Featuring hundreds of gorgeous environments filled with fanciful creatures and a classic feel, Secret of the Solstice is a free massively-multiplayer role-playing game inviting players to create a character and save the world of Xen. Aspiring heroes have access to plenty of in-game quests, unique and colorful items for their characters and an innovative smelting system for enhancing equipment. In dynamic daily in-game events run by Outspark game masters, players can experience Secret of the Solstice in a completely new way...and even contribute to the evolution of the game's storyline.
Recently, MMOsite was able to catch up with Secret of The Solstice GM Cretz and Morningdew to ask a few questions. Enjoy it!
MMOsite: I am glad that we have this opportunity to make an interview with you. First of all, how would you describe Secret of the Solstice to someone who has never heard of it before?
GM Cretz: Secret of the Solstice is a free multiplayer online RPG set in the beautiful land of Xen. The game features hundreds of environments, a variety of exciting quests, and an epic ongoing storyline directly shaped by players' actions.
Featuring great 2D graphics, friendly GMs, and an active community of players, Solstice invites players to discover the mysterious secrets of the Solstice Sphere and leave a lasting impact on the world of Xen.
MMOsite: How does your game set itself apart from the others? What's the key feature of Secret of the Solstice?
GM Morndingdew: Some things that stand out in Solstice are A) interaction with GMs, B) in-game events, and C) the class system.
A. Our Game Masters are very involved with the game community and are constantly in the game to answer questions, help players, and have fun, of course. For example, we recently ran an event for Talk Like a Pirate Day, which has created a new popular phrase in the game--"mew-yar." Players playfully type "mew" as a multi-purpose response to indicate surprise, delight, yes, no, etc. when communicating with each other in Solstice, and just added the "yar" to sound like a pirate. When we started to talk like pirates, the players thought we were a little crazy, but then it just caught on and now we have mew-yar!
B. A distinguishing point of our game is the type of events we run--on any given week, we have multiple in-game. Some may be formal events that are announced and promoted early on, while others may be spur-of-the-moment events that we organize as a surprise. A lot of the events are tied into the storyline of the game, which makes them very immersive and relevant to those playing Solstice and gives players a chance to affect the game's storyline.
C. You start out as one of four base classes: mage, healer, tank, and melee dps. The best part is, whatever class you choose to start off as, the classes evolve and branch into a multitude of possibilities, and you're not limited to the specific attributes of that class. You could start off as a neophyte (dagger class) and end up as an archer (bow and arrow class), or start off by being a healer and end up being a healer who deals damage--now that's cool.
MMOsite: Talk something about the new content. It looks like Secret of the Solstice just got updated with a new patch that involved many additions to the game. Could you tell us about what these additions were?
GM Cretz: There have been many additions to Secret of the Solstice in the past couple weeks. Some highlights include the increased the drop rate of Xen Stones (powerful items that let you enhanc e your gear), the PvP Arena Master, and the new undead dungeon, Sleepless Grave beneath Eir.
We have been actively listening to the Secret of the Solstice community and many of these improvements are a direct result of their suggestions. We saw how much they enjoyed the PvP Solstice Survivor GM Events, so we created a way for them to enjoy PvP at any time while still providing special PvP GM hosted events. We listened to the community and decided to help alleviate the economy strain with the rarity of Xen Stones and thus they will now drop at a higher rate in dungeons.
These changes, coinciding with GM Events such as the recent Dungeon Exploration, help to give all players a chance to experience the new content, regardless of their level. We are striving to give everyone the best experience possible and through an open line of communication with the community, and our upcoming changes to accomodate their suggestions, we are on our way to achieving that goal.
MMOsite: The new novice system looks like it will provide a more diverse way of gameplay for newer players. Could you explain how Outspark got together on this new system?
GM Morndingdew: We asked our players, and then listened to their feedback. Also, we went back to the mindset of a person approaching the game for the first time--how could we make the game easier to pick up and play? After gathering opinions from different players in the community and within our company, we went back to our development partners and made the suggestions for change. Our goal is to make your introduction to this wonderful game as easy and fun as possible, and we will continue to improve on it as much as we can.
