A news message on the Neocron Homepage has been put up describing a new set of Epic Runs on their test servers. They hope to bring them to retail servers soon. Here are the details:

"The first six Epic Runs have been installed on the public test servers. They will go live on the retail servers in a couple of days from now.

The Epic Runs will bring a huge boost to the overall content of Neocron and they might also change gameplay (especially for newbies to the MMORPG genre) quite drastically. Each and every of the 13 factions will get its own complex storyline. These storylines consist of several quests that will explain a lot about the faction the player is associated with.

Let's see how this affects gameplay in practice: If a new player enters the game, the first thing he should do is go and pay his faction's HQ a visit. Being at the HQ, one of the 'Human Resources Officers' (HRO) will check the player for his loyalty towards that faction. If the player's loyalty is high enough, the HRO will give him a so called 'Special Run' (SR). This first SR will be a fairly simple mission, which will lead the player into a complex story and into the background of the faction. After completion of the first SR, the player will have to reach a certain rank before he can pick up the next SR. Each Epic Run consists of atleast 6 Special Runs. Each SR is again divided into several smaller missions. This way, the player will become a part of the game's story and will identify himself much stronger with the faction he's bound to. After completing the whole Epic Run, the player will get a rare item from his faction, which is only given to players who complete this specific Epic Run.

From this moment on, gameplay will divide into two optional ways: A) Open a clan bound to this faction and receive 'Clan Missions', like e.g. warfare against other factions (completing an epic run will be a req for opening a clan in the future) or B) The player may choose to change the faction, by raising his loyalty towards another faction. The possibility to actually switch factions will allow a player to do the Epic Runs for all 13 factions. A player who collects all 13 rare Epic Run items, will be granted the title 'Neocron Paladin', which will be visible to all other players.

You may ask yourself, why we are going to implement linear missions to Neocron as an optional way to play the game. Well, the answer is quite simple. The most important reason is the fact that we saw many players who are new to the MMORPG genre, who often did not know 'what to do next'. The Epic Runs will give these players a red line and an exciting story they can follow. While they follow this story, they will level up their character within a storyline. We feel that this is much better than just going into the sewers and bashing rats without knowing why or without having a true goal. Another reason is that we want to bring more life to the factions and their backgrounds, porting more of the detailled background stories and political in-game situations into the game. The entire faction and loyalty situation will also have a more heavy impact on the game in the future. This means that you may not enter a territory, that is occupied by a hostile faction, without having to fear that you get shot by a NPC of that hostile faction. You will also no longer be able to simply walk into the HQs of hostile factions.

Another cool thing about the Epic Runs is, that the various storylines are sometimes cross connected. That means that when you play a run for a specific faction and meet a NPC, you may get a certain impression of that NPC. However, when you play an Epic Run for another faction you may find out that this particular NPC has a completely different personality than what you thought about him during your first run. Again, I've already seen some of the storylines and I was truely blown away by their thrilling plots.

Posted by: Martin J. Schwiezer"