Earth Eternal Interview with CEO and Creative Director Matt Mihaly - Page 2

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Updated Mon, Sep 14, 2009 by Medawky

Ten Ton Hammer:Groves are a unique take on player housing. What are they, and how will players be able to modify them when they’re added to the game some time after launch?

Mihaly: Groves are an entire valley, forest grove, island, etc that can be owned and customized by a player or by an entire clan. They can earn items, place them, customize the terrain and create mountains, valleys, fields, lakes, plateaus, and more. Eventually, players will be able to embed mini-games into their Groves, so they can create their own PvP arenas, create city services like merchants and banks, and more. Groves are likely to be released in stages as well, with more basic functions in first and others added later.

The raid size cap will be five players.

Ten Ton Hammer: Does Earth Eternal have player vs. player combat? If so, is there a story angle?

Mihaly: We’re still tweaking PvP, so we’re not going to go into open beta with PvP enabled. It’s going to be one of the first things we focus on after we stabilize EE post-launch. At first PvP is not likely to involve a story angle, but it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart, so is going to get a lot of attention.

Ten Ton Hammer: What sort of gameplay opportunities exist for groups and clans? Is there something equivalent to dungeons and raids?

Mihaly: We’re more solo-focused than most MMOs, but we have both clans and dungeon raids. What we don’t have though are 25 man raids. That’s just too hardcore for the game we’re making. Instead, our dungeons cap at 5 man raids right now. There are a few dozen dungeons available, ranging from small to very large.

Ten Ton Hammer: It's been stated that Earth Eternal will be released on Mac OSX, but not at launch. If EE is truly a browser-based game, shouldn't it be OS-agnostic?

Mihaly: Browsers are not inherently platform-agnostic, and just like you have to have the Flash plugin installed to run Flash content you have to have our plugin installed to run our content. We would have loved to have built Earth Eternal in Flash, but Flash isn’t powerful enough yet.

We will be Mac-compatible and have been engineered from the ground up for it, but it won’t be ready at open-beta.

Ten Ton Hammer: What’s your target audience? What does Earth Eternal have to offer, say, a hardcore MMO gamer who has over a dozen hours a week to play but expects to constantly have a new carrot on the proverbial stick?

Mihaly: Our target audience is anyone who is looking for a friendly, approachable 3d fantasy MMO, but we’re explicitly not trying to attract the hardcore MMO players. If your idea of pure awesome is Eve Online, we’re probably not for you. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something fun and whimsical with no subscription cost that’s still got a ton of depth, EE might be for you.

Ten Ton Hammer: What aspect of the game are you most looking forward to, in terms of watching how players take hold of it and make it their own?

Mihaly: One of the most fascinating parts of MMOs to me is watching players start to form their own communities and compose their own jargon. I’m already watching players create clans and start seeding the game with their own stories.

I’m also really looking forward to us getting Groves out in the future, and seeing what players do with them.
Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks again to Matt for more excellent information on Earth Eternal!