1) Who are you?
My name is Micah Caldwelland I'm a 19 year old gamer from North Pole, Alaska.
2) How long have you followed the development of Atriarch?
I've been following it since late April/early May of 2000.
3) What game(s) did you play before finding out about Atriarch?
Asheron's Call is my current obsession and I played EverQust for a while before AC came out. I also play Counter-Strike and Starcraft quite a bit on the side but not exclusively. I have played pretty much any game that has a good multiplayer least once if not having gotten addicted to it for a good while.
Gaming Aspects
1) What gaming design aspect are you glad is included in the game?
I like how Atriarch is aiming to have viable options for gaining experience other than fighting. There are very few games on the market today (other than edutainment) that aren't based completely around killing things. Now, I'm not saying that I have something against these games but I am very glad to see a game that gives the players the choice as to whether they would like to play their character as a fighter or another sort of class.
2) What would you like included in/removed from the game?
Instant travel. All the major MMPORGs on the market today (and the ones coming out) have a way in the game to instantly travel from one end of the world to the other. To me this really takes away from the exploration aspect of the game because there are very few places on the world that are hard to get to. If everyone has been to some place then it kinda takes the adventure out of going there. On the other hand I can understand the reason for this sort of travel, playing online with real life friends is one reason. Because of this I think it would be kind of nice to have some places in the world that are completely inaccessable except for by foot (or at least no wind tunnells to them) and others that are accessable by wind tunnells and the like to allow for people to get together easily.
3) How much/what innovation do you think Atriarch brings to the industry?
I think Atriarch is doing a lot of things that other upcoming titles are not willing to risk such as the ability to script your character while offline, the ability to level your character without the risk of dying, or having a completely PvP world with no non-PvP flag. In my opinion these are all very good concepts that may or may not work once the game hits shelves but no one will know until they are tried.
Atriarch Community
1) What factors build/destroy the Atriarch community?
Flamers. Flamers destroy every online community but luckily Atriarch hasn't seen near as many of those as other games (which in my mind is a good sign). One thing that I think really helps the community a lot is the communication from the developers to the players. Hearing from the developers really encourages me to post messages on the message boards and join in the atriarch chat rooms.
One thing that makes the Atriarch developers stand out in my mind is that they are as active in the community as many of the players are. It's not very often that you can go into a game's chat room and actually speak with one of the developers and have them speak back. It's kind of like the difference between saying that "I saw the President at " instead of "I held a conversation with the president".
2) How can the schism between longtime and new followers of the game be breached?
I think the best thing for this is to get the new followers informed as fast as possible so they can quickly blend in with the long time ones. This is best done by having a good, and easily accessible, "About Atriarch" section on all the major fan sites and the main atriarch web page. Another thing that helps a lot is to have a good IRC channel that is frequented by some of the more knowledgable and long time followers. Atriarch's channel is a good example of this and I think the reason is because the developers do stop in on many occasions which encourages people to go there because it is a good source of information about the game for both new players (from the old ones) and old players (from the developers). Now why the developers go there is still unknown (maybe they get information from God in the chat room or something).
3) Should visibility in the community curry special favour in the (pre-)game?
My first answer is yes but that is kind of biased because I have been chosed for a player profile so I have a slight advantage in this field and I, of course, want special favour in the (pre-)game. :) When I think about it a little more deeply it's not as easy of a decission. I know there are some games that I've been following very closely but I have not posted much on the message boards nor have I participated in many chats. This does not mean I'm not as interested in the game as other people may be it just means that I have not had anything to say about the game through to this point. In this situation I would be sorely disapointed if I didn't get to participate in the early betas or if I didn't get some special favour that someone who posted a lot on the boards did. At the same time I look at atriarch and think of how dissapointed I would be if I didn't get into the early stages of beta or some special favour yet some other guy who hadn't even heard about the game until the beta signup was announced and signed up 200 times with multiple email addresses did get into it. In the end it is up to the developers but I do know that I would be much more disapointed if the latter happend than the former.
Discussions
1) Where can people find your threads (site/url)?
When I first got involved in Atriarch I would post to the atriarch stratics developer forums and hang out in the atriarch stratics chat room. School is starting to catch up with me in the last month or two however and I have had less time to frequent those boards and the chat room but I still do try to reply to all of the Questions of the Week that are posted as a bare minimum.
2) What thread was your favourite to start or see thrive (site/url)?
I like to go a lot of factual information (information posted by the developers with solid answers to questions) so pretty much any thread that gets a lot of response from the developers is one that I like a lot but I can't think of any particular thread off hand that I liked.
3) What do you think should be discussed more amongst the communities?
How to be a grief player. I think one thing that is missing from most online game beta tests are grief players. Those are the players that learn to exploit the game such that you don't enjoy yourself because of them. Most grief players don't pay much attention to the game until it comes out and by then the beta is over and it's too late to change some things. I think that more "normal" players (players that play the game the way it was meant to be played) need to learn these grief tactics of play and put them too use in beta tests and discuss styles of grief play and ways to counter them on the message boards.
Other aspects you think would interest folks?
If you haven't seen the movies that the good folks over at world fusion have put out I would highly recommend watching them now. Those movies are what got me hooked on the game. I figured that even if the game turned out to be horrid (which it didn't) at least the company had a good set of 3D modelers and animators so the game would be worth getting just to watch the CGI intro scenes and look at some of the in game graphics.
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