Hello!

Today we've got a short and sweet Question of the Week from our developers. Let's dive right in.

This week we dabble in all sorts of things you can do with items in Earthrise, and it's Leprikhan's turn to ask us a question by pondering, "I'm wondering if Earthrise's item system will allow for creative use of various items, rather then the simple "right click to use"  from other MMOs."?

Like any other MMO on the market today, Earthrise will feature default usage only for its tens of thousands of different items. While it may sound disappointing to some, default usage actually helps the gamer by providing a seamless and intuitive method of using his or her inventory without need to deal with various interfaces and usage methods that might or might not be clearly presented (the so called "creative usage" that players figure on their own). Instead of allowing users to use non-standard items in order to achieve certain goal, we actually allow players to disassemble items to their parts and use these parts to build new compatible items that may have shared qualities. So while you cannot use a syringe with a dagger to poison your buddy, you can disassemble a poison syringe to toxins, use toxins to build a melee weapon energy fuel cell that adds a poisonous quality to its strike, and implement that fuel cell into a compatible weapon of choice (say, an energy dagger) to make it poisonous. Earthrise allows you to reach the same effect, although through crafting compatible items, rather than using incompatible items.

Feel free to discuss below.
~ m.

Seems good to me.  Not quite sure what is meant by creative usage - right click this, followed by this this and this?

Creative usage I basically meant as "usable in more ways then just right clicking it". And I'm very pleased with the answer, certainly more then I expected to be! I do agree in thinking about it, that building an item in a certain way means that you want to use it in a certain way. The fact that you can use the same items from consumables to make weapon effects (even only in certain situations) is awesome, and I'm really pleased to see that.

Once again, I really admire the Earthrise team's integrity and direction. It's nice to see a MMO developer actually stand up and say what they are and aren't going to do for a change.

This is great! We can build just about anything so long as we can imagine it! Good Qotw and answer!

I don't think that is what they are saying. 

I can see that I won't have nearly enough storage space to keep all the different components and sub-assemblies I get/produce.

I really like the ability to disassemble items. I can't wait to try this out in game.

You mean like the artwork people produced by making interesting arrangements of common items, both in SWG and ATITD?

When I read the question, it sounds more like a control/input scheme question. Such as, if there was a lever on the wall, instead of right clicking on it to flip it, one has to "grab it" with the reticle while holding down the mouse button and then drag the mouse in the direction one wants to flip it.