Realms of Torment Interview #1
Interviews

Dan Antonescu took the time to answer a few questions about their upcoming Massive Online title Realms of Torment, enjoy:

MMO Gamers Hell: You mentioned in another Interview that you want to make Realms of Torment "as in real life". That apparently includes possible world wide Player versus Player. But let's take a real life example: I can now go on the street and kill a person with my baseball bat, and I probably can go on a street in Realms of Torment and slaughter a random person with my sword. But I can also decide to just take a bath and then get a beer at the pub in real life. Long story short: to what extent does Realms of Torment support socializing? Can people meet at a tavern and drink ale?

Dan Antonescu: well, when I said "as in real life" in regards to realms of torment, I was referring to a question regarding RoT's PvP/Law system. But the concept of a mmorpg is far more complex than only PvP, especially when it comes to socializing. In the end, we're talking about MMO games, right? And considering that we want RoT to lean more towards being an RPG, we will surely add all sorts of socializing systems, even if they will first come about with the monthly patches.

MMO Gamers Hell: Another thing that got me exited is the political system, let's say I found a kingdom but I have no land, would that be possible? It would be pretty unrealistic.

Dan Antonescu: To clear one thing up from the start - You CAN'T have a kingdom , at least , not by yourself :) Discussing the political and social systems would take a lot of time, but the basics are this: All basic politics in the world of RoT stem from villages. Villages also have a terrain zone associated with them. Small unions of these villages form a county. Large unions of villages and counties form a kingdom. Huge unions of them form an empire. So, in order to form a kingdom you will need to have at least one alliance of orders, having enough villages under their domination to meet the minimum villages numbers/population required to be considered a kingdom :D

MMO Gamers Hell: When I founded my kingdom, and I have a good piece of land, my guild has built 2 or 3 cities and everything is nice - but then comes a day when it is 2 a.m. and only 1 of us is online, which effectively leaves all the land widely open to an invasion - can I still protect it somehow? I'm referring to for example the nightly artefact raids in daoc.

Dan Antonescu: he he, I think the appropiate term is ninja raids :))) Well, we are planning to build in lots of things to avoid those infamous ninja raids. Like for example: guards with different "levels" will be spawned to supply a city with enough defenders to make its power of defense pretty appropiate based on the power of its inhabitants/players.

MMO Gamers Hell: In your FAQ it says that players can change the geography. To what extent will that be supported throughout the world? Could I actually dig into any mountain and build a city inside it?

Dan Antonescu: well, we didn't have enough time to implement a player run city building system but we're planning to add it in the future, currently the only way players or guilds can build a new city will be via presenting their city plans to their favorite gods which will build it for them (assuming they have enough material and man power to afford such a thing).

MMO Gamers Hell: After reading the info about blood lines and permanent death, the first thing that popped into my mind was: Do I have to die? If I do not want to die permanently, do I have to? Or is it an option given to the hard core of role players?

Dan Antonescu: We were indeed chasing after realism in RoT, it was obvious to us that one of the main realism spoliers in a MMO was the never ending lives of player characters (not that it was the only reason which lead us to implement bloodlines.) One of the main factors which lead us to make this type of game design was observing that the vast majority of mmo players do not play with only a single character for very long. What we did with the bloodlines was allow a way to link all these characters and properly add them into the epic life of RoT's world. We will also allow some of the best/famous/infamous characters in-game to have a longer life span, and even make some of them immortal (in terms of perma death). Adding permanent death situations to a game (IF done correctly) will only restore the lack of balance and the lack of risk vs reward in the MMO games, It will also help in greater player satisfaction.

I guess you can also say we were tired of playing all these clones in the genre and felt the need to actually attempt something more innovative. If you are looking for a truly different type of gameplay experience than you will find it in our title.

MMO Gamers Hell: What measures do you take to keep a group or guild of power gamers from taking over the whole world's economy and land?

Dan Antonescu: The limited number of players in an order, the vastness of the world, the dynamic political system (we even intend on adding in the possibility of in-order political fights), the religion, heroes and gods.

MMO Gamers Hell: You mentioned the vast possibilities of customizing Armor in your FAQ, but how customizable are items like swords, spears, bows?

Dan Antonescu: We do have a large variety of weapons (items and models) implemented for game. There is also the possiblity of adding enhancements to a user made weapon via crafting system.


Thanks a ton to Dan Antonescu for taking the time to answer our Questions.
For more on Realms of Torment visit their official Website http://www.realmsoftorment.net/ or check the Profile.