Ten Ton Hammer has a 'behind the scenes' interview with Jumpgate Evolution's Hermann Peterscheck. The interview focuses on the development process among other things. Check out a snip.

Ten Ton Hammer: Did you (the designers) play a lot of Jumpgate Classic before you were brought onto this project? If not, have you put in some time since then? What elements were done really well in the Classic game?

Hermann: I personally did. In fact I did some work on the first game so I played it a lot. After JGC's launch I didn't' play it much anymore as I moved on to other projects, but we tested it quite a bit before starting on JGE. The best thing about making a game like JGE is that you have a test case to work from. You can take people and have them play the original game and work out what they like and don't like. It's really quite a different game so it's hard to compare the two. I think a lot of this is because the entire MMO landscape has changed since JGC was developed. Compare things like Ultima Online to Age of Conan or something... I mean UO had NO grouping mechanics when it launched. It just wasn't something that people had thought of at that point.

I think what the classic game did well is to create a complete and believable space game that people could interact with. That is, and will always be, the core of Jumpgate. Just like a game like Diablo is Kill->Collect, Jumpgate is essentially Fly->Shoot. The rest is just deepening and expanding on that core mechanic.

Read the rest at TTH, linked above.