EQNext: SOE Employee Highlight on Josh “Autenil” Kriegshauser

There are a number of EverQuest players out there who are interested in reading ANY news about the upcoming EQNext, no matter how vague. Today, we salute YOU Mr. “I’ll take any news I can get” with this month’s SOE Employee Highlight!

This time around, Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske interviewed Josh “Autenil” Kriegshauser and posted it on what turned out to be the 7 year anniversary of Josh being hired by SOE.

If you’re not familiar with his work, Josh has had a hand in programming every EQ2 expansion. Wanting to try his hand on a new title, he took a momentary break from the EQ2 team to help launch the successful Star War: Clone Wars Adventures. Although the interview plays coy with this detail, we have it on good authority that Josh has come back to the EverQuest fold — this time as Technical Director for EQNext.

What is your favorite SOE game title? What is your favorite thing about that game? EverQuest II hands down. I’ve spent so much time in that world (and code) that it feels like home. Everything from the lush green acres of Antonica to the packet processing of EntityServer.cpp brings a smile to my face.

I’ve really loved some of the content that we’ve added over the years. I think the Brew Day festivities and cow-tipping antics with Prew Drowers leave a lasting impression on me because good ol’ Prew was named for an actual developer with a penchant for homebrew. It’s fun to put little funny things like that in the game.

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Incidentally, if you would like to watch a more substantial technical discussion, check out the “Geek Panel” from last year’s SOE Fan Faire which featured Kriegshauser and other EQ2 developers talking about the the technical hurdles of keeping a game like EQ2 going.