Meet Tommy: Quest Designer

Say hello to Tommy, a Quest Designer for Dungeon Runners. He'll be the first of many entries introducing the DR team to you, and in the coming weeks expect more and more... stuff... from them. For today, however, Tommy is giving a bit of info into his background. Maybe too much info. We'll let you decide.

My name is Tommy Lieberman and I’m a Quest Designer on Dungeon Runners. I didn’t ever plan on becoming a Quest Designer and like many jobs I’ve had in the MMO industry, and here at NCsoft, I just sort of happened into them when there was an empty role not being filled.

I went to the Ultima Online (UO) release party in October 1997 at Club Paradox and happened to have a shot with Starr Long who was the Producer for UO at the time. He said they were hiring Game Masters (GMs) and asked if I was interested. I said sure, he gave me his card, and I submitted my resume. By January 1998 I was hired as a GM for UO, working on the game until May 2001 as a Lead GM and dealing with fraud, stolen accounts, and rules violators.

After quitting Origin, I was going to work for my brother installing security equipment when some friends told me they were applying for work at NCsoft. I figured I might as well try as well, but wondered if my green hair was going to keep me from being a serious candidate. I guess not—they hired me in June 2001 to become head of the billing, account, and tech support department.

The only game we had at the time was Lineage and we were unable to acquire as many customers as we had expected. This meant I ended up doing in game support, email support, billing, tech, and account support for Lineage with a very small team to manage. Of course, we eventually grew as a company and signed on a few projects. Jump to 2003 and with a number of projects in development, NCsoft moved me to Quality Assurance (QA), where I first experienced ExArch—a game that would eventually be cancelled and later resurrected.

When Lineage II and City of Heroes (COH) hit the shelves I went back to working as the head of Tech Support, Billing Support, and Account support. Of all our products, COH was my favorite and I played it to an unhealthy degree. I loved COH but really wanted to help improve it so I started writing down all my ideas and criticisms and forwarded them on to the appropriate people associated with the game and third-party development. I guess I made an impression since they asked me to review games that were being pitched to our company on a regular basis and I later got a job as the third-party producer.

In that job, my specific tasks were to research current and future games in the market, review product pitches, meet with various studios pitching games, and help decide what games we wanted to pursue. Whenever we did sign a project, I would be the temporary associate producer on the product until we hired a full-time producer with the new team.

Right about now, you’re probably wondering where is all the Dungeon Runners talk and when is that coming? I’m getting there. I’m just that talkative neighbor guy who starts up a conversation with you when you’re trying to get somewhere, but twenty minutes later you realize you’ve been trapped.