The live environment is so much different than the beta phase. Suddenly the needs and wants of your players come to the forefront. How will Hi-Rez be handling the ups and downs of a vocal community?

Our Beta players have already found that we tend to be very engaged with the community. Specifically we are active on the forums, conduct surveys and polls often, play our own game constantly and are fairly responsive to feedback. We will continue to be active with the community and play our own game because that is the best way to calibrate whether a vocal comment is really representative or not.

The Conquest system is Global Agenda's "heavy-hitter" in terms of persistent gameplay. How do you plan to keep the action and turnover of ownership between Agencies and Alliances fresh for players months down the road?

It really comes down to players, systems, and content.

Players, because the player-driven nature of Conquest definitely keeps things interesting compared to the typical pre-formed factions. Already in Beta we saw Agencies bribing others to not attack them, hiring Mercenaries to launch attacks on enemies, non-agression packs made and broken and some backstabbing as well.

Systems are important to make sure that we get the right dynamics between players. We introduced upkeep fees on territories, and some additional territory adjacency bonuses to inject additional strategic considerations into the hex-map play and ensure that victory does not simply go to the alliance with the most players. Our intent is that small Agencies can make a major impact.

Finally, as with any MMO, people expect fresh content and Conquest will get continual updates - new game types, new Conquest-specific items for player use, new Conquest items for Agency use, and entirely new zones to open and be fought over.

At the end of each AvA season what exactly happens? Are there special rewards for occupying Alliances at the end of a season?

A zone within Conquest can be won by an Alliance constructing and deploying a special facility called a Particle Forge. The massive Forge facility requires rare resources that can only be mined from certain territory locations within the zone. The first Alliance to complete a Forge will close that zone and be granted victory.

Winning a zone does bring rewards beyond just the prestige. For one, the leading Agency of an Alliance receives a massive cache of unique equipment and supplies for their Agents. i.e. Phat Loot! This includes combat and production oriented items, as well as those of a more showy nature. It's up to the leading Agency, who founded the Alliance, to decide how to distribute this reward among the Alliance.

The main focus of Global Agenda is PvP and the Conquest campaign, but it seemed in beta like many players thoroughly enjoyed the PvE missions as well. Are there any plans brewing in the studio to expand on them?

Definitely. As you say, many Beta players have found our PvE to be a nice change from the traditional MMO tab-targetting PvE and from our pre-orders we've seen as much PvE activity as PvP. The current Global Agenda PvE format is 4-person co-op missions that have a 'dungeon-crawl' feel; only a lot more fast-paced and with a pretty epic Boss fight at the end of each. We are already testing some alternative PvE encounter styles in-studio, and with our tool-set we can produce content fairly quickly. So, yes - we plan to introduce significant ongoing content to subscribers for both Conquest and PvE.