Herniweb.cz Interview

Hi there, I'm the editor of Herniweb.cz and fortunately it was me who was asking the questions. Here is the interview in English, hopes it will be interesting reading.

1) Can you introduce yourself and your team? How many people are working on
Path of Exile?

I’m Chris Wilson, the lead producer of Path of Exile. We have roughly 12
people working on Path of Exile fulltime, plus several contractors.

2) Can you introduce your game? How long is it in development?

Path of Exile is an online action RPG set in a dark fantasy world. We
started prototyping it with a small team in late 2006. We scaled up
development substantially in 2008.

3) How about meeting other players. Will PoE be like others MMORPGs or more
instanced like Guild Wars? And what is maximum number of players in group?

Path of Exile is indeed instanced. It’s an online action RPG, rather than
an MMORPG. Players meet each other in towns which hold 30-100 players
depending on the size of the town. Once they have a party, they can
venture out into randomly generated instances with a cap of between 4 and
8 players. The entire game is also playable solo.

4) Game will be running on your servers? If so will you be able to guarantee
their trouble free work (no lags, no unexpected shutdowns)?

Path of Exile is a persistent online game, which means that we host all
the servers for ourselves to provide a cheat-free environment. We have put
a lot of effort into our server infrastructure and will make sure that
they run smoothly. We are planning on having servers in both America and
Europe.

5) You said that you will be using micro-transactions. How? Any chances to
buy best equipment, more inventory space or faster levelling potions?

Path of Exile is both free to download and free to play. The
microtransaction perks that we sell are entirely cosmetic without
providing a gameplay advantage. For example, alternate spell effects,
skins for items, dyes, dark pets and extra animations. In addition, we’ll
be offering some paid services such as character renaming and character
transfers between realms.

6) We love dark atmosphere and visceral combat because we didn't see it
since Diablo 1 and 2. There was many cartoony ARPGs in recent time
(Torchlight, Mythos or even Diablo 3), was your goal to make darker game
for mature players?

Yes. We’re trying to make an dark cut-throat world. We feel that the
gritty realism makes for a more immersive gaming experience.

7) Will be possible to play without others players help just as lone-wolf?

Yes. All of our areas can be played solo.

8) What about game story, MMORPGs almost always lack in this aspect. Will
PoE be different? Are you planning some cutscenes?

In Path of Exile, the player has been exiled from their homeland to the
post-apocalyptic fantasy world of Wraeclast. Starting with nothing, they
must fight to survive and grow more powerful in a very hostile
environment. As they explore further into the continent, they discover why
things went horribly wrong.
We prefer to tell the story through environmental detail rather than
forcing the player to read a wall of text.
At this time, we don’t plan to have any cutscenes. As an indie studio, we
would prefer to spend our budget on gameplay.

9) Will it be necessary to complete some story related quests to progress
into another location (like it is normal in offline ARPGs) or game world
will be freely accessible?

The game world is not initially freely accessible – the player must play
through the areas in a somewhat linear order and complete the quests as
they come to them. It’s similar to an offline ARPG in that way, because
it’s possible to play the game entirely solo if you wish. This ensures
that the challenge of monsters that you encounter is pretty fair for your
level.

10) Game worlds are usually much bigger in online games, how big will be the
one in PoE?

We’re initially releasing the game with three acts. Once the player has
played through these areas on the first difficulty level, they can then
attempt them on higher difficulties, where the monsters’ life, damage,
behaviour and item rewards are scaled up dramatically.
The world areas in Path of Exile are randomly generated each time you play
them. The items and monsters that are encountered also have random
variations.
More content will be released periodically after release – we have a lot
of new areas and features planned.

11) Are you planning to add enough end-game content? Or are you planning
more difficulties after completing storyline?

There are more difficulty levels, and we’re going to be constantly adding
new areas in free post-release expansion patches.
Players can of course also engage in PvP tournaments at any time, if they
want to test their skill against other players.

12) Gear (equipment, items) is (are) truly alpha omega in ARPGs. How will
PoE handle this aspect?

We take items very seriously and have put a lot of work into their depth
and appeal. Players will instantly feel familiar with Path of Exile’s item
system, and will notice many new improved features that add customisation
and replayability.

Because Path of Exile is played entirely on our online servers, we can
ensure a secure economy which rewards people who trade items with other
players. In addition, our active skill system is itemised. Players can
level up their skill gems and trade them to other players.

13) Skill system in PoE seems very interesting. Can you explain it to our
readers? Can you tell us about some individual skills?

There are several individual skills that have been announced so far. Some
are combat skills such as Leap Slam (the character leaps to the
destination, stunning enemies that it lands next to), Cleave (the
character swipes his/her sword through a group of enemies, hitting several
at once), and Elemental Hit (elemental damage is added to the character’s
melee or bow attack). There are of course also magical spells, such as
Fireball or Ice Nova.
All of these skills are available to find as “skill gems” in the game,
which can be socketed into your items to grant the skills and level up as
you gain experience. There are dozens of skills planned, and many are
quite rare and difficult to find. High level versions of them would be
worth a lot in trade. The simple skills are given out by NPCs for
completing quests.
The interesting part of the skill system is when you combine “support
gems” with your skill gems by linking them together in connected sockets.
The effect of the support gem is applied to the skill. For example, if you
link “Multiple Projectiles” to “Fireball”, then your fireball skill now
fires a spray of several fireballs at once.
There are hundreds of combinations of support gems to augment your skills
with. Some totally change the behavior of the skill, such as making it
into a trap, or granting it to your minions.

14) We will kill thousands of monsters. But it is boring to smash just one
type, so how many monster types will be in game? Will different kinds use
different tactics in battle? Are some unique looking bosses in plan?

So far we’ve announced nine types of monsters for Act 1, and there are
still several other unannounced monsters in that Act as well. Subsequent
acts have their own unique monsters too. All monster types have several
variations with different appearances and behaviour. There are many unique
looking bosses planned, such as Hillock or Brutus, who you can read about
on www.pathofexile.com.

15) When can we expect releasing PoE? What plans do you have with game? Are
you planning to support it with adding content?

We’re going to enter public beta in early 2011. We’ll continue to add
players to the beta until the game is open to all, and released later that
year. We have a schedule of post-release expansion content planned. There
will be additional acts, items, monsters and features released
periodically.

16) There is your chance if I forgot to ask something you want to answer.
(“How can players find out more information about your game or sign up for
the beta?”)

We’ve updated the game’s website www.pathofexile.com with plenty of extra
information about the game and we frequently answer players’ questions on
the forums. Accounts created on this website are game accounts, so they
are automatically entered into the drawing for beta access once that
becomes available.

Thanks for posting Alanor!

Yes thanks for posting, we are all craving as much info as we can get on this game!

Thanks Alanor, good read, good questions, and got me even more excited.

Glad I could help. I'm also excited about Path of Exile. We've been playing Diablo 2 for way too long.