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Adellion: Interview - part 1
Wouter "Hyrrix" Ryckbosch, 2003-10-28 
Adellion, the ambitious MMORPG project of the rather small team at Honourbound, was described already by our editor Devin Cambridge in yesterday's preview. For a more detailed view on some of the game's aspects, we turned to Paul Hutson, director of Honourbound. The result was this interview of which you'll get the second part tomorrow. MMORPGDot: Mmorpg's are usually considered as being big business and the production of a high-profile mmorpg can easily cost as much as a movie. How hard is it to compete in this business as a company made up completely of volunteers?
Paul Hutson: Building a game such as Adellion is a very big undertaking, much larger than I first expected it would be. The problems that come with the team being made up of volunteers and spread all over the world is easily overcome by their enthusiasm for the project - in addition to that we have the liberty to take our time over the development and get things just the way we want them. MMORPGDot: What experience with developing (online) games do the members of Honourbound have?
Paul Hutson: Some of the team have had experience in creating large games. For instance one of our old coders has created large muds using Java - our newest coder, David Dougher, has created several games that were widely played in the past. However, most of the team - myself included - were not experienced in creating online games, but we've certainly made up for that now.
MMORPGDot: Has the lack of experience, or lack of knowledge about developing mmorpg's at some point put you before challenges that were quite impossible to take? Did the concept and game design of Adellion have to be adjusted to fit reality?
Paul Hutson: There have been problems along the way that we have had to find solutions for. One of the most major problems that we had to accommodate for was the size of the world - with our current engine we had to reduce to a much *much* smaller world than we wanted. Although that was a great blow for the team and the overall design of the game we overcame the problem and worked with what we had to... I'm sure its not the last problem we will have to overcome. MMORPGDot: So, what can we expect the world of Adellion to be like? Should we expect a typical fantasy setting or is there something altogether different about it?
Paul Hutson: Adellion is altogether different. It started off as something much smaller and grew to be what it is today - but it is nothing like any other game I have played. The cultures are designed to be semi realistic - in that they could have been as they are if there was such a world.
In the more traditional sense of fantasy, that is used to describe these sorts of games, there are no Goblins, Orks, Elves, Dwarves, Dragons or Giant Rats to kill or be. There are just humans... and the idea of the game is not to kill everything in sight but to become what you want to in a real world situation. MMORPGDot: To make this world reality, you're using the Torque engine, well-known from Tribes 2. To what extend do you think this engine can still compete with the engines of other upcoming mmorpg's?
Paul Hutson: It won't be the top of the range engine in the gaming genre, but it will look and feel good - it is something we were conscious of when we chose the engine over every other... in addition to us pouring in new ideas there is also a large community of Game Developers which surround the Torque Engine that contribute their code and progress to the large open ended project which we can integrate if needs be - we also hand back useful items to the community as well.
MMORPGDot: Cultures in Adellion seem to be the equivalent of races in other mmorpg's. In what way will the choice of culture affect the player's character?
Paul Hutson: There are several ways that the player will be affected by their cultural choice. The first of which will be their appearance - each culture looks different from the others.. beyond that their starting skill lists will be different and also their roleplay attitudes to life and the rest of the peoples in Adellion will be different.
Beyond that there is nothing holding a player back - if a player wanted to start as a Dalmite and then work towards becoming a Tarian leader they could, but getting there might be hard with the current Tarian prejudice against Dalmites... MMORPGDot: So there are no pre-determined hostile or friendly stances of cultures against eachother? Naturally cultures could be at war with eachother, but it's up to the player to decide for himself to take part in this or not?
Paul Hutson: The pre-determined stances are set by the history of the world - but Guards will not attack players, unless the two sides are at war... and then they might not always do so - it depends on the player. The player takes on a role within the world - they choose how their character would react.
MMORPGDot: Will there be an ongoing storyline? If so, how will the storyline affect the player, and the other way round: will the player community have an impact on the storyline?
Paul Hutson: There will a storyline behind the whole game, however we will not show the players the exact route through it - although it has been hinted at time and time again that it involves the artifacts scattered throughout the world.
In addition to that there will be several smaller storylines happening throughout the game - run for the cultures, which will more than likely be altered by what the players do. MMORPGDot: Player politics fulfill an important role in Adellion. Players can govern cities and to a certain extent speak justice in their controlled area. How exactly will this work? How can someone gain power and what are the limitations to this?
Paul Hutson: Players can become what they aim for up to running cultures - perhaps the world, who knows. They can dispense justice as it would have been in the middle ages - if they choose to proclaim themself as ruler of a whole region they will have to back it up or loose the area... it is all to do with realism.
The second part of the interview will be posted tomorrow.
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