Anarchy Online: AO Warcry Interview with Marius Enge!

This is the complete interview between Sallust of AO Warcry, and Marius Enge (Game Director for Anarchy Online/Funcom)!

Sallust[/b] - What are your focus areas for AO for the next 3 months or the next 6?

Marius - My focus is to continue to find ways we can keep AO a fun and fast paced experience without losing the challenges. Specifically, I will continue work on improving the game play experience through decreasing the amount of camping, time sinks and glitches. These are ongoing efforts. Of course, we are also working on the next expansion to further improve the world for new and long term Anarchy Online players.

Sallust - What kind of enhancements would you like to see done to Player vs. Player combat?

Marius - PvP is a very important aspect of AO. I know many players enjoy it, and I must admit there is nothing quite as thrilling as knowing that you are faced with another person on the other side, not an NPC AI.

There are still lots of things we want to do with PvP, and I believe PvP in MMORPGs has great potential. We have the normal challenges, like balancing which of course is important, and in a skill based game, difficult.

Maybe new elements of PvP will be included in our next expansion? (smiles)

Sallust - Do you have any major storyline developments in the works this winter?

Marius - Yes. The storyline is progressing and evolving as it should. We will maintain our focus at Funcom on developing content that all can enjoy while working closely with the volunteers and community in their efforts to promote and advance the storyline. We found that this is a better use of our resources and this arrangement is working quite well. The teams of volunteers running the events are doing an amazing job.

Sallust - What is the #1 feature you'd like to see patched into AO that it doesn't currently have?

Marius - There's many things I would love to see in AO, but for a little idea, you should check out the info on our next expansion when that is released. That will pretty much say it best!

Sallust - What do you think will make people interested in the Shadowlands? Additionally, how do you intend to get people to work together and team more in the Shadowlands?

Marius - The interest in Shadowlands has grown steadily and in some cases so much we have had to add in new hardware to support it. In many ways Shadowlands is a very different game experience from Rubi-Ka and the traditional AO world. The thing we need to focus on is reward. A while back ago we sat down and looked at the challenges players face in Shadowlands. We asked the question; "Are players being rewarded accordingly to the risks they take?" The answer was "no". These two sentences then spawned lots of tasks for changes in the Shadowlands. If you are willing to take a little extra risk, you will be very generously rewarded in the Shadowlands. I also believe that players will appreciate this and it will make for a more fun SL experience for everyone. We have done many changes to this, and we will continue to do so. At the same time we want to make sure we don't forget about the experience that is Rubi-Ka. It's all a tuned symbiosis and we can not neglect the fact that Rubi-Ka is still an important aspect of Anarchy Online and will always remain so.

Sallust - What is your vision for the future development of solo play and organization play? (In contrast to team play that is heavily supported right now.)

Marius - Shadowlands has a lot of great potential for organization play. With the latest updates Shadowlands has become a very attractive place to do solo hunting. In particular due to the increased XP you will receive there.

Being able to solo is a large part of AO, of course we want players to group with friends, and be social. The game gets so much more fun when doing so.

You will, in our next expansion see that we once again will do things not seen before in a MMORPG, and I am very confident that the game play offered in this expansion will make fun, solo, team and organizational game play.

Sallust - What is the future of the professionals program?

Marius - The professionals program is an excellent program where the Anarchy Online developers are able to work with key people from the community and maintain a dialogue with them on important aspects of the game. It's a program we absolutely want to keep running. In addition we also have other programs with a group of very dedicated testers that help us out on the test live server. These are all very important programs. What the players say is important to us.

Sallust - Do you have any plans to strengthen the ties between the AO community and Funcom?

Marius - I believe we have worked towards gaining one of the strongest communities in an MMORPG and that we have been very fortunate to have the community we have. We are proud of our reputation for listening to our players and we will never stop trying to improve these ties. We know the community is the game and are grateful for every single player involved as well as for the wonderful work of the ARK, Professionals, Fan Sites, media and all of our staff that keep this community thriving.

Thanks again to Marius Enge for giving us a chance to interview with him!