MMORPG.com: Today, can you tell us a bit more about magic in the game. What does the typical magic user do day-to-day and how will magic be different from the way it is in other fantasy-MMORPGs.

Mike Paddock: Man, so many things that could be talked about. Heh, I'm not even sure what a "typical" magic user is in our system, to be honest. Each class has its own roles, and since each character has access to two classes, a player's choice of classes when creating a character can result in something dramatically different from another player's choices. Imagine the difference between a character that is a Wizard-Healer versus one that is a GearKnight-Necromancer. Now mix that up some, so you are comparing a Necromancer-Wizard versus a GearKnight-Healer. Note also that the order of the classes is important. A GearKnight-Healer will not play the same as a Healer-GearKnight. It's difficult to describe what a "typical" magic using character does when that is so highly dependent on the roles that the player wants to emphasize for his character.

One thing that I can say though, is that our combat spells provide lots of tactical options. Players won't just TAB to the closest target and start cycling through their attack abilities, they'll be dropping barriers into place to stop the badguys from advancing, for example, or to stop them from retreating. Area of effect spells can be shrunk in size to do concentrated damage against fewer enemies, or increased in size to spread the damage out against numerous weaker opponents. All-in-all, players will spend more time playing, and less time button mashing.