target="_blank">Atlantica
Online
is turn-based strategy MMO from NDOORS that combines
combat with character and party development and city
management.  Players take on the quest to destroy the
Oriharukon energy, a powerful sensor from style="font-style: italic;">Atlantis that is
poisoning
the world. Atlantica has spent most of the time at the top slot in
Danny "Ralsu" Gourley's href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/free" target="_blank">Top
Ten Free MMOs list, and the title continues to grow its
fan base.

Ralsu recently had a chance to catch up with NDOORS
Interactive CEO Peter Kang. Ralsu peppered him with questions about the
past, present, and future of Atlantica.

---

The April release of the
Titan server allows for cross-server interaction and PvP tournaments.
How has this special server been received by the player base?

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style="font-style: italic;">Test your
tactical skills in fast-paced combat.

Peter Kang: So
far we’ve experienced an overwhelmingly positive response, not only for
the good but also for the not-quite-so-good. The Titan Grand
Championships have been without fail an absolute blast, and it has been
a pleasure to watch players cheer for their own teams and taunt the
others. Drawing from all of Atlantica’s
player population has produced some spectacular fights, many of which
players have uploaded to the internet. However, there is as yet not
much to do on Titan aside from fight and answer help requests. We’re
working on adding new content to the server, but in the meantime, it’s
only really a happening place during Sunday’s tournaments.

April also introduced a
major patch for Atlantica
Online. One feature that caught my eye was the Macro Block
to stop cheaters. Can you assess how big of an issue this was and how
successful the Macro Block has been?

Kang:  style="font-style: italic;">Fortunately, we
have developers and GMs who are very devoted to keeping the playing
field level by preventing activities such as macro use. The Macro
Report function is meant as another tool in our macro hunting arsenal,
rather than a be-all-end-all of macro control. To that end, it has done
its job beautifully. While the ideal of a bot-free MMO may but nothing
but a pipedream, it is an ideal that we get closer to every
day. 

The April patch also noted
some changes to crafting ingredients. Players are able to exchange old,
obsolete craft ingredients for their new counterparts. Why did the
ingredients change, and what are the benefits of these changes to
players?

Kang:
There were two main reasons for raising the elements needed for
crafting gear. The first reason was to help stimulate the market. The
developers felt that by increasing the elements, players would be more
liberal in dismantling their gear and selling the ingredients on the
market, helping it spur growth. The second reason for this change was
because the cost of crafting ingredients were too high, which resulted
in only the wealthiest being able to craft their high-end gear. We
wanted crafting gear to be more readily available to all players.

It’s also no secret that some items do not have any value;
these are the items that are not being traded. By consolidating some of
the cheaper ingredients, it helps raise their value and increase
trading in the market.

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style="font-style: italic;">Rock out
as a  Musician.

One recent change to style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica is the
repair system, which now requires 100% Will to repair an item. This
change has worked well for me and my gear, but what happens if I have
just repaired an item and then spot someone using macros? I can’t
report him until I regenerate 100% Will. What should I do?

style="font-weight: bold;">Kang: style="font-weight: normal;"> While the effects of Will and
its necessity will be argued, it serves several important purposes, one
of which is discouraging abuse. From a strategic standpoint, Will
forces the players to think about their actions in advance—if you’re
getting hammered by mobs in a dungeon, do you use your Will to eat some
restorative foods between battle, or do you use it to teleport to the
safety of Rome? Will also paces out player actions to prevent system
abuse. While the macro report system is very handy, there is also the
possibility for a player to repeatedly report an innocent enemy of
theirs. The Will limitation is one of several ways we curtail this. If
you happen upon a macro user while you’re out of Will, our GMs are
always happy to take a name for investigation. You can reach them
through in-game PMs, the website support system, or if you have Xfire,
you will often find them logged in there.

An adjustment a lot of href="http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/ATForum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=19950&posts=7&start=1"
target="_blank">Atlantica
players would like to see is a Character Selection button
that allows them to change characters without having to log out of and
back into their accounts. Is there any chance this will happen?

style="font-weight: bold;">Kang: style="font-weight: normal;">We currently do not have any
plans to make this adjustment. However, we’re always taking player
feedback and suggestions into consideration, so it doesn’t mean we
won’t come back and look into it in the future.

Any response to the claim
that href="http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/ATForum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=20399&posts=144&start=1"
target="_blank">two monks make for an imbalanced PvP unit?

Kang:  style="font-style: italic;">You’re always
walking a tightrope when tinkering with balance. So before we jump to
make any fixes or adjustments, we always monitor in-game trends, as
well as player behavior and opinion to avoid making rash decisions. In
this case however, we are indeed preparing to make some adjustments to
balance out the dual Monk builds. 

The most noticeable change will be to the Monk’s Holy Guard.
We feel that its healing effects are too powerful as it stands now, and
we definitely don’t want players feeling that they have to have two
Monks to stay competitive. So in the near future, we’ll also be
releasing new mercenaries that will share similar abilities as the Monk.

How close are we to player
housing in Atlantica?

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style="font-style: italic;">Explore
an alternate version of earth on your quest.

Kang: Pretty
close actually—we’re now in the home stretch. The first housing system
demonstration was just recently completed successfully. Look for this
system to be implemented in the game sometime this fall.

You noted href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/66688/page/4"
target="_blank">in April that a retail box or a
smaller client download was a possibility. Is this any closer to a
reality?

Kang:
It’s one of our pet projects that have us really excited at the moment.
As we mentioned last time, our light client will be a small, 700 MB
download, and from there you can play the game while the rest of the
client downloads itself in the background. We hope that this will open
the door to Atlantica
for new players, who may have been frightened off by the extreme size
of the current client. While I can’t go into more details on it here, I
will say that it is something we are making regular progress on.

Who do you consider to be
the competition for Atlantica?
Is there a specific company, title, or type of game you look at as a
measure of your success?

style="font-weight: bold;">Kang: style="font-weight: normal;">Hmm, that is a tough question.
There are of course a great many companies and titles out there that
deserve our respect, and I think that there is something to be learned
about design from any given game. That said, it’s hard to measure style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica Online’s
success against other games or say we’re in competition, as style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica offers a
very unique gaming experience. For the time being, we’re less focused
on comparing ourselves to other, very different games, and more focused
on creating the best Atlantica
we can.

I am a fan of Atlantica on
Facebook, and I recently saw a code given out there. What’s that all
about?

Kang:
As you may have noticed playing through style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica, our
developers put a heavy emphasis on community in the game with features
such as incentives for giving gifts to new players, rewards for active
guild members, and bonuses for playing in a party. The code you saw on
Facebook is an extension of this philosophy beyond the game. Players
can redeem these codes for in-game items. It’s just one way in which we
want to say thank you to our community.

Is there anything else you
can tell Ten Ton Hammer readers and style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica fans?

Kang:
I’d just like to thank everyone for taking the time to play our game. style="font-style: italic;">Atlantica Online is
the result of the passion and dedication of hundreds, and with all of
the exciting new features such as housing and massive battles coming in
the near future, it looks like things will only get better from here.