Feldon 
I have been remiss in reporting on this, as the bombshell came nearly a month ago. Emily “Domino” Taylor, Tradeskill maven in EverQuest II for nearly a decade, will be leaving Daybreak Games and heading home to her native Canada. John Smedley leaked the news on Twitter in advance of Emily’s planned announcement. Anyone who follows her on Twitter has A) learned a lot about baking and B) knows that she endured a month’s stranding in Canada by US Customs in December 2015/January 2016 despite having a valid work visa. After that unbelievable inconvenience, it seems more than plausible that she has seen the immigration crackdowns of our current President and made an executive decision of her own.
Domino has made her mark on EQ2 since 2008, adding Tradeskill and other content to nearly every expansion since. In 2012, she did accept a position at Trion to help launch the Television-MMO crossover game Defiance. It’s always good to have more than one game on your résumé. Then, when she came back to SOE, she was able to hit the ground running and continue to add fun content that players have enjoyed. She introduced countless Quality-of-Life improvements to Tradeskills, introduced Tradeskill Epic quests, and overall raised the profile and value of crafting in EQ2.
MassivelyOP’s MJ Guthrie has conducted an interview with Domino which we are happy to link to here:
MassivelyOP — EVERQUESTING: THE DOMINO EFFECT ON DAYBREAK AND EVERQUEST II
After the jump, a couple of funny photos…
She’s not the only one. Two other EQ2 devs were put on other games.
How many devs are we down too then? 2?
Thanks for posting. I read that article. I feel a *little* better about the state of things than I did before.
Jesus, how tall are you Feldon?!
On the other side of the coin, how short is Domino??
I’m 6’9″.
Neat! 🙂
/..\ But it’s online! She can still be the crafting/housing queen from in Canada. Please? /..\ (I know, wishful thinking… would be too complicated and disconnected without being in the HQ. :\ )
It was crap for us crafter/decorators while she was gone. /..\ Some devs think decorating has no place in an MMOG… there’s a whole play-style based around decorating! There are a fair bunch of us who ONLY play to decorate. /..\ Some devs think raiding is the only thing that matters… Domino was our bright light. /..\
Can’t blame her for going home though. Hubby and I are working on moving to Canada too. :\
My hubby is Canadian and it was a frigging battle before the @#$%&#$%^ we have as president now. :\ I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten. Our government makes it as bloody near impossible for an average citizen to get in. He was banned from crossing the border in 2008 because our relationship was too serious and he now was required to have a visa instead of his passport. -.- The U.S. government had us do paperwork with fees here and there, official copies of this and that to buy, “approved” doctors to visit…. they wound us charging us around $3000.00 by the time it was all done, all together. They had us fly from British Columbia to Montreal for a 5 minute interview in a US embassy. The posting said we had to be there in person to receive paperwork afterwords, so we booked a hotel for 5 days to be sure we’d be there… and they mailed it… so we had to wait another 5 days to finally live together after being married a year and a half during the paperwork.
gonna stop there before I look like a potential flight risk, but yah…
Good Luck on getting into Canada, Griffonlady. I hope you enjoy it.
On the other hand, if Domino had problems getting into the US during Dec 2015/Jan 2016, wasn’t that during the previous administration? And if you were having so many problems getting in, was that not also during the previous administration and, yet, you have the nerve to vent your political feelings HERE – of all places – by calling him a @#$%&#$%^? Get over yourself.
I will miss her a lot. I have one toon who does questing and 14 alts that do lots of house decorating – all thanks to Domino’s affect on the game.
Yes, she experienced Customs B.S. under the previous president. I have experienced problems myself and I am a U.S. citizen. The point is, under the new President, anyone not from the U.S. is already experiencing closer scrutiny and there is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt going around. He has added chaos to an already complex process. I know people who are cancelling trips to the U.S. and I think we’re going to see a yuge drop in tourism. And I’m not saying all this as a fan of Obama. He failed his campaign promises to rein in the Patriot Act and the TSA and killed more people with drone strikes than GWB did.
I brought up the President, so I take responsibility for there being some political comments.
XD In my mind, there hasn’t been a decent human being as president since Lincoln, if that (some one tried to convince me he didn’t really want to free the slaves. I wasn’t there, so I can’t argue. >.<)
You realize that @#$%&#$%^ isn’t a word… right? o.0 How DARE I say @#$%&#$%^!!!! NI! ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing!
And immigration is more difficult now than ever when it was already practically impossible for most potential immigrants, which was my point… the difficulty then and the added difficulty now…
BTW, Feldon, is there private message service on your site connected to this message board so people can chew me out for my abuse of the 1st ammendment in private rather than cluttering your coment section? XD
Well there are forums (with a messaging feature).
I agree it’s a pain to bring someone in from Canada, my wife is from there and we had similar trouble. Tons of paperwork, lots of time, ~3k in costs and the stupidity of having to send her to another province to have an “in-person” interview that lasted 5-10 minutes at most. Luckily she could visit a friend while there so it wasn’t as much of a pain as it could have been.
I’m an American citizen living in Canada and even I don’t travel to the United States anymore because of how much of a clusterfuck crossing the border has become.
From the MassivelyOp article:
“Can fans expect to see and experience your handiwork again in your new job, or have you moved into a different realm?
I’ll be in a production role as of next month so I won’t be directly creating content, but I’ll wait until I’ve actually started that job before talking any more about it”
Is anyone sure Ms. Taylor will be doing game development in Canada? I find it odd that John Smedley, not a regular anymore at Daybreak and working for the competition in San Diego, outed her move.
http://massivelyop.com/2017/02/16/emily-domino-taylor-departs-daybreak-and-the-everquest-franchise/
“it feels like time to return home to Canada, and remember what shoveling snow is like!” she tweeted. “More news on new job once I start”
Very vague.
A few comments in the above article are fascinating.
“Smedley got space lol.”
“I suspect many will be thinking Amazon once snow loses it’s appeal :-)”
“So … next tweet after February “Hired by Amazon”?”
The competition does have telecommuting. Or the pull to make things happen.
Can Feldon get a pledge, to be the first to know what Ms. Taylor will be developing?
/*
MassivelyOp article:
“IMO EQ2Wire is the best source for EQ2 related news.
Feldon is the man when it comes to EQ2.”
My assumption is she’ll end up with Behavior Interactive as she used to work with Nathan Richardsson on Defiance at Trion. But I could be completely wrong… there’s a lot of other possibilities in Canada (Klei, BioWare Montreal, Compulsion, etc).
Emily, we thank you for all your hard work and dedication to EverQuest 2 over the years. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we will miss you. Good luck in all of your future endeavors! 😥
I love this, she has had problem getting into the country years before current President ever took Office, but somehow it’s his fault that she has had past immigration problems, and that why she is quitting? Maybe, just Maybe she can see the writing on the wall and is jumping ship before it sinks? (DBG Ship) Or maybe she got a better job that pays better. LOL This is not because of Trump I am sure.
Fact: She’s ALREADY had problems under Obama.
Fact: Trump is on the rampage about closing our borders and “extreme vetting”.
Fact: CBP have been asking more invasive questions and doing interrogations for non-Americans since Trump got elected.
Fact: Having personally experienced CBP questioning myself, it is no picnic and very stressful.
Fact: Trump signed an executive order about H1B Visas suggesting he is going to fulfill his campaign promise and get rid of as many non-American workers as possible.
Trump rode into office on a wave of anti-refugee and anti-immigrant populism. Foreigners are terrified of what Trump has been tweeting and his executive orders, which is exactly the atmosphere that Trump supporters want. Trump voters think if they can just kick poor people off food stamps and kick all the immigrants out, they’ll get their jobs back at the steel mill or coal mine.
Feldon – you nailed it! Well stated.
Wow, thought I could come and play eq2 to get away from all the people gnashing teeth about politic (any side) guess not. Guess I won’t be coming to this site anymore
Bye.
Domino was a great developer and had a tremendously positive impact on the game. There’s no doubt in my mind that EQ2 would be in a much worse place today without her involvement.
Trump is going to be the new bush where literally everything is his fault. He’s already getting blamed for stuff that happened before he got elected