Hehe, well as far as I know he's no longer with Verant and is working on some other stuff. I'm not sure if he was actually involved in any of the early design of EQ2 or not. His online character was Aradune, the only guy in the early days with that flaming sword -- quite a sight to see!
I was heavily into MUD's and what not prior to EQ, but that's the one that really got me heavily addicted to the visual ones. Ultima Online just didn't do it for me. All these other ones have come and gone (Anarchy Online, Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot etc) but EQ remains the grand-daddy of them all continuing to have the best success. I think World of Warcraft is going to give it a serious run for the money though -- it's a much better game, and has excellent backing from Blizzard.