This week we're celebrating EverQuest II's fourth Birthday here at Allakhazam and as our present to the community we're bringing you mini interviews from many of the individuals on the team who've struggled over the years to make EverQuest II the game that you love and play. As promised, we did some reminiscing with John Tessin, one of the programmers working on EverQuest II. This guy has been working on EverQuest and EverQuest II for nearly nine years now. Wow!!!

Allakhazam : How long have you been working on EverQuest II and how did you get started?

John : I will have been working on EQ and EQII for 9 years this coming February.  Brad McQuaid hired me on the EQ2 team which, at that time, was being worked on as a joint dev project with the then Exodus dev team (Exodus being the code name for what eventually became SWG).

Allakhazam : Over the years, is there a particular change that you've seen made to EverQuest II that stands out against the rest?

John : Over the years I think the biggest change in EverQuest II, that I feel has had the most effect, is the change in how content is provided to our players.  When EQII development began, all of us had played, and loved, EverQuest.  EQ had us hooked and we all had a driving desire to make a better game that was free from the problems that EQ players always seemed to encounter.  We were building a new engine so we had the chance to push the graphics further towards realism and we also had the chance to change game play to prevent inter-player conflicts and problems.  Some of those decisions turned out to hamper player fun.  Thus began a journey of change that led EQII into the Norrath of today.  Today, EverQuest II is a far more friendly and fun game for our players. I believe EQII is rich and full and fun and exciting.  But there is still room to make it even better.

Allakhazam : What is both your most and least favorite memory about your time spent working on EverQuest II?

John : My most favorite moment had to be launch day. EQII had finally shipped. Watching the population numbers going up as players filled the servers.  Not even the horror of having the new high end servers draw so much power they started popping the breakers. The first prime time for EQII ended with huge fans trying to keep the breakers cool enough to keep from popping as we struggled to get to a time where we could have a maintenance window to rewire the stacks.  Which brings up, if I may add, that I believe the operations team for SOE has to be the best in the world.  So many events have happened over the years that our ops team has has efficiently handled, getting us back up and playing so quickly,  I have to say they are the best.  I remember one evening we received word that the east coast servers all went down.  Then the word reached us the data center had been hit by a tornado and there was 3 feet of water in the bottom floor of the building.  We were back up in only a few hours.  Of course we were on the second floor.  Out competition was on the first floor. I never learned how long they were down.
 
There are a lot of least favorite memories.  I get one every time one of our team moves on to a new project.  Bidding farewell is the saddest thing. Knowing they are heading onto new and great opportunities eases the pain, but I still miss them.

Check back tomorrow for our talk with the lovely Vanessa "Eovania" Barrera.