End of Nations interview with Michael Legg by GameFeature.de

[Mike_nl]

Originally posted at GameFeature.de, translated by yours truly based on the audio interview.

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With End of Nations, 2011 has a promising hybrid of real-time strategy and Massively Multiplayer Online game lined up.
We had the chance at Gamescom 2010 to exchange a few words with Michael Legg, President of Petroglyph, about the MMO-RTS End of Nations.


Christian Binder, GameFeature:
End of Nations is going to be a MMO-RTS. Tell our listeners something about this game.

Michael Legg, Petroglyph:
Well, End of Nations is a MMO-RTS, or a Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy game. And first and foremost, for us (the team), we feel the game is a very strong real-time strategy game. We want to make a great game for RTS gamers that love RTS games. We have RTS DNA in our blood from all the games we've done in the past, and we want to make the world's greatest, most epic RTS game ever.

Now on top of that, to do that, we're adding in MMO elements that are popular with MMO games. We're allowing thousand of players around the world to play simultaneously; we have bigger battlefields than ever before, bigger boss units than ever before - the game just takes place on an unprecedented scale.

And on top of that, we're also adding in a living world that runs 24/7. People can play around the clock with their friends or other people, or even play solo. Everything that you have, from your base and units to your achievements, is stored on our servers so players can pick up and continue any time they want. And we take the social MMO elements like guilds, friends lists, the ability to interact with other players, trading items and units on the black market, and this massive world - this massive community, to allow players to simply have a really great time with thousands of other players.


Christian Binder, GameFeature:
We were able to have a look at End of Nations, and we saw that you don't really have a base building system on the battle field. So please tell our listeners a bit about that.

Michael Legg, Petroglyph:
Well, your head quarters is your base; it is located on a separate geographic location on the map. When you start off as a commander, you start off with a smaller plot of land where you put your headquarters. As your commander levels up, you gain access to more land. At your head quarters there is your "War Room", where you can see the entire state of the world, your achievements and world events and you can see where everyone is actively engaged in battle. You can also go and view anybody else's headquarters.

Your headquarters is also where you build your super weapon, do research and development, build refineries and factories and where you can construct your own, customized vehicles. At your base are also monuments, that you can place if you've won some epic battle or obtained some incredible achievement, such as winning some elite raid against the Order of Nations, or an epic PvP achievement.

The reason why the base system works like this is because, first, we want to have a place where you can store your collectable army; it's possible to collect hundreds of units and customize them with custom paint schemes and decals. Secondly, we don't want people to be worried about being offline or on vacation and having their base attacked or destroyed.

So we still have the classical base and unit production, but you do it in a separate location. And then you take those units into battle in the tactical part of the game.


Christian Binder, GameFeature:
One last question: you have a really nice idea for the PvP gameplay: a "dynamic world war". I think that's a really important feature, so tell our listeners a bit about that.

Michael Legg, Petroglyph:
Yes, we're excited about both our PvP (player versus player) and PvE (player versus environment) gameplay. We have the cooperative PvE, where we've had 50 people playing cooperatively again the AI in the same battle. For PvP players we're planning a meta-game, that's basically seasonally-based. We're not exactly sure how long it's going to take yet; it could be anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months.

In the PvE game you're battling against the Order of Nations and you're playing through the story campaign. In PvP, you can ally with one of the world's subfactions and fight for this side. This way, players will battle with their allies in the same faction against players of other factions. At the end of the season, the winning faction will have access to unique rewards like special vendors, military technology, units and so on. The special part is that people battle for territorial control across the world. When you're playing in one of the contested regions, you'll get access to special buffs and certain enhancers; not game changers, just subtle things that will lend you a helping hand.

We're still working this out and are still in the experimental phase, but we're very excited about this idea, where players can actually influence the state of the world themselves.

[FluffehKitteh]

Secondly, we don't want people to be worried about being offline or on vacation and having their base attacked or destroyed.

I think there's also another underlying reason. Segregating bases in unique instances alleviates the trouble of having to find enough lebensaraum on the persistent map to host the hundreds of persistent bases, each belonging to a player.

Disregarding sheer player count, having bases within the persistent world could have theoretically been possible. Assuming the threat of being attacked while off-line, players could have had an AI with customised scripts in place to have a reserve force act as the watchdogs for his base. Assuming structures were killed, they could be made to be not literally erased (unless the player sells the building), just reduced to a demolished, derelict state which is restored to a functional state (by itself, through a rebuild anim) gradually. Think something like the Flood buildings in Halo Wars, they never truly die.

It is unlikely that a single player would be under attack by so many other players so consistently that his base is in a perpetual state of ruin because that would be a continual war of attrition against an undefeatable base (if the buildings rebuild themselves over time) which would discourage the notion of long term anti-base warfare against a single base in PVP.