While at E3 2006, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tracy Spaight of Rapid Reality thanks to MMORPG.com. After being fashionably late with my write-up, Dana posted it as quickly as possible. Here’s a short excerpt:
Having a strong Shadowbane background, I brought up the question of what will happen if a large guild comes in and exerts a large area of influence against other players, basically becoming the dominant force of that world? Tracy explained that one way to combat this behavior is that their Non-Player Characters (NPCs) will actually be smart! When I asked what exactly he meant by that, he explained they would be using a dynamic artificial intelligence and that NPC kingdoms can (and will) use real-time strategies against player guilds! When I tried to dig a little deeper into the technical jargon, though, Tracy told me I would have to talk to Adam Ghetti, the Senior Creative Director and Co-Founder of Rapid Reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to corner him for details.
You can read the entire article on MMORPG.com or on my site. And yes, I did notice that my article was Feature #666… and you thought all of those evil things Sachant says about me were lies! Of course, I also noticed what Dana said in his introduction to the article: Guest Writer Sean Dahlberg, the Community Manager of Shadowbane (watch carefully for his plug)… what can I say, being a virtual pimp for the games I work on is in the job description!