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A new day, a new MMORPG: RPGVault has learned about an already playable MMORPG from Germany, called Astonia 3. They have conducted an interview with the team, and here's a snippet:Jonric: How would you summarize Astonia 3? How did the game come about from the initial idea to launch? What's the basic concept? Why is it called Astonia 3 - were there Astonia 1 and 2?
Patrick Kollman: Astonia 3 is a MMORPG in a fantasy setting. Its sole purpose is to give joy to millions of players, and to make its creators incredibly rich!
Daniel Brockhaus: Astonia started as a paper and pen role-playing game in 1996. The first draft borrowed elements from Tracy Hickman's and Margaret Weiss' floating worlds novels and David Eddings' Elenium. The rule system used took some ideas from a German role-playing system called Das Schwarze Auge, and others from AD&D. It was played (as a paper-and-pen game) for about a year, which led to a lot of changes to the rule system, and to quite a few additions to the game world.
About two years later, I decided to turn the paper and pen game into an online computer game. During that time, I was working for an Internet Service Provider and coding this game was a hobby project of mine. Six months later, Astonia 1 went online. It was a very small world without a real magic system, but still, quite a few players enjoyed it.
Since this was my first venture into the art of creating computer games, a lot of things weren't very well planned and a lot of features were missing. This, and the players' suggestions and complaints, lead to a re-write of the game in early '99, which fixed the design flaws and incorporated most of the features the players asked for - the most important of these being a magic system.
Thus Astonia 2 was born. It was still a hobby project, and real-life demands put its development on hold for a year. The game was online and developing a life of its own, with players organizing the in-game life, taking care of troublemakers and creating quests for their fellow gamers.
In early '01, I decided to quit my job at the time and write computer games for a living; and with the help of Alexander, Patrick and Markus, work on Astonia 3 began. We used the successful elements of Astonia 2, discarded the components that didn't really work and added a different storyline. Nine months later, the first test areas went online...
Learn more about Astonia 3 and download the client from the official site. |
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Astonia 3 Interview
