All Posts by Lepidus

Marko Dieckmann: The economic cycle has always been one of the most innovative features in Face of Mankind. Everything in the game has to be produced by the players. This creates very dynamic markets and gives a lot of power to the players. We only control the basic prices for raw materials along with basic mining and production costs. The rest is controlled by the Dominion citizens. Each faction can define tax rates on the colonies they own. The economic cycle is closed, which means all money that is spent will go somewhere else and won't be lost.

A few months ago we introduced the new real-time mining and production system and we've balanced it a lot since then. The only thing we still need to introduce to complete a believable economic cycle is item decay. Item decay means that items that cannot be destroyed, used or emptied (such as weapons, implants, clothes etc.) will age and at one point become unusable. This feature is on our to-do-list.

PKO Team: At the moment, the PvP features have not been fully released. We do currently have the arena open where players can challenge each other to earn honour points for bragging rights. There is also a guild vs guild feature that we intend to test out soon in this closed beta.

Earlier on I mentioned about high level dungeons being accessable through random whirlpools in the game. These areas are Free For All meaning you can PK anyone who steps into the place. We are expecting a lot of clashes and rivalry between players and guilds for this highly contested territory purely for the item drops and rewards that are available in these areas.

In my inbox was mail from my friends over at NP Cube, makers of Dark and Light. The introduction line reads:

"The Ganareth Tour will give newcomers to the world of Ganareth a taste of many of the world's most addictive elements. It can be downloaded at no cost."

Ole Herbjørnsen: As I mentioned above I started playing video games back in 1985 on the C64. I played lots of different games and off the top of my head I can remember: Bozo the Clown, Blue Max, Defender of the Crown, Wiz Ball, Hunt the Bismarck and Carrier Command.

Back in those days I would typically play 4-5 hours per day. A friend of mine had a C128 with a floppy disc, and we would play lots of different games either head-to-head or in coop (like Wiz Ball). Since the graphics back then were pretty primitive (and took a turn for the worse when I transitioned to the 80086 IBM XT with CGA-graphics!), I prefer deep and involving gameplay over fancy graphics. My favorite genres are probably strategy, role-playing games and simulator games.

On top of the original storyline, the numerous expansion packs have added in-depth sub-plots into the game. The "Rise of the Zilart", the "Chains of Promathia", and the "Treasures of Aht-Urghan" all present new challenges, storylines, and rewards to the players who dare to complete them. The storyline is one of the finest qualities about FFXI, as it provides even the highest level players with something to do after they've hit the level cap.

Yoon Im: The free to play system has been very popular in Asia, and we anticipated a similar reaction from the Western market. We also believe that a user should have the right to preview and play the game before investing any of their hard-earned money. Yes, there are plenty of games that offer free trials, but many of these gimmicks still require you to submit payment information up front. And what happens when you accidentally forget to cancel the 'free preview'? Whammo - got yo money, foo! You will never see anything to the likes of this in Flyff. Not only is the game free to play, we allow our dedicated users to enhance the quality of their gaming experience through the purchase of premium pay items. These items not only provide the user with a great variety of options to raise the overall fun-factor, but it also helps support the Flyff team. It's like donating to a website that you thoroughly enjoy perusing - same exact concept. Still, in the end no one is ever required to pay a single dime to play the game. In doing this, I think Flyff will appeal to a broader demographic and will help us increase and strengthen our community.

Howard Marans: My job mainly focuses around the integration of the art and content for Camelot. The artists and world builders will give me their work, and I will get it integrated into the game clients. Sometimes, it's a bit slow, but other times the stuff comes in so quickly you never get a second to catch your breath.

I'm also in charge of making sure all the correct files are ready for the patches and are going to the correct clients.

"No matter how great an adventurer you are," it was explained to us, "you can't just force your way in to see the king, you need to look the part, you need to have the diplomacy abilities."

This means that diplomacy will provide avenues for gameplay that adventuring can not provide.

I'm not talking about their faces (though the differences here are mostly negligible too). I am talking about the way they dress. It seems to me that everyone is shopping at the same tailor/blacksmith. Take a tour around any game and you will notice that players of similar levels are usually dressed identically.

Christian Schuett: Our players often have asked for explicit PvP events where they can pit themselves with other players. The content team has seized this chance to host the “Masters of the Universe” event, a tournament where players could fight against others within a special ingame arena and with a sudden death rule set. While in the first rounds, players fought versus players, the final round was the biggest challenge. The five remaining players had to step up against a Neocron Gamemaster of their choice and showed them that good gear isn't the only factor that counts in a heated battle. In the end most of the remaining players taught our Gamemasters a lesson in Player vs. Player combat and carried off the victory. Prizes for the winning players were rare items such as a special Wisdom of Ceres body armor.

Overall we are very satisfied with this event and we have received lots of positive feedback from the community too. This is motivating us to host more of these events in the future.

EA is not, however, a small company with finite ambitions. It is only logical to assume that while Warhammer Online may look like it has the makings of being a big hit, they are not going to rest all their MMO hopes on one potential star and two aging veterans. One has to ask then, what else might they be working on?

The original Mourning project had been delisted by MMORPG.com in a famous incident involving developer abuse of our staff, among other things. Later, they attempted to launch the game in an almost unplayable state after a pre-order debacle. Since then, the game was sold, but due to confusion involving a partner company called Nuanced Entertainment, we once again removed the game from our list until we could confirm that it was indeed in fresh hands and a legitimate title.

Before returning it to the list, we spoke to Loud Ant CEO Colton Burgress, the CEO of Nuanced Entertainment Adam McCall and the original Producer of Mourning Andrei Gireada. The game's original owner refused to be interviewed for this piece. The three men clarified their roles, some of the history and confirmed that the project had indeed completely changed hands.

Priced at $49.99 / €49.99 / £34.99 the full ArchLord game package also includes 30 days free play as part of the full retail package. Monthly subscriptions to the ArchLord game service are charged at UK £8.99, US $14.99, Europe €12.99 respectively plus applicable taxes.

As part of the official launch of ArchLord, Codemasters Online Gaming have also unleashed final details on the official race to become the games first crowned ArchLord! Announced today, all players entering into the game are inline to enter the competition to be crowned the games first all-ruling ArchLord and with it the lucky winner will be presented with an authentic suit of ArchLord armour worth in excess of $10,000!

As part of this epic race the winner will be flown to the UK where the games first ruling ArchLord will be presented this unique prize as part of an ArchLord coronation ceremony with the full details to be announced in the coming months.