Allods Online Interview

MMOCrunch.com was lucky enough to get the chance to chat with Allods Online development team and they provided some interesting insights into their popular free-to-play MMO. Let’s get right to it.

MMOCrunch: The big news with Allods Online is the recently released patch, Revelations of Gipat. Can you tell how the launch of the patch went? What are some of the bigger changes the team thinks are playing out nicely?

Allods Online: The launch was both an exciting and challenging one for us. The Allods Team has been working incredibly hard for the last two months to make sure the launch was as smooth as possible.

Patch 1.1.0 brought a ton of improvements, new features, and completely overhauled some mechanics that many of our players were used to in the previous version. One of the bigger changes was the removal of Fear of Death and the introduction of a new type of death penalty – the cursed item system. It’s no secret that some members of the Allods community were not pleased with this change, but we’ve been doing our best to keep players educated and informed about how the entire cursed item system works.

To date, Patch 1.1.0 is the biggest Allods Online patch, and in terms of new features, Patch 1.1.0 introduced a new zone called Gipat.  From ghostly beasts to a worm-faced army, the monsters in Gipat are incredibly awesome.

The patch also added new audio, new animations, significant UI changes, and a complete rebalancing of certain archetypes. The new mounts – The Xadaganian Steed and the Kanian Runner have also been huge hits.

MMOCrunch: Allods is a free-to-play MMO, a trend that is quickly gaining popularity amongst fans and industry professionals. What sets Allods apart from other free-to-play MMO’s? MMO’s in general?

Allods Online: Allods features an amazing blend of genres previously unseen to the MMO world. While it contains elements found common in traditional themes of magic and fantasy, Allods also explores the realm of Astral exploration and adventure.  Players can construct a customized Astral Ship and are invited to experience the complex challenge of co-operative Astral combat. The ever-changing Astral is also highly unique feature, allowing users to explore diverse allods that are constantly moving to randomly generated locations.

The Allods world of Sarnaut is particularly well-crafted and detailed. Sarnaut contains thousands of lore-rich quests, unique dungeons, and  even a sport mini-game called Goblinball that lets you play on teams of six against other players.

MMOCrunch: Choosing a faction is a big part of Allods Online, and players can have a hard time choosing between the Empire and League. Any insider information fans could use to make their choice easier and more enjoyable?

Allods Online: It just depends on what kind of story or adventure you’d like to have. If you’d like to take part in a steampunk-esque industrial city filled with science experiments, and a strong military, and a stoic outlook, then the Empire is for you. But if you’d like to adventure through lush forests and rubbing elbows with magical creatures, then you’ll likely be at home with the League.

MMOCrunch: Another big question on forums has been about the new price of items with the patch? Can you shed some light on how the price system was devised and why?

Allods Online: Sure! There are a lot of decisions that come into play with deciding how to price items. It’s an extremely delicate and time consuming process. Generally, we take into consideration the convenience factor versus necessity. Though, when we dive into the details, other attributing factors to pricing include pricing per region, availability of the item, and potential economical value in-game – just to name a few. In addition to all of this we spend a lot of time analyzing player metrics to see if our prices make sense with the way the game is actually being played.

MMOCrunch: This reporter came across an Allods ad shown below:

Why has Allods taken this form of sexual advertising to reach their fans?

Allods Online: This ad actually only makes up around 2% of our ad spending, while 98% of our spending goes towards ads that rave about Allods’ graphics and award-winning gameplay. Sometimes these other ads just get lost in the marketplace and a different strategy is required to break out of the clutter.

MMOCrunch: Gold sellers have sadly become a part of every popular MMO and it seems Allods has been infected by this plague as well. Can you tell us what the Allods team is doing to prevent this awful trend?

Allods Online: The Allods team takes gold spam very seriously and is currently working with Astrum Nival on various ways that we can help to combat the spam. We have already implemented a chat filter that helps to weed out multiple postings and the team also goes into the game several times a day to ban the ones that do make it past the filter.

MMOCrunch: Any other recent or upcoming news the Allods community would be interested in?

Allods Online: Definitely! The team is always working on new and exciting things to bring to the community. Our newest contest is a tiered giveaway that we’re calling the “Quest for Chests!” Players will be able to earn keys to chests to win all sorts of prizes and the more you play, the better the prizes will get!

MMOCrunch would like to thank the Allods team for answering our questions. For more on Allods Online including more on their “Quests for Chests” giveaway, click here.