I recently had the pleasure to sit down with Black Opal for a 2h long interview about MO for a french MMORPG website I work for ( http://www.jeuxonline.info/ ) and heres the result + 2 new screenshots.
Art: Hello
Opal: Hello
Art: First of all, thank you very much for accepting this interview, it makes us all very happy here at JOL.
Opal: No problem.
Art: Firstly, can you tell us more about you? Are you Maerlyn with a new name?
Opal: I read that stuff, and I find it rather funny. I think enough time has passed to clearly label me as someone different from Maerlyn, my interaction style and my stance on a lot of things are quite different from Maerlyn. So, no I'm not Maerlyn with a new name.
Art: Good. Let’s talk a little about Dawn.
Dawn will bring many great new features and content and a lot have been said about horses but what can you tell us about the others features of Dawn? Are there features that are not announced yet?
Opal: Well, I really can't talk about anything that hasn't been announced however there are some things that have still not been mentioned properly, we are very cautious this time around to make sure anything that we start talking about to the community is in proper working order, or far enough along to ensure that it's going to make it into Dawn.
Art: Talking of that, is dawn development progressing good? Do you have a firm release date yet?
Opal: I believe that the development is going pretty good, the latest insider "Scoop" is that Sebastian was chasing around a bug, or rather being chased around by it for one or two days now. Joking aside, we are still aiming to release sometime mid-may, hopefully we will be able to get a more clear release date out quite soon, as middle of May is approaching fast.
Art: And a video maybe?
Opal: Haha, I'll release some videos when I am able, I can't wait to show some of the new stuff.
Art: Many peoples at JOL are concerned about the pvp balance, can we expect any improvement with Dawn? Some peoples feel that we are forced to use specific builds and races to be competitive.
Opal: Dawn doesn't directly deal with the current way that the "Classes" are created, so in terms of PvP style combat you won't see a large departure from what you have right now, expect mostly performance increases and bug fixes in that area. The greatest change for PvP will come from the necessity of eating food, as well as having more dynamic mounts.
Art: Are you saying that some food type will give buff?
Opal: Not a direct buff, but eating fine food will allow you to join some NPC Guilds, and impact Diplomacy and Trade, these are things that are still off in the future, but this is the direction we want to take things in.
With the cooking system "Sophistication" was added, and I would imagine that later on all sorts of systems will be dependent on it, like joining NPC Guilds, and even learning certain skills. So this would make a Thursar at a disadvantage who by lore are naturally shun from these areas of life in Mortal. This would even the scales out in an unconventional way, however the disadvantage is that all of this takes implementation time.
Art: What are your plans after Dawn for the short and long term?
Opal: The Short term is to continue to build upon what Dawn implemented, adding things like the full flash UI overhaul, improving the magic system, and alchemy. Also, working on the AI.
Art: Does undeads drops interesting loots and requires special tactics to kill them?
Opal: Well it drops what a walking carcass would.
Art: Poison?
Opal: Some of them are the traditional ones you have seen walking around, another I believe is a new type, they hit quite hard. Not as hard as a Risar, but enough.
Art: Does that new type was captured in a screenshot by a brave warrior?
Opal: Not yet.
Art: Peoples appreciate your in-game events a lot but some peoples complain about the time it is organised at, do you plan to organise more events in different time zones?
Opal: I have talked to Discord about this, and we are working on getting something set up for that.
Art: What are your plans about housing and player towns? Do you plan to implement furniture or player ran taverns for example?
Opal: That's the end goal, the coming flash UI will allow us to do some cool stuff with the houses, well any surface really.
Art: Like moving objects around?
Opal: More like Edgar Degas.
Art: What are your plans about territories? Anything coming in dawn?
Opal: The guild system was rebuilt for Dawn from the ground up, so the Diplomacy Tab would feature all of the old features like war declarations and the like. For the actual territory control and any specific changes, I can't say at this time.
Art: Any change in the war system? It was largely discussed in the official forum.
Opal: The way we handle the war system wasn't changed, but hopefully with the new guild system, having the trouble of random murder counts and the whole thing not working as it should all the time will be gone. With the whole guild being flagged locally allowed for someone and those concepts, we would have to approach very carefully, as I am sure you would be able to use something like this to start taking out random people in droves without any consequences.
Art: What is happening with the black dragon and the “griffin”? Is it actually possible to fight them or are you still waiting?
Opal: I can't comment on the Black Dragon.
Art: I know it's there sir! Let us fight it! Or defend it or ride it or whatever you plan! Are there ways for us to free it right now or it’s still to be implemented?
Opal: Haha, well I really can't say anything because Henrik would send Mat's after me, and he is worse than a Ninja. Or rather Ninjas lead by Mats. Henrik would bust down the front door with pirates.
Art: Can we expect new armour sets, weapon groups, breeding system and such in a near future after Dawn?
Opal: Yeah, the breeding system is the next logical step after the Gene System, after all why have a gene system if you can't play with it. Horses are nice, but you got to be able to tweak them.
Art: What about lances, crossbows, new armour sets like those that tindremic soldiers wear in Fabernum and Meduli?
Opal: That's also on the long, long backburner of things to do.
Art: Can we expect new items in a near future? Besides the cooking tools.
Opal: New items, yes, mushrooms and other stuff you can gather, like bushes and etc... In terms of player equipment, I think it will be rather sparse for now.
Art: Why wait so long between bug fixes? Can we expect more frequent bug fixing patches in the future?
Opal: There were a couple of hot-fixes, some server side and some client. I would say the current lull is because of Dawn, we don't want to be playing around with builds every week, increasing the chance that something will not mesh together. In the future, yes for sure we want to release more frequent bug-fixes.
Art: Any changes to the mounted combat with Dawn? I read about the necessity to actually aim now, can you tell us more about that? What about the dismounting ability and charges?
Opal: For charging, you would have to use special equipment on a horse, if you don't have blinders on your horse, it will not want to knock down other players. Right now you have something similar, because it's very hard to get a horse to simply charge off a cliff. So a horse will behave like a horse instead of a car, or a train.
Art: With blinders, it's going to be 100% success rate ? Does every horse can use them?
Opal: No it's still not a 100% you have all of your current calculations in place on top of everything as well.
Art: What else will affect it other than blinders then?
Opal: The skills of the player, the stats of the horse, a little puny Donkey is not going to run over many people, you have to find a big, and strong horse.
Art: Talking of that, does actual horses like bull horses, jotun horses, etc. will still look similar or are they going to be completely different with Dawn?
Opal: I have seen some scary variations on how they look, I would say it's a rather large departure from the current look of each horse, however if you squint you will be able to say "Oh Yeah, that's that horse".
Art: And large horses like bull horses will be able to use plate armour?
Opal: That's the whole thing behind the mount equipment teaser, it showed a horse being loaded up with all sorts of gear, but if you have a weak horse, it won't be able to carry all that stuff for you, just like a player gets overweight depending on the strength, so does a horse. You won't be able to load up a lot of equipment on a weak horse, or at the very least don't expect to go fast if you do.
Art: Let's talk about the trading tools, what can you tell us about the noticeboards? Is it going to be a player quest system or are we going to be able to post services announce on it or both? Is it local?
Opal: Think of it as the contract system in EvE, of where you create a "Contract" of what you want to do, for example buying something or delivering something to somewhere. Everything is local, always. You won't be able to use these systems to transport goods without any danger.
Art: Arn't you afraid that people won't use it if it's not safe?
Opal: You already have couriers running around transporting goods, except right now you have to contact someone outside of the game, and arrange something. This automates a large chunk of the economy allowing people to account for these things in-game, instead of relying on outside Noticeboards, or services.
Essentially the courier system and noticeboards don't introduce anything that's not already used by the players, it just eases and streamlines the entire process so that the players don't have to worry about the headache of standing and screaming "WTS, WTB, LFG to Transport Goods" in the middle of town.
Art: Does players will all have to be online to pick up a delivery or it's going to be deposited somewhere and the player that asked it can pick it up when he log on?
Opal: It can be picked up when the player logs on. The system is there to decrease headaches not create them.
Art: What about the storage revamp? Many peoples are asking for more room. I know we will get more storage chest with huge houses but not everyone can afford these, what will you do for poor players? How much does the new houses will cost?
Opal: We are still trying to pinpoint the exact value for the new houses, but the initial tiers will be cheaper than the current houses, so expect them to be under the 100 gold for a T1 house for sure. For the actual banks, unfortunately they are going to stay the way they are for now. Major changes to the way inventory is handled are going to come with the flash UI overhaul if anywhere, and that won't make it's way in Dawn. However it gives you an idea.
Art: What do you think about player towns? Would you like players to live in player towns instead of NPC towns and if so, what do you plan to do to improve player towns?
Opal: Well, that's the eventual goal, of course we want players to build their own villages and infrastructure. What's the point of guild warfare if you aren't fighting over something that you built.
I know the current argument that Myrland has too many cities, and in reality it was going to have even more cities, however I guess someone stopped Mats.
Art: Does it mean the next continent will have less NPC towns? Did you already start working on the next continent?
Opal: I have heard all sorts of technical things flying around, there are a lot of issues that have to be solved before the next continent can be implemented. Myrland was designed to act as a sampler; to have the most diverse environment types, from Jungles to Frigid Mountains. Any future continents will focus more on a single "Theme" with only slight variation on that theme. Something like Nordveld wouldn't be Nordveld without a lot of cold mountains and also Myrland being the first continent is probably going to end up the "Lovable guy we all love to hate" There are a lot of things that were learned from Myrland, not only design wise, but also technical implementations, so the future continents will benefit due to this experience.
Art: Any sort of timeframe for the next continent? Does SV still plan to have a total of 5 continents? Are you waiting for more players? Talking of players, how's the player base, can you give us any numbers?
Opal: I really can't give a time line on the next continent, and I can't give out the exact number of continents however 5 is still a good number to expect. No feature is really being held back because of players, things are released when they are ready.
Art: Talking of graphics, is Dawn going to bring any improvement? I remember Henrik talking of improved character textures a while ago. Not to mention the town life teaser that was showcasing real guards and better looking characters, females especially.
Opal: I think it's the clothes specifically, they were still the same models, except had some nice sexy clothes. Dawn primarily features optimisations and as you can see in the screenshot an increase in player view distance.
Art: When can we expect what was shown in that town life teaser like real guards?
Opal: Eventually(TM) and maybe even soon(TM).
More seriously, for something like that I believe that the AI has to be upgraded a notch. Right now the next step would be to rebuild the AI from the ground up, they will be using the AI Package that comes with Unreal, allowing them to make a lot of progress quickly. However, that will have to wait after Dawn.
Art: Alright, I think we covered a lot of subjects, thank you very much for your time.
Opal: It’s been a pleasure.
. Que porcierto, mu buena gente, cosa que no entiendo como soportan a pollitos como tu 
!