Questions by Cody
"Micajah" Bye, Managing Editor
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Answers by Tim Tan,
Producer for Lineage II
For those players that are absolutely dedicated to their favorite MMOG,
they often make a name and a reputation for themselves on their
particular server. Whether it's through their leveling skills or their
abilities in PvP, the other gamers on their server may either respect
or despise them. So when the Lineage
II development staff announced that they were going to be
offering account services that allowed people to change their genders,
names, and even transfer servers, gamers were incredibly interested in
how this was going to work. The Ten Ton Hammer staff caught up with
Lineage II's
producer, Tim Tan, to get to the bottom of these details.
Ten Ton Hammer: We first
heard about the account services back on the official Kamael preview
day in late 2007. Has anything changed since we heard about it last,
and why has it taken so long to release the features?
was to actually get a bunch of these features in before the end of the
year (2007), but unfortunately there was a delay.
In general, we wanted to bring these account services live because they
were features that the players were asking for. The three services that
we are talking about are character name changes, character gender
change, and character server transfers. With character name and gender
change being implemented first, we've already made those services live
and are giving players the opportunity to implement these in the
game.
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Players can now
switch the genders of their characters.
Concerning the basic rules for each of these account services,
href="http://www.lineage2.com/my_account/account_services2.html">gender
changes are pretty generic. You can change your character
from male to
female (or vice versa) and you're free to do that when you want.
Name
changes are a bit different from the gender change simply
because
a player's name (and their clan name) are a bit more important in
certain aspects of the game. It means a bit more than being a simple
name, especially when you've really done a lot of leveling or PKing
with your character. Players earn reputations for themselves, and one
of the stipulations the player base really clamored for when we were
introducing this service was to give them a look-up feature so they
could track down players that have changed their names. At first we'll
have a simple list, but as that gets populated we'll eventually have an
integrated search feature to find those names.
You see, we want to offer these services to players, but we also want
to make sure that the existing customers have some way of tracking down
someone that has harassed them in the past. By giving players this
option to look up player names, it makes people who want to change
their name think twice before actually doing so.
For those individuals that are interested, we've actually put up a pair
of pages that feature in-depth looks at how to go about doing both the
gender
change and the
href="http://www.lineage2.com/my_account/account_services2.html">name
change. These pages will give you
step-by-step instructions on how to purchase the service and implement
them on your Lineage II character.
Ten Ton Hammer: When a
character switches their gender, are they going to have options on what
face/hair options they'll look like after the switch?
over, you'll actually be defaulted to the "A" face/hair selection.
However, you can get potions in the game to change your hair and face
looks. Players will have a chance to switch their look up in game,
thankfully.
Ten Ton Hammer: How much
does each service cost?
gender changes is set at $9.99 and the name change is set at $29.99
Ten Ton Hammer: So you're
definitely wanting those people who are changing their name to escape
notice to think twice before they do it.
the service, but at the same time we want to protect the player base.
It's meant to make players think about it before they go and do
something like that.
think it's a problem, I can definitely see that price going down. We'll
see.
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In Lineage II, names
carry a lot of weight with the player base.
Ten Ton Hammer: And the
rules for server transfers?
character server transfers - will be going live in February. I'm trying
to make it earlier than later, but the only target I have right now is
February. The rules for character server transfers will be available
very soon - before I even announce the actual date - and they'll be
available on the website along with the other two rules pages. We can
definitely go over some of the basics for your readers.
Once every six months you'll be able to transfer a character to a
different server. Unlike some other MMORPGs, you will have to transfer
each character individually. Depending on the level of the character,
there will be a restriction on the amount of items and Adena that a
character can transfer over to a different server. The higher your
character level, the more Adena over to a different server. As of right
now, there's a pretty heavy restriction on the number of items that can
be transferred between servers.
Ten Ton Hammer: What
happens to the items that you can't transfer with you onto another
server? Are they simply deleted?
what they currently have, will be removed. It is in their best interest
to warehouse the items and Adena over to another character. The
restrictions were designed to pretty much protect the server economies
of the servers that are getting the influx of people. There's actually
a pretty extensive list of things, but there's a couple other
restrictions that are systematically not allowed (clan ties will be
severed, etc.).
Ten Ton Hammer: So no
guild transfers?
we don't have that in just yet. We'll pretty much have to do that on a
case-by-case basis.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are there
any restriction on the servers that a player can transfer to?
will change on a week-by-week basis. For example, if populations are
too high on a particular server, we will close off character transfers
to that particular server. We will personally determine how these
population shifts are going and we'll make our decisions accordingly.
Ten Ton Hammer; So
character transfers aren't necessarily this open-ended thing? You can't
go to whatever server you want all the time?
the main goal is to protect the players that are currently on the
destination server. We do want people to get where they want to be, but
at the same time we're going to protect the players that are already
playing on those servers. However, this will be determined on a
case-by-case basis.
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Characters are
limited on the amount of Adena and items they carry with them to their
destination server.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are you
looking at adding more account services anytime soon?
time, no. There were some theoretical talks about doing character
account transfers - transferring a character from one account to
another - but that was pretty much rejected because of folks worrying
about selling characters. There are times when players might have a
secondary character on a different account that they suddenly want to
play with more regularly. That'd be one of the reasons to switch
accounts with a character.
services are popular, we'll see about implementing another round of
account services based on our player feedback.
Ten Ton Hammer: On a
different note, how has the response been to the Kamael expansion? Was
there a big influx of new players coming in to try it out?
good mix of new players coming into the world and older players that
had taken a break from the game for awhile. It was a pretty large
influx of those players coming in and checking it out again.
In my opinion, it has been a successful launch.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is there
anything else you'd like to tell the Ten Ton Hammer readers?
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definitely be having more conversations in the coming weeks, so make
sure you check back in with us to find out what's going on!
the "gender change" account service option? Does a gender change really
influence enough people to make it part of the game? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?p=205507#post205507">Let
us know on the
forums!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Lineage II Game Page.
