GameSpy: What compelled you to give the MMO thing a go, let alone involve yourself with something as non-traditional as 2Moons?

David Perry: Well, there are plenty of business models for games, but the trend is towards charging more (when we really should be charging the price of movie tickets or maybe a DVD). Then there's a trend towards adding more revenue streams (like advertising) without considering the consumer first. I think this is a mistake.

Then again, everyone has opinions, so I guess my task has been to put my money where my mouth is, and I plan to be one of the people that put the consumer first. Sounds noble, but in fact I think it will be good business too.

MMO Portal: Jumpgate was released in 2001 to critical acclaim and is regarded by your players as the best thing since sliced bread. Can you give us an overview of the game and the unique niche it fills?

Istvan: Jumpgate is novel because it is one of extremely few MMOG flight sims out there. We tend to get thrown in with MMORPGs, but Jumpgate really wasn't designed as one. Rather than having an avatar that you have to "level up" or "skill up" to gain capability or access different parts of the game, Jumpgate is solely based on player skill. You don't point and click and passively watch your ship fight: you have to fly the ship yourself, hands-on, usually with a joystick. That's what seems to excite people the most. The learning curve is fairly fierce, but it's quite possible for a new player who has a feel for flying to defeat in combat a veteran player who's been in the game for years. There's also plenty to do in the game besides fighting, although the flight model and combat are perhaps Jumpgate's most characteristic elements.

Shack: Incorporating PvP as a core focus sounds cool, but as with most RPGs, story can be important. Are there any inherently evil races? Please explain.

Colton Burgess: I disagree. Story doesn't always need to drive everything. This is a hardcore, guild up and go to war or stay home and craft me a new helmet so I can replace the one I lost in battle with those filthy Orcs game.

The players will inevitably decide what reasons they have for battling each other. There can be many reasons or there might be no reason at all but I would guess the main gameplay related reasons would have to do with territory and resource control.

Jeff Woleslagle, Ten Ton Hammer: I nearly fell off my imaginary throne when I read that Thrones of Chaos will have a family / aging process. This is something MMO gamers have been hankering for ever since Horizons: Empire of Istaria was a twinkle in David Allen's eye (where it mostly remained). How will it work? Does this mean death is permanent?

Colton Burgess, Loud Ant Studios: No, I do not think we will be using permanent death associated with the family system. We may use it in some capacity associated with combat but it won't be extremely invasive or cause the players too much grief. We plan on having a family system. However, it will be another month or two until we have all the logistics and details worked out. Part of the system is already done but we are not sure what direction we are going to take it at this time.

I have a special affinity for level designers seeing as I've been one myself for many years. And for my project there's a special kind of level designer that I'm looking for. You see, even though I'm doing an MMOG I'm looking for a real, true-blue serious FPS level designer. The kind of person whose life is making sure the FPS meter is high, the polycount in the FOV is balanced, the design is tight and visually grand, and who has a deep love for all things level-related.

Check out my new job listing on Slipgate or Gamasutra.

Once, I played a lot of EverQuest. A lot, a lot. Since then, I have matured. Now I play a lot of World of Warcraft. Now, as then, it is this hideous nightmare hole into which I pour hour after hour of my precious and irreplaceable youth, pissing away time that I could spend writing, or being with my family, or being involved with the community, or just - you know - doing something.

The only difference between World of Warcraft and EverQuest is that, when I raided in the latter for many hours, I was the only person I knew who did it. I was the lone misfit, spending hour after hour raiding, while friends and family looked on... and shook their heads sadly. But with World of Warcraft, everyone around me has been sucked in. People, male and female, who looked at my addiction with sympathy and mockery, are now playing more hardcore than I do. The sensible person I am married to is raiding several nights a week now. This is not a sign that humanity is headed in the right direction!

MMOGs are computer games that enable thousands of players to interact simultaneously in a game world connected via the Internet. According to global Jupiter research, MMOGs generate roughly US$350 billion a year and is the fastest growing entertainment segment in the world. The typical MMOG user is male, aged between 18 and 34, and spends an average of nine hours a week playing PC games. Wired magazine says that 'in-game advertising' is worth US$60 million, set to grow to half a billion by 2009.

E-Sports seem to still to be struggling to take off in the West. There are sporadic outbreaks here and there, but the idea of games-as-spectator events is still limited to physical sports, and maybe chess. Compared to Korea, where TV stations regularly broadcast Starcraft and even Lineage match-ups (and where I stood in a room with fifty teenage girls who screamed in anticipation of a particularly ruthless Zerg gambit), Western gaming audiences seem a bit nonchalant. The audience that wants to watch the gaming elite slug it out for glory and sponsorship dollars is limited.

The MMOG pie chart (thanks Mike Martinez) offers a breakdown on the market shares of the various MMOGs out there in the metaverse, formatted for the PowerPoint generation. The o-blog-itory commentary on Wonderland (where the chart was spotted) remarks upon the preponderance of fantasy games in the mix, a point echoed by Fantasy Trumps Sci-Fi For MMOs, a /. thread referencing a Gamasutra feature chatting with Mythic's Mark Jacobs where he opines on why this is the case.

Here lies the proverbial rub - the two genres of PVP and PVE are actually two different communities when you peel away the facades that mask both sides. There will be a minority that proclaims enjoyment of both, like myself, but held to make a definitive choice - they would choose one over the other. The one thing they both share: money.

Cryptic Studios' PR folks sent out a press release announcing that they are recruiting new team members to work on upcoming projects. The team behind the super hero MMORPGs City of Heroes and City of Villians said in the statement, "With projects in the works on console and PC platforms, Cryptic has partnered with top publishers and is planning to announce multiple new massively multiplayer titles later this year."

The Sims Online should have been a sure thing. The premise reads like a gaming executive's dream sheet. A popular, long-lived franchise loved by casual and hardcore gamers alike; a game that sells at Wal-Mart as well as it does at EB Games and developed by Will Wright, one of the most famous names in game design. The launch window picked was close to perfect: December 17, 2002, just in time for Christmas, virtually assuring millions of sales. In-house predictions called for an ongoing active subscriber base of up to 1 million people, but The Sims Online launched out of the gate and promptly fell flat. Six months after launch, Wired reported 125,000 retail copies sold and 97,000 active subscribers - not bad, but not enough to justify the game's $20 million budget. By April, 2004, their subscription rate peaked at around 55,000, and has now stagnated near 35,000.

Fundamentally, SWG was launched too early from a game design point of view. It may not have been from a financial point of view - there's considerations like how much had been spent, how soon it would earn back the investment, that sort of thing - but most systems in there were first-pass at best. The place where that was most obvious was in the relative lack of content at launch. The tools simply came on too late to make the volume of content needed, and even though a heroic final push tried to populate the game with distinctive content, it just wasn't anywhere near enough.

One of the best features in my mind about an MMORPG is the ability to join factions. When one joins a faction, they no longer specifically game for their own purposes, but for the benefit not just of a guild, but for a collection of guilds all under the same banner. However, I also believe that the majority of MMOs do nothing to support the faction system.

As it stands in most games, people are free to join whatever faction they may desire. They can bring dishonor towards the faction, but there is nothing that can be done against them. Factions are also almost entirely PvP orientated. Unless you want to go around killing other players, there really is no benefit or contribution one can make towards certain factions. There also is very little benefit to actually controlling different regions for one faction, unless more PvP is viewed a benefit. Can such a system be changed? I believe it can be done, by incorporating a few systems.

Recently there has been some debate as to what gamers should expect from MMOs produced by lower budget development teams. With the recent release of games like SEED and Dark and Light this topic seems more interesting than ever. Should we excuse incomplete products and poor game performance because they lack the resources of the big boys?
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To get the answer we are going to have to go back in time a bit to the late 1990's when bunch of guys from two smaller companies formed a company called Mythic Entertainment and with a small, but hard working crew of designers, created Dark Age of Camelot. To this day many gamers still hold it up as one of the top PvP titles for its creative use of Realm vs Realm combat. Although they recently were bought out by EA they still have made an indelible mark on the genre.

First Partnership Between U.S. Entertainment Company and a Korean Game Developer

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 19, 2006--Cartoon Network announced today that it is developing its first massively multi-player online game (MMOG) in an unprecedented partnership with a leading MMOG developer, Seoul-based Grigon Entertainment. Cartoon Network New Media, already a leader in online entertainment and gaming, will debut the game in the United States. This is the first-ever partnership between a U.S. entertainment company and a Korean developer to create an MMOG for the global marketplace.

The Cartoon Network MMOG will launch in spring 2008 and target the growing and sophisticated kids' interactive gaming market. The game will be free to download, with subscription and micro-transactions available to players to enhance the gaming experience. New areas for exploration and play are planned and will be added regularly over a span of several years. The game brings Cartoon Network's beloved characters and sensibility to the fast-growing online gaming realm with an "East-meets-West" creative approach. Grigon Entertainment is best known for successfully developing and launching several online games in Asia, including Seal Online, a light-hearted role-playing game (RPG) that took the online gaming world by surprise. Localized versions are available in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and Thailand.

MMORPG.com: How have the in-game events been working out for the players of RAN Online?

PB Kim: We are providing various types of event, such as Double EXP, Double Item Drop Rate sort of events you may generally seen from other MMORPG. Moreover we provide unique events, for instance, a localized event which includes mythic heroes or animals in the game by each local festive day schedule. Recently we have arranged a server for Battle Loyal Type competition event and finished testing. We are continuously looking for more joyful events to satisfy our users. Please give us your cool ideas for new events.

Jonric: Given the propensity of many online gamers to collect items, how are you approaching this aspect of Crusade? Will there be many different types? Do you plan on any usage restrictions?

David Allen: I personally love items and the ability to craft, enhance and manipulate them; our team feels the same way, so we will be placing a lot of emphasis on items in Crusade. Not just crafting or acquiring them, but the ability to modify and enhance them as the character grows more powerful.

Crusade will feature different types of items, such as a basic sword versus an ancient weapon of power, or a unique item from a deity. Certain ones will require a specific amount of skill to use efficiently, and we're also considering adding actions specific to items (a vorpal blade may have a behead action, for example), but we're still working on the core item-based system.

The MMORPG genre has changed a lot since the early days of Meridian 59 and Ultima Online, but the games still relies on the basic classes introduced back then. Most MMORPG still use the Fighter, a heavily armoured close combat character that can take lots of damage. Having to rely on short-range weapons and relative low damage his fights may last long. Thus he will need the healer, whose job is to heal the party and make sure they stay alive. A second role of the healer is to buff the party by adding temporary enchantments, which make the party stronger, faster or more resilient. The mage is the most fragile character, but he can deliver large amounts of ranged damage through arcane magic. Though the games do not always use the same names for the character classes they are always build on one of these arch classes or a mix of two of them through hybrids like the Bard, Paladin or Battlemage.

This mix is tried and proven in MMORPGs through the past ten years. The fighter takes the damage, the healer keeps him alive and the mage deals the damage. But will these three classes keep being the blood of MMORPGs in the years ahead?

I understand that Thrones of Chaos will make use of assets from at least one MMORPG that is no longer in development. Can you give us a little background on the project?

CB: We procured a few different assets from numerous areas to help us get a functioning MMORPG title on the market in a very short time period. Either way, we have all the tools and experienced team members needed to put together an interesting MMOG experience in a timely manner.

Jonric: How would you introduce Crusade? What is its underlying premise, what kind of game are you aiming to create, and do you have a target launch date at this time?

David Allen: Crusade is a new MMOG in development that takes place in a unique fantasy world where the player chooses a racial and class combination that represents one of two diametrically opposite sides, both fighting each other for domination. Deities also play a critical role in the game, as players can become patrons, and receive boons that empower or dis-empower their characters. Realms within the world are also controlled by specific deities, so as players travel the lands, they may encounter strategic beneficial or detrimental areas based on their patronage.

MMORPG.com: Explain the Events that Martial Heroes has been hosting for its players in recent months. How often do the battles occur?

Alex Jones: In Episode 2(which was introduced in Febuary), we added a new map called Red Castle and implemented a Horse System in game. The Red Castle map contained a lot of new monsters and provided a new fun experience for players.The Horse System was a wonderful addition to Martial Heroes and with it the players could move faster than using the turbo skill that all classes have. The Horse System also allowed players to attack and PVP while riding the horses.

mmplay.de: Hello Raph and thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us. I don't think I need to introduce you, I'm sure most MMORPG players know you and your work on games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies from the past. However, you have been an admin of a MUD server before you started to work professional in the business - well, or what was once to become a business back in these times. How did you first start? How did you get to MUDs and later on to Ultima Online?

I have been making games as long as I can remember; I used to make board games to take into school so we could play them during recess. A lot of them were ports of arcade games like "Pengo." My brother and I were given an Atari 8 bit computer around 1982 maybe, and that's where I really started making games. I also learned on an Osborne 1 running CP/M. We used to make games to sell in ziploc baggies; we sold exactly one copy, and I am pretty sure we sold it at a loss.

I drifted away from games for a while, but came back to them during college. After college, I went on to grad school, but stayed in touch with friends who. were still there. One of them turned me on to MUDs, and suggested they were a cool way to stay in touch. This was in 1992; you did everything with text back then, Mosaic wasn't out yet and there was no web.

I started playing on several muds, and ended up focusing on Worlds of Carnage, where I met a bunch of folks who turned out to be important to the history of MMORPGs: Damion Schubert would later go on to be involved with Meridian 59 and Shadowbane, and Rick Delashmit was the main programmer for UOUltima Online von Electronic Arts. and later on worked on several other MMORPGs. Rick was also the main implementor of LegendMUD, which my wife and I both worked on for a long time.

Rick was hired by Origin to work on UO, and he recommended my wife and I for designer roles, and that's how we landed there.

South Korean video game company Webzen Inc. on Tuesday said it struck a deal in which Microsoft Corp.'s newly acquired Massive Inc. advertising unit will place promotions in two of its upcoming titles.

The ad deal, which is a first for online game maker Webzen, marks Massive's entry into the Asian market, the companies said. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Games included in the deal are "Huxley," set for release next year, and "All Points Bulletin," due in 2008. Those titles, which are set in virtual urban environments, are so-called massively multiplayer online games that can support thousands of players at once.

Dan Mann: A lot has been made of the MMO industry being given over to the big time, ultra-rich, power hungry studios that care more for the almighty dollar then daring to stray from the mold of its predecessors and providing a game that provides more than a level treadmill. Can small companies compete with giants like EA and Sony who can throw dozens of devs and millions of dollars at a project?

Garrett Fuller: The problem with small studios is one thing, money. Games cost money and no matter how much passion or time you put into them there is always the dollar to contend with. There are many games about to launch onto the market right now that do not have the huge financial backing. It seems like the video game industry is moving in the same direction as movies. You have a bunch of people out there trying to make games in the hopes that one of the major publishers will pick up the game and run with it. The problem is, once a publisher gets their hands on a game, they can change it and tweak it the way they want.

According to information at MMOGChart, there are over 12 million MMORPG players in the world. To put that number in perspective, games that sell a million or more copies are few and far between these days -- so 12 million players is more than a few peanuts. MMORPG's tend to retain players longer than a traditional game as people will often play a single MMORPG obsessively for months, or years in some cases! If you are the company benefitting from the monthly subscription for the game, this is a very big draw -- to the point that many MMORPG's have built in time sinks to ensure that players have reason to play for months on end.

What if you aren't the MMOG company, though? What impact is there on the bottom line of other companies in the gaming industry? Do MMORPG's benefit the industry by bringing in more actively involved gamers? Or do they bleed money away from other companies in the industry as MMORPG players spend their money on subscriptions and skip out on trying other games that hit the shelf because they already have something to go home to?

Could MMORPG's be bad for the industry?

Have you ever gone to a school dance, a dance club or even a wedding reception and heard a song that really moves you. A song that starts your feet tapping and your leg shaking ? Yet, you stand there on the sidelines staring at the empty dance floor because you don't want to be the first person to step out and shake your groove thing. After all, there's a fifty-fifty chance if you jump on the dance floor first, people will stare and giggle at your Fergie-esque tail wiggle, making you the center of attention you don't want. Unless, you're made up of the stuff few people are and you just don't care, you will find a way to dance yourself right into a crowd of spectators and disappear. Now, theres another scenario to this way out in left field analogy. Theres a chance you hop onto the floor, get your groove on, and a crowd joins in with you, leading to a great time had by all. The question is are you brave enough to throw yourself into the spotlight.

What the heck am I talking about ? It's alright, you can say it out loud. The MMO market has become much the same as the empty dance floor. Everyday we are flooded with new and "innovative" ideas with which we can get our grooves on and we don't take the chance. We find ourselves heading to the crowded dance floors of the tried and true titles such as World of Warcraft and Everquest II. While these games offer few new features (server queues are not a feature) and stay the course of time tested formulas. It's like dancing to re-mixes of the same old songs over and over again. Sitting on the fringe are titles that have truly taken a step in a different direction and attempt to offer features never before attempted in MMO's. The life of these titles is shorter than a Dixie Chicks concert in Texas, over before it starts.

Creating an MMORPG with an all volunteer team is hard enough. Having to create it while a camera crew is following your every move would seem to add on to the challenges. However that's exactly what Damon Grow decided to do with his company Shattered Reality Interactive. He and his time are trying to make their MMORPG Kaos War under the cameras for Creating Kaos, a new web video reality series that launched its first episode on Games.net last Friday and will continue on a weekly basis. FiringSquad got a chance to chat with Grow about both Kaos War and Creating Kaos.

Nick Yee, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at Stanford University who studies online games, found in a survey earlier this year that 29% of women players and 8% of men said they had gone on to date someone they met in a game. He says the games are filled with scenarios that shed light on players' personalities. A risky raid on a dungeon, for example, can reveal whether someone is a team player. "These are trust-building exercises," he says. Players "are constantly having to make decisions like, 'Do I run out and save myself or help the others survive?' " Situations that reveal so much about someone's character are less common in the real world, he thinks.

Myth War is something else. Not like Eve Online, Second Life or A Tale In The Desert, in that they're a complete step outside what everyone else is doing, but very much an attempt to find its own place in the shelves. Spending a few hours running around its currently running Beta, both as a fresh new character and a level-50 pre-prepared character, we managed to gather a few first impressions of how it works.

Firstly, there's the whole aesthetic look. For those who've been missing the days of bitmaps, rather than using polygons Mythwar prefers to use an isometric sprite-based characters which gives an atmosphere not unlike Baldur's Gate or Diablo II (will Blizzard not stay out of a preview for at least a paragraph? This is getting silly). The character designs have a certain degree of eastern-flavour, weighted towards the more realistic end of the spectrum - though we have hyperactive icons released in the chat window to provide a little more life.

Wurm Online will be a community-centric fantasy MMORPG fully developed in Java. Gameplay will be free at first, but when you wish to develop your character beyond basic skills, you're going to have to pay a monthly fee.

The world will have a real economy with a fixed pool of money and resources, and almost all items in the world will be created by other players. When the game is first launched, it will pretty much just only be a huge forest, and it will be up to the players to build the towns and create the items needed for both everyday use and more exotic practices.
Wurm Online will neither have levels nor hitpoints. Instead, you have a set of skills that define your character, and a list of any unhealed wounds the character has.

Gameplay is expected to be very down to earth and community-based for most players, with each town serving as a small community. Towns will also remain safe as long as the computer controlled guards are alive. You won't be able to attack other players or perform any other illegal activity inside the town without first killing all the guards. Outside the towns, however, you can do anything you want, but performing illegal activities will lower your status in the nearby villages.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Ever played an online game like "World of Warcraft" or "EverQuest" and wished the expressions on your avatar's face looked more realistic or that it was easier to communicate with other players?

If so, then a team of researchers from the famed Palo Alto Research Center might be your heroes.

The PARC team--Bob Moore, Nicolas Ducheneaut and Eric Nickell, plus Stanford's Nick Yee--have spent the better part of three years studying the social dimensions of so-called massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) to better understand the design challenges behind creating satisfying face-to-face avatar and other interactions in such environments.

I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for Funcom, and an even softer one for Conan. As such, it's pretty difficult for me to be objective about this game at this juncture, but I'll do my best. Now, I've never read any of Robert E. Howard's novels. I've only seen the Conan films. Hell, when I was little, I even thought that Conan the Destroyer was a good movie. But even given that shallow level of familiarity with the lore behind it, I really dig the world. I think I "get" it. And from where I'm standing, it's clear that Funcom gets it too. Conan's world is rife with brutality, and judging from the demo that I saw at E3, this MMO's gameworld will reflect that. The villages are populated by crude buildings and even cruder inhabitants, and the combat system is probably the most savage I've ever seen in an MMO.

It doesn't take a genius to see how this issue could potentially affect gamers. "The gaming community, also the businesses that provide services to the gaming community are at a significant risk," warns Karr. Kurtz voices similar concerns. "Smaller game companies could have a hard time getting fast traffic for their online games. The fan sites, mod communities could be affected."

If your favorite MMO doesn't pony up cash for premium service, you could be out of luck. Or, if the ISP you use runs on a connection owned by a company that has decided to give game servers low priority, your days of lag-free gaming could be at an end, no matter how fast your own connection to the web is. Another scenario has web content providers deferring the charges for high-speed service to you, the web user, turning the Internet into something like cable TV where you have to pay for access to specific sites, much like how you have to pay to get HBO.

This week on Game/On's first interview show of June, we present you with two great interviews from E3. In this first interview, Jon Wood sits down for a very brief chat with David "Zeb" Cook, the Lead Systems Designer for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Stargate Worlds. The second interview takes Garrett Fuller and Dana Massey to the Mythic Entertainment booth for a long chat with Greg Grimsby (Art Director) and Jeremy Dale (Lead Animator), about the ins and outs of their newest property, Warhammer Online.

Laura Genender: One thing I've always hated in MMOs is when people assume that, just because I'm a female gamer, I should be really into the tradeskills and crafting aspect of the game. Personally, I've always avoided crafting skills like the plague; even in craft-centric games like A Tale in the Desert I spent more of my time working with flower genetics and exploring the desert than I did at the loom or the kitchen.

Carolyn Koh: One thing I have found in playing MMOs for the past 8 years is that many female gamers enjoy the tradeskill and crafting aspect of the game. I myself do. It's a challenge outside of just blowing things up, and that is, in of itself, an aspect of an MMO that is more attractive to female gamers than to males.

GameDaily BIZ: When you sit down to write music, what gets you motivated, puts you in the right mood to produce game music?

Jesper Kyd: I am excited about how I can enhance the game experience and how the music piece I am writing is going to enhance the situation I am writing it for. There is so much that can be done with music. There are no limits anymore since technical limitations are not a huge concern these days. And with music budgets for most games now the size of independent films, sometimes even larger, there are so many creative things we could be doing. We have only just scratched the surface and pushing things forward is also a huge inspiration for me.

Jonric: To introduce Ultimate Baseball Online, what kind of game is it? What kind of audience do you feel it can attract, and do you think it will appeal to online world players?

Gabriel Law: Ultimate Baseball Online (UBO) is the first massively multiplayer online sports game (MMOSG) in the world. Each position on the field can be manned by a real player. Players can pitch, bat, field, steal bases and do everything as in a real-life game. Moreover, players start their career with basic characters, and their statistics are recorded in these categories: AB, H, HR, ERA, SO, Outs and so many more. Points are awarded in accordance to players' performance, and players can grow their characters to specialize in any of the seven performance parameters, such as speed or power batting. Furthermore, players can form their own teams and even leagues, sometimes for organized and prize-laden competition.

MMORPG.com: For those who may not be familiar with Game Center Group, could you quickly summarize what kind of services you provide?

D. Scott Mattson: GCG provides companies that are considering an MMO, consulting services specifically related to Customer Support. We also offer a turn key solution to host the entire support side of the house if the client wants to avoid the management headaches of the support organization. Launch readiness on people, process and tools is really where we shine. For existing MMOs we provide an assessment and recommendation on their CS model and provide direct ROI in terms of customer satisfaction.

Rather than a character class system, the team has incorporated incarnations, which are different combinations of abilities and equipment. Together with every avatar being able to learn any skill and wear any item, this should make it easy to switch among a variety of play styles as you deem appropriate. The advancement scheme is also unusual and interesting. You gain power by recovering lost memories. Doing so requires completing related quest-like tasks within the PvP scenarios. Rank is based on the number unlocked, not on levels gained by accumulating experience points. Combat includes a meta-layer based on building up elemental charges that should enhance the strategic element. There will be four modes ranging from solo free for alls to small-, medium- and large-scale group encounters. The pace is on the quick side but seems manageable for most players. The graphics appear to be very competitive.

Jonric: As an introductory overview, what kind of online world is Hero Online? What is its underlying premise or concept?

Jack Stanley: Hero Online is an incredibly innovative MMORPG that integrates the excitement and wonder of Asian martial arts folklore into an immersive online world where players can experience the rush of martial arts movements without having to invest years of actual training time. Maneuvers like running with incredible speed or jumping incredibly tall heights are all basic skills that players will have the opportunity to master in addition to learning combat with skills in both unarmed and weapon forms. Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets MMORPG, and you'll probably have a general idea of what Hero Online is like.

Imagine for one moment, all sound fading away as light dims into complete darkness. You are alone and there is nothing else besides your self. Gradually, a light begins to form and sound begins to return. At first, they return so slowly you hardly notice, but soon you are flooded with sensory information that all say one thing: You are no longer where you once were. Looking around you realize that you are in the middle of a bamboo forest with green sunlight shining through a canopy of Bamboo leaves. The bamboo stalks serenely sway as you feel the wind breeze easily through the forest. The forest floor is soft and cushiony as you walk around trying to get a bearing of where you are. For every step you make you hear the soft rustle of leaves and smell an indescribable aroma that warms the heart. The sound of birds chirping seems to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. It is neither loud nor quiet, but perfectly resonated to match the quiet atmosphere of the bamboo forest. Despite not knowing where you are, this place induces an inescapable sense of peace.