gamebunny eternal lands interview

ETERNAL LANDS is a fantasy-based MMO (with an open source client) currently offering free beta play. The blurb on their site states "The game is now in Beta stage, but that doesn't mean it is incomplete. There are 9 skills, total character development freedom, many quests, religion, a lot of NPCs, animals and monsters. If you are a PKer, you can fight other PKers in special maps." Sounds like these guys are determined to create a game here! Will you support them by having fun?

We spoke with Radu Privantu, Project Manager of the ETERNAL LANDS Development Team in order to get a grip on the finer details of the game. Land Ho!

gamebunny:
Could you start by giving us a bit of background about yourself? When did you first discover online worlds and what attracted you to them? When did you decide and begin work on Eternal Lands?

Radu Privantu:
I am 25 years old, and I started programming when I was 13. I always dreamed to make my own game (a good game, not just a simple project). When I was 19, and just got out of the High school I got hired by a Romanian game company (AMC Computers), working at their RTS (now called No Name War). 7 months into the project, because of some disagreements, I left the team.

Then I had some sort of vision (which I thought to be unique), about making an online game, where unlimited number of players can interact. At that time I had an even bolder vision, for example allow players to have their own houses with gardens, grow their own animals, crops, maybe even irrigate their land, and many other real life things. Obviously, all this is possible, but it would require a huge development team, and, well, it might not be that fun for the average player to go and water his or her plants.

After telling a friend of my 'innovative idea', he told me that this was done already, by Ultima Online (and even other games). I was kind of disappointed, and decided to temporary abandon the idea.

In November 2002, me and my wife (she is the artist) had a lot of time on our hands, so I descended to give the MMORPG idea a try. So we started working at it in November 2002, and had the first pre alpha version online by mid February 2003. It wasn't a game at that time, it was mostly a graphical chat. But we kept working at it, and now the results of our hard work can be seen and experienced by everyone.

What has been the most challenging aspect of creating Eternal Lands? Do you ever regret diving into the creation of such a huge persistent world?

Radu Privantu:
When making an MMORPG, everything is a challenge. I think the biggest problems we faced are:
1. Making a solid, bulletproof economy.
2. Marketing the game properly.
3. Retaining the players.

We only have about 1000 active players, and 250 online at the same time, at peak time (about 4 PM, EST). This is not very much, considering this is a free game afterall. A lot of people download the game, try it for 5 minutes, and then give up. Now days, most of the players are too busy to actually read a manual, and they expect Eternal Lands to be exactly like their favorite MMORPG (whatever that is), only better and free. They don't realize it's a totally different game, so there is a learning curve. You can't learn everything in 5 minutes, so you have to try the game for at least 1 day and see if it fits your style or not.

And yes, there are many times I regret starting to make an MMORPG rather than a single player game. Single player games are much easier to make, demand a less sophisticated economy, and allow much more development freedom. For example, you can't make really great, world changing quests in an MMORPG. You can't really implement a feeling of achievement, like becoming the hero of the world, the one and only. In an MMORPG everyone has to be equal, but still allow those who work more to be 'more equal' than the others. In a single player game you don't have to worry about that. You also don't have to worry about the game security, cheating, scripting, etc. and you don't have to try to please everyone, even though everyone wants different things.

What are the most compelling features of EL that will attract and keep adventurers playing?

Radu Privantu:
The most compelling is that it's a free game. It also has good art and visuals, for an independent game. Think about it, we don't have millions to hire an entire team of artists, designers and programmers + the necessary equipment.

But what I want to be make us unique is a big quest system, and a lot of NPCs. All the NPCs will tell a story, have a background and relationships with other NPCs, which will give our world a life of it's own. I want to make it that way so you can play the game like a single player big quest, if you want. This is a really big challenge, because it requires a lot of time, but I already started to work at it, and so far I am pleased on how it is going. In the end, for the free version, I want at least 200 NPCs, in addition to the shop owners, which don't really talk much, except for buying and selling stuff. The commercial version should have around 3-400 NPCs. What really inspired me was the game Ultima 7 (it's a 12 years old game), which still can't be beat when it comes to the story and quests and world consistency. What I am aiming is to make an even more complex story and world. This is extremely hard to do, and it has to be done gradually. But the important thing is that we are already working at it.