 | Perpetuum Online, developed by Avatar Creations, a small independent softco, is a sci-fi MMO that will be appreciated by all the mech and robots fans. We told with the dev team to know more about this game, now in closed beta. |
MMORPGITALIA: What's Perpetuum? Could you introduce your company and the storyline of the game?
Perperuum is a single-server, persistent, sci-fi MMO. The dev team is basically a bunch of guys who got together to create a game and in the process became close friends, formed a company, and learned a lot. The core team is about 10 people, all working very hard to create a world you can enjoy. The story of Perpetuum is set 200 years in the future, where experiments with an orbital fusion reactor went very wrong and opened up a micro wormhole right on our doorstep. Scientists find a way to send information, energy, and very tiny objects through the wormhole to explore the galaxy, and in the process find a strange world rich in energy and inhabited by robotic life forms. Desperate for energy the humans send over a fleet of nano robots to infect and take control of some of these robotic life forms. We manage to take over a few small islands on the planet by controlling the inhabitants - this is where the players come in, we're basically an invasion force in a foothold situatio n and a whole world to discover.
MMORPGITALIA: What's your definition of "Persistent Universe"?
Persistent universe means that if a player does something - for example digs a whole in the ground, depletes a mineral field or destroys a building - that change is permanent in the world until someone or something (ie natural causes like plantgrowth) changes it again.
MMORPGITALIA: You said the the terrain and the vegetation can be modified. Could you describe this aspect more in details?
Yes, players will have the ability to terraform the terrain. This will heavily be tied into settlement construction by changing the area so you're able to protect it better. We'll see things like walls around settlement, trench warfare, etc. The vegetation can give you cover for a while, but nothing in the game is permanent - if you hide behind a tree, eventually it will be destroyed.
MMORPGITALIA: How does the character's progression work?
In Perpetuum we decided to give a level playing field to players. Skills of characters accumulate over time instead of grinding long hours. There are many skills a player can learn, and their numbers are always growing. Players earn an Extension Point every minute from the creation of their first character even when offline - you can spend these points on the skills you wish to learn.
MMORPGITALIA: Crafting in Perpetuum.
Perpetuum has a complex crafting system where you're able to create items by reverse engineering things you find or buy, or if you have the knowledge you can even create an item from raw materials.
MMORPGITALIA: Classes, races and customization of our avatar.
As the story suggests, you play a human being who remote controls robots - we currently have more than 25 types of robots and the customization options are numerous. You can equip a large number of modules on your robot for various purposes. Be it combat, mining, support or transport you want to do you'll find the equipment you need. In the future we plan to expand the robot and equipment choices significantly.
MMORPGITALIA: What about a guild/clan system in P.?
Perpetuum has an extensive player group system where players are able to have their own means of communication, common storage space, common pool of money, roles for players in the group, everything that is needed to smoothly operate a group inside the game.
MMORPGITALIA: The game will be more a sandbox or you'll stay under a theme park definition ?
We're creating an open world where we set up some rules but won't tell people what to do. Of course we'll have missions and theme-parkish elements, but you do what you want. It's a sandbox game.
MMORPGITALIA: Open or instanced world in Perpetuum? And how big will be ?
The world of Perpetuum is completely open, anyone can go anywhere. We do have the world split up into different islands as the story suggests, but it's one universe. We do have some ideas for instanced areas, but those will be the exception, not the rule.
MMORPGITALIA: What kind of combat will there be in Perpetuum?
Perpetuum has real-time, high action combat on a massive scale. Players can use the layout of the land to their advantage and can even change these factors in the heat of battle by taking out covers or later even by digging themselves in.
MMORPGITALIA: What kind of business model will have the game?
We don't wish to talk about a business model until we have finalized our plans in this aspect.
MMORPGITALIA: Are there other features that you'd like to talk to?
We're pretty excited about the long term plans of territory control and player built structures. We feel that by incorporating Real-time strategy elements into high end gameplay we'll have a truly unique game. Players will be able to build their own settlements complete with complex infrastructure to make them work. They will be able to raise walls around these areas, defend them with automatic turrets and basically carve a piece of the area out for themselves. We're creating a new world - it'll be your job to take it over before others do.
MMORPGITALIA: Thx for the interview.
Thx to MMORPGITALIA.