Alganon Interview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun chatted up Quest Online’s Derek Smart about Alganon’s “disastrous” 2009 launch, the extensive updates they’ve rolled out for the fantasy MMORPG since then, and a new MMOFPS he’s developing called Line of Defense.

RPS: Can you tell us a bit about how Alganon has changed in the past year? What do you think you have brought to the game?

Smart: Wow! That would span quite a few pages. As is well known, in Dec 2009 the game was released by the previous lead and designer to disastrous results. Once I was made president in late February 2010, I pretty much scrubbed the entire planned dev schedule, design etc and started with a clean slate for how to proceed going forward and under my leadership. The primary goal was to first finish the game. We were able to do this around the end of April 2010. We branded that v2.0 and it was a far cry from the previous Dec 2009 v1 launch.

If you compared the original v1.1.1 (Dec 2009) to the official launch 2.0.0 (April 2010) and then to the recently released 2.5.2 build, you will see that a significant amount of work has gone into the game since that original disastrous launch.

We’ve not only fixed all of the launch problems and actually FINISHED the game’s first generation, but we also implemented a transaction system, a cash shop, went fully F2P, added a bunch of new quests, areas etc but we also made significant UI revisions to the game and added an extensive PvP (which should have shipped with the game from the start) to the game. It has been an extraordinary amount of work that was done in a very short time due to the determination, focus and planning that I brought with me.

Now we’re designing and developing the game’s third generation which will see the game’s first expansion pack launch by the middle of this year. And that will bring a bunch of new technologies, features and assets to the game.