Gravity Visit Campaign - Interview with Mr. Kim Hakkyu, the CEO of Gravity Compiled and edited by Luna Great thanks for Christy for making this possible! And that old friend of mine (he was my friend since 5th grade, kekeke) who came with me and was drooling at the fact he's inside Gravity! And my mother, kekeke, who didn't make me look stupid. ;) August 2nd, around 3:20 PM - at Gravity discussion room --- Luna: Hello, Mr. Kim Hakkyu (shortened into neolith, his nickname in Gravity, for the rest of this text - editor Luna). It's a great pleasure to meet you. neolith: Hello. Nice to meet you too. Christy: neolith, this is Luna (of course she introduced me in my real name, but I prefer keeping my real name hidden ^_^;; - editor Luna), a webmaster of RagnarokSource - one of the biggest fansite with over 5000 users on the forums. neolith: Ah. Okay, so you wanted to have an interview with me? Luna: Yes, these are the questions the English users want to know the most about. neolith: Okay. ^^ Luna: Here we go... Luna: Any approximate plan for when iRO will go pay-to-play? If so, what can we expect for price, service, etc.? neolith: We are planning to make iRO pay-to-play sometime around the fall, although it's not really official... because we're currently planning to have pay-to-play services around in Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan, etc. first. The price is not yet decided (I'd guess around 15-16 bucks following Lineage price overseas... by the way, Lineage costs more than Ragnarok in Korea XD - editor Luna). Luna: Any approximate time when there will be more servers for iRO? neolith: We plan to add more servers after when iRO goes pay-to-play. Luna: How big will the final intended world map size of RO be compared to the size of it is now in beta 2? neolith: Map size won't change... but we do plan to add 3 more dungeons or more. It's not decided though. Luna: A lot of people say that LUK is the most useless stats in the game compared to everything else - mainly AGI and VIT. Will there ever be changes to the LUK so that any player of any class would actually consider putting points into them? neolith: LUK (at least in Korean Beta, I assume - editor Luna) now provides with 3 times the more CRIT hit chances, and in future, they will increase the chance of getting a rare item - but this is not official decision. Luna: Will base and job level always have caps of 99 and 50 respectively? Or will there be any ways so that maxed out users can still improve their char without the use of cards or any rare item? Maybe to use some of the EXP point gathered to trade in for stat points? neolith: First, we don't have any plan regarding trading in EXP points for stat points... the Base level still will be at level 99, but the job level will be reset again when advanced to the 3rd level class. Maybe we'll set the maximum level to 105 or similar... Luna: Like Star Ocean's level 255 limit! Luna: Related to above, will there ever be any seriously hard areas implemented that will only be huntable by characters that have surpassed the 99 level cap (it seems pretty much decided that base level will be at 99 - editor Luna)? neolith: We aren't so sure, but we're going to be adding in monsters and adjust so that people has to focus on party play in order to beat the monsters. Luna: Will the total classes be still at around 30+ as previuosly - ages ago - stated? Any approximate time for when other classes will be released - the 3rd final class such as Monks? neolith: We are planning to release them around late fall or winter. Luna: Is there more selections of arrows coming up for the bows? neolith: We don't have any plans about it. Luna: Is there any upcoming way that you foresee in dealing with bots anytime soon? neolith: Ah, the bots... we're going to implement packet encryption to stop them soon. We're almost done coding the encryption methods. Luna: Are there any plans to make all weapons show up (Tsu as a Tsu rather than a simple sword, for example - editor Luna) when equipped to characters? neolith: Maybe for a few weapons in a certain classes... but not all. Luna: What are Gravity's main priorities for our servers? neolith: Right now, the first priority is to fix bugs, then the next is to implement pay-to-play services in iRO. Luna: How much sleep are the Gravity dev/code/artist teams getting? neolith: Well, people won't tell... ^^; Luna: Will there ever be more animated poses such as sitting? neolith: We don't have a plan for that yet. Luna: Will weapon strike animations with different weapons change? neolith: While not all weapons will have different animations, but we do plan to have a different weapon hit streak/animation with weapons that has elemental properties (Maybe fire-elemental weapon will have slashing color of red... - editor Luna) Luna: What are the short and long term plans to improve gameplay in iRO? In terms of enormous lag and possibly getting more servers and/or more gameservers per server? neolith: For now, we plan to change to pay-to-play as quickly as possible. But first, we would want to prepare the adaquate user support and a company based in United States before that happens. In a meanwhile, Japan servers are planned to go over to Japan, and have our branch there for pay-to-play this fall. Luna: Right now the current servers in North America are constantly between 5000-8000+ users at all times - which is very stressful for the servers and makes for poor performance since there is no 'slow period'. Will iRO have more 'international' servers to allow a person to pick a server that is placed in Europe or Southeast Asia or Austrailia instead of lumping all of the world into just the two North America servers? neolith: This matter will be discussed once iRO goes pay-to-play... Luna: Ah. Thanks for your time to answer the questions! (_ _) <-- bowing icon neolith: No problem. ^^