Sindar: All right, welcome, guys! First question: You guys sure seem to love Meridian 59, exactly what about it is it that you love?

Q: For me, it's Meridian's ability to make making friends and enemies easy in a cool world.
Psychochild: Yeah, I'd agree. It's really the players that make the game so great. I also like the PvP. I'm an old-school MUD player, and no other game has captured the PvP mechanics that make Meridian 59 work so great.

Sindar: How long have you been trying to get the Meridian 59 software? Is this just a recent idea, or has it been a long-term goal?

Psychochild: I'll let Rob take this one.
Q: I started discussing it with Trip about a year or so before 3DO eventually closed down the US servers. From the start he was supportive of the idea of my running Meridian knowing my love for the game. From there it was just timing and putting things together. I was very lucky to be able to hook up with Psychochild; we're a great complimentary team.
Psychochild: I'd agree with that. :)

Sindar: Well, that's good to hear. A lot of people are very curious...you hinted at making updates and/or fixing bugs in the FAQ...what kinds of updates do you plan to do? Anything set in stone yet?

Psychochild : Nothing set in stone yet, really. We have to take some time to get things back in working order, of course.
Q: Originally we were going with the Cow Island thing... I think we'll have to hold off on that now that Gerechtigkeit leaked that info.
Sindar: Haha.
Psychochild: Haha!
Psychochild: Lots of bug fixing in my future. :) There are several issues I wanted to take care of that I never got to. We hope to include players in on discussions of changes as much as we can. Especially those great Cow Island ideas. ;)

Sindar: *chuckle* Alright, Now, one of the concerns players have had has been that you guys will open some servers for a while, and then fall behind financially and have to close them down. Any words of reassurance on the topic?

Q: Well, we're sure that Meridian is a great game.
Psychochild: No doubt about that.
Q: But the biggest point that many don't seem to understand about us is that being such a small company, we don't have to worry about all the overhead that a larger company does. Additionally, we don't have to take any salaries...we've been living with no income for a while putting this thing together and are able to continue to do so.
Once all that's considered, we really need only a very small subscriber base to keep the game running and consider this endeavor a success.
Psychochild: You'd be surprised the number of ways you can fix Ramen Noodles. ;)
Plus, there has been a lot of support from the community. For example, one player is hosting our web pages on his web hosting company (http://www.icuservices.com/)
There seems to be a good amount of publicity out on the 'net as well. So, I think we can meet our needs pretty easily. :)

Sindar: Neat. All right, that's all the questions for today, but do either of you have any comments or statements you'd like to make before we wrap up?

Q: I'd just like to thank everyone for their support and to hope they can continue to be patient as we do our best to bring Meridian back properly and permanently.
Psychochild: I'd like to say Thanks again to the players. Even the ones that didn't think there was ever going to be a US server. :) I'm also very excited to bring Meridian 59 back from the dead.

Sindar: Well, I'm sure I speak for most of the players in wishing you good luck with the project. Thanks for your time, guys. =)

Psychochild: No problem. :)
Q: Thank you =)


As always, you can find out more about NDS' new plans for Meridian 59 at:
http://meridian59.neardeathstudios.com/