Currently, M59 is seeing a massive graphics overhaul to bring it on par with a majority of games today. I recently saw several before and after shots, the change is remarkable. Who is working on the art?

Thank you. We're very excited by the new update because it really lets us show some of the game's quality. The new client will show off a completely new hardware-accelerated rendering engine.

The art is actually mostly the same as in the old client. The old art was actually very high quality, but the software renderer didn't let it shine, especially at higher resolutions. The only things we've added, artwise, are the new skyboxes which show off high-quality images for the skies in the game and little bits of upgraded artwork. The skyboxes were done by my better half, Kathleen Foley, an aspiring fantasy artist.

But, we're also adding other new things with the new client as well. Volumetric dynamic lighting is another big thing we're adding that really adds to the new visual appeal game. Torches and braziers in the game will now give off actual light in the new rendering engine. Monsters can now glow eerily in the darkness. It's really cool seeing the fey in the Vale of Sorrow give off their particular glow. We're also adding a bunch of other features to improve the visual quality of the game as well. Things like antialiasing, higher resolution renderer, bilinear and anisotropic filtering, etc. The new renderer uses Direct3D, so we were able to really take advantage of hardware acceleration.

The visual aspect isn't the only thing we're changing, however. We're also going to be introducing mouselook and rebindable keys to the game. These are the first steps towards improving the user experience with the game. If the new client is well received, we hope to do a lot more upgrades to the client.