Interview with Andrew Brown

Posted by Asfer Sunday, July 18, 2010

Hi, I am Asfer Forsaken World Fans webmaster. Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Hi Asfer. My name is Andrew Brown, Product Manager for Forsaken World.
  1. How will Forsaken World set itself as the leading Free to Play MMORPG in such a competitive market?
Forsaken World kicks up what players should expect from, not only a free-to-play MMORPG, but from their MMORPGs in general. Both from a graphical and game play perspective we’re looking to provide the highest quality MMORPG possible mixing Eastern and Western gameplay styles.
  1. This has been causing a bit of a stir amongst forum posters, so, how does the Soul PK system work?
Imagine you are in a PvP battle and you have this awesome ability to output crazy damage, but you need to collect soul energy in order to use it. You first must kill enemies to collect this energy, and then enable your ability to output some awesomeness! The trick for players will be finding the balance of when to enable it and when to turn it off, as there will be side effects for having it on.

  1. How would you describe the art style of Forsaken World?
The art style of Forsaken World is very western and draws from common archetypes such as elves, dwarves and humans, only with a very unique twist. The dwarves have a very steam punk flavor and we’ve added new races, the Stonemen and Kindred, that are distinctive to Forsaken World.
  1. How are stats allocated to your character?
You don’t! As you level up, your character’s base stats will increase and you will utilize equipment to boost the stats you deem important to your character. You will also have the ability to socket runes into your equipment, to allow further stat customization.
  1. How is the grind in the game - approximately how long will it take to reach a certain level like 50?
It really depends on the player’s play style. Questing will be the most straightforward way to level your character. We will also be offering instanced dungeons for players to part-take in that offer great amounts of XP. There will also be daily events that players can jump into to break up the monotony of questing. A combination of all 3, will yield you the fastest leveling curve.
  1. How do server wars work?
Since closed beta testing is still going on in China, I can’t give too many specifics. What I can tell you that the server war system will pit one server against another to unlock some pretty epic battles.
  1. Have you tried the game?
Yes. I’ve played through all of the races and classes. My favorite would have to be the mage class. I don’t like tanking, but love to be the DPS, so it fits me. My second favorite would have to be the vampire. Their starting area is awesome and I like being an outcast :)
  1. Will the world has open world PK, PK zone, or PVP server system?
Right now there is World PvP, but we also plan to bring battlegrounds for players to the game.
  1. How many floating bases will available in the future?
I’m not allowed to talk about this feature at this given time, sorry!
  1. Can pets evolve after certain level?
Pets do evolve and you can customize them to fit your needs. If you want a more offensive pet, just utilize the stat points you get when leveling your pet, to boost his attack power.
  1. Will players receive in-game benefits, if they have obtained a beta key through on your website?
Players who redeemed a Forsaken World closed beta key before June 30, will have a chance to win an IBUYPOWER desktop computer. During closed beta, we do give players Zen so that they can check out all of the cash shop items before open beta.
  1. Has the localization team encountered any difficulties in localizing Forsaken World? Have you made any changes to cater to the American audience?
There has been some issues actually. We are utilizing some new tools for changing text in our games, which will make it faster for us to localize and easier to customize certain aspects, like GUI text. With any new tool or system, there are bugs, but nothing we cannot resolve. In the end however, we are working faster than any of our previous games!

We were consulted from the start about the story, characters and mini stories in the game, so there isn’t much we wanted to change. We do however customize some quest chains as we get time, for our amusement.
  1. How frequent do you plan to release an expansion or updates?
Normally we publish our games in other territories much later than when the Chinese version is released. However with Forsaken World we will be right there with them, so changes will be occurring more frequently as we address issues, on top of the changes we request specifically for our version.

Major content updates or expansions will be frequent enough to keep hardcore and casual users entertained. This is something we are really trying to address with Forsaken World, so there are no periods of “lack of updates.”
  1. Finally the question everybody wants to know the answer to, how far is FW in the localization process?
Ahead of schedule. Our originally closed beta target was Winter 2010, but I can gladly say it will now be Early Fall 2010."

2 comments
  1. Anonymous Said,

    That is a nice amount of information. It is good to know that we will be getting updates and patches alongside the Chinese build. Evolution of pets is pretty cool as well, and it is great to hear that they are ahead of schedule.

    Posted on Monday, July 19, 2010 at 1:27:00 AM GMT+10

     
  2. Anonymous Said,

    one thing id like to be more "specified" is the part where he says "pets do evolve". ive played games where pets evolving really just means the stats increase and id like the pets to physically change when they evolve. so it would be great to know whether or not he meant they "physically" change. if so that feature would make me very happy. hope there could be an update to that info eventually.

    Posted on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 4:15:00 PM GMT+10

     

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