On the other side are the Talrok, who represent the Kujix races for launch. They are the counterpart to the humans and a bit more traditional, although they have some distinctly chaotic qualities to their look and feel.

They’ll begin their career in the Xanjuis Plains domain. For launch the Domain of Teldis will also be available for higher level content.

Eventually, they’ll be joined by the Vesperling, Ogre, and Fiend. Vesperlings come from no known original and are an extraordinarily beautiful, all-female race. Ogres are large, warlike and from the swamps, but also far more intelligent than the traditional Ogre. Finally, the Fiends are an extremely evil, humanoid/demon-type race.

Map of Harraja

While each of the two continents only launches with two domains, the maps show much more is planned. Like EVE Online, they hope to make a realistic game for launch and organically expand over time. In part, this is driven not just by practicality, but also by the desire to let the players into their world and have them help define where it goes.

Repeatedly, Henry discussed how he wanted to see what people enjoyed. Too many games ignore their playerbases, according to him, and tell them how it should be. He believes that once they get more people in there, and see what they like and dislike, he’ll have a clearer vision of not just where to go with the game, but what to emphasize and what not to.

Every element of their game focuses on the player experience and their desire to make it accessible, easy to grasp and fun.

“We’re not trying to hide then fun,” was Henry’s mantra throughout our meeting.

Crafting is another large part of Alganon. They’ve intentionally set things up to make the various crafting disciplines inter-dependent and then created a consignment system to facilitate transactions between players.

This circles back to their desire to provide alternatives.

“Our goal is to have alternate means of getting to the same rewards,” explained Lead Designer Hue Henry. “You shouldn’t have to do something you hate to get something you love.”

Too many games force people to do things in one way. For example, if someone wants to have a specific sword, but hates to raid, why should the game force them to raid to get that sword? With crafting and studies, they now have others means of achieving this. They can either raid and get the sword the old fashion way, build it, unlock the ability to use it through studies or have someone build it for them. It provides alternatives so that everyone can get what they want in the way they choose.

At launch, the game will also feature some instanced dungeon crawls, typically found at the end of a chain of quests. One thing Henry emphasized, though, is that they work to make these meaningful. For example, in one quest, they eventually have to kill a kobold master before he raises a dead god.

It turns out though that later, when they enter an area of the world infested with those same kobolds, now in complete chaos. Why is that? You killed their leader earlier on and have since sent them into disarray. It’s just a small touch, but it makes people feel quite important.

Of course, there will also be larger raid content that players expect, although Henry insisted that 95% of the game’s content will be solo-able if the player so chooses.

According to Allen and Henry, the game has more quests from 1 to 30 than World of Warcraft. That’s no small boast, but I can say that in my hands-on time, I never lacked something to do.

The Kudos System is another very unique system to Alganon that really is a long time coming in an MMO. Clearly, Quest Online is worried about people finding a good group easily, hence, the dual-class system. They take that a step further with Kudos. Basically, think Digg. It’s a system where players can give “Kudos” to other players who have done their role well. Players with more Kudos get a higher rating and while they’ve gone to great lengths to avoid exploitation, they admit it won’t be perfect, but suspect that in general it should give players a good idea of whether a potential group mate or guild leader is worth bringing along.

They’ve also added Families to the game, which is a choice made at character creation. Families start out as glorified chat channels. Players tell the game whether they’re an achiever, explorer, etc. and then they are grouped immediately in a general chat with like-minded individuals. Over time, this family provides a few alternative quests and achievements related to that style of gameplay. Explorers will be encouraged to see the world, and so on.

The final big wrinkle to Alganon is that they’ve finally admitted that players like to know, they like to document and they are going to use the Internet to do it. Quest Online cut out the middle man with their in-game library and MyAlganon website, which has already been launched.. This documents everything in the game down to the smallest detail and lets players access it either on their website or within the game itself. No more alt-tabbing. The library also tracks player achievements, which should help players get a little bit of recognition when they pull off something grand.

During my time in Phoenix, they did what the best demos do. After some introduction to the company, tools and methodology (check back tomorrow, for they are operated unlike most other MMO companies you’ll read about), they simply let me play the game.

It is by no means perfect, there are bugs of course to be worked out, but they clearly have a very solid foundation and have chosen their battles wisely, which all small companies must do. If you’re a big fan of character creation, for example, Alganon isn’t exactly City of Heroes. There are no nose sliders, just some basic options. Why? Allen called those complex systems a waste of time, since no one actually looks at their face ever again. At first, I was leery at first, but honestly, once I was in the world, I completely forgot about it and had more fun gaining new and cooler armor, as I completed more and more quests.

Alganon is a throwback to the way MMOs used to be a few years ago. It has its unique features, but they’ve worked hard to do those things they focused on well, rather than just throw thousands of half finished features at the wall. When they launch this fall, there will be likely those that decry that lack of options (specifically races at launch) or take a peek at the art style and call it a WoW clone, Quest Online has taken the right path. They’ve picked their battles and really made some solid, fun systems, rather than tossing around a thousand poorly executed grand plans. What they are doing, they’re doing well and there’s a lot to be said for that these days.

You can read more about Alganon on their official website. It's due out this fall.