Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising is poised to be unleashed on the world in the very near future. On a recent trip to Heatwave Interactive, MMORPG.com writer Richard Cox participated in a round table discussion with CEO Anthony Castoro, Lead Designer Tim Schubert, Producer Phil Tittle, Community Manager Donna Prior and Product Manager Shannon Drake. We're presenting this terrific interview in three parts to keep the channel tuned right here through Wednesday.

With most of the industry seemingly fleeing from the subscription based business model and adopting the F2P model, can you shed some light on why you’ve decided to stick with a subscription system?

Anthony Castoro: Early alpha polls indicated that the subscription payment method was the preferred method by far. As the game moved from alpha to beta, and the community grew, polls were continuously issued and they continued to come back in favor of a subscription model. It also made a lot more sense financially. Gods and Heroes was built with the subscription model in mind. While it COULD be changed to work with a F2P payment scheme in mind, the transition would take a lot of extra work and time.

Read more Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Developer Round Table Pt. 1.