First announced in May last year, Wolfknights seems to be hiding behind the shadows of Tree of Savior, with both game currently in development in South Korea by IMC Games. With the new regular developer posts, hopefully this massive 3D MOBA-like game will flourish. Read on!
Q. Hello. First of all, please say hello to our fans.
A. Hello. I am Developer Snow White.
Q. Since when did you start to have these internal tests inside the studio?
A. We started to have internal tests since the middle of April and we were having 3 tests in a week on Monday/Wednesday/Friday until recently. Now we are having the tests every day.
▲ Overview sight of the map of Battle for Sanctums of Lothian, which is the main season of Wolfknights
Q. Why are you having these tests so often?
A. When developers are developing a MMORPG game which requires a great amount of time, it’s quite hard for them to actually play the game. However, since Wolfknights is a game which is divided into each season, we all play the game regardless of which team we are from.
Well. I guess that’s the right way of developing a game. Since we play often, we share diverse feedback to each other and fix the elements in the game that need some adjustments or corrections.
Q. I know that a season in Wolfknights was originally designed to last for 2 hours. What was the reason that it has been reduced to 1 hour?
A. Initially, the game lasted for 2 hours since we allocated a little over 1 hour to the RPG elements of the game, and the remaining 40~ 50 minutes to the PVP elements of the game in which each realm fights against each other. To play a season which lasts for 2 hours, a player needed to connect to the game, visit the village which acts as the lobby to do some shopping, and wait for some time after booking for a season.
And then the season starts, and when the season is over, approximately 3 and a half hours to 4 hours had to be consumed. We concluded that 3 ~ 4 hours are way too long since our objective was to play the game without thinking about the time. That’s why we have combined RPG elements and PVP elements together which were separated in terms of time/space and made each season to last for 1 hour.
Q. Can you briefly explain us about the play report of the last week? First, what do players do at the village which acts as the lobby?
A. First, at the lobby village which is called ‘Winterweiler’, players are able to book for a season. You can think of the village as a typical village that you can see from a MMORPG game. You buy costumes from NPC and you can also buy account-specific items at the village.
Q. What are the account-specific items?
A. The items in Wolfknights are largely divided into two categories. The items that fall into the first category are the ones that you can obtain and only use within a season. The items that belong to the other category are the ones that exist permanently to our users’ accounts that do not disappear or reset.
Right now, Runes and costumes fall into the second category. By equipping them, Runes increase characters’ stats slowly. Players need to collect diverse types of Runes and upgrade them to grow your characters different from the others and these Runes will help your characters to grow permanently even though the rate of growth will be slow.
Q. Can you explain more about Fire Mage which I played last time?
A. Actually, lots of people are selecting Fire Mage besides you since it is easy to control. Fire Mage possesses various useful skills such as basic long range attacks, crowd controls that you can use when you are in danger, magic skills that you can use to block enemies’ attacks and etc.
When the skills from Fire Mage are successful, every enemy will burn in flames and when this is coupled with strong weapons, Fire Mage will be very useful in dealing some damages on the enemies.
▲ An image of Fire Mage
Q. I know that Tachyum is the most important resource in the game. Can you explain to us about it in more details?
The two important resources in the game are money and Tachyum. Vis (money) is more like personal resources when Tachyums are more like public resources which can be used by a whole realm.
Players turn in Tachyums that they obtained in the game in exchange for Vis or they could also use them to craft the legendary items and accessories.
When you turn in Tachyums, you receive Vis and Battle Points in exchange. The accumulated Tachyums that will be filled by players in the realm storage can be used to purchase efficient buffs that can be used on a realm by the commander-in-chief so I recommend you return Tachyums from time to time.
However, it’s better to turn in your Tachyums in one large lump sum. For example, you receive more rewards when you turn in 50 Tachyums at once rather than turning in 5 Tachyums or 10 Tachyums several times. Of course, you should be careful not to get killed during each interval of turning in Tachyums.
Q. What does the Commander-in-chief do except for purchasing buffs?
A. The commander-in-chief is selected among the users who apply to be the commander. The commander controls the public resources of his/her realm, execute upgrades, and order commands when fighting against other realms. He/She also has the following characteristics.
– Use Tachyums to select realm’s passive skills or buff upgrade tree.
– He/She is able to send system messages such as ordering where to go within the mini-map and order either attacks or defense. He also has his exclusive dialogue balloon which looks different from the others in some specific locations.
– Maximum HP is higher than the normal users.
– When the Commander-in-chief leads the season in victory, he/she receives more compensation. (In losses, he/she may receive less compensation than the normal users or he/she may not receive any compensation at all.)
▲ Win/loss is decided by the number of sanctums that are occupied by each realm. If two or more realms have the equal number of sanctums, then the realm which occupied the sanctum in the center wins the season.
Q. It seems that the outcome of each season is decided based on the number of sanctums occupied by each realm. How do we exactly calculate our results?
A. There are total of 7 sanctums including 6 normal sanctums and 1 sanctum in the center. The realm which occupies the most number of sanctums wins the season, but when two or more realms occupy the same number of sanctums, then the realm which occupies the sanctum in the center will be positioned at higher standing.
That doesn’t mean the points or the counts you receive by occupying the sanctum in the center equals the counts you receive from occupying 2 or 3 normal sanctums. If the winner of a season can’t be decided even after considering who occupied the sanctum in the center, then the winner or the standings will be decided based on the kill counts of each realm or the death counts (whoever scores less death counts) of each realm.
Whenever a season comes to an end, then each realm’s standing will be displayed they will receive prize money based on the number of sanctums that they occupied. Even if you don’t win a season, if your score is very close to that of the winner, then you will receive the amount of prize money which you won’t be disappointed.
If there is a realm who fails to occupy any of the sanctums, then that realm will only receive a small amount of prize money. This prize money is the game money which is used in the accounts of our users
Q. Lastly, which type of gamers is main target for this game?
A. Wolfknights is a new type of game which we concentrated on shortening the time span of MMORPG’s elements such as farming and item advancements to enjoy PVP contents as quickly as possible.
If you want to equip stronger weapons or armors than the others in a typical MMORPG game, then you have to spend a considerable amount of time and money. And in typical MOBA games, if you want to beat other players, you need greater techniques, understanding of the game and responsibility.
Our objective was to break those barriers that were present in both genres. We are developing the game so that lots of different users who have different tastes all enjoy the game. Full-time workers who don’t have enough time, the students who don’t have enough money, the oldies who are not good at games, and the beginners who have less understanding of the game, will all be able to enjoy the game.
