The other day, Justin and I were joking about the Allan “Orion” Maki interview that turned out to be a massive three-hour affair. Orion has become an icon in the Lord of the Rings Online community because of his apparently insane work ethic and patience for the wackadoos in the playerbase (y’all know who you are). The former lead content designer for the original game under Turbine, he left for years and returned in 2022 as the lead systems designer and now plainly spends an absurd amount of his time communicating with the playerbase and training up the next gen of MMO devs. And he’s a large part of why LOTRO took our best studio award last year.
“He’s up there with Bobby Stein for sainthood imo,” I joked, but I wasn’t really joking. (Stein is narrative director at ArenaNet; he famously runs a mentorship program for fledgling developers.)
There are so many thousands upon thousands of developers toiling away in our industry; you’ll only ever hear of a handful of them, and not always in a complimentary way, but every once in a while, you see somebody going out of his or her way to be a real force for good in MMORPGs. So tell me about ’em. Which MMO dev deserves a shoutout – or sainthood – for putting up with all of us?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
