On the early days of this list we had a member - who always seemed to know
more than he should about EQ. At first there was some controversy - then we
found he was a someone who was friends with some of the game designers and
ultimately did get a job working for Verant - I just saw this on EQ Stratics

John Capozzi: A Harley Riding Grunt Who Likes to Read

John Capozzi is a Game Designer on the EverQuest Live team. He, along with
several others, provides content for the game in the forms of quests, text,
historical background and much more. As he puts it, "I like depth and story,
I feel they are needed to draw you into the game. Give me a rich world to
enter, and the tools to let me feel like I'm really there, and I'm a happy
gamer. Give me a shallow game, no matter how good the gameplay, and I feel
like I've been short-changed."

John grew up moving from place to place, largely in the eastern United
States, and spent the thirteen years prior to joining the Verant team in the
Tampa Bay area of Florida, where he was a small business owner. He put four
years into college (mostly sociology, computer science and literature
courses), and did five years as what he refers to as a "grunt" and then
"grunt NCO" in the United States Marine Corps. The latter is what he
considers his greatest accomplishment - making it through a five-year hitch
in the Marine Corps with all his original body parts. The Marines, John
says, were "founded in 1775 in a tavern! The Corps always had its priorities
straight. ;)"

Even back in school, John was a gamer, starting out with the pen and paper
and board games of the time, and moving on to the electronic versions as a
natural progression. He credits himself for having addicted dozens of other
high school students to these, simply by demonstrating his own skills. Steve
Jackson's Pocket Games, he says, got him suspended from school for a week,
for that reason. John claims, "Right away, I knew I wanted to wield that
sort of power over my fellow men."

Some of John's favorite games over the years have been the Civilization
titles, D&D Gold Box games, System Shock, Thief, Fallout, all the
Mechwarrior titles, Gemstone, and of course, EverQuest. It's clear that he
prefers games that challenge the mind as well as the hand-eye coordination
skills.

John managed to make some time for other hobbies over the years, including
working on and riding vintage Harley Davidson motorcycles, and lots of
reading. Some of his favorite authors are Roger Zelazny, William
Shakespeare, Larry Niven, George R. R. Martin, Jerry Pournelle, Tom Clancy,
Ernest Hemingway, Robert A. Heinlein, and last but not least, the anonymous
author of "Lather, rinse, repeat."

With such a rich background in literature and concern for detail in games,
John is making a valuable contribution to the EverQuest Live team!