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"A good example of something that wasn't done conservatively was the complete heal spell. That was in the original game a level 39 spell. Players are still using it to this day. We've put 15 expansions of healing spells out and that's still a good spell for a lot of people. It's funny, we were putting in NPCs that can help you, mercenaries, and when we were testing it we gave them a lineup of spells and they were all using complete heal too," said Turkowski.
He continued, "It's always good to design your systems with a backup plan or failsafe. If things don't quite work the way you want you have a second plan that makes things work the way they used to work." He stressed a focus, at least when initially designing the game, on basic systems like attack versus armor rating and mana cost versus mana reserves.
The panelists were asked what they'd say to the designers of the original game, which released back in 1999. "I'd say great job guys," said Allen Krause. "Thank you for coming up with this stuff and you're going to make a great product."
"Had they known the game was going to be around a decade later, they probably would have approached it differently," said Caraker. "I don't think they understood the success that EverQuest 2 was going to enjoy over its tenure…when Kunark came out it was billed as the only EverQuest expansion. Then Velious was the only after that and it just kept rolling from there."
"We're a little critical of our predecessors," said Turkowski, "but honestly, there was no model for them to look at. There was nobody that had experience making MMOs, really. It's very hard to make something that's this complex and this successful without making some mistakes. I'd probably give them some pointers, give them some advice from the future, but I think they did a pretty good job. The game is very creative."
