Everquest Next - Interview @ Gamereactor

Gamereactor had the chance to interview David Georgeson from Sony Online Entertainment, and Stéphane Bura of Storybricks to talk about Everquest Next.

We sat down with David Georgeson from Sony Online Entertainment and Stéphane Bura of Storybricks to discuss the ambitious plans surrounding AI in Everquest Next and Landmark.

Georgeson explained to us that: "AI is becoming incredibly predictable and a lot of the time static in these games, and our whole goal, what we wanted to go with for Everquest Next, was to make an ever-changing world that was dynamic and reacting to what the players did. And to be able to do that we had to develop a very, very different kind of system."

We also asked Bura "what is an orc's life?", to which Bura explained: "So the reason why we wanted to make something more dynamic is that we don't play through a single scenario, you play the world, a living world, in which orcs do stuff when you're not chasing them and killing them, so that it gives context to what you're doing to them." He then went on to explain how the player can affect the emotions/needs of the NPCs in the world around them, and how that feeds into creating a living world.