Jumpgate Evolution - Interview @ Vault Network

An interview with community manager Nicole Hamlett is up at The Vault Network. The smiley-heavy interview seems to essentially revolve around blowing stuff up:

Beibhinn: Above, you mentioned mining, what are the other professions available to people and what are you guys doing to make sure they aren't boring or monotonous?

Nicole: Yes! It was realized early in development that an action combat game is really fast paced and there is only so much shooting and blowing up of stuff that you can do before it becomes tedious.

Obviously, a solution to that is to create downtime activities. Beyond the combat, the next best progression is of course tradeskills, so that is being implemented right now as well as a comprehensive trading system which includes an auction house, mail system and a manufacturing scenario.

However, beyond that again, the team is planning on implementing mini-games within the larger sphere. If all goes well you will to be able to play flash based games while you're in a station that will help fill the downtime.

I'm pretty excited about that. I started playing EQ as my first MMO, and I often wished that we'd had decks of cards or something while we waited for those spawns. Even while I play some games now, I wish I could take a break from the action and just chill out.
The best example of I've seen of this is actually Puzzle Pirates. You can go into the towns and play sword fighting games or cards or whatnot. It's great and it's sometimes more fun to login and do those than it is to sail and pillage.
I'm really looking forward to that phase of testing because I've found that those things can be just as engaging as the main game itself.