TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

“From a gameplay standpoint,” Peter continued, “the stances are absolutely fantastic. While you have a basic character class, each stance is like another class unto itself. With the number of stances and classes available in the game, there’s almost an indefinite number of unique combinations that you can comb through.”

Localizing a game is no small feat. With translation, gameplay adjustments, and additional content to be added in the case of Sword of the New World, one would guess that the process might take some time. But it seems like K2 was extremely quick on the turnaround for their newest MMOG title. So how long did the entire localization process take for Sword of the New World?

“It took nine months,” Peter said. “But that wasn’t just the text we were changing. We adjusted many gameplay features. We wanted to make grinding not as harsh and we also wanted to make a number of costumes available during character creation for our Western market consumers. People enjoy customizing their characters and we wanted to make sure they had that opportunity.”

Several costumes were added to Sword of the New World from the original Korean version.

While the costumes at character creation aren’t infinite, there certainly are enough to make each combination of characters in the game have a certain uniqueness to them. “With our added costume combos, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set of three characters that were exactly the same,” Peter added.

The multi-character control system, depending upon who you converse with, has been a matter of contention with many individuals in the MMOG industry. Though some people consider the MCC system to be very similar to standard MMOG design and simply a trick to draw players in, I was wondering what the general response to the MCC system has been and what Peter has heard about it. “Overall the feeling has been positive,” Peter stated. “Every once in awhile we get the complaints concerning the lack of WASD controls, and I think it’s a fair question. Believe me, we tried our best to figure out a way to plot the movements to the WASD keys, but it just wasn’t possible with the MCC system groups. The time it was going to take to master that system for our game just didn’t make sense when we already had a system that worked great. Like the saying goes, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.”

Concerning expansions and updating content, Cesario was more than happy to rest any troubled minds out there about the type of content that K2 Network is putting together. “Since Sword of the New World has been running since 2006, they’ve obviously put out expansions and done some updates to the very high level content areas,” Peter stated. “We’re going to continue pursuing new content with the game, but we’re also hoping to get major weekly events in the game, whether that is GM events, PvP tournaments, contests for new costumes; we’re working on all that stuff. Even if we don’t hit the once a week mark we’re shooting for we’ll at least do an even once every other week.

“We really want to make sure the community knows that we’re reading and listening to what they have to say,” he added. “We want to be really involved, and I think hosting events regularly is a great way to show them that.”

Peter urged players to try Sword, because "they have nothing to fear."

When it was first announced that K2 Networks was bringing Sword of the New World (then titled simply Granado Espada) over to the Western market, a few individuals in the industry noted there surprise because very few Asian-market games get such a quick transition to the Western market. K2 Network has previously never touched such a “young” game, so I posed the question of whether K2 was moving to a plan that had them releasing games that were a bit newer in relation to their Western brethren.

“In general, I think that’s what we’re trying to achieve,” Cesario said. “I think its tough to enter a market where your game is already looking old compared to the competition. Going forward, I do think we want to take that approach and look for the ‘younger’ games.

“However, it also depends on the genre,” Peter added. “If it’s a fantastic card game and we wanted to switch it over to the Western market, I don’t think it would necessarily have to be as ‘new’ as the graphically intensive MMOGs need to be.”

As the interview came to a close, I asked Peter whether there was anything that he’d like to tell the Ten Ton Hammer readers about Sword of the New World. “You really have nothing to lose when you try this game,” Peter said. “We have a free component and a retail component, and you can play the game through the first 20 levels (out of 100) without having to pay anything if you don’t want to. You can even continue to play once you hit level 20, you simply won’t be able to gain any more experience with that particular character. That’s still a pretty good chunk of the gameplay to be able to play for free.

“As I said before, people who play this game stick with it,” he added “You really don’t have anything to fear “

Thanks again to Peter Cesario for taking the time to chat with me at the San Diego Comic-Con, and make sure you check out the rest of our Comic-Con coverage!

Ten Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for Sword of the New World news and features!