MMORPG: Why a persistent world? Persistence must bring massive balancing issues and a tremendous amount of complexity?
Xi: That would be our reckless expansion phase. We have a really unusual philosophy in our studio. We love the idea of being pioneers, coming up with some crazy idea. We know there are so many games about war but so many end up being instanced experiences. Additionally, we had pressure from marketing from the in-house studio to focus the battle into an arena. However, if you think about the battles we have, I cannot imagine it without the mountain ranges, rivers, or sea for us to conquer. Without this, I don’t see any real meaning behind the fight. I have no feeling of ownership.
If you make a single player game, it is easy enough to make a large-scale strategy game but moving to an online environment then you might have something similar to an online RTS. Still, even then you do not have to actively lead troops on the ground, giving our players an entirely different experience from many current strategy titles. This provided a lot of challenges that were not easily overcome. It took us at least half a year just to iterate our development around the combat rules and sometimes you have only to have a trade-off to have a balance.
We want to let the community know that we know what we are doing is new and risky, and we will iterate and polish the systems with your help. We all love the idea of the territory war.
Tested in Battle
MMORPG:How has the experience of playing alongside the players been, during the beta testing stages?
Xi: We have been playing pretty much every day until 3 or 4am playing with the gamers, really late. As developers and designers, we try to merge ourselves into the gamer’s guilds to get an idea of how people are playing Conqueror’s Blade. It gives us a chance to play with them, talk to them, and share in the excitement of what is to come. Especially in Europe, we found thousands of people moving around the territory war. The whole world is so populated when we play, and it makes us really so happy to see that.
This has given us tons of feedback too. We’ve had a chance to start digging into the comments on the forum, and it is exciting to see the difference in opinion among players. Right now, we have the core mechanics in place for things like territory war, hot join matches, trade routes, and bandits and while some players might want the territory war to happen all the time and some just play for a quick hour. It’s interesting to see.
MMORPG:Was player behavior entirely as expected when you launched into testing these systems?
Xi: The most surprising thing is probably how disciplined our gamers are in the core combat. I joined a lot of battles with gamers and what I noticed is the gamers in Europe seemed to have a gut intuition about ancient warfare. The players I joined seemed to control their nits so well and collaborated surprisingly well.
In casual combat, we might see people just rush into a cluster, right in the center of an arena. In the Euro servers, we saw players line up and waiting for an opportunity. They would use the shieldmen to hold the line and put archers behind them to remove as many enemy troops as possible until they had an opportunity to charge the enemy.
In the territory war, the organization between players was just incredible. I saw, in some kingdoms, tens and hundreds of gamers defending their territory at the borderline. We expected players just to siege a city and defending at the village walls. Instead, we saw gamers start to line up along the boundary of the kingdoms. So, for any potential invader, it blocks them at the frontier and does not allow them to attack the city at all. This is just one of the tactics that surprised us.
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MMORPG:What are the results of that. Have you had to make any changes to the game?
Xi: We are still looking at all the data at the moment. We are digging through all the player suggestions and the data we have gathered. The data is more objective than our comments and experience, so we are using that as well. We tried to use the testing phases to do as much polish as possible before we launch into the next Open Beta Test.
MMORPG:We asked Steven Sharif and the Ashes of Creation team a similar question, Why partner with My.com?
Xi: When developing a game with such a massive scale, we need n operating partner with expertise in what they do. So, while we are not a small studio, our focus needs to be on developing the best game we can.
For the publishing side of things and what My.com can bring to gamers, it makes sense. They are a large professional company that can provide what Conqueror's Blade need and allow us to focus on excelling at what we do.
MMORPG:What are your hopes for Conqueror’s Blade as a game?
Xi: As a team, we’ve been working towards this dream for more than six years. As a result, we are not so worried about what is the most popular type of game right now. Instead, we want to create is a game that is ultimately remembered by gamers. We want to be able to build our own world and our own friendships in this world. If you are a fan of massive ancient warfare, then Conqueror's Blade is a game that you absolutely to check out.
Conqueror’s Blade is a flagship sandbox PC warfare game that crosses ancient Eastern and Western civilizations. Its core design is an innovative hybrid of action and tactical gameplay. Players can enjoy smooth hero action combat combines with sophisticated tactical control of troops. The game perfectly recreates weapons, armor, and troops from many civilizations such as a European sword knight and Swiss halberdier. Additionally, Conqueror’s Blade features an unprecedented and the most popular feature in the game, a “world sandbox” in which players can acquire vast territory. For more details on Conqueror's Blade and how you can get into battle, check out the official website.
