a_skeleton_02
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Isn't brad a pretty religious person as well? I remember hearing that he didn't want any angel or demon mobs in EQ
Found it:
Found it:
I am a Christian so this probably goes back to me seeing 'Deities and Demigods' and kind of being bummed about that even though I still play [D&D]. It would have made me feel better if they had not used - or rather, had other creatures that weren't demons.
Bezüglich Vanguard, SOE Brad McQuaid - Part IIf13.net: I'm going to do a 180 here. Apologies. But you're a religious person. You've said that angels and demons not being in EQ while you were there isn't just because of your religious beliefs. What was the core reason?
Brad McQuaid: There are different symbols, beings, supernatural beliefs - belief systems that people have that are active today in this world. Gods, demons, angels, others. I guess, in a textbook, would be world religions. You can't avoid offending everyone. Let's take angels. Christians generally believe that angels are real. Many other people don't. That they're mythological beings. Most people don't believe that dragons are real. Or that a griffin is real. Putting a griffin in your game though, versus an angel - is much less a problem. What we decided to do was to avoid anything that's from a major religion. There's some fundamentalist Christian that won't let their kid play period. Dragons, dungeons, death. Whatever. There's also going to be more moderate Christians who are going to let them play EQ or DAoC because there aren't demons or angels or something. We're creative enough people, why not just use the plentiful fantasy out there and not elements of major religions. I also wanted to not use symbols, even from dead religions. While I definitely think it would be great to take themes from mythologies like East-Asian, Norse, Egyptian and things like that - let's avoid using an ankh or whatever. Let's come up with our own religion and our own symbol that means life. This is a different world. Maybe we don't have the time or creativity of Tolkien - who borrowed from mythologies. We're not going to make our own huge religion, but at least come up with our own pantheon of gods and symbols and whatnot. That was just one of the things I wanted to do early on - by simply avoiding offending people if we can. To an atheist sure, an angel is no different than a griffin. But Johnny's mom will let him play our game.
