Rekonstruction on WarCry

Rekonstruction is a new MMOG that can offer up to 1.000.000 players to interact with each other in one single world. WarCry hooked up with Chris DiBona, Co-founder for DamageStudios, to talk about this futuristic game.

Is Rekonstruction the next generation of MMOG? Will it change the industry by placing higher standards on the technology? Well, we don't have those answers, but we do have Chris!

WarCry: Alright Chris, before we start dancing, I just have to ask you --- Why Rekonstruction with a "K"? Who made the typo?

Chris: Oh, it's Rekonstruction with a "K" to establish the trademark. Basically, misspellings are easier to trademark when you are choosing a common word, (takes less time than waiting the many, many years to establish a trademark) and "K", uh... is from the future!

WarKry: You say that 1.000.000 (one million) players will be able to play in the same single world. How will you make that possible?

Chris: Before I begin, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. We don't expect 1m people to be playing this game on the first day, or the first year, we project hat if we're successful we'll take at least 4 years to hit that number, so keep in mind that we're not building out the infrastructure for that many people playing simultaneously at launch so much as creating a scalable infrastructure which, when matched with our provisioning skills,
can accommodate that kind of growth.

I'd like to take a moment to explain the backgrounds of our management and development team [Editors note: Chris used to be a "Linux-guy"]. On our staff are developers and management from computer companies like Tandem (on which 90% of the worlds stock markets use for transaction control) and we've collectively helped in the design and implementation of clusters for biotech, weapons production and special effects houses, so the architecting of such a service isn't a foreign thing to us.

There are some very real issues when you consider game play and specifically latency for any large population. I've said in previous interviews that if we have an uber-battle between 200,000 people, then there will be lag. Luckily we're not creating a FPS here, and that is a very important thing to mention, FPS are tests of skills between two players, MMORPGS and RPGS in general are tests of skills between two avatars that have their own mix of traits and skills. I'm not denigrating FPS at all, but you cannot have a good FPS match even approaching fair between two players with lag over say, 70ms and we all would prefer playing at 30ms or less on a local lan. The bar is different for MMORPGS. For combat, you have more leisure due to the fact that the character does the fighting with the player directing him or her. You really have no real need for attributes if you aren't going to let them affect the outcome of a combat; after all, so just by having attributes and skills, you reject latency as your deciding factor.

Imagine a number line between two kinds of combat... on one side you have a single "fight' button and the server comes back whether you have won or lost, on the other you have a FPS. We're somewhere in between, which gives us some latency latitude, like all MMORPGs that don't market themselves as fps-like and still maintain some creativity in the combat mechanisms.

Finally, we also are very good at understanding network provisioning, so we think we can moderate out some lag issues this way. This is a big part of what we mean by officially supporting a geographical area. When we officially support an area that means that we have a culturally and language appropriate client and we have some infrastructure in place to route players preferably onto our leased lines into our server clusters. Of course in the end, unless we lease fiber directly into players houses, run it over leased lines into our clusters, and control all kinds of other variables, sometimes, lag will just happen. Did anyone look at the BGP traffic on the different backbones following the blaster worm/blackout? Routes were blown away for some time and it affected gamers, to be sure.

The user interface hacks for dealing with vast populations within player perception is extremely tricky, and I don't want to mislead you on where the client is going so I'm just going to let that lie for now, the only real way to answer the client population question is likely a screen shot with crap-tons of players in it, something we are not providing yet.

WarCry: Players will be able to construct buildings. What kind of buildings will players be allowed to construct; what limitations will there be?

Chris: At launch we'll provide some rough tools to build a spec house and modify it to some degree and over the months introduce new building features and earth moving features. Since we are mixing pk and non-pk in the same world, we're in a tricky pickle deciding how to allow someone to operate a ditch-witch in the game and not use it to intimidate non-pkers, for instance. We're actually still working on the exact mechanisms for construction, so it's just too early for me to give specifics.

Player will in time also be able to establish teleportation links between locations, cities they build etc, and with teleportation links comes services and shops. (they're very expensive to build, btw) We're thinking this will evoke a western train stop mentality for players with cities springing up around teleportation links and salvage areas like SF, New York, Paris etc.

WarCry: How is the economy represented in the game?

Chris: We've decided to opt for a global currency in the game (not that we ever considered a solely barter focused economy, but I digress) but the economy too, is one of those things that we'll be balancing for the life of the game. Currently, we're working on balancing raw material values correctly and the design of the market system so that people can really enjoy that part of the game. We know what a let down a poorly implemented economy brings. I'll tell you this though, we see the economy as one of the most important things in the game, as or more important than combat and we're really drawing on our experience in the banking sector here.

WarCry: There are three groups of people in Rek: The Remnants, Soldati and the VCA. Now, why would anyone want to be the Remnants, since it's obviously they are the less technological advanced people?

Chris: The way to think about the three classes of survivors is as feedstock for a character more than as clans you must join. They also act as a way for us to hang alignment onto players, with the Soldati being more evil and chaotic, the VCA being net evil and the remnants being defensive and agrarian. The three groups exist not as factions you must join but as conflict that you can or cannot take part in. Each survivor class have things they are better and worse at, of course.

WarCry: What can you tell us about the environment on the planet? Will there be ruins? Will there be plants and animals?

Chris: There will be a ton of ruins, lots of regular and mutated plants and animals and vast areas that will be functionally inexplorable due to both nuclear and biological contamination (you can try but you will die and your gear will be left behind in the dead zone). The earth will be a very changed but still recognizable place. The planet will have gone through some 200 years of scouring from the weather and seismic effects of the fragment. Also, the mutated biologics that the fragment brought with it have played hell with the environment and surviving species. The contaminated areas allow us to open up new areas as we see the need and introduce new story lines and arcs as population grows and avoid some of the empty world problems that a large playing space introduce. You should read the IGN round tables for some of our thoughts on the problems of having very large game-spaces.

There will also be a number of NPC types running around from the different survivor factions. Remnants salvaging, Soldati raiding, VCA doing their thing, etc...

WarCry: How will players be able to be a part of the political life in Rek?

Chris: We are exposing a bunch of faction control and construction logic to the players at launch, but at this time we haven't really settled on the right mix of government structures that we are making available to the player. Setting up taxation is easy, other bits are harder, think hierarchy management in an environment where people can cancel at anytime, etc...

WarCry: Thanks a lot for taking your time - anything else that you would like to reveal for us?

Chris: Just a word about the models I gave you, these are some early renders of some weaponry that will be available to characters and we might change them drastically before launch. You've been warned :)

I'd also like to solicit that your readers sign up for our mailing list so that we can keep them up to date on what's going on with us and the game. Finally, any questions that they have can be directed to me at chris_at_damagestudios.com and thanks for the opportunity to do this interview!

Related link: www.damagestudios.com