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Added an AMA transcript.
An AMA was held on the MMORPG Subreddit on April 23, 2018.
: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/8ee7e7/project_gorgon_a_fantasy_mmo_ama/
;What features or content do you want to add to the game before launch?
: The game will have content up to (and past) level 100 at launch. There's a lot of content planned, and I'm excited about a lot of it! (I get excited about content easily though.) In terms of big stuff, I think the two upcoming capital cities are the most daunting.
: Statehelm is the capital of the Council Lands, a mageocracy where "everybody is happy and there is no hunger." (Or dissention. Or homosexuality. Or orcs. Or...) It's not really a utopia, but it's far from dystopia, too. It's a complicated place where mages really do try to make the world a better place... but good intentions don't always work out right. Getting the vibe right is tricky and an interesting problem.
: And Ormala City is a trade hub on another continent, with its own system of commerce, its own ecology, its own laws, and... it turns out I can't talk about upcoming content much without spoiling surprises, but it's got surprises. But I'm excited about that.
: And of course the new races are pretty exciting, too -- each of the three unlockable races (fairy, dwarf, and orc) has its own starting experience to give it a unique feel and help players learn the special rules involved with each race. - Eric
;will there be a panda mount? and what kind of mounts will be coming / are planned in the future? will animal forms be able to ride mounts? will humans be able to ride other animal form players?
:We don’t have plans for a panda mount and we don’t currently have any plans on allowing players to ride animal players. We do plan on introducing mounts, starting with a horse. In addition to the benefit of movement speed, you will be able to have saddle bags that allow for item storage. -Ryan
;Are there plans for expanding the current selection of weapon skills into Two Handed weapons or maybe more Ranged options?
:Yeah, we'll eventually have two-handed weapons, I think -- if I can find a design that's interesting enough and isn't too similar to existing skills. Right now I suspect we'll just have one skill for Two Handed Melee weapons, encompassing everything from claymores to giant hammers. But it's not set in stone yet, we'll play with things and find what seems fun and interesting. - Eric
;I like that the game has so many unusual skills. Any weird new ones in the works?
:There are several new skills in the works including Vampirism and Weather Witching! -Ryan
;When will dwarves be introduced?
:We don’t have anything specific to announce, but they are definitely in the works. In order to play as a member of the Dwarven race, you will be required to unlock them via an in-game quest. - Ryan
;How will the housing system work, house anywhere in the world, or a zone designed for housing for people.
:Houses will be instanced. Think EQ2 style: you click on a door in town and teleport to a special area that you can decorate.
: Guilds will also have special "guild halls" which are, for the most part, instanced. But there will be a few very expensive guild halls that have a public front area (where guilds can set up vendors or whatever), along with an instanced private guild lounge in the back.
: (Houses are the only part of the game that's instanced, by the way.) - Eric
;Two semi related questions:
; Do you have a world map in mind already? In other words have y'all fleshed out the general structure of the world for future maps and such, or are you more or less building smaller maps as you go and gluing them together?
; Do you have a general story associated with the world in mind already or are you building those pieces (who is in the world, how these people came to be, why they're located where they are, why things are the way they are like the undead island, that sort of thing) as you go?
; I hope those don't come off as harsh. =D They're not meant to be fwiw. Great work so far! This game really renewed a bit of "MMORPG void" feeling I was having.
:I'm weirdly bad with geography. I have a famously terrible sense of direction, I get lost all the time, and for whatever reason my brain just doesn't deal well with maps. So the answer is: yes, there is a general idea of how the world fits together, BUT it's not very well fleshed out yet.
: To put it another way -- I know the backstory for most areas, the points of interest, and why you'd go there... but I'm not actually sure which areas touch which other areas. - Eric
;Hello Elder Games, I kick started the game years ago, and could not be happier that I did. I returned recently and have been loving it.
; Micro-transactions and loot boxes have been in the news a lot recently. While there is a great deal of differing opinion on them, many like myself feel that even cosmetic micro-transactions detract from the MMORPG experience. What is the team's stance and plans concerning micro-transactions?
:Project: Gorgon is a ‘Buy to Play’ title, meaning that once you’ve purchased the game there are no additional, required or reoccurring, expenses. There will be no mandatory subscription fee, but we do plan on offering an optional ‘VIP Subscription’ that will focus on convenience. We are adamantly opposed to any ‘Pay to Win’ elements and you won’t see them in Project: Gorgon. -Ryan
;Are we going to see player housing in the near future, or is it already in the game now and I'm just totally missing it?
:We do plan on having player housing, but it is not coming in the near future. Due to numerous reasons, it will not be an open world system but instead will be instanced. -Ryan
;What's the active player daily peak right now?
:We are seeing around 400 players during the weekdays and up to several hundred during the weekends! - Ryan
;So my question is in relation to wipe, will there be one after the game goes full release
:There will not be a complete wipe at launch, but we will be wiping some aspects of your characters including but not limited to: items, currency, NPC favor levels, and favor-quests. That said, we don't plan on wiping most skill levels. -Ryan
;Why should someone who got burned out on traditional MMOs play your game?
:This is an important question. And I think the answer is a little surprising. There's a knee-jerk idea that nostalgia is the main draw. It's true that many players say the game reminds them of one old game or another -- Runescape, EQ, AC, DAoC, all sorts of names. But frankly Project: Gorgon isn't especially similar to any of those. And those games aren't like each other, either!
: When players say that it reminds them of an old game, I've found that what they usually mean is that it reminds them of how they felt when playing that old game. They didn't know WTF they were doing, they didn't understand how the game worked or what was possible. The world was full of opportunities and mysteries and trial and error. That's the feeling they miss.
: Project: Gorgon was designed around the idea of letting you explore deep game systems. The game's complexity opens up like an onion -- and it's not pointless complexity, because that's dumb. There's real complexity that models interesting things, to let you create interesting custom combat builds, or solve problems in interesting ways.
: You have to learn how to play, but doing so is really rewarding. - Eric
;What are your thoughts and plans concerning animal players, and combat skills availability? More precisely, will you add equivalent to the rabbit ice magic to other animal forms? I for once would love to use battle chemistry as a spider, mixing alchemical wonders in my poison glands, it would really fit the lore and concept of the spider i feel. I know not if the upcoming 'weather witch' is a combat skill, but that would fit well the pig, thunder pig and all. And of course, the holly cow.
;In a more general fashion, permanent animal forms are... well... severely limited in choice of combat skills... a bit too limited, and while i understand why, it's a bit suffocating at times. It would also be nice as an added gameplay differentiation between beasts, to give a bit of variety.
;Thank you for your hard work and this wonderful game, and have an amazing rest of your day.
:We look at each animal-form curse individually. They won't all have access to the same set of combat skills -- spider won't have Ice Magic, for instance. But most curse forms will have access to one or two more combat skills, when all the skills are implemented. - Eric
;What are your plans to fix the low FPS in crowded areas ?
:We have heard from the players that they are experiencing FPS issues in very populated areas, mainly Serbule, and we are working to implement optimizations to improve those issues. In fact, we’ve already released optimization updates for those issues and will continue to do so until the issues are resolved. -Ryan
;I love the humor in the game. Please keep content coming like that! All the mystery and unknown in this game make it kind of.. magical. I even like the weird stuff like some damn golem that made me do math. Amazing. Keep up the weirdness please
:Don’t worry, we’ll keep it weird. -Ryan
;Is there any possibility of a more fleshed out PvP experience? If so, what are you thinking of implementing?
:Actually, PvP isn't going to be a big part of the game. That's mostly about development scope: trying to balance things for both PvP and PvE is a tremendous job that usually doesn't work too well, even for teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Since this game is mostly about cooperation and PvE, we decided to skip PvP.
: So our PvP will always be pretty rudimentary. We'll make do very basic balancing work on it eventually, but don't expect elaborate events or rewards.
: I do think there are some interesting niche opportunities for indie PvP MMOs, though, and I hope that more indie teams focus on them! -Eric
;To the folks at Elder Game,
;Wanted to formally thank you for making a game as lovely as Project: Gorgon. I've been playing MMORPGs for just over a decade, but in comparison to most of the game's userbase, I'm a novice. At first glance, the game's amount of available skills were intimidating, but this is one of the first games where I genuinely feel that it's about the journey as opposed to the destination. That being said, here's some questions I have:
;1) Throughout the crowdfunding process, you've made it clear that Project: Gorgon will have an optional VIP membership available by the game's full release. What was the psychology behind this decision, and have you done more planning on what benefits the VIP membership will include?
;2) A common request I've seen in-game is a chance for players to get to see a development roadmap to gain clearer insight as to incoming changes. If not now, will this ever become a reality?
;3) My favorite part about Project: Gorgon is the community based efforts. In-game guides (shoutout to Sims, Rummencola, and Daimes) facilitate player-run events, this past weekend there was a "Summer Event" that required players to start a campfire, hunt tigers for cookable meat, and dance in town during night time. Given the success of these events and their effect on player retention, will there be efforts to expand upon this? Whether that be in the form of a paid community management team, the usage of more in-game guides, or developed systems i.e. the Summer Event "buff".
:For 1 - the VIP plan will be a way for players to help fund continuing development of the game and get some perks as a reward. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but it will probably include more character slots, more account transfer slots, that sort of thing, plus in-game "gift baskets" of various items each month, mostly just fun stuff. There's also one VIP-specific skill planned called Autodidactism. It lets players find special books in-game, and then "hang out" with the book (instead of hanging out with an NPC). It's a way to slowly level up some skills offline, for players who can't play all that much.
: For 2 - we don't post our roadmap very often because we don't really work that way. There are a few big-ticket things on the horizon, being developed in parallel -- including several new areas, a new animation system, horse mounts, playable fae race, a new dungeon, and (starting soon) player housing. But I can't tell you which of those will go live first. There are a lot of interdependencies, and we're such a small team that scheduling gets complicated.
: Plus, we often pivot the schedule when we see something important that needs improving in game ASAP. On a day to day basis, we work in "sprints" of about 2 weeks, resulting in updates every 2-3 weeks. So giving exact details more than a month out is hard.
: For 3 - we are excited about the Guides program and want to do more with it! We're still basically prototyping the program, but we have big ideas on letting Guides facilitate in-game events in the future. - Eric
;Will the game go down in price? I am hesitant on dropping $40.
:We strongly believe in the value that Project: Gorgon presents to the players at the current MSRP of $39.99. It’s important to remember that games like Project: Gorgon have an on-going developmental and hardware expenses on a recurring basis and as a Buy to Play title, we don’t have a mandatory subscription like other similar titles. That said, we did offer an introductory sale and there’s no reason to believe we won’t have another in the future! - Ryan
;Will there be better graphics in the future?
:Yes, there will be improvements and optimization to the current graphics and animation systems, but the main focus of Project: Gorgon is not the graphics. We want to create a fun, immersive, experience that focuses on the gameplay itself. - Ryan
: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/8ee7e7/project_gorgon_a_fantasy_mmo_ama/
;What features or content do you want to add to the game before launch?
: The game will have content up to (and past) level 100 at launch. There's a lot of content planned, and I'm excited about a lot of it! (I get excited about content easily though.) In terms of big stuff, I think the two upcoming capital cities are the most daunting.
: Statehelm is the capital of the Council Lands, a mageocracy where "everybody is happy and there is no hunger." (Or dissention. Or homosexuality. Or orcs. Or...) It's not really a utopia, but it's far from dystopia, too. It's a complicated place where mages really do try to make the world a better place... but good intentions don't always work out right. Getting the vibe right is tricky and an interesting problem.
: And Ormala City is a trade hub on another continent, with its own system of commerce, its own ecology, its own laws, and... it turns out I can't talk about upcoming content much without spoiling surprises, but it's got surprises. But I'm excited about that.
: And of course the new races are pretty exciting, too -- each of the three unlockable races (fairy, dwarf, and orc) has its own starting experience to give it a unique feel and help players learn the special rules involved with each race. - Eric
;will there be a panda mount? and what kind of mounts will be coming / are planned in the future? will animal forms be able to ride mounts? will humans be able to ride other animal form players?
:We don’t have plans for a panda mount and we don’t currently have any plans on allowing players to ride animal players. We do plan on introducing mounts, starting with a horse. In addition to the benefit of movement speed, you will be able to have saddle bags that allow for item storage. -Ryan
;Are there plans for expanding the current selection of weapon skills into Two Handed weapons or maybe more Ranged options?
:Yeah, we'll eventually have two-handed weapons, I think -- if I can find a design that's interesting enough and isn't too similar to existing skills. Right now I suspect we'll just have one skill for Two Handed Melee weapons, encompassing everything from claymores to giant hammers. But it's not set in stone yet, we'll play with things and find what seems fun and interesting. - Eric
;I like that the game has so many unusual skills. Any weird new ones in the works?
:There are several new skills in the works including Vampirism and Weather Witching! -Ryan
;When will dwarves be introduced?
:We don’t have anything specific to announce, but they are definitely in the works. In order to play as a member of the Dwarven race, you will be required to unlock them via an in-game quest. - Ryan
;How will the housing system work, house anywhere in the world, or a zone designed for housing for people.
:Houses will be instanced. Think EQ2 style: you click on a door in town and teleport to a special area that you can decorate.
: Guilds will also have special "guild halls" which are, for the most part, instanced. But there will be a few very expensive guild halls that have a public front area (where guilds can set up vendors or whatever), along with an instanced private guild lounge in the back.
: (Houses are the only part of the game that's instanced, by the way.) - Eric
;Two semi related questions:
; Do you have a world map in mind already? In other words have y'all fleshed out the general structure of the world for future maps and such, or are you more or less building smaller maps as you go and gluing them together?
; Do you have a general story associated with the world in mind already or are you building those pieces (who is in the world, how these people came to be, why they're located where they are, why things are the way they are like the undead island, that sort of thing) as you go?
; I hope those don't come off as harsh. =D They're not meant to be fwiw. Great work so far! This game really renewed a bit of "MMORPG void" feeling I was having.
:I'm weirdly bad with geography. I have a famously terrible sense of direction, I get lost all the time, and for whatever reason my brain just doesn't deal well with maps. So the answer is: yes, there is a general idea of how the world fits together, BUT it's not very well fleshed out yet.
: To put it another way -- I know the backstory for most areas, the points of interest, and why you'd go there... but I'm not actually sure which areas touch which other areas. - Eric
;Hello Elder Games, I kick started the game years ago, and could not be happier that I did. I returned recently and have been loving it.
; Micro-transactions and loot boxes have been in the news a lot recently. While there is a great deal of differing opinion on them, many like myself feel that even cosmetic micro-transactions detract from the MMORPG experience. What is the team's stance and plans concerning micro-transactions?
:Project: Gorgon is a ‘Buy to Play’ title, meaning that once you’ve purchased the game there are no additional, required or reoccurring, expenses. There will be no mandatory subscription fee, but we do plan on offering an optional ‘VIP Subscription’ that will focus on convenience. We are adamantly opposed to any ‘Pay to Win’ elements and you won’t see them in Project: Gorgon. -Ryan
;Are we going to see player housing in the near future, or is it already in the game now and I'm just totally missing it?
:We do plan on having player housing, but it is not coming in the near future. Due to numerous reasons, it will not be an open world system but instead will be instanced. -Ryan
;What's the active player daily peak right now?
:We are seeing around 400 players during the weekdays and up to several hundred during the weekends! - Ryan
;So my question is in relation to wipe, will there be one after the game goes full release
:There will not be a complete wipe at launch, but we will be wiping some aspects of your characters including but not limited to: items, currency, NPC favor levels, and favor-quests. That said, we don't plan on wiping most skill levels. -Ryan
;Why should someone who got burned out on traditional MMOs play your game?
:This is an important question. And I think the answer is a little surprising. There's a knee-jerk idea that nostalgia is the main draw. It's true that many players say the game reminds them of one old game or another -- Runescape, EQ, AC, DAoC, all sorts of names. But frankly Project: Gorgon isn't especially similar to any of those. And those games aren't like each other, either!
: When players say that it reminds them of an old game, I've found that what they usually mean is that it reminds them of how they felt when playing that old game. They didn't know WTF they were doing, they didn't understand how the game worked or what was possible. The world was full of opportunities and mysteries and trial and error. That's the feeling they miss.
: Project: Gorgon was designed around the idea of letting you explore deep game systems. The game's complexity opens up like an onion -- and it's not pointless complexity, because that's dumb. There's real complexity that models interesting things, to let you create interesting custom combat builds, or solve problems in interesting ways.
: You have to learn how to play, but doing so is really rewarding. - Eric
;What are your thoughts and plans concerning animal players, and combat skills availability? More precisely, will you add equivalent to the rabbit ice magic to other animal forms? I for once would love to use battle chemistry as a spider, mixing alchemical wonders in my poison glands, it would really fit the lore and concept of the spider i feel. I know not if the upcoming 'weather witch' is a combat skill, but that would fit well the pig, thunder pig and all. And of course, the holly cow.
;In a more general fashion, permanent animal forms are... well... severely limited in choice of combat skills... a bit too limited, and while i understand why, it's a bit suffocating at times. It would also be nice as an added gameplay differentiation between beasts, to give a bit of variety.
;Thank you for your hard work and this wonderful game, and have an amazing rest of your day.
:We look at each animal-form curse individually. They won't all have access to the same set of combat skills -- spider won't have Ice Magic, for instance. But most curse forms will have access to one or two more combat skills, when all the skills are implemented. - Eric
;What are your plans to fix the low FPS in crowded areas ?
:We have heard from the players that they are experiencing FPS issues in very populated areas, mainly Serbule, and we are working to implement optimizations to improve those issues. In fact, we’ve already released optimization updates for those issues and will continue to do so until the issues are resolved. -Ryan
;I love the humor in the game. Please keep content coming like that! All the mystery and unknown in this game make it kind of.. magical. I even like the weird stuff like some damn golem that made me do math. Amazing. Keep up the weirdness please
:Don’t worry, we’ll keep it weird. -Ryan
;Is there any possibility of a more fleshed out PvP experience? If so, what are you thinking of implementing?
:Actually, PvP isn't going to be a big part of the game. That's mostly about development scope: trying to balance things for both PvP and PvE is a tremendous job that usually doesn't work too well, even for teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Since this game is mostly about cooperation and PvE, we decided to skip PvP.
: So our PvP will always be pretty rudimentary. We'll make do very basic balancing work on it eventually, but don't expect elaborate events or rewards.
: I do think there are some interesting niche opportunities for indie PvP MMOs, though, and I hope that more indie teams focus on them! -Eric
;To the folks at Elder Game,
;Wanted to formally thank you for making a game as lovely as Project: Gorgon. I've been playing MMORPGs for just over a decade, but in comparison to most of the game's userbase, I'm a novice. At first glance, the game's amount of available skills were intimidating, but this is one of the first games where I genuinely feel that it's about the journey as opposed to the destination. That being said, here's some questions I have:
;1) Throughout the crowdfunding process, you've made it clear that Project: Gorgon will have an optional VIP membership available by the game's full release. What was the psychology behind this decision, and have you done more planning on what benefits the VIP membership will include?
;2) A common request I've seen in-game is a chance for players to get to see a development roadmap to gain clearer insight as to incoming changes. If not now, will this ever become a reality?
;3) My favorite part about Project: Gorgon is the community based efforts. In-game guides (shoutout to Sims, Rummencola, and Daimes) facilitate player-run events, this past weekend there was a "Summer Event" that required players to start a campfire, hunt tigers for cookable meat, and dance in town during night time. Given the success of these events and their effect on player retention, will there be efforts to expand upon this? Whether that be in the form of a paid community management team, the usage of more in-game guides, or developed systems i.e. the Summer Event "buff".
:For 1 - the VIP plan will be a way for players to help fund continuing development of the game and get some perks as a reward. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but it will probably include more character slots, more account transfer slots, that sort of thing, plus in-game "gift baskets" of various items each month, mostly just fun stuff. There's also one VIP-specific skill planned called Autodidactism. It lets players find special books in-game, and then "hang out" with the book (instead of hanging out with an NPC). It's a way to slowly level up some skills offline, for players who can't play all that much.
: For 2 - we don't post our roadmap very often because we don't really work that way. There are a few big-ticket things on the horizon, being developed in parallel -- including several new areas, a new animation system, horse mounts, playable fae race, a new dungeon, and (starting soon) player housing. But I can't tell you which of those will go live first. There are a lot of interdependencies, and we're such a small team that scheduling gets complicated.
: Plus, we often pivot the schedule when we see something important that needs improving in game ASAP. On a day to day basis, we work in "sprints" of about 2 weeks, resulting in updates every 2-3 weeks. So giving exact details more than a month out is hard.
: For 3 - we are excited about the Guides program and want to do more with it! We're still basically prototyping the program, but we have big ideas on letting Guides facilitate in-game events in the future. - Eric
;Will the game go down in price? I am hesitant on dropping $40.
:We strongly believe in the value that Project: Gorgon presents to the players at the current MSRP of $39.99. It’s important to remember that games like Project: Gorgon have an on-going developmental and hardware expenses on a recurring basis and as a Buy to Play title, we don’t have a mandatory subscription like other similar titles. That said, we did offer an introductory sale and there’s no reason to believe we won’t have another in the future! - Ryan
;Will there be better graphics in the future?
:Yes, there will be improvements and optimization to the current graphics and animation systems, but the main focus of Project: Gorgon is not the graphics. We want to create a fun, immersive, experience that focuses on the gameplay itself. - Ryan
