Reclamation: MMORPG.COM Exclusive Q&A

Admin · June 2004

Our own Richard Duffek (Kunou) with the help of the MMORPG.COM community, has just completed an interview with Mike Fisher (Producer) and Jason Kramer (PR & Marketing Lead) of Lyra Studios, the company behind the upcoming MMORPG "Reclamation." This in-depth interview sheds light on many of the elements that will make this title a unique and true RPG experience. Here is a snippet:

MMORPG.COM: Exactly how do you plan to get rid of or deal with non-roleplayers in Reclamation?

Mike Fisher: Our first goal would be to ease them into roleplaying by showing them how fun it is. We want them to be roleplayers and will make every attempt to show how fun that can be. We will do our best to help people out and show them roleplaying is fun but we certainly won't let those who diminish the environment by not staying in character and participating properly remain in our roleplaying dedicated worlds. Depending upon interest, we may allow for separate worlds for non-roleplayers to play but right now our heart and soul is dedicated to maintaining the integrity of our roleplaying environment. Reclamation does have many features that we hope will appeal to players who don't normally consider themselves roleplayers. If we can bring them in and show them what roleplaying is all about, all the better.

You can read the full interview in our Reclamation Features section at this link.

DustyBallz · June 2004

Great! All the questions were from us, the ones that posted questions in Kunou's topic in the Pub. ::::20:: ::::02::

My question was asked, but not really answered.

MMORPG.COM: How do you plan to bring new players to your world of RP-centric gaming? Reclamation appears to be a niche product, and the success of any mmorpg comes down to number of subscribers; how do you plan to draw subscribers from the other big names?
Mike Fisher: Well, as I've somewhat touched upon the first thing to point out is we don't need hundreds of thousands of players to be successful. A lot of developers seem to be shooting for very high numbers as far as subscribers and their estimates are usually pretty unrealistic. Our level of success is measured by a more realistic number of subscribers. We aren't trying to put anyone out of business by beating them in a subscriber race, we're trying to set ourselves apart and be the best roleplaying option out there. In that category, there really isn't a whole lot of competition among graphical MMORPGs.

He didn't say how they planned to market the game to new players. Then again, the part after the semicolon in my question isn't from me. To put words in my mouth, as if I thought they needed to 'draw subscribers from the other big names.' *shrugs* Oh well. ::::10::

MMORPG -- Where's the RP?

Lyra-Mike · June 2004

Hey DustyBallz,

He can give another shot at answering if you'd like . In what way do you mean marketing to new players? As in, product wise, what features will we use to attract new players or are you talking more along the lines of advertising, promotions and the like? Also, by new players, do you mean people who don't already play MMORPGs, people who don't currently play Lyra Studios MMORPGs, people not familiar with Reclamation or something completely different?:)

Thanks!

Mike Fisher
Lyra Studios, LLC
http://www.reclamationgame.com
http://www.underlight.com

darkman · June 2004

Cool, Mike Fisher posts here occasionally .

First of all, wow, all of our questions that we asked were answered, not that gives us great joy, nice to know that the community actually is being answered and listened too, I love the way you guys have been handling this new title and developing it, truly a Role-Playing emphasis is a great idea for a game.

My question was answered greatly I must say (was the one with features to promote role playing, it led to another question, cool), so I thought that was a great Q&A, it brought up attention to me, I'm definitely going to consider this game as a future subscription for me.

New PR rep for the North American Version of RYL
www.planetwidegames.com

Clever_Glove · June 2004

I'm a little disappointed with he interview, it's pretty much what has been said before other places... almost verbatim. I'll be insulted if after I post this I find Mike Fishers answers where cut and pasted from somewhere else.

"Our first goal would be to ease them into roleplaying by showing them how fun it is. We want them to be roleplayers and will make every attempt to show how fun that can be."

Going no holds bard, This statement is nearly impossible to believe. It is implying that someone is literally going to give RP-lessions. Does Reclamation really have the support staff to give hundreds of d00ds lesions in role-playing? Are they really going to follow players around for weeks creating scenarios to practice role-playing? In short your going to give acting lessons for free?

No, It seems to me when someone says. /shouts Britney Spears gives me a woody or /say this game rokorz my sokorz, after many hours/days/week/months they will get a tell from CS to something like "Could you please not do that." You really couldn't expect CS to do anymore.

Will Reclamation leave the RP police to the users. If would an in game SS inhibit a postive game environment?

All and all this sounds great, but it has the ring of marketing fluff that is unrealistic and undeliverable, designed to lure people into playing. Your saying what RPers want to hear.

Even in our last conversation (
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/setstart/11/loadthread/13975/loadforum/510/loadclass/35) it was never explained how RPing would be enforced or shown "how much RPing can be", only that non-RPers wouldn't be booted.

-=-=-=-=-
"We're a game that's focused on grouping and on solo play, you know, more group oriented, more solo play..."
John Blakely Senior lead for EQ2. Link

Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.

Lyra-Mike · June 2004

Hey Celver_Glove,

I can promise you I didn't copy anything verbatim from anywhere else. When you're asked a question a few times though it tends to get easy to get pretty consistent with you answer .

As for the rest of your qestion, the answer is here:

[b]We will do our best to help people out and show them roleplaying is fun but we certainly won't let those who diminish the environment by not staying in character and participating properly remain in our roleplaying dedicated worlds.[/b]

You're definitely right though, it sounds like I'm dodging around it and spouting fluff a bit in my answer. When we went back over the interview for editing, that was one of the answers it was actually recommended I explain better but it looks like the changes we made got lost a bit in the shuffle.

Here's a better, more direct answer - We want people to enjoy roleplaying. If someone is acting a bit out of character, we're usually willing to talk to them a bit and ease them into understanding how it works. However, if that doesn't happen and blatant out of character discussion like you mention continues, that character will be removed from the world by our GM staff.

Sorry for being vague in my interview reply, does that answer your question a little better?

Mike Fisher
Lyra Studios, LLC
http://www.reclamationgame.com
http://www.underlight.com

Clever_Glove · June 2004

Originally posted by Lyra-Mike

You're definitely right though, it sounds like I'm dodging around it and spouting fluff a bit in my answer. When we went back over the interview for editing, that was one of the answers it was actually recommended I explain better but it looks like the changes we made got lost a bit in the shuffle.
Here's a better, more direct answer - We want people to enjoy roleplaying. If someone is acting a bit out of character, we're usually willing to talk to them a bit and ease them into understanding how it works. However, if that doesn't happen and blatant out of character discussion like you mention continues, that character will be removed from the world by our GM staff.
Sorry for being vague in my interview reply, does that answer your question a little better?

Your certainly earning respect Mike.
The upper portion was meant for MMORPG staff, they asked good questions, but "normal" ones. Those are fine to ask in an interview, but somewhere you want to push for more information, or ask something wacky to ensure your interview has something in it no other interview does.
I think I understand your OOC policy, get out of character get a warning, get enough warnings get booted. However, being the nuts and bolts type of person I am, I think things like "This is a pretty big promise to make, it would require a number of people on staff 24/7 monitoring chat in order to flush out the non-RPers.
Let's look at a couple bolts, and I think it'll be clear why I'm so skeptical.
Since your in LA, and if your not farming CS out (and you be a fools not to) that would mean about 12-15 bucks an hour, for 3-4 employees to man the CS center at a cost of about 500,000K year + minor benefits. So about three fourths a phat one just to ban non-RP paying customers.
Your going to need about 63K accounts just to cover this mammoth attempt at a dauntless task. This is just game GM's, no administrative staff, facilities, hardware, or profit. I'd image 100-120K accounts beofore the break even point was meet, under above assumtions.
Since you said your looking to fill a niche market, and do not require a large player base, I assume this will mean a 1 person 9-5 as a GM, and maybe some non-paid customers as support staff? All and all it may work fine, but it means depending on the community to ostracize those that are non-complaint.
Witch sounds like everything else.
I'm asking for more "real world" details on how such filtering and re-education system be maintained. Although perhaps I did go into a little more detail than is required, it would be interesting to see how non-RP's are recognized (Ex word filtering programs, staffed peoples..ect) How much of a effort Lyra is putting into rooting them out. You tend to give shall I say 10,000 foot level answers, normaly that may be fine, but for such a bold promise I think more details are required.
If these systems are minimal, and Lyra is merely depending people to "act appropriately" how can a greater RP experience be expected than any other game on the market?
And if I may ask a few an addiontal follow up question.
"MMORPG.COM: Is there any economy, tradeskills, loot, etc?
Mike Fisher: There is certainly some natural economy as well as loot, but these are not at the heart of the game. Tradeskills are important but not in the generic way that they are used in most MMORPGs. Any trade you can take on in Reclamation, such as the role of teacher, is one of significant gameplay importance."

Do you have a system in witch items are removed from the game?

How do you plan to control devaluation of items?

Is there a open market, simlar is the bazaar or housing district in EQ and DAoC?

-=-=-=-=-
"We're a game that's focused on grouping and on solo play, you know, more group oriented, more solo play..."
John Blakely Senior lead for EQ2. Link

Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.

RJCox · June 2004

The upper portion was meant for MMORPG staff, they asked good questions, but "normal" ones. Those are fine to ask in an interview, but somewhere you want to push for more information, or ask something wacky to ensure your interview has something in it no other interview does.

The staff didn't ask the questions, you members did...

Lyra-Mike · June 2004

I thought the questions were pretty good, a lot of it I actually haven't been asked before. It just happens that particular question of dealing with non-RPers is one that would be on a lot of peoples minds.

As far as keeping the game in character, I can't completely answer to the numbers as far as costs, although we do have our own estimates and certainly feel we can effectively moderate Reclamation going beyond our boundaries cost wise.

As far as what I can say to answer your question, I'll throw it out in point as I often tend to do:

- Firstly, it's important to keep in mind a term we use frequently that "not everything happens in a vacuum". That is to say that there are all sorts of additional factors that go into how we decide whether to "ban" (we use the word "terminate") someone. Some people will obviously be out to do nothing but cause a disturbance and those people can be removed rather quickly. Others might make more innocent mistakes, be unfamiliar with how roleplaying works, or whatever the case and those people should certainly be given some change to get acquainted with how things work.

-Not all moderation can always be done in real-time. We'll try and deal with problems as quickly as possible but some cases may require players to file a "cheat report" complaint so that we can go through the game logs and confirm the problem. We certainly try to resolve issues as quickly as possible but we can't always guarantee immediate action.

-The game itself is designed to support roleplayers. Advancement really depends highly on players interacting with eachother and asking eachother for quests(See teaching system in interview). If you're being a goofball, other players aren't going to want to help you advance. In that way, the mechanics work with us to make sure that non-roleplayers don't harm the enviornment.

-If you still have doubts, try out Underlight ( http://www.underlight.com ) under the 30-day free trial. I don't mean this as marketing push by any means, but it's the best way to show that we can in fact do what we say. I think it gets hard for me to verbalize sometimes because I'm not working based on a concept of something that might work, I'm going from experience of something I know can work. The graphics are now way outdated, but if you can get beyond that it's a great roleplaying community where people really do stay in character.

As far as the other questions, I'll try and answer them in the future, just a little tied up at the moment and wanted to reply to the main question .

Mike Fisher
Lyra Studios, LLC
http://www.reclamationgame.com
http://www.underlight.com

Clever_Glove · June 2004

I'd like to thank Mike for his response, while it may seem like I'm being a big meanie, in actuality I'm try to learn about the game. And I think you somewhat indirectly answered my question, although I was hoping to get a very direct and precise answer.

I appreciate you stopping and taking the time to answer the questions of some_random_guy_02.

PS: I was never able to post on the Q&A forums

-=-=-=-=-
"We're a game that's focused on grouping and on solo play, you know, more group oriented, more solo play..."
John Blakely Senior lead for EQ2. Link

Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.

Lyra-Mike · June 2004

Do you have a system in witch items are removed from the game?

-Not entirely sure what you mean by that...generally items that are left on the ground will evaporate and disappear, I'm guessing that's not what you mean though .

How do you plan to control devaluation of items?

-There's really no currency system in Reclamation. Value is generally set by barter and trade.

Is there a open market, simlar is the bazaar or housing district in EQ and DAoC?

-Threshold is considered meeting place where most trade goes on. Many players also hold special item trade events.

I appreciate the questions really; it helps keep us thinking and seeing how people react to what we're doing. It's also a challenging situation because we're coming from a completely different angle than most other games. I think this was best summed up in a recent interview I listened to where the developer was asked what will keep people interested in playing their game over the long haul. Their response: "Well, people play these games because of their sense of pride in accomplishment in the things their chracter accumulates, the items they earn...a lot like games like Ultima Online and EverQuest." That's when it struck me that they weren't pointing out their game as a something unique, they were lumping it in with the rest of the genre as really just another game. Secondly, it occured to me that our game isn't really like that. You probably won't play Reclamation for pride in accumulating items or gaining levels on your character. Reclamation will be played for the pride in how your character develops intangibly. How your character as a living thing grows his or her personality and finds their role within the city. If you're trying to understand Reclamation, I think that's the biggest difference right there. The questions to ask aren't about items and levels, the questions to ask are about how you'll be able to make a difference and develop a personliaty in a community environment.

Hopefully that makes some sense and doesn't come accross as a big rambling

Thanks as always for the questions and support, it's immensely appreciated.

Mike Fisher
Lyra Studios, LLC
http://www.reclamationgame.com
http://www.underlight.com

Howdy, Stranger!

Reclamation: MMORPG.COM Exclusive Q&A

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Reclamation: MMORPG.COM Exclusive Q&A

Comments