Quest Online LLC has taken a unique approach to MMO development and when we were in Phoenix to see Alganon, we also got a glimpse into how they hope to change the way people build MMOs.

The other big difference between QOL and most every MMO I’ve ever seen is that they do everything themselves, and I do mean everything.

They didn’t license Unreal, buy HeroEngine or any of these other third party solutions. Every single thing in Alganon is developed 100% in-house by their team. This is very rare. Some MMOs license everything from the graphics engine, to the billing system, all the way to the trees in the world. The only possible exception to this, according to Allen, will be integrated VOIP. They do intend to eventually adopt it, and will almost assuredly turn to a third party for that out of pure practicality.

The Alganon Editor is how the game is put together. As anyone who has tried to play with the Neverwinter Nights or Unreal editors know, these tools can be complex, but also quite powerful. It’s a lot of work to build and maintain one, and usually the more custom to a project it is, the more convoluted it gets.

Read it all here.

Interesting stuff, Dana. Thanks for posting this.

As I mentioned in the thread for yesterday's article, the game has possibilities. Yes, it looks WoW-ish, at least from the screenshots, but I am not put off by the UI or the graphics. In some ways, they are pleasantly familiar.

One of the advantages this company has is that, conceivably, the game's direction can adjust and evolve more easily than say, the ten-ton behemoth that is WoW/Blizzard. The ability to make creative and unique course corrections in a small company might just give QOL the edge in the market that they need. It's like comparing the "turning radius" of a sports car to that of an aircraft carrier. Sure, an aircraft carrier is huge and formidable, and nobody's about to "take it down", but sometimes being small and maneuverable has its advantages.

I wish this company well. A number of people asked in yesterday's thread why an MMO player would choose this game over WoW since (I imagine) WoW has more content, more options, and a greater level of polish. I think that's a really REALLY good question.

My feeling is that if Alganon turns out to be very WoW-like BUT, for example, leaned toward being more solo-friendly than WoW (something I'd sure like to see), or more PvP-oriented (eventually), or less expensive, for example, this game will find the sling it needs to -- if not slay "Goliath" (I hardly expect that!) -- at least hold its own on the MMO battlefield and stay viable.

Alganon has some nice features, but I am curious as to what will really set it apart from the "Big Boys" out there.

 Good article. I don't know if this game would grab my interest, but it's nice to see an indie company with a solid plan and determination to utilize it. 

I like how they are creating their own gaming engine. Although this may be tough to do initially eventually they will have a product that is uniquely theirs. This will open a lot of doors for them in the future as far as producing other MMO's.

Alganon is getting quite some attention from MMORPG ;)

The way they work and go about things appeal to me ... good to hear they have such a good design tool, as i think that does make half the game. Now, if they would make it partially available to players so they can create their own little pieces of content in the game ( dungeons? Interior design?) .... THAT would pull people in.

As Will Wright (creator SIMS) once said, the current gaming market consists laregely of people that want to express them selves through games, there for these games should be largely build by players. It's the future of gaming and in the process lowers development costs.

I hope to see more of it soon. I had been send a beta key ... but they took it back

Im kind of excited for this game, im not sure why yet.  It seems new yet familiar.

Hm. I'm following this one a bit now since a year or so and I've been following Horizons since long before it's launch, played it for a year or so but don't play it anymore. I've no hard feelings against anyone, I've seen Allen did his share of failures, Bowman as well and now Vitrium is working hard to keep it alive. Soooo ... if Allen learned from his past - my respect to him. I wish him and the team all the best for the future, proof will be in the pudding of course.

The optics of Alganon are at least to me nice looking, seem not to eat much performance so the market is not very limited, it looks atmospheric to me - I like it. The features are not so much mine, I miss a more non-combat interactive environment with housing, crafting etc. so probably Alganon is not for me. But power to them, every successful mmo out there is a good thing and teach us at least lessons about ideas and how they work or if they don't why maybe not.

I enjoyed this article very much, from the "no bs" management style to the inhouse engine & tools to the overall direction it has me interested.

Ok, so they aren't loking to "do anything new" but I like their work-ethic.

Their duality approach to PvE & PvP, setting up both to be designed as independant systems really chimed with me, it was something I had always hoped a brave developer would try instead of just trying to shoe-horn a PvE system into a PvP role or visa versa.

I would loved to have seen them developing some emergent content systems but for an Indie that may be too cutting edge a biscuit to try chewing it this early in development, hopefully they can evolve into this later in the game's development.

So  this has become one of only 3 titles I am going to follow closely.

I've always wondered why game's continued with the "bolt it on" approach to everything. PvE, RvR, Raids etc .. always just bolt it on. I understand back in the early days why this was done (ease) but newer MMO's have always followed the same approach which struck me as odd.

Its always seemed to me that "balancing" has always been a major issue in MMO's. Be that balancing raid content with group/solo content or balancing player vs player interaction with AI Vs player interaction. Refreshing to finally see a company try to step away from the bolt it on method and truly seperate the systems. It should allow for far easier balancing within the game. Adjusting how much damage / debuff / snare or whatever a skill has in PvP wont effect the skill at all in PvE which is refreshing.

It will allow the team to truly work on balancing each side of the game (once they add the PvP of course) without messing up the other aspects. It should allow for faster balancing too since they only have to look at the ramifications of a skill change in that one aspect of game play rather than over the whole system. How many games have you played where a skill was "nerfd" for being too powerful in PvP and in doing so that made it totally usless in PvE or Visa-versa?

I hope they take this model even further to split thier game aspects for balancing.

Take DAoC for example. Loved that game until RA's and ToA. Why? RA's gained through RvR has a HUGE impact on the PvE game too. Raids/groups wanted RR5+ tanks etc to roll with. So RvRin became a must do for the PvE players in order to compeate. Then ToA hit with artifacts and MLs which were "must have" items/abilitys for RvR. So the RvR people were forced to PvE in order to compeate in RvR. Bad model IMO. (Suxed for me since I had specific RvR and PvE characters that I was now forced to do the other on)

Actions should only bring rewards for the sphere associated with them.

Eg. PvP combat rewards should only effect PvP. PvE rewards should only effect PvE. Raiding rewards should only effect raiding. etc.

This makes balancing issues alot easier too. You dont have to balance PvE rewards for PvP. You dont have to balance PvP rewards for raiding etc etc. Of course there would be common "base stats" on all types of gear. but specifics could all be fine tuned. Procs on PvE weapons only proc on MoBs. Debuffs on PvP weapons only work on players etc etc. Abilitys wont fire on the wrong type of target .. raid gained abilitys wont fire on regular PvE mobs or players ... and so on. AoC tried this with the heroic defence/attck stats gained on raiding armor, it was a step in the right direction IMO. (Dunno if they still work with this model long time since I played AoC)

This allows people to play in the spheres they enjoy and want to progress in without having an impact on other spheres. So what if the raiders have uber-leet raid gear? Wont help them in PvP. So what if the PvP'rs have death weapons .. wont touch a raid mob ... You could go so far as to have different "gear tabs" where you have 2 or 3 "sets" of gear .. your PvP gear. Your PvE gear and your raid gear ..

I'm not saying limit what people do. If they want to play all sphere's they should be able to do so, I just dont agree with the model that you can raid 24/7 and have gear that outstrips the people who PvP 24/7 or visa-versa. Keep gear / abilitys gained within a sphere WITHIN that sphere. Cross overs should be very limited.

Its my hope to one day play a game that manages to balance all aspects of playstyle. Be it PvP. Raiding or solo/small group play. I dont see why people feel that if you spend 15 hours a week "raiding" you should have better gear than people who spend an equal amount of time / effort in another sphere (be that PvP grouping or crafting) Rewards should always relate to the effort invested. Sure people will argue man-hour stats (if 24 raiders spend 15 hours for 12 items bler bler) but that could all be balanced. I dont think I've ever seen anyone argue that gear should be easier to get in ways other than raiding .. just that it should be acheiveable in some form.

(Btw I was a raid leader in EQ DAoC and WoW for many years so I'm not knocking raiders .. just pointing out that raiding. although fun, seems to be the staple "gear-grind" method for current MMO's and I personally feel that its an injustice to all non-raiders out there who put in at least equal amounts of effort - Notice I said "equal amount of effort" .. I dont support the whiners with the "me gear now" attitude who feel they should get gear just for paying a sub.)

On that note, I've been following Alganon with the wife and we're both interested in playing it. Happy to pay a sub based on what I've seen and heard from the Dev's at this point. Sure the game may flop badly, it may also go on to be great. If your not willing to "risk" (<--lol) a few bucks thats fine, no-one is telling you to. It has enough "uniqueness" that I'm willing to drop some cash on it and although I see the art style being very similar to WoW I really dont agree with the "clone" comments. After all the Dev's have been totally honest and said they are adding a few new things to give it a new feel and hope to add more over time with community support, progress tends to come slowly so I dont expect the "next gen" MMO to hit for a long time .. until then I'm happy to take things slow and get some new idear's to keep my gaming fresh.

I was quite interested at their development editor video on their site, and you got to see it in action first hand (jealous). I was hoping they would reveal more about it, since us developers out here tend to pay attention to the lessons learned by other people in the zany hope of not falling in the same holes. The editor looked very slick, I must say.

Thanks for the interesting review.  This is the first I have heard about Alganon and I'll definitely be following their progress into open beta and release. 

There are a lot of aspects that appeal to me - MMO yet plenty of soloable content, graphics that are appealing yet not over the top or excessively cartoony, quests, and having fun.  The family and kudos systems sound like excellent ideas as well.  I'll be looking forward to seeing more on the combat system and character animations, as well as the overall challenge level of the content (hopefully not as easy and dumbed down as Warcraft... hint hint).

I'd just like to mention, regarding people saying they won't pay for a subscription based game - $15 is about what you pay for a lunch out.  A month's subscription $ provides a heck of a lot more value than a burger.   I would rather pay upfront than have a good game degenerate into an item mall where the people with the most cash have the most advantage in game.

This game definitely has me interested and I wanna give Alganon a shot...I hope it ends up being successful in some form or fashion.

     I have to say that the Original Horizons was pretty far from what was released.   Angels, demons, dragons and more all as possible races.  Just as the tip of the iceberg.   The entire thing seemed very outlandish but me and a few friends followed it closely for a while because the ideas were new and just plainly seemed awesome.   It was released much later as the horizons we know today before the name change.   Horizons was a decent game but all the constant changes showed and it lacked any content, minus the crafting system which hooked me for a while, (and i am an avid PvP player as well as at the time a hardcore gamer).  So it had its ups, but the `` in house  crap ``  that occured obviously affected the game and it was nothing to what we expected, just another game that failed its potential with a differant Dave at the helm.

      Anyways the reason i posted this was because i loved Allens ideas and i still do.    Trying to make a game with the best of your ideas is awesome. Personally i feel the gaming world if filled with mediocre ambition for better games, sort of feels like if they make 100 dollars they seem to be happy.  Even if the game was rotten.  I will certainly be trying this game simply because there are some people who make games for gamers not for the average dollar.   MMOès have probably been plagued by disapointment more then any other genre if you have followed them since i have.  Ultima Online 2 and the original horizons being 2 big ones fromt he early days where only Asherons Call and EQ were the new big contenders.   So seeing Him at the helm again sort of makes me hope that his ambition carries forward a bit and we migh actually get to play an MMO for the gamers and not the investors.