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Job description - What is it you do on a daily basis?
Right now I’m mainly focusing on the WAR Beta and the Beta community. Specifically on enhancing and expanding the communication between the developers and the Beta community. I work directly with Jeff Hickman and the various strike team leads to help facilitate this from one direction. I also work with the community team to help communication from the other direction. If I can help make the information flow between the two groups better then I’ll be happy. I’ll also be happy if I ever win the lottery, but I’m not holding my breath for that one. =)

What is your background? 1st job out of school? 1st game industry job? How long have you been with Mythic? What other jobs have you held in the industry?
I’ve been in the gaming industry since ’99 and it seems that I know someone pretty much everywhere at this point. I was hired to help launch Everquest back when SOE was known as Verant Interactive. I joined Mythic Entertainment in the summer of 2001 previous to the launch of Dark Age of Camelot. So that puts me as having been at Mythic for a bit over 6 years. Longest I’ve worked anywhere. Before the gaming industry I worked at various companies such as AOL, UUNet, and Carfax. I’ve always been a geek of various flavors (gaming, tech, etc) so my job choices certainly reflect that.

What other titles have you worked on in the past? In what capacity?
For Everquest I was the Network Administrator. I was the one (for the first year or so) that was dealing with the various servers when they were down at 3am on a Saturday morning. I came into Mythic to help launch DAoC from the network side of things. At this point I’ve had a plethora of hats ...and many of these hats overlapped at the same time. I’ve been: Network Administrator, Operations Manager, Tradeskill Developer on DAoC (Alchemy & Spellcraft!), Line Producer (DAoC), Designer (Imperator), Operations Project Manager, Associate Producer, and a pain in the butt for various people at various times. =) My collection of business cards is quiet impressive.

What was your “welcome to the game industry” moment when it hit you that you were really making games for a living?
When I had friends that were asking me to get them free accounts for EQ. =) No seriously... It was some “way to early time to be awake” time when I was replacing one of the dead hard drives from an EQ server. I was sitting around in the chat room while the array was re-building and was noticing exactly how many people this was impacting. That made it very real to me the sort of impact this expanding MMO “genre” was having upon the gaming community.

What excites you about the Warhammer property? What makes it perfect for an MMO? What cool things in the Warhammer universe do you hope to bring to life?
I find the Warhammer IP exciting mostly from the depth of lore and history that it has. That’s what you get when it’s been a jam packed 25 years! I remember buying army lists, back when I was taking a break from playing the miniatures combat game, just to read up on the back story and lore.

For an MMO it answers many of the questions that a company might have when designing their own IP. We don’t need to spend the time worrying about how a certain monster might look or what to name an army. GW has already done the work for us. We get to spend that time taking what they’ve made and perfecting it for the MMO game-space.

Do you collect Warhammer figures? What army do you play?
Heh. *clears throat* BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!! *big wookiee grin* My main army (and really the only one that’s playable right now) is a Khorne Daemon army list from Storms of Chaos. 2000 points. I can roll with a “normal” Daemon list, but then I’d loose my uber Chariots of Khorne. I loves me some juggies. =)

What are your hopes/goals for the game?
My biggest hope has always been that we are able to nail this IP, as far as the look and feel go. That’s something that’s very subjective on a person by person basis, but I honestly feel that we have and are going to continue to. And I’m not just saying that since we have a Bloodthirster in the game. *eg*

What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games are you playing right now? What game should the reader be playing if he’s not?
The problem I have right now is that I almost don’t have enough time to play any of the games I want to. But right now I’m into Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, Halo 3, and Team Fortress 2. My favorites of all time? That’s easy... any Star Wars game that didn’t suck (trust me, it’s a short list).

What music are you listening to right now?
*checks winamp* I currently have my “Trance Mix” playlist going. Next in the rotation will be a choice between Led Zeppelin (best band ever), Rush, or Iron Maiden. Yeah, I have a wide range of musical tastes.

Is there a recent movie you’ve seen or book/comic you read that you’d recommend to others?
If you haven’t read and/or watched Neil Gaiman’s Stardust you need to do that immediately!

Anything else you want to add?
The one thing that I can say is that I wouldn’t have traded the last 8 years for anything. Being a part of two companies that both managed to impact people’s lives is nothing short of amazing to me. I can’t believe it’s already been 6 years here at Mythic and I can’t wait to see what another 6 brings. The only parting advice I have is remember... Don’t Feed the Wookiee! =)

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