Kingdom Heroes: Open World PvP Channel to Be Released

Kingdom Heroes: Open World PvP Channel to Be Released By Michael Fuchs Michael Fuchs has been playing MMOs for over 8 years. He has a strong passion for the competitive side of video games. Besides video games, his passions include reading, writing, and roleplaying. He currently attends the University of Wisconsin - Waukesha for a degree in Communications.

Chip Smith with Aeria Games recently took the time to answer some questions we had about Kingdom Heroes, an MMORPG based on the Three Kingdoms era in China. We'd like to thank him for taking the time out of his busy schedule to do that – especially since the interview took place right before the 4th of July (Independence Day) in the United States.

Kingdom Heroes - Interview

Michael Fuchs (MMOSite): So, could you tell us a little about your position at Aeria Games?

Chip Smith: Yeah, I'm Chip Smith.  I'm the Associate Producer on Kingdom Heroes by Aeria Game. I basically oversee all the production and marketing and sales. Sort of a jack of all trades for everything that is Kingdom Heroes and where it's going.

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Michael Fuchs (MMOSite): Great! So, open beta started about a month ago.  What are your goals for Kingdom Heroes as it progresses?

Chip Smith: Well yes, open beta has started.  We've also had the commercial launch with the launch of the item mall and everything.  From the open beta, we've worked out a lot of the kinks that come with the initial launch of a new game.  We've made a lot of progress with all that.  With those issues and other bugs.  As we go forward, we definitely want to make sure we polish up our content, and also deliver new content to our players.  Going forward, we want our Kingdom Heroes to be strong, faction-based MMO that allows players to experience and take part in the Three Kingdoms universe. But even more so, we want our players to be able to play a game in which their actions, as a player, guild, and kingdom have a persistent and visible effect on the world in which they play.

Michael Fuchs (MMOSite): Great! Many players have expressed interest for a player versus player server.  Are there any plans to include one in the future?

Chip Smith: Yeah, we've definitely seen this on the forums, and we definitely want to give the players what they want.  I mean, the great thing about Kingdom Heroes is that the server architecture we use allows for multiple channels on the same server. Currently we have the kingdom war channel and the PvE channel, and what this does is it basically means we can allow players a variety of instances on the same world or the same server.  With this architecture we are working on making one of the channels into a PvP channel on each server. This means players that want to do open world PvP can log into that channel, and players that want to have normal PvE environment can log into the normal channel, but they'll also reside on the same server, so if players ever want to play with players in the other channel, they can easily switch the channel.

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Michael Fuchs (MMOSite): Awesome, so the game play of Kingdom of Heroes largely revolves around the worlds of Wu, Wei, and Shu.  Are there any plans to help even out the number of players in each kingdom?

Chip Smith: Yeah I mean, the populations of the different kingdoms primarily come into play during the faction versus faction action that happens in the event called kingdom war--it happens twice a week, and the kingdom wars that have happened so far have been pretty fantastic to watch.  I mean, I've seen it swing from one nation completely being back to the other two nations, to four days later when the next kingdom war happens that that new underdog nation is making complete comeback and different nations are on the bottom. That being said, there are already a number of tools already built into the game that kind of help maintain a balance between all the different kingdoms.  

First off, there's a system in place that allows players to switch from one kingdom to a different kingdom at any time for a nominal amount of gold.  This system being in place—allowing players to switch factions or switch kingdoms—allows the players the option of siding with the underdog nation to help them fight back.  At the same time, the faction switches to them such that whichever nation is in power or overpopulated can't receive new immigrants from a different nation.  This way players can't just jump ship to whichever the reigning kingdom is after a kingdom war.