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Playnet News Break Transcript #1 - 7/28/00

(Transcribed by Sixxo)

The first Playnet News Break audio pseudo-interview, featuring Chris "Mo" Sherland, and conducted by Ron "NewzGuy/Flapz" Jackson, was recently available for mass-consumption. This transcript is provided for those that were unable to obtain the MP3 file, or for those that want to have a clearer understanding of what was being said.

Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson: Lots of questions have been raised of late regarding how new players can easily step into the persistent World War Two Online universe. Hi, everyone, I'm Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson with a Playnet News Break. Sure, you can grab a weapon or a vehicle of choice and jump into the fray, but that's not going to move you up the ranks very quickly. I recently stepped into the office of World War Two Online's producer, Chris "Mo" Sherland. Mo's a very kind fellow; spent a few minutes talking to us about how new players who want to move up in rank can learn the ropes quickly.

Chris "Mo" Sherland: What we want to do is introduce players into this mission system. The quick overview is that missions will be available to be run, they'll be designed and posted by other players who have more experience, and that trickle-down theory works in a way where, as I successfully complete more missions, I get more points, which increases my rank, and then I can take my experience and post missions for guys that are in the rank system below me. What we're hoping is that, by completing successful missions, you'll then again experience on how to post a successful mission. In other words, if I send two guys, you know, on a motorcycle into the heart of Berlin to take the city, that's obviously not gonna work. But if I've been on successful missions, I learn what things need to happen to succeed; my ability to then create missions for other players is going to increase, et cetera, et cetera. A new player coming in, what we're going to do is give him all the information he needs to select these missions. In other words, we're going to show him where the hot-spots are, what missions are pending, where they're going, what kind of vehicles are going on the mission... The mission interface for every player, including the casual and the advanced, will be a sorting list of missions where you can sort the missions by vehicle type... if I just want to fly Spitfires, I can bring up the mission screen, you know, 'just show me all the missions that are being flown by Spitfires.' 'Oh, here's an escort mission, here's a fighter sweep, here's a fighter-bomber mission, and this one's long, this one's short, this one's got a short lease on it - I've only got two hours before I've got to be at work, so, I'm going to take something short.' What we're doing in that way is focusing all the action into the mission system, which then generates experienced players that feeds back on the mission system and gets the ranking system working.

Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson: Now, experienced gamers will be going about their appointed rounds, and in many instances, they will be well into one mission or another: how does a new player catch up?

Chris "Mo" Sherland: I don't want to have World War Two Online be a place that's unfriendly for somebody... I mean, clearly, it's going to be pretty unfriendly, but I don't want it to be unfriendly for somebody to have a good experience in there. So, let's say I log in, uhm, I just go to the nearest base, I see a bunch of Spitfires flying, I don't really know what's going on but I get my Spitfire in there and I'm flying along with them, and maybe I'm so new I'm having a hard time getting on the radio; I can still follow those guys, and I'm going to be guaranteed that a bunch of Spitfires are going to get into some trouble, because somewhere down the line in this ranking system, somebody with a lot of experience sent these Spitfires to a certain place, and if I follow these guys, I'm going to get in trouble. By the time I land, I will have been looking at radio chatter for the last thirty minutes that says, you know, 'this is a really good mission, this is a really bad mission,' or whatever it was, you know, 'next time we go, we'll do this...' I'm going to be asking questions. The very next time I grab a Spitfire, I'm going to be looking for some guys to interact with, because that's really what it's all about.

Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson: The watch-words for World War Two Online will be 'teamwork' and 'community.'

Chris "Mo" Sherland: Without the community, all we really have is... we really have nothing. I mean, sure, you'll have a game front end, you know, but that's nothing without the people. In fact, we're designing these systems in a way that requires people to interact together to make the game work. The way we've designed the supply system is: driven by AI to a certain extent, so that places that get bombed out while no one's in that area will repair themselves, or places that are under attack that don't have some defenders there, AI will be able to defend itself. But, if you're going to go on a long strike, or some sort of flanking maneuver, these vehicles only... they'll have all their historical range, you're going to have to bring players with trucks full of gas, and stuff like that. So to really make this thing work in a way that's... you can exploit things, like flanking maneuvers or who knows what-all, you're going to have to stick together and say, 'You know what, I'll drive the truck this week, but next week I want to drive the tank.' And, you know, 'you watch my back, I'll give you fuel and ammo.' The other part of 'community' that we're getting into is the Player Services package, where, once you have a Playnet account, we'll give you some e-mail addresses, you know, soandso@wwiionline, and, if you join a squad, we have squad templates for web pages, we're going to host all that stuff here on our site... and, the hooks in the game that tell you what rank you're obtaining and all that stuff will be available in the Player Services package, so then on your website you can show your rank, you can pull up your score, you can do all that stuff. So what we're doing is trying to take the community building that's outside the game, tie it into the functions of the game itself, so that those two things are interacting all the time. In other words, if I go to the webpage and I look at the World War Two Online newspaper, I can see, the day after I made Lieutenant-Commander, it's posted on the newspaper. And everyone in the community sees that I've gained rank.

Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson: Support for squads, large and small, will be extensive.

Chris "Mo" Sherland: And we'll be supporting squads within squads, where, you know, you have a squad of maybe thirty guys, but ten of them really love to fly Ju-88s; that's all they want to do. Well, eventually, those guys start getting restless, they get their own e-mail thing together... We're going to support that 'inside-their-own-squad' format, so we'll be able to give them a separate mailing list inside their mailing list, you know, we'll give them three or four lists so they can self-manage; a web template that lets those bomber guys create their own identity on the web, et cetera, et cetera.

Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson: In the next few weeks, you'll hear from Roger "Frying Tiger" Long and his team of artists as we take a look at the many facets of one of the most anticipated gaming titles in years. For Playnet News, I'm Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson.

Thanks to both Ron "NewzGuy" Jackson and Chris "Mo" Sherland for providing us with this great update. We all look forward to the next installment of Playnet News Break with eager anticipation. For those that would like the original MP3 file, it can be obtained here (3.13 MB).