GamerGod: With the disappointments of Star Wars Galaxies, there's a seed of worry going around the MMOG community that The Matrix Online might follow suit. With these mistakes learned, what steps is the MxO dev team taking to avoid them?

T. Ragaini: Movie properties evoke specific expectations and fans are disappointed when a game does not live up to those expectations. In the case of The Matrix, we identified what we thought were four key 'themes' that immediately come to mind when thinking about the Matrix films.

First, we needed to depict a huge, dense cityscape that created the feeling of intimidation that was captured so well in the movies.

Second, we needed our characters to be able to sport the kinds of bad-ass clothes and weapons similar to those used by the characters from the films. In addition, a certain amount of variety beyond the movie constumes is needed to support player expression.

Third, we absolutely needed to raise the bar on MMO combat visuals. The accepted notion of static "I swing, you swing" combat system would not be accepted by Matrix fans.

And finally, we agreed that simply recreating the environment from the movies would not be enough. In order to be relevant, we knew that fans would want to participate in an ongoing story that actually moved the saga of the Matrix forward.