Heroes of Telara Interview

GamesIndustry.biz has gotten around to posting an interview they did with Trion World Network's Lars Buttler during this year's E3 about Heroes of Telara, as well as their upcoming Sci Fi Channel project.
Q: You've said in the past - to us, actually - that you're not competing directly with World of Warcraft. And yet, Heroes of Telara is a fantasy-themed MMO. Are you basing that statement entirely on the differences between a server-side and client-side game?

Lars Buttler: Great question. So, number one, Trion is a publisher and developer of a multitude of different games. Here at E3, we are actually showcasing the first big title, Heroes of Telara, a fully dynamic, massively social MMORPG. We also already announced that we are building a fully dynamic, massively-social action RPG in cooperation with the Sci-Fi Channel. And we also announced that we are working on a fully dynamic alive MMORTS with Petroglyph, with former Westwood [developers], almost the creator of the RTS category.

So the idea is not just to make one MMORPG, it is to create server-based games and take the innovation that server-based gaming allows you to different powerful, fun gaming categories. That is very different from making one game and so on. But although the first game, Heroes of Telara, is in a similar category like World of Warcraft or others, it's very different in terms of the experience that you will get.

And we felt that it was kind of almost irrelevant to go after WoW and try to do the same that people have done for ten years. The architecture of the gameplay of MMORPGs has not changed for about ten years. And WoW has really taken this to the best polish and quality. HOT is a new generation. It is very innovative in terms of gameplay, it uses very different technologies and tools, and so we don't feel it goes after a certain traditional MMORPG, it is actually a different category; it is a server-based game. Traditional MMORPGs are still client-computed.