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Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Q&A - Monsters, Team Battles, and Rome Rising (3)

GS: Tell us about your plans for player housing in the game. We understand that housing will be handled by a tent camp that your followers will haul around with you, and that the camp can be upgraded with luxuries as you progress through the game. Does this mean that players will be prospecting for the best camping spot in the world?

SH: Camps are an interesting part of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising in that, when the game launches, they're going to be your base of operations. From here, you'll be able to store and retrieve your minions, manage your squad, and build upgrades for them. The camp is nonmobile in the sense that you can't pack it up and move it around anywhere in the world. If we allowed that, the world would suffer from camps being placed in numerous inappropriate areas, and that really breaks the immersion. Instead, there's a single camp that players can access from a variety of places in the world. After we launch the game, we will be extensively expanding camps and their capabilities. We believe that players are going to be very excited with the features we have planned as time goes on.

GS: Could you elaborate on the god powers that your character can pick up throughout the game? What sorts of powers are available? Why do you have them? How many powers can you have? And what sorts of limits are on them?

SH: God powers are essentially gifts from the deity you follow. You're granted these powers after completing tasks on behalf of that god. As players progress through the game, they will be charged with various tasks, quests, and requests from their chosen god. Their god will then award them with either higher standing or more powers based on how well they did. "Standing" is exactly what it sounds like: How much your god likes you. The more they like you, the more standing you have, and the more often you're able to call upon the gods in battle. Favor is what is actually "used up" (like mana in other games) when god powers are used.

There are a variety of powers per god, for each class, from destructive attacks to restorative buffs. Gods have their own specialties based on their personalities, and players can acquire them all as they become more powerful.

GS: Finally, tell us a bit about the game's setting. This is the ancient world of Rome, and we know that you can visit Hades. But what sort of world is this? How large is it? How many different places are there? Are there multiple towns that you can visit? What's your favorite place in the game, and why?

SH: Rome is a civilization that has inspired and influenced millions of people since its inception. It is a world that people can relate to but at the same time can be thoroughly awed by. It's a world of mythology, treachery, and humanistic deities. It's the combination of all these realities and the addition of lore and epic mythology that paints a vividly rich setting for players.

The overall size of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising at launch is well over 30 square kilometers of public, noninstanced terrain with an additional 25 percent of that number spread out across various instances, so that's pretty large even for an MMO. There are myriad places to visit and each area has several subareas, each with its own influences and look. There are countless villages, towns, and cities, all of which culminate in the inevitable visit to Roma, my favorite city and easily the largest city in our game, and quite possibly in the massively multiplayer genre.

We have an incredible art team, as well as some awesome graphics programmers, who have spent countless hours making this world look as stunning as possible. Screenshots and movies just don't do this world justice and I still find myself impressed at what they have accomplished. There really isn't anything like it out there and we're all very excited to see how the players receive it.

[Origin:Original] [Author:Admin] [2010-07-17]   BACK