“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.”
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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.”
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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!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Sword of the New World Game Page.
