Atlantica Online has surprised many players during these months, with a mix of quality, exclusive features and deepness unusual for a F2P MMO. So we have decided to talk about these aspects with the Head Producer of the game, Mister Kim Tae Gon.


Atlantica is a big success in the west and i think you deserved it. In Italy is acting really good. It's appreciated by the community and it's played from lot of people. Say in 3 words why Atlantica is different from other MMORPGs.

Thank you for saying we deserve the success. That’s very kind of you. We just think if we develop a good game, the success should follow, and that’s what we’re trying to do with Atlantica.
The three words why Atlantica is different: strategic, turn-based action.


What are your plans for the future? Any new features on sight?

Our plans are to keep Atlantica fun and fresh for our players through periodic content updates. We just updated the game with new content on Feb. 18, adding new dungeons, a new magic mercenary called the Elementalist who becomes Pocahontas when she is upgraded, and most notably two new main character classes, the Musician who uses a guitar as a weapon and the Maniac who uses a power saw. Expect large updates like this in the future, in which we continue to build on the innovation of the turn-based combat with new and fresh features that you don’t usually find in an MMORPG. You don’t normally see characters armed with a power saw or a guitar in a video game. There will be more characters, such as new mercenaries, and we’ll also be adding new geographic regions, opening up more parts of Africa as well as South America. So we hope you stick around to find out what’s in store for you.


How many Goonzu devs worked on Atlantica?

There’s a team of 120 who worked on Atlantica, and about 20 of them were also a part of developing Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu. Luminary started its development in 2003, and we’ve experienced just a really great sense of teamwork over these last six years.

 

Atlantica inherited what Goonzu invented, turning it in a "lighter" version. I played 3 years Goonzu Global and Luminary on ijji and i miss what Goonzu was. It's obvious you created Atlantica in this way to fit more to nowadays users but why didn't you implemented a few "Goonzu Style" features? I mean, in Goonzu there are class A and Class B players. Class A players are the ones making money and leading towns, class B players are the "commoners" farming resources and monsters. Both class A and B players were happy of this condition, so why you didn't use this way of thinking for Atlantica ?

Although there are similarities between the two games — we kind of think of them as being brothers — Luminary and Atlantica were developed with different purposes. Luminary was developed to be a game that revolves around economics and politics, while Atlantica was developed to present a different kind of action, the turn-based combat. Since players of Atlantica will most likely be focused more on the battles, we didn’t want to include all the complexities of Luminary, like the different classes of players and the politics. However, instead of voting for a GoonZu, Atlantica has other features like nations that encourage player interaction. But, ultimately, nations come down to going to war. So there is much more emphasis on fighting in Atlantica.We couldn’t include all of Luminary’s activities that impact the economy in that game, like farming and mining. But Atlantica does have fishing, and you can expect other features, especially when it comes to town control, which are based on Luminary ideas in the future.


What’s the feature you are most proud of?

The turn-based combat system. It’s what we created to make Atlantica stand out from all the rest, and to make the game different than most of the MMORPGs out there. And players seem to be really enjoying it.


Who’s your favourite historical character inside the game?

For me, it would have to be Bluetooth, the Viking mercenary. But most of the developers prefer Cassandra, the Prophet mercenary.


People whine about late leveling phase, considering it too grindy, slow and boring. Do you plan to increase exp rates for higher levels, or change something?

We are aware of the struggles upper-level players are having, so we’ve come up with some solutions for them to level up. Players at level 96 and above can earn up to 3% bonus experience each day, if they complete three quests that day. Also, we’ve added a birthday system that automatically levels up characters. Plus, the title buff and your main character’s new magic will help you to level up. But these are just the beginning, and we’ll have more ways for upper-level players to level up.
 

In Italy there is a prejudice about microtransactional model. Because of bad publishers and cheap games, it's connected to a poor realization and a low income for devs. We know they are totally wrong but you can see the same behaviour also in other countries?

Yes, there are similar attitudes in the United States and other countries in Europe and the West. In fact, it’s one of the challenges we face as we try to get people to give Atlantica a try. But it is our goal to do away with these stereotypes, and the only way we’re going to do that is by producing a solid and fun game that just happens to be microtransaction-based.


How is the global crisis influencing Ndoors and Korean developers? Michael Pachter just said free to play MMOs are less exposed to this kind of problems. Is it true?

Fortunately, the global economic crisis hasn’t hurt us like it is has so many other companies. And we hope it proves to be true that free-to-play games will be less exposed to problems. It makes sense that free-to-play would be more popular in tough economic times, since people will still want to play video games, but just not pay as much money. Hopefully they’ll give Atlantica a try and discover how fun and solid of a game it is while they experience everything the game has to offer without having to pay any money. Of course, we hope players will use our item mall to purchase items. But purchased items just make the game more convenient, and they are not required to enjoy all the content in the game.


Except for Goonzu, what or which game did influence Atlantica most?

The game that influenced Atlantica the most other than Luminary is Gersang, which is the Korean word for merchant. It’s a game I developed before Luminary, at a company I was working at before coming to NDOORS. Gersang had some new concepts for a game’s economy, combined with real-time strategy battles. When a player begins a battle, the screen switches to a battle map, in which the player can control multiple characters in real-time. I brought this battle concept to Atlantica.

 

Atlantica came out about at the same time as Runes of Magic. Here in Italy and probably also abroad, these two games are seen as concurrent because people believes they are the only AAA MMMORPGs based on microtransaction. Do you feel this competition or do you think you have a different catchment area?

Right now, we’re just focused on improving Atlantica and turning it into the best gaming experience we are capable of making. We’ve heard great things about Runes of Magic and the positive reviews, and I’m sure we’ll be competing against it to get the attention of players. But we don’t want to concern ourselves with what they’re doing right or wrong or who’s playing it. For us, we just want to focus on what we can do to help Atlantica evolve and make it better for players. And if we can do that, plus with all the accolades and awards that Atlantica has already received, we believe things will ultimately turn out well for Atlantica. The response we’ve gotten from people like you, I think shows us we’re on the right path.



We'd like to thank Kim Tae Gon and Ndoors for the interview.


Questions by Chobeat