MMORPG.com's Richard Cox recently had the opportunity for a studio visit to schmooze with the development team behind Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising. His day started off with the weekly "Show and Tell" session and continued from there. See how the rest of the day went in our exclusive Heatwave Interactive studio visit.

Now, for a bit of clarification, there was no real schedule for the interviews. Nothing was set up ahead of time; it was really just a series of catching people in their office who had time to chat with me. I had already fully expected that there wouldn’t be many folks who had time to chat so close to launch, so I had typed up the questions and given them to Donna. I figured I’d end up getting them answered emailed to me after I had left. But nope, everyone was great about making time to see me. In fact, the first person I sat down with was the CEO Anthony Castoro.

Read more of Richard Cox's Heatwave Interactive Studio Visit.

So... what were your questions and answers?

Sounds like you had a good time, and you can't go wrong with Donna's picks of beers :)

And yes, it is nice to see a studio that isn't stressing like crazy over launch.  A CEO that knows if his employees are having fun they will be more productive than being treated like a productivity vending machine.

 - Ice_Hole

Originally posted by Mitara

So... what were your questions and answers?

The questions/answers actually ran a week or so ago in a three part series.

Here's another History lesson that many wont get from and advertising site, like here.  Dont buy a game at a AAA mmorpg mainstream price that carries a monthly sub, but that has either no single-player game-play content, let alone no massively-multiplayer game-play content.

So be carefull of this game with as little as they offer and as much as we know about how shallow it is for the over-stretched price-point.  Without predjudice, and getting past the advertising that they pay for on mmorpg.com, imho, this game certainly lacks overall mmorpg deliverables when it comes to game and play design, mechanics and content within the mmorpg space.

Be warned that the money-grab by the devs isn't worth it, imho.  However, if it ever goes F2P, which should be soon, or adopts a more indie GW payment model of box-sale and no monthly sub, then wait until it does-so.

Thank you.

Cik_Asalin,

The same could be said of MANY MMO's.  Personally Rift dosn't have any content I am interested in.  It doesn't make it a bad game.  Rift has TONS of that single player content you speak of.  In fact, in my opinion the entire game is all single player content.  Their is barely any group content to make the game be called an MMO in my opinion.

An argument could be made that Rift features, well rifts that are group content.  But in my opinion that is nothing but grind content with little to no variation.  It's dungeons are few and far between.  And ultimately the PvP is lackluster, suffers from big balance issues, and is nothing but battleground style PvP.  Even the PvP servers lack open world PvP.

That being said, it is still a good game.  It isn't a good game for me, I wasn't even able to keep playing an entire month.  Yet their are people playing the game and enjoying it, so who are we to judge?

Gods and Heroes is somthing different and unique.  It isn't your typical fantasy MMO, and has a different interesting setting.  If you want WoW, play WoW.  If you want fantasy, play fantasy.  If you want somthing different, try somthing different.  This game gives everyone another option of games to play.  And in a setting that can have some educational value (From the standpoint of learning some mytheology.)

It is what it is.

 - Ice_Hole

It is always good to hear a studio that treats their employees good. Its unfortunately they didnt hire the right game designer an d the right artists however. And the result, well take a look for yourself. Its probably 30% there, no more.

On the other hand, I believe this is their first attempt at this, and some forgiveness can be found in this, or at least so, if they do fire the game designer and the art director and find some more capable people.