slightly smaller areas, but lots, lots more content in them.

What sort of mass transit systems are there?

Sites: We have boats for travelling between the shattered islands that make up the world. We'll also have player mounts that are racially specific. So the humans and the mid-size races will have horses, the gnomes and halflings and dwarves will ride wolves, and we haven't decided on what to have the larger races riding, although we're thinking about things like rhinos or elephants. Very large creatures.

Check back tomorrow for part three of our EQ 2 interview.