RF Online, the massively multiplayer online game developed by Korean outfit CCR and published in the US and Europe by Codemasters, is scheduled to release the its update, which is called Giga Final. This update includes two parts, we will see the first part on June 19, and the second update will release in July. To get more information of this update, we chatted with kyle rowley, the Community Liaison Officer of RF Online. 

MMOsite.com: Can you first say something about your team, the faces behind such a hit game?

kyle rowley: Wow, where to start! As you probably already know; to run a live game like RF Online you need a lot of different team members, each of whom play a very important role in the service we provide.

While we at Codemasters don¡¯t develop the game ourselves (that¡¯s takes a large chunk of personnel out of the equation), our team seems to be getting larger and larger every time I take a good look around the office.

I guess I¡¯ll give you guys a brief run down of the different people behind RF Online. Well ¨C the important people anyway :p.

First of all and most importantly *ahem* there is myself. I¡¯m the community liaison officer, and it¡¯s my job to help and manage the community (among other things). While running a community may sound like an easy task¡­ I can assure you it isn¡¯t. There is so much work involved and I often find myself wishing there were an extra 24 hours in every day, just so I can keep up with the workload. Saying that, I do have a really good time working with the community. While slightly aggressive sometimes; they are a great bunch of people and I am looking forward to meeting some of them at our Codemasters Online Gaming Community Lunch on July 28th.

Then we have the production crew; which are headed up by our Director of MMO¡¯s, Anthony ¡®SunSword¡¯ Castoro. These are the guys who make all the decisions regarding patches, maintenance etc. Associate Producer Michael Rowland (former Community Manager Zzeno) runs the RF Online service, and is backed up by a number of other personnel, all of which have a goal in life of making the RF Online community happy :p.

Moving on ¨C we have the Net Ops team who is lead by our very own super hacker, Mark Fowlis. Mark and his team are responsible for maintaining the games servers and making sure everything runs smoothly hardware wise. These guys are HARDCORE RF fans ¨C I always see them playing at lunch time ¨C and I think it¡¯s starting to get slightly obsessive :p.

I¡¯m going on a bit now, so I¡¯ll quickly give you a list of names, which will mean nothing to you what so ever :D. Chris Dye (aka Ulric) is the Alchemic Dream / Codemasters Liaison and helps communicate issues between the two parties. Then we have the Lead Game Master, Edinn ¨C he handles all the customer support issues that players have. Finally we have Lea ¨C who is our Korean Translator. She is a vital link between Codemasters and CCR in Korea. You will be able to find some detailed interviews with Lea, Mark Fowlis and Ulric in issue 02 of the RF Online magazine due out at the start of August!

MMOsite.com: RF Online has been officially released for 4 months in the US and the UK, and many new players keep coming to join the game. As there are a lot of free MMORPGs launched on the market everyday, do you think subscription based RF Online will finally prove to be a success, and why?

kyle rowley: While your right in saying that there are a lot of free MMO¡¯s out there that players can pick up and play for free. I think players know that when they pay their monthly subscription for a game, the team behind the game will be committed to releasing new content and generally supporting the game all they can. With free MMO¡¯s this is not always the case, as they don¡¯t have the revenue to help them. Obviously there are exceptions to this (like there are too most things), but in general, subscription based games are more well equip to provide continued content and support.With the release of Giga Final Part 1 this past week, players should be reassured that we are in-fact still supporting the game, and that we will be for a long time to come. Speaking of the future, we are looking to get Giga Final Part 2 ¨C which contains Guild vs. Guild battles ¨C out by the end of July/Early August, so players can look forward to that. 

MMOsite.com: RF Online continues to gain popularity among the gamers. To those who?ve played RF Online for a long time and had high-level characters, what will you do to keep them coming back?

kyle rowley: As I stated in my previous response, we are implementing a lot more content for higher-level players. This includes a new high level area called Elan Plateau, a revised version of a current location within the game with higher level monsters and Guild vs Guild battles.

As you can see, we are working hard to make sure players of the game who have reached the higher levels have something to look forward to. We want to try and cater for all players ¨C both new and old, and we believe with the content we have planned we will be able to do just that.

MMOsite.com: Tell us more about the new Elan Plateau in RF Online, what can we expect to see there?

kyle rowley: Elan Plateau is a new high-level area (by high-level I mean 45+) that will require players to work together to progress through a series of different locations. All the monsters within Elan are very very tough, and we don¡¯t expect that many of our current player-base to be able to complete it. Aside from these new monsters, there are a series of new Pit Bosses, which will drop some very nice loot.

Due to the way in which Elan has been designed, players will be unable to simply run past mobs within the area. There is a strict narrow path that players most follow in order to complete Elan ¨C and the mobs there aren¡¯t very keen on players getting past ;).