Fallout Online Q&As

Fansite Fallout Online Forum is offering up two separate Q&As with Interplay president Eric Caen and lead systems designer Chris Taylor about their forthcoming Fallout MMORPG. A snip from the former:

Many of our readers have played all of the various Fallout titles. Which Fallout title is your favorite? Why?

Fallout 1 & 2. For the unique tone, humor and immersion it is providing to players.

And a sampling from the latter:

What is Fallout Online going to be like? Is it going to be like WoW?

Show me a MMO developer that says they haven’t played WOW, and I’ll show you one that’s lying. (Okay, I’m sure there are some developers that truly, honestly haven’t played WOW, but they would be few and far between.)

WOW is the current industry standard. I’m not saying a developer should make their game based on WOW, but they should, at the very least, be familiar with WOW’s content and mechanics. For any genre of game, it’s important that game developers are familiar with the current crop of titles. I used to get reimbursed for my gaming purchases as a producer just so I could keep up with the competition. Neat.

Personally, I play all the new MMOs that come out, just so I can see what other games are doing. Most of the time, it’s just for a few months, but I’ve played EQ, WOW, and COH to the elder game. Just for the fun of it. I’ve played AoC, WAR, EQ2, Vanguard, Wizard 101, E&B, DAoC, AO, SWG, AC2, EQOA, Shadowbane, and UO. I tried EVE for about 1 hour and couldn’t hack it.

V13 isn’t going to be a clone of any specific game with different graphics, but we’re not going to make changes from what we think is best for the game just to be different. Let me put in another way — we’re going to make the best game we can that we would want to play. I’m sure that there will be similarities to other MMOs, the same way that CRPGs can be similar, but there will naturally be differences as well.

It is not our intention to just make a clone of game X. Our intention is to make a great game that stays true to source material while at the same time updating it properly for a great online experience.