Hi everyone!

I'm back this week with two questions straight from the developers. Enjoy!

Cid_mutation: A big open world in one map,  or many small map. A combination of the 2?
Masthead: Earthrise is a persistent world MMORPG and all the action is currently designed happen in a single, big open world environment.

Tyrus Dark: How do items "exit" the world. With insurance and loot drop, it seems like items have little chance of being permanently lost via combat. Equipment destruction in my eyes seems to be absolutely necessary as a money-sink.  How does equipment finally get destroyed in Earthrise?
Masthead: Item destruction is one of the most important aspects of Earthrise's economy and we consider this a major money sink in the game. Each usable item is designed to lose Durability with its use, and can be repaired by players using specialized tools. It is not possible to repair your items forever, though. The loss of Durability also lowers the Quality of the item. When the item's Quality drops under certain value, the maximum Durability of the item is lowered by a percentage as well until the item starts to constantly break down with use. Even if such a broken item is deconstructed to its components, the Quality of those components is derivative of the item's Quality and will be useless as well. Players who end up with a lot of trash should not consider destroying the item yet. Characters can refine multiple items of the same type into a single item that has higher Quality than each one of the refined items. This should be a serious money sink of its own for players, as they will need to sacrifice items in order to end up with one with sufficient Quality once again.

Enjoy, and I'll see you around the forums as I'm catching up!
~ m.

Thanks for the post,

Good to see (usefull) durability is in, been missing that in many games. I wouldn't worry about players becoming too poor drkiller, players will just adapt their playstyle rather then just using the best they can they will use the best they can lose. The basic items will probably be extremely cheap.


A question regarding the first answer though, So there are no seams or choke (zone)points or am i reading this wrong, if i'm right i wonder how loading happens?

There are some follow up questions, also.  If you're correct and it's preloaded, then do you get to see the current state of what's over the boarder so you don't suddenly take one extra step and find yourself in the middle of a 10 man gang that you couldn't see before?  If so, can combat occur across borders (and hence, across servers)?

Or does this mean a single logical server spanning a massive cluster so it's all the same map and there are no 'borders'?  This would be really cool, but the cluster server would have to be a monster.

This is, what I'm actually thinking of, when it states seemless world. and if you look at the EvE Online-server it's actually exactly this, but with an totally out of date code, why it's laggy and not able to shift power to where it's needed on demand.

Wow it's goodto have item decay back in a meaningful way!

Th seamless world is an awesome feature I get sick of load screens!

Wb Moll!

I was hoping that it would be one big world.  Very very good.
Also happy for the item decay.

This is usely handed by server client communication, basicly it's a load area arround the player. Basicly the game world doesn't change offten so all your map information (trees rocks rivers) are loaded client side. NPC's and PC's are loaded on a need to nkow basis Deppending how close you are. Unlike some older games like EQ where all information is loaded to the client when you log in.

Information will be loaded slowly to your client as things get or you get closer.

It also depends completely on the way the server is coded also. If it is coded to work as one LARGE system and not broken into diffrent soft-zones then it shouldn't be a problem. This way the server load is not a problem because all systems are tied into one server cluster. It's when areas are designed to run in diffrent soft zones that you see this problem because information is not loaded to the client untill you cross that invisable line (or visable as in AO).

Will have to see how they set thier servers up to know.

I have no quotes to back this up but I don't expect their version of persistent to be terribly different than any other MMO that doesn't use instances for the majority of its content, ala GW.  In fact, ER developers have stated that they want to avoid instances at all costs.  By calling it persistent, I believe they mean to say its the same world for everyone rather than shards that reset periodically.  If Bob kills a mutant boss, then you cant kill the mutant boss until the boss respawns.