Just wanted to give a shoutout to Shawn (Azaliil as he's known in Norrath) here, don't think he's too keen on advertising but for anyone interested, he's an Ex Developer/Leader Designer for the EQ1 team and he's been streaming himself playing on Aradune and re-learning the game for the last week. Lots of interesting stories and he's more than happy to answer any questions people have. He's also, starting today at 11am PST, bringing some former colleagues on as guests to talk about their time working on EQ. If anyone's interested you should pop onto his stream, link provided below. https://www.twitch.tv/averylovingrobot
I've been looking for something like this for a while. It's interesting hearing what else goes on behind the scenes. Like how difficult it was just to create a server queue at all and the amount of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into creating an xpac.
Truly an interesting stream. I wish more people on these boards would watch. Also, I wish more current devs streamed their workday.
Maybe temper your expectations since he's unlikely to know about modern dev cycles & TLP openings & stuff. Azaliil was an EQ developer 15+ years ago not last year. His stories are about, like, building EQ for Pentium 3 server architecture
Just a heads up, Shawn will have Ryan Barker (Rytan) [EQ Designer 2001-08, EQ Design Lead 2008-12; Sr. Designer EQ Next] on the stream tomorrow morning tentatively scheduled to start between 9am-10am PST (12-1pm EST) if anyone would like to join in. If you can't make it but would like to ask him a question feel free to PM me the question and I'll ask on your behalf. Some people have inquired about a transcription of the Questions/Answers, I'm going to *maaayybee if I'm bored* try to plug away at the Scott stream from Friday and see just how much I hate my life after.
Bill Fisher [Designer EQ, EQOA, Vanguard; Advisor, Pantheon] will be joining the stream shortly if anyone would like to visit!
Great stream with some very entertaining chat going on between the streamer, guest & the chat participants. I laughed a lot.
Just going to post the Schedule here, as this is not a "Weekly" scheduled thing. There will be a multitude of Guests over the next several days Schedule Several other Guest appearances have been soft confirmed with no date set; There's a pretty diverse list, so chances are your weird esoteric question about some half known change made 18 years ago might actually be answerable. Again, for those who can't tune in during their work day but would still like to pose their queries at a particular Guest or perhaps all of them, feel free to PM me and I'll add it to the question queue
He's so chill I actually have a hard time staying awake for his stream. It's like some weird EQ ASMR thing.
I binged out on all of the prior streams & it was a blast, so many funny stories, weird anecdotes & insights into inspirations along with an overriding sense of just how difficult & yet fun much of the "other side" of EQ was. I was quite simply in EQ nerd heaven and enjoyed all of them immensely so far, there is a deep and rich history being uncovered in a very personal & intimate way here so if you have any interest in EQ development history & game history in general I would highly recommend getting on board for these.
Exciting guest coming on tomorrow! Jennifer Chan - Saturday, Aug 8th 2020 - 11:00am PST [Head of Studio, Darkpaw Games; Former Tech Director, Daybreak; Programmer / Lead Programmer, SOE]
Thank you to you and Azaliil for the very informative and interesting interview. It was cool to hear that JChan actively plays anonymously on Live!! It is a quality of a good leader/real fan to play their own product. (I'll keep the server secret). The whole discussion about server clocks was insane. lol. The interview is worthy of its own thread or perhaps Dreamweaver will share it in News and Announcements.
I love Twitch. You need these interviews on your stream or the stories Azaliil tells for EQ to be interesting to watch on Twitch. EQ wasn't designed for Twitch, how could they know it would be a thing back in 1997 when they threw the world together, heh.
I really enjoyed the stream with JChan, lots of good info & insight shared, the brief mention of JChan's interactions with Ji Ham actually altered my perspective a bit & I'm maybe a little bit more optimistic for the future than I have been.
I like the way Shawn interviews people. He's very fair and upfront. The guest and the audience come away feeling like better people.
Shawn does a great job; it's great hearing about some of the behind-the-scenes history of this great game.