Vanguard loses John “Kendrick” Capozzi

The rumors have been confirmed, John Capozzi is no longer a senior game designer for Sigil Games. Frankly the news of his departure has me shocked, Capozzi was deeply rooted in the McQuaid era starting early in Everquest’s lifespan even up until the point where he followed McQuaid’s lead leaving SOE midway through the development of EQ’s third expansion, Shadows of Luclin alongside a few other key developers who are still employed at Sigil Games. As an aside this also explained why Shadows of Luclin was a big heap of unfinished flaming shit with certain zones only seeing a two week development time in regards to item and npc implementation…

The history of the core team runs deep and while I could toss out all sorts of speculative conjecture about why he left Sigil that would make some head spins instead I’ll focus on some of his past accomplishments.

Kendrick earned the moniker ‘Grand Father Rogue’ as he criticized and fought hard early in Everquest’s beta as a player because rogues were seriously under-powered and didn’t have the most simplistic rogue like abilities such as evade. Eventually with all his pontificating and suggestions he was able to get his foot in the door and eventually earned his seat at the round table as an associate designer working his way up the chain.

Back in my early raiding days, I still remember slaving away equipping our melee in Sleeper’s tomb and the whole fiasco between the effectiveness of melee versus caster itemization, it was brutal, several of my own guild mates actually hated me because I was a rogue and you could thank Kendrick for such hate. None of our casters would ever want to do Sleeper’s Tomb and primal weapons were god weapons, seriously over powered and since Kendrick was a rogue himself this always stirred up a bunch of drama on the forums. Given I didn’t always agree with his decisions, it was always a blast and I thank Kendrick for all of his contributions in and out of game.

Here is a laundry-list of some of his more notable contributions during his stint at VI/SOE.

Concepted ‘Discipline’ system for RoK as a non-employee
Mage Epic quest, implementation
Rogue Epic quest, concept and implementation
Western Wastes, items and implementation
Dragon Necropolis, items, implementation and population concept
“Ambush” and “Flavor Text” trigger concept (based on Dan Enright’s brilliant solution to the trap problem)
Sleeper’s Tomb, items, implementation, population concept, and cross-zone event concept and implementation
Revamped the Plane of Hate, concept and implementation
Repopulated Runnyeye Citadel, items, concept and implementation
Sanctus Seru, concept and implementation
Netherbian Lair, concept and implementation
Marus Seru, concept and implementation
Mons Letalis, concept and implementation
Grieg’s End, concept and implementation
Game manual intro fiction, Scars of Velious and Shadows of Luclin

At Sigil he was one of the original core senior designers working on the Asian themed continent, Kojan. His loss is a huge blow and it should be interesting to see the switch over in development considering the Vanguard beta will soon be underway. No matter who takes over what he was working on whenever a switch occurs the design is most likely to be impacted I’m not saying Vanguard is doomed, but it’s definitely a setback and huge disappointment. Out of all the actual lore writers working at Sigil he was my favorite, and of course, I am a little biased towards the content he designed probably because my main character in EQ was a rogue.