All Posts by Lepidus

Currently available on their public test server, Revelations I not only continues the theme of Biblically named expansion packs, but also further fills out a game world that has been relentlessly growing since the title's initial launch in May of 2003. Unlike many expansions we see, Revelations does not just throw a couple new classes and races (or should I say skills and ships) into the equation, but systems that fundamentally alter the experience (although there are four new battlecruisers and four new battleships to go along with those systems).

Since Echoes of Faydwer brings back the ancestral homeland of the Wood Elves, High Elves, Gnomes and Dwarves. Players creating any one of these races including the Half Elf and the Fae, can choose Kelethin as their starting city.

Steven-Elliot Altman: Good question, Garrett. As far as visuals go, our Korean design team was given a mandate: If it didn't exist in China during the Ming Dynasty, it doesn't exist in 9Dragons. That speaks to the design of the cities, the wardrobe, and even the available weapons. You won't find Shuriken (throwing stars) for example, because they were yet to be introduced during that period in China's history.

As far as the writing goes, I researched each of the Clans to the best of my ability (Shaolin and Wu-Tang Clan had the most available literature of course) and hopefully no one will observe any serious anachronisms. That being said, we have ancient Chinese wisdom being offered in English, so we have to allow for the cultural bias first, and then flavor as we go. I think it's the correct flavor we all strive to experience, not dead on accuracy. Believe me, that would be boring. The process is very similar to writing and then shooting a historically based movie. You have to balance familiar storytelling elements with historically accurate visuals and tune the language as close as you can without losing too much in translation. The only element that keeps me from total immersion in the time period is the fact that I have a mouse in my hand. As far as liberties go... without giving away too much... there just may be an invasion from a foreign land brewing in a not-too-distant expansion event... and we may be compressing time a wee bit.

But betas are also fun. Since it was Halloween, we decided to do something a little bit special and celebrate the holiday in style!

Our content lead, Jess Lebow, led the charge. He recruited artists and mission designers to work up some neat stuff and in just two days, we were ready to go. I'll run down the list of nifty things we did in the four new-player towns of Marsh Harbour (pirate), Jenny Bay (British), Barilla (Spanish), and Tampa (French).

Monty Sharma: The biggest difference between Vivox and the others is that our voice services are integrated into the game. There is no separate application to run, and no credentials and server addresses to negotiate. The service reflects the look and feel of the game and supports the established social structure. The solution is fully managed and supported by Vivox - you don't have to run your own communication server anymore.

In addition, our service allows you to talk to anyone else in the game, not just people on a particular server. This opens up a huge range of possibilities for grouping, adventuring, and conquering. Imagine approaching another character and just starting a conversation, or having guild-to-guild or corporation-to-corporation negotiations. Similarly, by integrating with the game, we can match the communication hierarchy to the command hierarchy, so that raid leaders or fleet commanders are automatically mapped to the communications infrastructure.