October 28, 2009

Going behind the scenes of a new MMO, Alganon
By Michael Lafferty

Alganon team talks about bringing a new online gaming experience to life

It is a tough go to make a compelling experience within the massively multiplayer online gaming space. The folks behind Alganon, though, have something in mind, though – they are out to create a compelling gaming experience that pulls in players with its simplicity of play, its intuitive controls and then holds them with elements that are a bit outside of what players normally experience.

Alganon is fast approaching its release date (slated for the end of the month), so GameZone thought it a prime time to chat with key members of the team behind the title. To that end, David Allen (President of Quest Online), Hue Henry (Alganon Lead Designer) and Jim Younkin (Community Manager) took time to chat with GameZone.com about this title.

Question: The MMO space has been inundated with titles, each trying to grab a piece of the large player base created by the success of WoW. What does Alganon bring to the table that will allow it to stand out from the rest of the games on the market?

Alganon team: One of the unfortunate aspects of many new MMOs, whether they be small, F2P games, or the new big-budget titles, is that they seem more concerned with being different than being fun. They have abandoned the things that made other games in the genre so much fun to play. It's not uncommon to pick up one of these new games and find it takes several minutes before you understand how to perform even the simplest of tasks. It takes hours of gameplay, or in the case of F2P games, multiple purchases, before things become fun.

Alganon was designed to be fun from the very beginning. We don't want to hide the fun behind complex control schemes or cash shops. We want to give players what they enjoy about MMOGs from the very beginning. If you have a favorite MMOG, it doesn't matter which one, you can jump into Alganon and the controls, interface, and system are familiar enough that you will immediately begin having fun. If you love MMOGs, you will love Alganon.

Yet, Alganon is a completely unique world. The characters, stories, quests, locations, and encounters of Alganon are unique to the Alganon experience. Moreover, Alganon is designed to be a very social, and community centered game. With the MyAlganon site and the Family system, we have developed a game where players can get to know one another and work together with players who enjoy the same style of gameplay.

The core of what Alganon brings is the "magic" of a large, vibrant and immersive world people want to be a part of. On top of that, Alganon has all the features an MMOG player would expect, paired with some new features players have been asking for years now.

The Web site for the game states that it will be a game that is easy to play. What, specifically, do you mean by that? Are you talking in terms of gameplay mechanics, user interface, combat and leveling concepts, or just that players will be on linear quest paths and find it simple to level?

AT: When designing Alganon, we wanted the starting experience to be accessible to everyone. Players who have an MMOG they enjoy can step into Alganon and immediately recognize what they need to do to start having fun. Even players who are new to the genre will find that the early levels follow simple rules that allow them to understand how the game works. From there, the game grows in complexity. As players level, they gain additional options that allow them to experience the more unique features of the game. This growth is slow, so that many players may not realize the game has become considerably more complex and unique by the time they reach the level cap.

In Alganon, our quests are storyline based. There are many stories running through the world of Alganon, but they are all related, to an overarching story that ties them all together. These quests are designed to provide a guided tour of the world, but players are in no way required to "stay on the path." If players wish to ignore the story entirely, or perform some combination of questing and grinding for experience, they are free to.

How will players be able to “grow their characters in the background” when they are not actually logged in to play?

AT: The studies system operates in real time. For example, a player may decide to study "Swordmanship Mastery Level 3." This skill may, for example, give another 1% to sword critical hits, and take three days to obtain. This study time is real time, it does not matter whether the player is logged in or not. Three days later, they will obtain the benefit of the study. This allows players who have real life commitments, like work, school, or family commitments, to continue to advance, even though they are not able to spend time in the game. As long as you keep your subscription and studies active, you will be gaining new skills, opening new content, and advancing your character.

How will players be able to multi-class their character roles? Are there differences between male and female characters apart from looks? How much customization will there be in the game?

AT: In many games, the story elements behind your character and the role they perform in combat are fused together into your character class. If you want to be a mystical master of the elements, you have only one combat choice - DPS. If you wanted to defend your party as a tank, or to support your party as a buffing class, you wouldn't be allowed to. Your class forces your gameplay role on you.

For Alganon, we wanted to provide players with more choice in how they enjoy the game. So, we developed a dual role system. Your class determines your story, and what we call your primary role. So, a Magus has the story of being a master of the elements, and their primary role is that of AoE DPS, but that is not their only role. They can have a second role that is entirely up to how the player wants to play the game. If they want to be a tank, they can choose abilities in the Frost tree and tank as their second role. If they want to support their team with buffs, they can choose abilities in the Storm tree. If they want to burn down single targets with high burst DPS, they can choose abilities in the Flame tree. If they want their second role to be a hybrid, they can choose abilities from any tree to create their own role. Every class has 3 ability trees from which to create their second role.

To answer the other questions, the differences between males and females are only cosmetic, and our character customization system is designed to give players choices of appearance, without forcing players to spend a long time making cosmetic decisions before they enter the game. 

What roles will guilds or clans have in the game context? Will there be benefits to being part of a guild or clan? 

AT: Guilds in Alganon are similar to Guilds in other MMOGs. We've refined the features just a bit and made it so tracking accomplishments of guild members is easier, and also added a few things to make the guild system more enjoyable (with communication, guild vault, etc). We want Alganon to have a rich community, where players are not only active in their guild, but also active in other groups, like their Family, and MyAlganon groups, and as a part of the Alganon community as a whole. In many other games, you have just your guild, and everything else is a PUG. We want players to have more than that.

Why did you decide to make the fog of war such a pervasive part of the game environment?

AT: The way our game map operates often compared to a fog of war, but it's not quite the same. The core map is always visible with the key areas, but as players move through that map, more detailed information is revealed, and this revealing is done on a much finer level than most games. Rather than an entire region being displayed because you took one step in its boundary, this system reveals where you have and have not been on a more detailed level, making it easier to see if you overlooked something in a particular area.

How will combat be handled – as in will players gain skills and have all available when adventuring or will they have to choose what skills to take with them from a menu when adventuring? Does the game employ magic missiles or line of sight?

AT: One problem we've had in marketing Alganon is that every other MMO on the market tries to emphasize the differences in their combat system and claim that their game is superior simply because it is different. Unfortunately for gamers, this is rarely (if ever) the case. Players often find that it is the new and revolutionary elements of these games that frustrate and disappoint them the most. Games that flood the market with hype about revolutionary new combat systems tend to quickly release updates that return to a familiar system, or fail as players leave the game and return to the systems they are familiar with. The goal of Alganon's combat system is not to be different, but to be fun.

We know that it is not new or unusual to have classes that are able to heal, to tank, or to do DPS. It is not new or unusual for a class that controls the elements to shoot balls of fire and ice at their enemies. It's not new or unusual for players to use a tree interface to alter their actions and customize their combat role as they level.

In Alganon, our Magus class controls the elements. They shoot balls of fire and ice. It hurts to get hit by a ball of fire, so they are a DPS class. We have an ability tree that allows a Magus to customize their actions as they level up. Players of the Magus class will use the ability tree to alter their ice and fire-themed spells. These things are very common to fantasy MMOGs. In fact, a fantasy MMOG without them would disappoint or confuse the players who enjoy these elements, but Alganon is much more than just these common elements.

A Magus can alter their frost-themed spells and use them to mitigate damage, gain threat, and to heal themselves. This allows the Magus class to transform themselves from a DPS class into a tank, but without giving up their DPS role. When they choose to tank, they turn on frost-affinity and use their frost spells to tank. When they are done, they can turn it off and return to their primary role.

And that's just the beginning. Our Ranger can choose abilities in their own trees to enhance their knowledge of field medicine. This allows a class typically thought of as an archer or ranged DPS class, to heal their allies, cleanse status effects, and act as the primary healer for a party - a role usually limited to magical or religious-themed classes. Similarly, a Soldier can become a support class, focusing on issuing and maintaining buffs rather than doing damage directly. These concepts are not unique by themselves, but they come together to create a unique experience.

The dual-role systems is not the only place that elements are both unique and familiar. It's not the fact that soldiers build points instead of spending from a pool that is unique; it is what they use these points to do, and more importantly, where, why, and in who's face they spend their anger. It is not unique for a class to build combo points for performing actions; it's what a Healer can do with these points, and why they would want to keep or to spend them that is unique. The examples go on and on. If you focus only on the familiar aspects, you will only find elements you already enjoy in other games - nothing new - but if you look at Alganon as a whole, you will quickly find that Alganon is full of unique elements, but without abandoning the aspects that make MMOGs familiar and fun. 

This idea of being both familiar and unique is one of the main goals of Alganon. We aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, our goal is to invent unique ways to have fun with the wheel. We want to build an exciting and unique world, where you can see the wheel in a different light. We want to introduce players to fun activities they may not have considered doing with the wheel in the past, and, most importantly, we want to build a community of "wheel fans" that will enjoy using the wheel together. Unfortunately, we are trying to this in a market where the "round is for n00bs" and "square wheels are better" hype is the dominant form of advertising. (Okay, I think I've stretched the wheel analogy a bit far, but hopefully it gets the point across.)

Everyone on our team is an avid MMOG player. We love MMOGs. There's a very good chance that someone on our team enjoys playing your favorite MMOG as much as you do. We've taken that joy and are using it to make a game we enjoy even more and we want you to join us in playing it. If you are interesting in coming along, you can order a copy right now. We'll be happy to have you along for the ride.

As for the details on which of the familiar aspects we chose to include, here's a quick rundown. Players will have access to an action book that contains all of the actions they have learned. They will not be limited to a combat deck. Much of the progression is fairly standard, skills are raised based on events (i.e. swords or defense for combat, mining for tradeskills), experience for kills and questing, and new actions are gained every level. The player can also spend points in their ability trees to define their secondary combat role, and utilize the study system to advance their character even while offline. The unique aspects are too many to mention here, visit our Web site and join our forums, as they are the best place to find these details. You can even ask our devs directly; we are active on our forums and answer these kinds of questions regularly.

What do you find to be the most compelling elements of this game that should resonant with gamers? 

AT: The overall world is just beautiful, smooth, vibrant and immersive. We've captured "that feeling" players love in fantasy MMOGs. That is really the core. If you love MMOGs, you will love Alganon. We also have a vibrant and welcoming community. Visit our forums, or join a group on MyAlganon.com, and you will quickly see the benefits of having a great community. As far as features, Studies, the Library, and other unique features will make the game that more enjoyable for each player. 

What will you offer in terms of community support?

AT: We are proud of the community we have built up so far during beta and pre-release. One of the nice things about being a smaller independent company is that we are able to have much closer interaction with our player base. We have a team of talented CSGMs that will be available to assist players with in game issues whether through in-game ticket system or via the Alganon forums. We also have a thriving forum community with community members often helping members with issues before we get the chance to. I think anyone who comes into the Alganon community will find it a very inviting and supportive place. With a player to developer ratio much smaller than players will find with many larger MMORPG titles players who come into Alganon can expect their voices to be heard by real people. Whether it is for a customer support issue, a game balance issue or to request a new game feature. Alganon was built with the players at the center of its continued evolution.

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