MMORPG.com: Are you concerned that as an independent development studio looking to break into the MMO market that your game will be overshadowed by big studio games?
Mats Persson: No. Mortal Online is a niche game and we don't see ourselves as competitors to the big names out there. To be big you have to have mass-appeal, and to have that you will have to cater to casual players, in turn meaning lowering the difficulty of everything from combat, PvP and crafting, and introduce a whole dimension of solo-play features such as quests and story progression, not to mention easy-to-understand concepts like levels and classes. And that's the opposite of our game.
Instead we hope to attract a core audience and grow slow but steady by delivering something different, and I come to think of EVE Online that I have very much respect for. I do think we will have an initial inflow of players (small for the other companies but big to us) from other games wanting to test our game, but I honestly think most of them will go back to whatever it was they played before. We hope to be able to keep those who are looking for sandbox game play, PvP based on player skill, or simply something genuinely different - but those who just want another cookie-cutter MMO with different graphics (this time set in first-person) will probably be disappointed.
