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Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer

What is your official title? Senior Producer, though I am sure that a lot of people call me other things when I am not around. What is it you do on a daily basis? I get the wonder and joy of guiding the overall (or strategic) vision for the game. This means that people talk to me a lot and I either nod or shake my head many, many times a day. I read a whole lot of documents and wield a might red ink pen. The reality is that I have the overarching responsibility to make sure the game is fun and compelling – period. What is your background? How long have you been with Mythic? I have been around long enough to have a very boring background. The interesting parts really started about 6 years ago when I joined Mythic and the Dark Age of Camelot team. I actually started here as the Director of Customer Support and through the grace of God (and Mark, Rob and a whole lot of hard work), have been given a lot of great opportunities including Executive Producer of DAoC, and now Senior Producer of WAR. What was your "welcome to the game industry" moment when it hit you that you were really making games for a living? Oh, it was absolutely the launch of DAoC (though I am sure the launch of WAR will be even more so). The excitement and enthusiasm of the team during Camelot's launch and the feeling as we watched the servers filling up with customers to experience our game – it was like nothing I have experienced before (or since). 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 think one of the most exciting things for me is the depth of the lore that makes up Warhammer. We have such a massive amount of content to draw from that it is difficult to even know where to start! This along with the iconic character imagery makes it absolutely perfect for an MMO. Bringing those miniature characters to life, and letting people actually control the actions and behaviors of this beloved game is my biggest goal. What are your hopes/goals for the game? Not to sound too cliché, but it truly is to make the best MMO ever. We are setting ourselves apart in so many different ways such as; RvR, Public Quests and the Tome of Knowledge (just to name a few). I have no doubt of our future success, it is just a matter of how massively successful WAR will be ;) What are your key influences when making the game? Anything besides Warhammer? Absolutely! Probably the biggest influence besides Warhammer itself is Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC is at the foundation of almost everything that we are doing in WAR. DAoC is a fantastic game in its own right, and is a proving ground for much of what we are doing with RvR, our guild system, and many other features. The core of the WAR team is mainly DAoC veterans and we are applying everything that we learned from DAoC to WAR. What music are you listening to right now? Boy! I listen to a lot of music and could go on forever about it. Let me give you a snapshot by telling you what is in my CD changer in the car: Disc 1: Metallica - ...and Justice for All, Disc 2: Kid Rock – Devil without a Cause, Disc 3: Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime II, Disc 4: Mindfunk, Disc 5: 80’s Pop MP3s, Disc 6: 80’s Metal MP3’s. Is there a recent movie you’ve seen or book/comic you read that you’d recommend to others? I won’t get into my non-fictional reading, as people will judge me in odd ways :P As for fiction, I have a huge library mostly full of fantasy authors (at least on my side, my wife’s side is mostly full of horror and mystery). I recently finished up re-reading Stephen Brust’s wonderful Taltos series, as well as all of Feist’s Midkemian sagas. I read both series through every couple of years and would recommend them for entirely different reasons - the former makes me laugh and the latter makes me imagine. Anything else you want to add? "Fun you F***ers!" Can I say that?

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