Originally we wanted to present this interview much earlier. But with the sheer amount of community questions, compiling and answering everything took a bit. The result is one massive interview!
Mr. Lee Jang-Wook, how did you get into the gaming industry?
Mr. Lee Jang-Wook: When I was a teenager and senior high school student I became interested in some games for the Apple computer. This early experience made me think about how games are actually made and constructed. Ever since then my interest in computer games continued to grow and I eventually started working in the gaming industry. In my early adulthood, while studying abroad in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to visit one of my friends at work. Back then he was working for SEGA, a famous Japanese console game company you have surely heard of. This fortunate meeting had a profound effect on me and gave me the motivation to enter the video game industry as a profession. My first job in the gaming industry was with SNK, another Japanese game company.
Your company profile states that your way also lead you to Blizzard where you worked on the Diablo series.
I worked with Blizzard from around early 2000 until around 2003. At the time, I was the lead concept-artist and did 3-D modelling as well. I spent most of the time on "Diablo 3" and other new projects.
After your time with Blizzard you founded Nitrozen and are now working on the Action-MMORPG "L.A.W – Living After War". Why did you choose to work on a MMOG?
The main reason I decided to create a MMOG is simply because it wasn’t difficult to find some outstanding individuals who were already experienced working on this genre. Especially in South-Korea, a country specialized in the genre with state-of-the-art technologies. More so than other countries, really. These reasons were good enough for me to choose the genre of MMORPG. And well, another important point is that I was a great fan of "World Of Warcraft" at that time. It made a huge fan of MMORPGs! Therefore, in a way, it made absolute sense to me to choose the genre of MMORPG for my next project.
Aside from MMORPGs, what are your personal favourite gaming genres? And do you even play a lot in your free time?
Aside from L.A.W, I always enjoy a round or two of the game "Counter Strike". Since its launch in 1998 I have remained a great fan. That means I’ve been playing it for 13 years now! That’s why my wife uses to say she just doesn’t understand my obsession. Sometimes I even find myself wondering about it, but that proves all the more that it simply is a very well-made game in many ways.
What is the first game you have ever played?
"Dragon Ball" on the Famicom. I still find it very captivating to this day!
What were impulses for the world and setting of L.A.W – Living After War? What inspired the dark and grim vision of the post-nuclear world?
As human beings, and particularly in stressful situations, we all have aggressive instincts. And yet, human beings can also be defensive, or try to develop themselves in positive ways. I am hoping that people can find the essential instincts of human beings mirrored in our game L.A.W.
By experiencing the war presented in our game L.A.W, the player can learn about instinctive behaviour, self-development and the essence of humanity – themes found throughout our game.
A lot of users were actually quite intrigued when we originally mentioned that L.A.W’s story and setting are inspired by a philosophy, more than by books and movies. Some of them actually started to wonder about the ethics of the two races in the game!
It’s good to hear that even for MMOGs there’s still some people interested in the storylines. As we have already released the storyline, you probably know about the basic premise: After a nuclear war, some humans fled earth to outer space in cryonic sleep. After 200 years they return to rebuild civilization. But upon their return they find two more species on earth. For one, there are the Shamak, a monster tribe that enslaved those who were left on earth. So the humans want to save these people. But at the same time, they find that other survivors mutated due to radioactivity and have developed into a descendant race of humans: the Nak. This is where indeed ethics come into the storyline. Humans feel alienated by the Nak and discriminate them instead of forming an alliance with their mutated descendants. Based on these ethics, each of the two playable races, humans and Nak also have their own storylines. These storylines will be reflected in the respective areas the factions live in, as well as their unique quests, skills and even items.
The concept art of such areas looks very interesting. How closely will you be able to mirror these in the actual game?
Being concept artworks, the artwork released does of course not mirror the final in-game graphics. However, the development team used these artworks as more than just an orientation for the game. As you can see from the following comparison, the in-game graphics not only look great, but style and design are very close to the concept artwork.
Will users need a high-end gaming-PC to play the game in all of its glory?
Despite the state-of-the-art graphic quality of L.A.W we want to make the game accessible to as many players as possible. We are currently compiling the data so that the minimum requirements are low enough to play L.A.W even with older machines and even laptops!
You can check the System requirements here.
Aside from the setting: what makes L.A.W stand out in the mass of MMORPGs?
One of the main features of L.A.W is of course its sophisticated PvP, which essentially is a full-fledged real-time strategy mode. This war over resources is not session based, but persistant and open for all player, all the time. 24 hours/7 days a week. Combined with this, we realized an economic system, where you trade gathered resources like you would on a stock market. This makes all aspects of resource allocation easier to access for beginner and advances players alike. So instead of offering a typical form of “Siege Warfare” or so called “Realm-versus-Realm” battles, which are basically just a lengthy version of common PvP-battles, we offer a far larger and above all much more strategic possibilities in L.A.W.
Since this sort of strategic PvP is quite unique for MMOGs, it sparked the interest of many players in the community. Could you give them some more details?
All players who belong to different tribes can freely enter combat and fight each other. These battles take place on special PvP-Maps, the only place where the two races humans and Nak will meet. As we continue development, we will later decide whether to allow them to meet in PVE regions as well. For now, the races meet, fighting over five different kinds of resources. Players use harvested resources to install a base and arrange a line of automated turrets to protect their resources. Alternatively, players mount ground and airborne units such as tanks and helicopters that they are in direct control of and attack enemy bases. Furthermore, players are supposed to transport the resources to a safer base. Which means it will also be possible to raid such transports! The rule sounds simple, but the gameplay is captivating and very strategic! And of course we will be closely monitoring the community and are planning to add additional defense facilities and vehicles if necessary to add even more depth.
How many players will be able to participate in such battles and how do they gain victory?
As already mentioned, the world is persistant, so there is no complete victory over the rival race. The war of resources wages on 24/7. However, we are planning to later introduce instanced battlefields with complete victories.
But for now, during beta version, these battles will be fought on three maps. But of course we will keep developing maps for players to fight battles in diverse regions.
A world in L.A.W will hold up to 5.000 simultaneous players in total and up to 1.000 players in one area where they can play together or battle over resources. If we find that even more players than that will want to join battle fields, which of course might cause chaos, we will introduce additional channels. It is hard to make final decisions for an online game, since you always have to respond to your users’ game styles in order to handle any occurring problems. This also means that for now, forming alliances are not provided within our community features – however, if we find users are keen to form such alliances to play real-time battles with the same group of players, even in a persistant world, we will provide such functionalities with future updates. Unlike retail games, an online game is made by its users after all.
With the PvP being so central – what about PvE? Quite a few community members, who prefer fighting boss monsters, are wondering if they will be forced to play PvP in order to gain resources?
Of course we also offer instanced PvE-dungeons! And of course there will be some massive boss monsters in there that you will have to fight in a well-functioning party in order to beat them. These creatures even hold important roles in the storyline. And since you can trade resources on the stock market, you won’t have to participate in PvP battles to gain such resources.
And what precisely will PvE players be able to do with these resources? They don’t need to build a base after all.
Players can produce, upgrade and grant special properties to items using resources. We are currently finishing up designs for item upgrades and stats property granting.
So this is what the concept art, showing a sword in different versions, is all about? Quite a few players were wondering about the glowing red crystal giving the sword fire abilities, or the blue gem giving it electric abilities.
Exactly! We differentiate between resources and items – and you will use both in order to upgrade your weaponry. While you gain access to resources through PvP-battles and through the stock market system, items will be gained through quests, drops, but also item production mode.
What is Item Production Mode? So far this game mode has been kept a secret.
The item production system allows disassembling items to gain materials. Briefly explained, it basically works like a mini-game, setting up factories and producing technologies. With these, players produce weapons and tools for their characters. So instead of raising an “armor production skill” for your character, you will have to raise your armor factory level in order to make better armor. Each produced item will have random options that cannot be predicted by users. Which means that if you repeatedly use production modes and upgrade these products with resources, even normal items can have better stats than unique items! The system is quite deep and intricate, with all of the different factors and elements being intertwined.
What about items for individualization?
This, too, is something we are considering, but haven’t made a final decision just yet. But even without paying for individualization, you will find many possibilities to create your own character.
Which would be?
Of course this starts with creating a character: There are the two nations, three occupations for each nation and you can of course pick your gender, if you want to play a male or female character. That means there’s a total of twelve basic character types that you can further individualize through various face types and hairstyles. We are planning to provide more than 10 face types and hairstyles. Also, we will produce different weapon models and 12 garment sets with at least three different colours for each set for different occupations when we hit commercial launch.
Will it be possible to play characters of both races on one account?
A player can only select one of two nations for one account and one server. But if one account is used on different servers, different races can be selected.
One question that popped up several times in this context was whether there will be “Jobs” for each character class – and if so, whether you will be able to switch these “Jobs” throughout the game?
A player can select one of three occupations when making a character. These three occupations are Warrior, Ghost and Esper. You can’t change these occupations during the game, but you are free to develop your own, unique skill-set.
In how far are these skill sets unique?
A character does not have a fixed skill tree that you have to follow. Instead, you put together your own skill-sets. Some of these skill can be learned from skill masters, others can be used by equipping certain items, armor and weapons such as a flamethrower, a machine gun or a bazooka.
With this system you are clearly going against a current trend in the MMOG-Genre. Most other games offer a wide range of character classes and make you pick your occupation right at the beginning of the game.
It’s true, recently more and more varied characters are appearing in the MMORPG genre. But from the view of role playing, most of these classes are based on three fundamental types – the Tanker, the Dealer and the Healer. We have tried to make our existing characters more simplified. More synthesized if you will. You don’t just play one of many classes, but you have the ability to freely develop characters and combine skills from these three forms. For example a Warrior as Tanker and Dealer, or an Esper as both Dealer and Healer. By concentrating on the essence of these three fundamental types our characters are multitalented and much less isolated in their range of skills.
What character class is your own favourite?
Of course I am! I have to say I am a man of the sword. So naturally the character I like best is the warrior. I find this character impressive and powerful. A single strike from his sword is enough to leave a lasting impression on his enemies.
MewtuD and mattiarp2 would like to know what the “Level Cap” will be for these characters – and in what steps, from Closed Beta to Open Beta to Commercial Launch and future updates – it will be raised?
During beta phase we are considering 50~60 levels as the level limit. Later when we update large amount of content with new regions, skills and items, we are planning to raise the level limit for characters. But again, in what steps we raise the cap can only be decided once we see the progress the players make. So if the alaplaya-team requests, we can also adjust how quickly a character can level up or add restrictions. We will surely test all this during the beta phases.
Kakashiiii wants to know if there are any plans for a Disc-release with additional bonus content and features? Maybe right after beta phase ends?
This hasn’t been decided yet. If the game is popular and successful with players of course it makes sense to release a Disc version. Let’s just say that we are already thinking about some really special cooperations! Of course we can’t tell you what precisely this will be. But we wouldn’t be working on this, if we weren’t confident enough to already make plans as to what bonus content we could offer with a Disc version. We really do hope that our confidence pays off so we can offer some of the cool stuff we got up our sleeves.
And last – but certainly not least – a question that really made us all chuckle at the office: Kugelwilli is asking why the female characters in L.A.W are so scantily clad and wearing so little clothes? Even after 200 years, earth should still be radioactively wasted – so running around half naked seems like an unhealthy idea.
Yes, what you think is right. In fantasy games, female characters always seem to wear very sexy armor, even if that means it doesn’t offer much protection. I guess the simple answer is that we all like to look at beautiful women. And in a world full of changes, I’m sure that at least that’s something that won’t change much, even in 200 years.
Thank you for your time and the best of success with L.A.W – Living After War!
