Wednesday’s sprawling two hour Critical Hit podcast with Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall is absolutely worth listening to, as Nathan goes into the best uses of design hours, what it takes to revamp zones such as Qeynos and Freeport, why the starting islands were removed, the importance of storytelling, and more.

But if you are a raider or otherwise into the mechanics and itemization of EQ2, and you listen to only one EQ2 podcast this month, it should be EQ2Talk Episode #63 with Kyle “Kander” Vallee. He goes into a lot of the thinking behind the upcoming update (and this fall’s expansion), has some refreshing vision towards the future of EQ2, itemization and content design, and is very candid about some of the missteps in Chains of Eternity as well as other past changes.

All comments below are paraphrased from Kander’s comments in the 1 hour 40 min podcast. Any errors in meaning are the fault of the editor.

Stat Consolidation

• If there is one thing Kander could go back and change about EQ2, he would never have gone along with Stat Consolidation (where each class has just one primary stat and then Stamina for increasing health).  The different benefits you got from each stat were some of the “meat and bones” of EQ2 and chasing different stats and having to make choices on which gear you equip added a lot of depth. We had a lot more choice itemization-wise. For example, building up Intelligence to increase poison damage for scouts.
• As far as Stat Consolidation, we’re actually planning to head back in that direction as far as the next expansion to provide more choices. Right now, itemization feels a little bit stale. Players should need to think about their gear.

More after the jump…