Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: Would you say you’re just testing the waters? The Azeroth Advisor was popular when it was first introduced, but it wasn’t *that* popular. Are you just trying to build up the user base and get some clout behind the Azeroth Advisor?

Schilling: Essentially – when this article comes out – it will be the launch of the product. It’s received 3+ years of “beta testing” already done. What we’ve done in the last 6-8 months with it is refine it and put the 38 Studios touch to it. I’m very anxious to see how players and customers react to it, because this really is our first product.

The Azeroth Advisor technology may become a part of other MMOGs as well.

We’re going to be able to take this product and use this product to engage the MMO player in a way that we couldn’t otherwise. That will add value to us. We won’t ever unwillingly send players information or data involving things that they aren’t fully comfortable doing.

This is not a player or a customer grab. At the end of the day, if we deliver an incredible product and an incredible experience, I don’t need to go get other peoples customers. They’ll come to us. That falls on us, and I’m okay with that. There are a lot of angles to this that just aren’t apparent to the naked eye.

Ten Ton Hammer: What kind of changes have you made to the product? The cosmetic changes to the Azeroth Advisor are very evident, but have you made any other changes besides that?

Schilling: We’ve started to. Cosmetically, we’ve changed almost everything about it. There’s a level of quality that we believe we need to set the standards for today and carry forward.

From a content side, before we purchased the Azeroth Advisor it was mainly focused on getting you up to level 70. Now, we’re working on creating a lot of different content that will be relevant to those level 70 players that are raiding, into Arena combat or battlegrounds, or even content for the hardcore tradeskiller. That’s a huge portion of the audience, and it can be looked at as a huge handicap for us.

We’re taking that and turning it into something that ultimately could be positive. We’re going to be sending these newsletters to people for an extended period of time, and we need to have the content for that. Plus, Wrath of the Lich King is coming out, and we’re getting the drop on that as well. When that launches, we’ll be doing another launch with the Wrath content included. Level 70s, for the first time, will be experiencing the Azeroth Advisor as it was intended to be delivered. It’s supposed to be a step ahead of you at every level, pulling you to the instances and the zones you can quest in. You’ll get 10 levels of that at level 70.

After that, it’s up to us to keep you engaged. I had two level 70s before I even found the Advisor, and when I started getting that third character up to 70 I realized that I was seeing content that I missed with both of my first two characters. The game is so big, that I doubt anyone has seen all the content unless they have six or seven level 70s. There’s so much that you simply miss a lot of it.

As a business man, I look at it this way: if you’re going to spend 100 million dollars to create a game, wouldn’t you want players to experience that content? If I can point them in the right direction…..

Copernicus will definitely have an Azeroth Advisor component.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are you going to bring the Azeroth Advisor technology into other MMOGs as well?

Schilling: Absolutely. We’re in discussions with a bunch of different companies – and not just companies that are working on MMOs – from Xbox Live franchises to other franchises. There are a couple reasons for that, number one being that we can have this service available to a company in a personalized newsletter format in six months.

We’re really looking to branch out to be able to service any product that has a global online community.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will you be looking to expand your “stable” of writers in the future?

Schilling: Yes. We’re always looking for good writers and we’re engaging with writers from a variety of different games.

Ten Ton Hammer: And I’m assuming you’re going to have an Azeroth Advisor type service when you launch Copernicus?

Schilling: That’s a no brainer, right? There are so many things we’re going to be able to add compared to what was done with the Azeroth Advisor. Mentor Media created that three years after WoW launched, now you’re going to have a game that’s been built side-by-side with this technology. There’s so much potential in the product – from delivering story to delivering video to delivering anything you want – and that’ll be implemented well ahead of the launch of our game.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are you working with Blizzard at all on this project?

Schilling: We did. We had several meetings and I got the chance to talk with Mike Morhaime a couple times.  Frankly, we would not have been able to do the things that we wanted to do if we stayed a revenue generating product. We were going to sign a license with Blizzard and it was going to come with all the things – good and bad – that that comes with. We could not afford to do that. At the end of the day, it had to be the best decision for our company and the customers of our product. That was the decision we had to make.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the Azeroth Advisor to “clear the air” about the product and the future of it with 38 Studios?

Schilling: As I said on the Instance, a lot of people are going to come up with the wrong conclusions if they don’t think for more than a second about the product. It’s a very short-sighted and narrow view. If you build a product or a service, the product will speak for itself.

It’s a real odd business model in the sense that if you look at what we’re trying to sell and who we’re trying to sell it to, it’s a very experienced, long-standing player base that has already – for the most part – blasted through all the content. It should allow us learn more about ourselves and our process, to continually manage the product and perfect the product.

But we’re not taking anyone’s money to learn our lessons. Is it costing us money? Yes. It’s not diverting energy. It’s not diverting resources. It has its own independent team that operates and functions with it. But we’re giving it a chance to learn a lot about our internal process in the meantime, and that’s valuable to us.

At the end of the day, the product will speak for itself, and we recognize that there is a shortfall in the content for high end players. We’re going to deliver that in a timely fashion and we’re excited about meeting the potential of the product for the release of Wrath of the Lich King as well.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get any new details about Copernicus.

Ten Ton Hammer: Finally, could you give us any hints about Copernicus?

Schilling: It’s a fantasy based MMO….

Ten Ton Hammer: *laughs*

Schilling: Things are going great. We’ve done some licensing on third party technologies in the past few months for the game. We have a lot of internal play testing going on. It’s been a thrilling experience.

Ten Ton Hammer: You’re in heaven right now, right?

Schilling: I’ll be in heaven three or four years after we launch. Right now it’s a mixture of heaven and hell; it’s a grind. It’s a daily thing. But I love it, because I’m surrounded by incredibly talented, passionate people.

Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks Curt! We’ll talk again at BlizzCon!