Sigil Games posted up a lengthy interview with the company president, Brad McQuaid. It was done in house, so it is more of a promotional vehicle, but it is still an interesting read. It talks about his experience with Everquest as well as their plans for their new game. You can read the whole interview at this link. I picked out a few of the more interesting excerpts below. I played EverQuest and ever since you left, the game has lost some of its fun. You were EQ. What made you leave? Well, first I'd like to say that EQ is a great game and there's no reason it won't stay a great game for quite some time. There were a combination of events that made me leave (some of which wouldn't be appropriate to get into), but it really gets down to this: I realized over time that I wasn't happy overseeing a series of games and really missed being 'hands on' with one. I missed producing, and I didn't care for a larger, more corporate environment. I went from Producing EQ with about 25 people, to VP at Verant with 65+ people, to CCO of SOE with 400+ people, and things just didn't scale right for me. It was definitely hard to do, and a very emotional time. I miss a lot of people there, but looking back I have very few regrets. Sigil is the right place now for me to realize my dreams. Why is twinking necessarily a bad thing? When you have a character that you've built up through effort and work, and want to experiment with other characters, why is it bad to have the ability to gather nice things for your other class character so you don't have to start from basic square one again? Actually, I totally agree. Replayability in MMOGs is extremely important, and the ability to move equipment to a new character is great. Twinking is controversial more often when someone else receives a set of high level equipment they didn't earn, say, from a guildmate or friend. But, then again, what if that's what your friend needed to catch up, or feel like one of the group? This is a very tough issue. I think there are several ways to emphasize the strengths of twinking while simultaneously toning down the negatives, including soft level limits on items and spells (for example, you can still wield a high level item with your newbie character, and it's beneficial, yet he's not a god among men, slaying monsters right and left). More on this later. What do you say to people who hit the current level cap (if there is one) and feel there's not much left for them in the game if they haven't the time to raid with the "uber" guilds and say they don't want to go through the "level grind" again? I think there needs to be content for all sorts of playing styles, regardless of what level the character is at. There's no reason to limit high level gameplay to 'raids' or to 'uber guilds', and there's also no reason why some low-mid level zones can't be extremely dangerous, requiring multiple large groups coordinating with each other.