Developer Round Table Pt. 1

General Question:

(Kenze:) If each player can have up to 4 minions, and assuming you can have 5 people in a group, that means up to 20 NPCs following you around. How is that managed? How will it affect performance?

Tim Schubert:

First and foremost, performance has been greatly improved over the course of beta. Also, the content in Gods and Heroes is balanced with minions in mind. It is expected that you'll be there with as many minions as you can summon along with a group of friends all with their own minions. There has also been extensive stress testing which placed many hundreds of characters/minions in the game to test stability.

General Question:

(Shari:) Do you have any further information on Digital Distribution through outlets such as Steam and Direct2Drive?

Anthony Castoro:

Digital distribution has just been finalized with all digital distributers. Steam will offer a special Steam Edition which will come with an exclusive estate item. There will also be an exclusive minion from Steam for pre-ordering, the Phocyde, which is one of the very few non-humanoid minions available in the game. And also, even though it's not a digital distributor, I'll add the news here; we've also just come to an agreement with AAFES to sell the game in the PXs on military bases.

MMORPG.com:

I've been greatly impressed by the level of community interaction from your team. Not only from your great CM, but also from the CEO. By taking over a game that was already in development, you inherited a pre-existing community. What has been some of the pros and cons of dealing with such a community instead of one you would have built from the ground up?

Donna Prior & Shannon Drake:

The community who has stuck around since the Perpetual days have done so because they're really behind the game. They're really excited about it and want to see it succeed. The newer additions to the community are for the most part very passionate about mythology and history. Since they're an older community on average, they're really good about trying to educate each other, rather than flaming and trolling as much as you may see in a community with a younger average age. It has been really interesting watching the melding of the older community with the more recent additions to the community as beta ramped up and release started getting closer. The most difficult thing in dealing with such a community is that an older community isn't as familiar with social media and other community tools available to them. You can't just expect that as big of a portion of them are following you on Twitter for example.

MMORPG.com:

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.

MMORPG.com:

I know PvP is still a ways down the road, but come on... It's Rome, there's a Coliseum, there are Gladiators... We'll eventually get some gladiatorial games right? Please?

Phil Tittle:

Absolutely it is something we're looking at doing with PvP, it just makes sense. And not only Gladiatorial combat games, but also chariot racing, gambling on the fighting, etc, all that great competitive stuff from Roman history.

MMORPG.com:

Other games in the past that have launched without PvP and then added it later have felt like it was just tacked on, a separate game. How will you avoid this with Gods and Heroes?

Phil Tittle:

For starters, as mentioned above, it's all stuff that really fits the game, fits in the world we're creating. The Gladiatorial games are part of Roman history. Some kind of open world or realm versus realm system wouldn't really fit though, and would feel tacked on, so that'll be something we'll avoid. Another major hurdle will be class balance. Classes balanced in PvE aren't necessarily balanced in PvP. That's definitely going to take a while and is one of the main reasons PvP will be added post-launch.

MMORPG.com:

(Poll) I love that there's almost always pizza and beer during your live-steamed dev-chats. What are your favorite beer and pizza toppings?

G&H Team:

Anthony Castoro: Beer: Newcastle Brown Ale, Pizza: Italian Sausage

Tim Schubert: Beer: Ciders, Pizza: Peperoni or Green Peppers and Hamburger

Phil Tittle: Beer: Guinness Stout, Shiner, Dark Beers in general, Pizza: Italian Sausage, Onion and Peperoni

Donna Prior: Beer: Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout, Pizza: Garlic and Mushrooms

Shannon Drake: Beer: Four Roses Bourbon, Pizza: Peperoni

MMORPG.com:

How's progress on the Nomad and Scout classes going? Any estimate how long after launch we may expect to see them?

Tim Schubert:

The animations issues have been mostly worked out. The Scout is very close, will be the first one release of the two. You can probably expect to see him fairly soon after launch. But we're also working on a lot of content at the same time. We're only launching with one of the Telchines Deities, but there are three more just about ready to go, and there will eventually be six total. The first major content patch set for after launch will add ten more levels of content to the game and is about 90% complete.

MMORPG.com:

I love what I've heard of the Estates system so far. EQ2 probably had my favorite housing system to date. I loved being able to set up shop and sell my crafted items there. Will we be able to set up shops in our Estate to sell stuff to other players?

Tim Schubert:

Shops are a possibility. There are a lot of different things we're looking at doing with the player estate system.