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Interview with Mike Emmons

Garret Fuller Posted:
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Meridian 59: Resurrection Interview (Page 2 of 2)

MMORPG.com: One of the main points about your game is the stability at which players can develop, fight, and compete. Tell us how you keep the game so balanced.
Mike Emmons:

It’s part player input, and part personal judgment. Player input is very important, but we have to also keep our eye on the larger issues since everyone wants to improve their own character. We occasionally build our own characters, testing out different builds, and seeing first hand if the issues brought up are legit. The game, overall, is in a relatively balanced state but issues can arise to throw that off balance as our ever inventive players find out new ways to use even older spells and tactics.

MMORPG.com: What new systems do you have in place to stop hackers and cheaters?
Mike Emmons:

Here's a little secret: we have never really relied on a system to stop cheaters. We’ve know that if you stop cheats then people can simply work around the system and the first person to get caught will warn the others. On the other hand, if you detect the cheating you can more effectively catch cheaters and terminate them.

Most publicly, this was seen when users exploited a bug to duplicate money. We put in a patch to detect the duplication which was occurring and then capped the money in the game to affect the cheaters. When cheaters lost this money, they used the exploit to duplicate more and we ended up banning about 5% of our total accounts. If we merely stopped the cheat, they would all still be playing and finding other exploits and harming the game.

We do what we can to catch as many cheaters as possible and remove them from the game. Of course, in a competitive PvP game people will always accuse others of cheating, so we have to do a lot of verification.

MMORPG.com: Building a player community is always important. Meridian 59 certainly has a history with its players. How has the community grown or changed over the years?
Mike Emmons:

I’d have to say it’s changed quite a bit. Since Meridian 59 has had such a long history, quite a few players have come through and left their mark. When the game was first launched the atmosphere was much different, being one of the first graphical online RPG communities out there. People tended to get close, maintain strong friendships, and in a couple cases get married outside of the game.

We still have an active community for the game which tends to congregate at our longest running fan-site, Gilroy’s, and will occasionally even lead to discussions that the developers will join in on. We try to interact with the players as much as we can while still having enough time for our small team to still do quality development work.

With the variety of MMOs available now, I think smaller games, such as Meridian 59, in which community is such a large aspect, tend to be a bit less intense. As people come from larger games where you’re often seeing different players every day they can bring a jaded attitude along with them, and that may hurt the community in some ways. On the other hand, it can bring more diversity and create a more exciting atmosphere.

MMORPG.com: Keeping the game world a medium size is one of the selling points of Meridian 59. With Evolution can we expect any new zones or hunting areas?
Mike Emmons:

Well, with Meridian 59: Evolution we expanded one of our newer areas, the crypt in Marion (a small farming town). We built it down to a third level which is full of our newest monster, the Thrasher, and can lead to a quick death if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. When we do add new content, especially new areas, we like to make sure that they have a purpose within the game. We don’t want just another area that people will run through on the way to their final destination.

The work that Rob ‘Q’ Ellis does when designing new areas is extremely impressive in my opinion, and the subtle details add a quality that you can’t find just anywhere. Will the world be changing in the future? If it does, it won’t be a lighthearted decision.

MMORPG.com: How has the in game economy grown or changed over the years?
Mike Emmons:

As more games have come to the market, game economies have become a lot more sophisticated. The original Meridian economy was implemented based on what previous games, both online and offline, had done. As the game progressed, we've become much more savvy in what we do. One of the biggest changes we've made is to add more controls for the developers to monitor the community. We can measure things like a player's earnings and adjust the economy as appropriate. If there is a shortage of reagents, we can increase the drop rate of items in the game to compensate. We've adjusted the values over the years and have found what we think is a good balance.

MMORPG.com: Where do you see the MMORPG market going over the next several years?
Mike Emmons:

MMORPGs aren’t going to go away, that’s for sure. I think the goal for MMORPGs is going to bias more towards dynamic content. People enjoy games that change with them, where they can influence the storyline and the outcome. Along the same lines, of course, is player created content, which allows people to contribute directly to the game. This kind of interaction will become more and more important as the market tends to turn out more and more choices for people to buy.

Thank you to Mike for doing this.

You can debate this interview here.

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