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Ten Ton Hammer: How do you advance your character in Warrior Epic? Will there be statistic points that are distributed? Feats, skills, and abilities to choose? Armor to procure? How many levels will there be?

Brice: Leveling in Warrior Epic is done by gaining experience on the battlefield.  As your Warriors level, they gain access to new abilities in their skill tree as well as better gear.  As their body grows in power, so does their spirit.  

An interesting feature in Warrior Epic is the spirit system.  A warrior’s spirit increases in level and strength, along with their physical form.  If that warrior falls in battle, their spirit will ascend to the spirit realm.  Spirits of our fallen warriors are bound to your Hall’s Sanctuary.  With your spirits, you have two options.  You can resurrect them back into living form to continue leveling them and using them on missions, or you can leave them in spirit form.  If you choose to leave your warrior in their spirit form, the spirit can then be called to your aid in battle during times of need.  Spirit summoning in battle will greatly benefit the entire party and is extremely fun to watch.  The strength and ability of the spirit is a direct reflection of the strength of your warrior at their time of death.
 
Ten Ton Hammer: What sort of customization options will players be presented with when they enter the game? Will the process be extensive with numerous physical trait changes and/or coloration options? Or will it be a slimmed down version of what we see in the more robust MMOGs?

Brice: A huge part of Warrior Epic is the ability to personalize and customize your warriors and your Hall.  Not only will there be a much larger selection of warrior types in our game than you have seen in any RPG up to this point, each of our classes will be fully customizable.  This is not limited to our human warriors either, as there will be many very strange, never before played classes available in our game.  The customization possibilities are endless.

Ten Ton Hammer: How will players interact in Warrior Epic? Is it an open game world that players will journey through, or will players combat creatures in instanced areas outside of standard population?

Greater peril equals greater rewards in Warrior Epic.

Brice: The quest areas in our game will function as instances.  This is not a free-roaming MMO that involves walking all over the world trying to get from one point to another.  This is an action RPG, so when you play Warrior Epic, you will always be either engaging the enemy on a mission, or managing your warriors and Hall.  We have a full community system to let players find the games and buddies they want to play with.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will solo play be as viable as group oriented action? Will larger guilds have bigger targets that they can attempt to dispatch (raid type scenarios)?

Brice: The game adjusts itself according to the size of the group in a quest.  Solo campaigning is not only possible, it is recommended so that players can familiarize themselves with their new classes before joining up with a party online.  As the party size increases, so does the enemy population.  The strength of the monsters will increase as well as the type.  By “type” I do not mean instead of blue dragons you will face red dragons.  I mean the size, strength, breed and overall difficulty of the entire monster population will change dynamically with the size and power of your party.  Placing your warriors in greater peril gives access to greater rewards.

Ten Ton Hammer: How does the gameplay compare to other MMOGs? Can you compare it to anything that’s on the market today? How do you control your character and use his or her abilities?

Brice: At the risk of sounding like every other game developer on the planet, I must say we are doing something different here.  There are similarities in a few aspects of our game, such as how the player is controlled and how abilities are used, but the strategy and teamwork aspects of Warrior Epic really set it apart from other games.  Our camera can be 3rd person isometric, or you can zoom in tight on the action.  Abilities and special equipment are selected from tool bars or activated via hotkeys.  We have a full array of group buffs, individual buffs, combat magic and several damage types.  Each adventure is constructed to last from 10 to 15 minutes. What your party brings into the mission is all you get.  You can’t lay on the ground the recharge your health and skills.  It’s this resource limited teamwork that lends Warrior Epic its unique game play feeling.

Ten Ton Hammer: What sort of business model are you using with Warrior Epic? How does it compare and contrast with the current business models on other games?

Brice: Anybody from anywhere in the world will be able to visit our website, register an account, download a tiny file, and be in game within minutes without paying a dime.  Your account information is stored in our servers, so you can pick up your account on any machine anywhere, so long as you have an internet connection.

The game is free to download and free to play.  There will be aspects of our game that require real world money to access, but not having them will not hinder progress in game.  Certain warrior classes, equipment, physical attributes, buffs and hall upgrades will cost real world money.  That being said, you cannot buy god-like strength.  The strongest warrior in the party could easily be someone that has never spent money on the game.  The strongest gear and strongest warriors can be obtained by progressing through the game.

Much of Warrior Epic was created with hand painted assets.

Ten Ton Hammer: In a previous interview, you said that the game had hand-painted assets rather than rendered graphics. Has this hindered your ability to produce new content? How has hand-painting helped you make such a small file-size game?

Brice: Investing in a brand new art process has been one of the best moves we have made in the development of Warrior Epic.  We have hired a team of incredibly talented artists and created a unique art process unlike any other game we are aware of.  After the game ships, they will continue creating unique and beautiful art for our game that we will add regularly long after launch day.

Mainstream game developers rely too heavily on hardware to render the final result at runtime.  This process requires a wide array of complicated and large assets that get jumbled together at render time to create the image that you ultimately see.  The net result is a process that is difficult to art direct because it simply has too many variables.  

By using custom, hand painted art, we have been able to create a game that looks amazing and puts a much smaller load on your CPU and graphics hardware at run time.  It also results in fewer files which translates to faster downloads and lower memory usage.  That means that you get a great looking game that will run smoothly, even on a computer that is 3 or 4 years old.

Ten Ton Hammer: Tell us a little bit about the Warrior Epic development team and their experience within the MMOG industry. Are they a veteran group? What sort of gameplay experience are they bringing to the table?

Brice: We do have some pretty experienced management.  The founders have been key contributors to several hit titles.  Some of their past projects include Battle for Middle Earth II, Gears of War, Starcraft, Age of Mythology, Command and Conquer III, and The Sims series.

In addition to their game experience, our art directors have been visual designers for feature films including Star Wars Episode III, Transformers, Mission Impossible, The Island, The Day After Tomorrow, and others.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can you explain the Download On Demand (DoD) technology? How does this help players access the game?

Brice: Players anywhere in the world can visit our website and be playing almost immediately.  We have a very small installer, currently 300kb.  When this file is run on your computer, it downloads only the content that you need as you need it.  This allows you to be in the 3-D world and playing the game within minutes of initiating the process.  It also makes it much easier to play Warrior Epic when you are away from home, because all of your account information is stored in our servers.  

Ten Ton Hammer: Why should the MMOG player be interested in Warrior Epic? What’s your favorite part of the game? What kind of diverse adventures will players be experiencing?

Closed beta for Warrior Epic begins very soon.

Brice: Warrior Epic is fun to play, looks great, can be played from anywhere, and will be regularly updated with new content and features.

Aside from a compelling story, the game play in Warrior Epic is my favorite aspect of the game. It is hard to put into words, but when you play online with a group of friends and everyone knows how to handle their warrior, the experience is incredibly satisfying. I also love building my hall and showing my friends what a real castle looks like.

You will save lives, take lives, and plunder a copious amount of treasure from the undeserving.  The world outside of the Kingdom of Providence is both mysterious and dangerous...your task is to conquer the wild and rid it of the pestilence that plagues it.

Ten Ton Hammer: Finally, when will players get a chance to play Warrior Epic?

Brice: A closed beta will be released very soon.  If you are interested in participating, head over to http://www.warriorepic.com and register now.  Be sure to leave a valid email so that we can invite you to the beta.  Also, the name that you register on our website will be the name you use in the game....so get the name you want now before someone else gets it before you!

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