If you've played a massively multiplayer game before, you'll be familiar with one or more of the following: creating a persistent character with certain abilities, going on quests either alone or with other players, and killing rats to earn a few rusty copper pieces. Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, from developer Perpetual Entertainment and publisher Sony Online Entertainment, will attempt to break free of the constraints of previous online games by including an intriguing squad-based combat system and by letting players become heroes in ancient Rome, a time and place where men were men--except when gorgons like the Medusa were around, because then, some of those men were actually turned into statues. Design director Stieg Hedlund explains.

　　Gods & Heroes will have elaborate combat animations. Also, lions.

　　GameSpot: We've seen that Gods & Heroes will have elaborate combat animations that will let players leap onto their enemies and choke them to death. How will you execute these attacks in the game? Will they automatically happen if you attack someone, or do you have to perform a specific action to trigger them?

　　Stieg Hedlund: We specifically set out to create combat that was as immersive as it was exciting. Just creating animations and letting them play out on their own would make combat lose both its immersion and the excitement after the first few fights, so we built the system so players will be able execute various attacks that not only have high-payoff animations, but also all have different game effects that go along with them and have different strategic uses. Non-player characters (NPCs) will become aggressive against player characters, naturally, and in turn use their various attacks when their artificial intelligence thinks it's appropriate or when they have the energy to do so.

　　GS: The squad mechanic seems like it's designed so you can adventure on your own, but we understand that players will still have a large party of non-player characters to help them out. Will squads let you play through the entire game solo, or will some of the tougher dungeon areas require you to group with other players to succeed?

　　SH: There are certainly many players who prefer to play solo, and while that's not the main idea behind squads, we did want to allow those people to extend their solo play; but at the same time we didn't want to discourage grouping, as the social and cooperative aspect of online games is certainly very important. Therefore, squads are set up in the early- to midlevel game play in such a way that players can use light minion squads to complement the abilities of their character class: Priests can form an all-infantry squads that can be sent to attack while they make sure the soldiers are "buffed" (protected with defensive magics) and healed, and so on. Even so, minion squads aren't meant to be a substitute for grouping; minions are neither as powerful nor as smart as player characters, and there are many abilities player characters have that are unique. Then, at the higher levels of gameplay heavy and mythical minions become available, but can be hired only by players with appropriate professions, such that priests can hire only minions that cast spells. So, cooperation becomes even more useful.

　　GS: Obviously, there are different kinds of massively multiplayer online game fans--some approach the games as time-consuming grinds, others as social experiences, and more-casual players sometimes have only an hour or two to play at a time. How will Gods & Heroes accommodate different kinds of players?

　　SH: This really ties in to the previous question of allowing players the freedom to choose how they play. We've built an enormous world that is rich with history, myth, and adventure and we're pretty much opening it up and saying to players, "Here's an epic world, how do you want to be a part of it?" By giving players the opportunity to acquire various minions, build up spectacular godlike powers, and customize their characters to their preferred style of play, we're basically letting players define how they choose to play--be it casual, hardcore, or anything in between.

　　GS: Tell us about the game's six character classes--how will they play, and how will they develop over time?

　　You'll command a squad of soldiers who will follow you into battle.

　　SH: When players first start out in Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, they'll have the choice of one of six classes: gladiator, mystic, rogue, soldier, scout, and priest. As players progress through the world, they will be given choices on how they want to build their particular class through their feat trees and also through their god of choice. They choose which skills to master and which weapons armor and shields to equip, which minions to hire, squads to form...lots of different things.

　　GS: Give us an idea of about how much content in the game will be persistent and "public" (letting all players interact at once) and how much content will be "instanced" (closing off individual areas only for certain players). Will the game rely more on one type of content, or the other?

　　SH: I'm not sure how the idea that we were making an instanced world got started, but I'm happy to help put it to rest. The vast majority of the very large world that we're presenting is public--I'd estimate 75 percent of all of the content is in this form.

　　We do use instances, but not willy-nilly--there are two reasons we'll make one: If we are creating a scripted event that won't make sense to those not involved (and will break immersion or remove resources for them), we'll do that in an instance. It's a good way to eliminate "spawn camping" (staying in the same place and repeatedly fighting the same enemies as soon as they "spawn" into the world) and to make events that are more heroic and centered around players and groups. The other reason is for computer performance. One of the big payoffs of squads is epic warfare, where we'll tune an area so that a full group with full squads can do battle with appropriate numbers of foes. We put things like this in an instance, because if another group like yours shows up it'll be hard not to have a drop in performance with that many characters onscreen.

　　GS: We understand that most, if not all, of the game's monsters and enemies have been drawn from Roman mythology. Was the game's reliance on real-world lore limiting, or did it actually provide much more leeway than there originally seemed to be? What's your favorite or the most unique creature from the game you can think of?

　　Expect to see fanciful and ferocious creatures drawn from ancient mythology.

　　SH: The beautiful thing about history and mythology is that it gives us thousands of years of game design right off the bat. The most challenging part of creating Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising wasn't coming up with stuff to put into the game, but rather what limits we should set and what we should save for postlaunch. It's quite possible for us to release several expansions for Rome alone without ever touching other cultures that existed during that time and even more so for each one of the numerous cultures that intersected with Rome from its inception to its eventual fall.

　　What this culture and its history provide for us is a rich and well-founded basis for us to work from. We aren't just retelling old stories that everyone knows (although there are some of them in there), we're telling new stories and bringing players into a world they've only been able to imagine up to this point. It's amazing, breathtaking, and challenging all at once, and the result has been very exciting for us.

　　As for a good example of a creature, our character and art teams have done a phenomenal job re-creating the "volta" (the original inspiration for our modern werewolf). It's a perfect example of why this culture and its history lend itself so well to massively multiplayer games; it is the basis for today's lore and culture. People can see this creature and instantly recognize it and still be awed by what the team has done.

　　GS: Combat seems to be a big focus of the game, but what sorts of activities will players be able to do when they're not fighting? Will there be crafting or gathering of special resources in the world?

　　SH: While combat is an important part of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, it is not the primary object of the game. I'm particularly excited about our quest system and what that lets us do for players. We have an extraordinary quest team that's busy implementing an incredible amount of content for players to take part in at launch.

　　Crafting is something we're looking at as a postlaunch addition, along with several other features we're kicking around. The main goal with crafting, and the reason we're waiting to release it, is because we feel that everything a player interacts with should feel like it belongs there. To throw in crafting for the sake of shipping a game with crafting only creates more problems for us and breeds discontent for everyone. If we can build a great game now and introduce a killer crafting system via a patch short time later, then we've made the game more fun and at the same time strengthened that trust for everyone involved in the game--from the developers to the players.

　　GS: Tell us about your plans for player housing in the game. We understand that housing will be handled by a tent camp that your followers will haul around with you, and that the camp can be upgraded with luxuries as you progress through the game. Does this mean that players will be prospecting for the best camping spot in the world?

　　SH: Camps are an interesting part of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising in that, when the game launches, they're going to be your base of operations. From here, you'll be able to store and retrieve your minions, manage your squad, and build upgrades for them. The camp is nonmobile in the sense that you can't pack it up and move it around anywhere in the world. If we allowed that, the world would suffer from camps being placed in numerous inappropriate areas, and that really breaks the immersion. Instead, there's a single camp that players can access from a variety of places in the world. After we launch the game, we will be extensively expanding camps and their capabilities. We believe that players are going to be very excited with the features we have planned as time goes on.

　　GS: Could you elaborate on the god powers that your character can pick up throughout the game? What sorts of powers are available? Why do you have them? How many powers can you have? And what sorts of limits are on them?

　　SH: God powers are essentially gifts from the deity you follow. You're granted these powers after completing tasks on behalf of that god. As players progress through the game, they will be charged with various tasks, quests, and requests from their chosen god. Their god will then award them with either higher standing or more powers based on how well they did. "Standing" is exactly what it sounds like: How much your god likes you. The more they like you, the more standing you have, and the more often you're able to call upon the gods in battle. Favor is what is actually "used up" (like mana in other games) when god powers are used.

　　Will divine powers save you from the Medusa's gaze? This guy had better hope so.

　　There are a variety of powers per god, for each class, from destructive attacks to restorative buffs. Gods have their own specialties based on their personalities, and players can acquire them all as they become more powerful.

　　GS: Finally, tell us a bit about the game's setting. This is the ancient world of Rome, and we know that you can visit Hades. But what sort of world is this? How large is it? How many different places are there? Are there multiple towns that you can visit? What's your favorite place in the game, and why?

　　SH: Rome is a civilization that has inspired and influenced millions of people since its inception. It is a world that people can relate to but at the same time can be thoroughly awed by. It's a world of mythology, treachery, and humanistic deities. It's the combination of all these realities and the addition of lore and epic mythology that paints a vividly rich setting for players.

　　The overall size of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising at launch is well over 30 square kilometers of public, noninstanced terrain with an additional 25 percent of that number spread out across various instances, so that's pretty large even for an MMO. There are myriad places to visit and each area has several subareas, each with its own influences and look. There are countless villages, towns, and cities, all of which culminate in the inevitable visit to Roma, my favorite city and easily the largest city in our game, and quite possibly in the massively multiplayer genre.

　　We have an incredible art team, as well as some awesome graphics programmers, who have spent countless hours making this world look as stunning as possible. Screenshots and movies just don't do this world justice and I still find myself impressed at what they have accomplished. There really isn't anything like it out there and we're all very excited to see how the players receive it.

　　GS: Thanks, Stieg.