MMORPG: PVP is a big focus of Albion, but what about players who don't want to play that sort of game? Will you be having PVE servers or PVP optional servers?
Sandbox: In general, it is of course true that Albion Online is a lot about PVP.
Then again, we are more than conscious that there are a lot of people who prefer PVE content or do not like to fight at all.
For that, we have designed our so called “Zoning System”, which splits the world of Albion into four areas with different characteristics.
For players who want to avoid PVP entirely, they can simply remain in the Green Zones, where PVP is not allowed. You can still do a lot of PVE fighting in Green Zones and obviously other activities, such as resource gathering, crafting or farming. Thanks to the player markets, even players who want to become master craftsmen do not have to venture into the PVP zones (yellow, red and black) because they can simply buy the higher tier resources other players gathered in the more dangerous zones in the Green Zone cities.
This system by the way also allows us to ease new players into PVP more smoothly as they don’t have to fight against other players with much more powerful gear right away – you’ll hear more about that from us very soon.
As to PVE content, we’ve already talked about the Demon Prince earlier – a testimony that there is also really high end non-PVP content to be explored in Albion Online.
MMORPG: How do you use analytics to help shape the direction of the game as opposed to just anecdotal player feedback?
Sandbox: We believe that analytics is a big part of improving our game and we are definitely not novices when it comes to pulling data from previous Alpha tests and working them into our balancing sheets. With an economy as interconnected as Albion’s, we definitely have to rely to a substantial degree on the mathematical calculations and models we’ve created for all aspects of the game.
At the same time, we also truly believe in the importance of simply playing the game ourselves. A lot of our developers are very active, heavy players of Albion Online. They are members of guilds and see the game from different angles, which allows them to really report on the actual player experience.
The same goes for our approach to community management and player feedback in general. We’ve always aimed to be very close to our players and collect as much feedback as possible, e.g. our Founder & CEO Stefan “Bercilak” Wiezorek is one of the most active users in our forum.
Beyond that, we are also using more systematic means to collect player feedback, e.g. after each Alpha, we have conducted a large survey with those players who participated and where we collected several thousand answers that we could use as a basis for further development.
MMORPG: What system(s) have undergone the most change since Alpha began?
Sandbox: There are so many!
If I think back to the early Alphas, we have introduced completely new concepts to the game, such as private player islands, where players can build their own buildings and for the Closed Beta now can even hire their own laborers who help them with gathering and crafting. We’ve also introduced farming as a completely new activity and made food a key component of the world.
Other than that, as mentioned above already, our combat has changed a lot, as we recently showed in a new feature trailer, and will also continue to do so.
MMORPG: Can you give us a road map of what Beta will entail and how long you envision it will last with some of the larger milestones along the way?
Sandbox: Absolutely! One of the key areas of interest for us is how our game will develop over a longer period of time. In the previous Alphas, the game was running for a maximum of only 4-6 weeks each. After that, we’ve always wiped the servers and players had to restart from the beginning.
Now, we want to find out how players will play and enjoy Albion Online when the game is running for at least several months. Our aim is to build a game that will give players an MMO-home for at least a few years – we are definitely in this for the long haul and therefore, want to put the current state of the game to a test against that goal.
That being said, we don’t have a concrete end date yet for the Closed Beta. However, I can already say that there will be at least two major content updates along the way – the first coming out in early December already and the second one in the end of January. So you can see from that information that the Closed Beta will definitely run significantly longer than all previous Alphas.
MMORPG: What are you most proud of that your team has been able to accomplish so far? What do you feel you still need to work on the most?
Sandbox: The most rewarding feeling when developing a game is always when players really enjoy playing it. Especially in MMOs, where a lot is based on social player interaction, it is truly satisfying to see a strong community of people growing around our game who really care about what is going on in the production and have found new friends (and foes) in the world of Albion.
If I see that we have now reached the mark of 35,000 Founders who have supported the development of Albion Online and are now passionate followers of our game, that does not just make me proud but also extremely grateful.
The core of it all is of course that we have managed to build a game that really gives the players the freedom we wanted, with the player-driven economy as a foundation. To see how the mechanics, such as the player-owned crafting stations, work when in play, is just an amazing feeling and a great reward for all the hard work the entire team has put into the game.
We only just entered Closed Beta after all. As mentioned previously, since the Summer Alpha, we’ve reworked combat a lot, adding more and more depth.
For the future, we are of course still trying to improve on a lot of things and have many great ideas up our sleeves that we didn’t have the time to develop yet, fishing or even more spin-offs of our “Hellgate” feature. So players can definitely look forward to seeing Albion Online evolve further and further in the future.
