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

But how are the developers, besides upgrading their services, hoping to keep the game in the "modern" mainstream? "We simply believe that we aren't going after the more modern 3D games," Young Park explained. "It's for a niche market, but a big niche market. It's a very simple click-to-move game, and the fun thing about this game is that it's an ever-evolving environment. Players actually take the content and make their own stories out of it. That's how the game has stayed alive for so many years. We're not going after the same target audience."

Players don't really want an update of Lineage's graphics.

"It is an older game," Yong Take Bae continued, "but without creating a whole new Lineage you can't really update the graphics. A lot of the users think that if we did update the graphics, they'd be made at us. There are some advantages with having low user specs; it means we can serve a lot more people."

To gain additional users, the developers have a number of goals and plans in their minds. First, they're going to be focusing on the Lineage players that left the game and try to bring them back into the MMO. Then they're planning on putting together a large marketing campaign to attract new users on top of that. Mac users are also one of the main targets for Lineage, and they want to grab as many of those players as possible.

Included in the push to gain new players, the Lineage team is creating two new classes that are going to be introduced in 2009: the Dragon Knight and the Illusionist. "It's really going to put a new spin on everything," Yong Take Bae said. "We're also going to introduce some new maps and new dungeons, monsters, and new weapons." Although there's no race concept in Lineage (the developers chose to make separate races their own classes like the Dungeons and Dragons of yesteryears), the two new classes will be added to the five current classes in the game. The developers hope to have this update, along with the statistic change update, implemented into the game by the first half of 2009.

If you're a gamer that's always wanted to take a stab at the original Lineage, the early part of 2009 may be the time for you. With so many updates coming, including the two new classes, in such a short amount of time, there's definitely room for new players to jump into the fray. A big thanks again to the Lineage developers for taking time out of their schedules to talk with Ten Ton Hammer!