Wizard101 Interview - Part 2

Jonric: What approach did you take to building vs. licensing technology, and what most influenced the related decisions?

Todd Coleman: Wizard101 uses Gamebryo as our rendering engine - modified, of course, to deal with the challenges inherent to rendering a virtual world. Beyond that, the core technology platform was created in-house, jointly by our engineering team including the folks on this project, Tom Hall's guys (working on the aforementioned secret project), and the core technology group in our Dallas office. A lot of times the idea of "core technology" can be pretty daunting to a start-up, but if you take the time to do it right, and architect and manage it directly, the payoff in the long run can be huge.

he found the core game mechanic innovating, and appreciated the high level of polish. More than anything else, he was delighted to find something new and different in the virtual world space.

Todd Coleman: Well, our terminology is a little different, because we don't break our player population up into discrete servers... or rather, we kind of do, but it's entirely arbitrary since individuals can move among the realms at will. Basically, we built the architect to scale in real time, with areas replicating or removing themselves as players travel around - one of the benefits of avoiding a seamless world, I suppose. Instead we have soft and hard limits to the number of players the areas were built to expect, and triggers that kick in at each level. Once a soft cap is reached, the servers attempt to load balance new incoming people, and at the hard cap, they force it to happen.

Almost all of our population limits are design limitations, not technical ones. For example, we only want 50 people on Firecat Alley, because based on monster population and geographic density, that's all it was designed to handle. Technically speaking, it could handle hundreds, even thousands I guess, but everyone would be tripping all over each other, and monsters would be impossible to find.

Jonric: Given that community is critical for any massively multiplayer game, what are your key goals in this area? What kinds of support are you providing?

Todd Coleman: This is a tough question; really, we could fill out an entire interview just based around the idea of community in a kid-safe game. You have two completely conflicting goals - fostering social connections, and yet keeping everyone at arm's length from each other to keep them all safe and happy.

For beta, we've tackled this with brute force. We completely moderate our forums, and in addition, we provide players (and parents) with a strong set of tools to adjust the degree of communication among them to the level they feel comfortable with.

For release, we'll have to keep watching to see how things progress. We hope that, over time, we'll find a great middle ground that everyone will be happy with.

Jonric: Although you've noted a couple already, what are some major elements you're planning to add or expand after launch?

Todd Coleman: We have a post-launch plan that includes a strong mix of content (new areas, monsters, spells, items, etc.), and new systems. I already mentioned the first one coming down the pipe; we're working on a really expansive player vs. player tournament system to augment the in-game arena. This will serve as a great end game for us, as well as giving players an additional advancement track that they can pursue, if they so choose.

Other major elements that we're looking at include crafting, with an auction system, as I mentioned before, a heavily expanded pet feature, and off-campus housing, where each player can get a wizard's tower or castle in the sky.

Jonric: Do you have any final comments you'd like to leave with our readers? Since many see themselves as hardcore, why should they consider trying Wizard101?

Todd Coleman: You know, a few weeks back, a friend of mine called - an old-school Shadowbane player, about as hardcore as you can get - to give me his thoughts about beta. I put him in specifically because I wanted to get some feedback from outside of our target market; I wasn't sure that he would like it, but I figured it was worth a shot.

The first thing he said to me was "Todd, the most impressive thing about Wizard is that you change the core combat system. This is nothing like EverQuest, World of Warcraft or Shadowbane." A jaded MMOG veteran, he went on to explain how tired he is of repeating the same experience, describing it as "a bunch of players standing on a beach, smacking a giant crab with pointy sticks."

Even though he isn't a huge fan of the wizard school genre, he found the core game mechanic innovating, and appreciated the high level of polish. More than anything else, he was delighted to find something new and different in the virtual world space.

We've long held the opinion that new and different will enlarge the massively multiplayer segment's potential audience without excluding the possibility of appealing to grognards. Consequently, it's always interesting to learn about titles that seek to expand the boundaries. We thank Todd Coleman for telling us about his team's intriguing attempt to do so, and we'll certainly continue to track KingsIsle's initial project, which is in open beta as of last week.

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