Kendricke Says:
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:18 am
For those of you who never had the chance to chat with Steve at a FanFaire, I cannot express how approachable he’s always made himself to players - who would sometimes mob him a dozen or more at a time. In a very real way, Moorgard was the physical embodiment of Everquest 2 to a large segment of the playerbase.
Long before anyone had heard of many of the current designers or producers, fans only had one real interaction with the developers during the game’s initial development. Whereas Gallenite and Smed would occasionally give a fansite interview, it was Moorgard who would actually respond directly to questions and concerns within forums like EQ2 Lounge (now OGaming) and EQII.com (where Blackguard was an admin at the time).
He was careful with his words, and loved to release information with riddles or puzzles.
He’s had his issues as well. There are still players who will hold him personally accountable for announcing player owned ships or a different initial view of tradeskills. There’s still a sizable percentage of players who swear they heard from someone who told them something about reading somewhere that Moorgard said Frogloks were in the game months before they actually were.
Even with potential blemishes such as these and more, Moorgard continued to act with class and intelligence in the face of players who could very often be hostile or outright abusive.
Even after moving on to full time development, Steve continued to act as a community presence, often chiming in with his own thoughts on a particular change, or just to respond to a particular charge raised within the forums.
He’s a fan favorite because of this - because he’s often seen as one of “us†and not one of “themâ€. Really, he’s not all that different from most of the developers, except in how he seems to openly communicates with us - and from a player’s point of view, that seems to be all the difference.
At this point, Steve’s been involved with the launch of seven Everquest 2 titles. I’d say he’s done “enough†to earn a change of scenery now. He’ll move on to greener pastures for the time being, and perhaps even help with the next big monster game to come out, but in the meantime, I think we’ll just miss having Moorgard to kick around.
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