Interview with Jondo Cino, the producer of Ruin Online.

MMOsite.com: For those players who are not familiar with Ruin Online, could you give it a brief introduction in your own words?

Jondo Cino: Ruin Online is an MMORPG set on post - apocalyptic Earth with a new geo - political climate containing multiple cultures/factions with diverse regions, weaponry and stories. These new governments collide in a combat theater set around some of the last inhabitable regions of the planet. The game is designed with PVP combat mechanics as the focus, above all, but the experience includes the gamut of elements expected in a MMO: community, crafting, advancement of skill, persistence of world.

MMOsite.com: From the perspective of the team developing Ruin Online, what kind of game are you creating, and what are the key characteristics that differentiate it from other online offerings with persistent characters?

Jondo Cino: Ruin Online is a story - driven MMORPG geared towards Player versus Player combat. The key differences that come to mind about Ruin would be the ruthlessness of the world, PvP focus and our (whacky) development style. We approach our project as players first, then developer s. We include our development community (testers, artists, scripters, writers, GMs) in a lot of the decision process and often put important topics, such as player death up for discussion in our forums. Additionally, we offer elements of FPS/twitch based combat that aren t often found in RPG s and a twitch based melee fighting system unseen since the hey-day of Fighting games such as Tekken and Virtua-Fighter. As old melee stackers ourselves, we are very excited about this new system. In-house testing is proving that is its really "fun" and that is the #1 priority. Update: The new melee combat system has gone from FUN to ADDICTIVE.

MMOsite.com: Why did you name it Ruin Online? In overview, how would you describe the gameworld?

Jondo Cino: Ruin was chosen as a name early in the process, initially to describe the state of the Earth and its societies at present time to gameplay (somewhere in the distant future round the year 2291). It is also a name that pokes fun at the fact that many of us gamers have heard something like: "You are going to Ruin your life on those video games!" As I described a bit above, the world of Ruin is rough. Ammo is scarce, we trade canned food for guns, quest  and scavenge to get items often "handed to you are in games. We want to maintain a feeling of human societies barely holding on to life as seen in movies like "The Road Warrior", but at the same time explore the idea of diverse societies that emerge out of the apocalypse with varying levels of technology and often conflicting belief systems.

MMOsite.com: What major challenges did you encounter while developing Ruin Online?

Jondo Cino: Being a small team the biggest challenge is time. There are only so many hours in the day.  Many long al-night-sessions are required to get new features implemented and deployed live. We work fast, we don t have red-tape or a marketing department, or some corporation that owns us to answer to. From the outside, our milestones may seem to hit on average, or late, when compared to mainstream games, but we wish reader s to know that there are less than 10 full time developers on Ruin Online. Most days, there are only teo of us building the game, now with weekly help from our team members, as things heat up. Additionally, we are building this game on a micro budget; we don t have employees in the traditional sense, only a handful of core developers. We have been lucky to gather some volunteer s from the Ruin Community and they are pulling extra weight for us adding new art, quest content and building lists for such things as items, skills and crafting recipes.

MMOsite.com: Does the development team have any previous experience in similar work?

Jondo Cino: Each of us has some background in our fields, which are somewhat related to 3D entertainment and deployment of an MMO, ranging from: 2D/3D art, C programming, Network Architectures, game development for AAA game companies and ISP administration. Though none of these fields are enough on their own to properly construct an MMORPG and launch it, we feel that combined we ve "got what it takes".

MMOsite.com: What kinds of gamers is the game aimed at, hardcore, casual, average and their age group?

Jondo Cino: Hardcore, of course. It is PvP first, then all else, hugging last. We wouldn t call a game an MMORPG without the crafting, the begging, the kill stealing, the guilds, factions, drama that we all love/hate. We feel without nubs, how can you be leet? It takes all kinds: crafters, dancers, leaders, lone wolves, griefers and helpers. We plan to create a complete MMO experience, but kicking other  player s asses on the internet is always job 1. We have discussed age group and agree that we would like to keep the content very gritty, we will make every effort to keep the age limits wide open.

MMOsite.com: What kind of graphics engine are you using for Ruin Online? In-house developed or licensed?

Jondo Cino: We are building Ruin on Torque Game Engine licensed from GarageGames. We have recently ported our project up to the newest version of the engine TGE 1.5 (previously on version TGE 1.3). We have been very happy with the new performance of the game and many new development features, such as easily compiling Ruin for Mac and Linux. J

MMOsite.com: How long do you expect Ruin Online to stay in beta? Any set release schedule?

Jondo Cino: We plan to be ready for release in Winter 2007. We need about a year more before this thing will be worth paying money to play :P We are also planning a free version that plays along with the pay version, same servers. We have got some other schemes in mind to give players more power and abilities to co-develop the entire Ruin Experience, but I can t be more specific about that at this time.

MMOsite.com: What games or ideas have influenced your work?

Jondo Cino: Where to begin...? MMO s we have been hooked on: mainly AO, EQ1 and SWG, though we try to play as many current MMO s as possible. Cyberpunk, Appleseed, Desert Punk, Road warrior, Terminator, the Matrix, just to name a few movies and games that inspire us daily. The themes in these stories are so ingrained in popular culture that they have become almost the fairy-tales of this generation and we feel any time you draw on something the player already knows well, its very easy to create immersion and keep them "in the story".

MMOsite.com: How much leeway will the players give in terms of customizing their starting characters? What steps are involved in the creation stage, and what key decisions have to be made then?

Jondo Cino: Character creation and customization is still under development but so far we can assure a full range of wearable clothing, armor and accessories for characters to choose, loot and create. There are numerous base bodies, eyes, mouths and faces to start with. In addition, players will be able to scale elements of their character, such as upper body, or head size to further customize their look. Sex, race and culture of origin are chosen. (You choose your culture of origin, but you don t sign up to fight for your birth faction right away. Nor are you limited to specific player "looks" if you choose one culture or another. Once you set up your look and determine where you came from (or where your parents came from, really) you start the game as everyone does: a nobody. A poor, desert-dweller trying to make your fortune in one of many shit-hole towns you find throughout the wastelands.

MMOsite.com: How do weapons, armors and other items function within Ruin Online? How are they obtained, and are there rare or unique ones? Do they wear and break? Are many bound to your avatar?

Jondo Cino: Here is where you will find Ruin Online different from many games. We have taken the common class restrictions away from weapons and items. "Everyone can use Everything", is the idea, but to what degree? In this combat system equipment will come and go a bit more, as players are fully lootable, with only a few restrictions planned. What training you have will affect availability of replacement weapons and what special attacks you can perform. In other words, 10 nubs can gang up on a leet player and overpower him, then steal his lazer katanas. They can use them, but not very well and with no special attacks. When the batteries run out, or they need service, the untrained nub will have little choice but to toss out the weapon as only trained users of the lazer blades are trusted to be reissued or sold new blades/ parts. As for the player models, they are bald and nekkid. Everything above that is customizable. Hair, face, clothes, armor, weapons. The main difference is the fighting system itself, how it plays... armor and weapons do pretty much what they always do: protect and kill, respectively. Loot NPCS, loot players, trade, hunt, craft, and steal to get your items.

MMOsite.com: Is there much in the way of activities aside from fighting? Are there any non-combat skills or abilities?

Jondo Cino: Content in Ruin can be edited and updated real-time without restarting the zone servers. This is possible through an in-house database-script dialog called rpgBrowser. This allows developers, GM s and content providers to add new elements to the game quickly and easily. We ve already begun work on the crafting system which will follow a basic recipe failure/enhancement system. Crafted items will compete with looted weapons at all levels. In some cases the crafted version will be better than what s lootable. We also plan guilds in the traditional sense: Trade Guilds. Run by the Neutral players, those who can t or choose not to participate in war elements of the game. Huggers!

MMOsite.com: Anything else you d want to share with our readers?

Jondo Cimo: Try my Product! The way we see it we re making "OUR" game. The way we ve always wished the MMO s we played were made. We re gamers too, and have spent many a night waiting for PvP listening to guildies and opponent s cry to no end about why "Game X" is so messed up. We decided to do something about it! Most of these complaints online gamer s make are logical fixes/requests that would enhance the game alot for them. Since the playing community pays the bills, they should be able to call the shots, or at least have a big influence. We feel that if more MMO developers were also MMO players, there would be a much higher quality level to online games in general, but especially important in persistent worlds where if something sucks, it usually sucks for a long time.