Tim Tan is the Producer of Lineage II: Hellbound, the upcoming free expansion to the popular NCsoft MMORPG. He spoke with WarCry's Jordan Deam last week by telephone about the update in this exclusive interview.
WarCry: Hellbound is the final installment of the First Throne Saga. Talking about that overall storyline, how important is it to a typical Lineage II player?
Tim Tan: From a storyline standpoint, I feel that we started with the Kamael, and we introduced the Hellbound zone, and unlocking the different areas. I feel that Hellbound, basically the signature part of the last segment of the First Throne, is the completion of that. Your goal is to actually explore the rest of Hellbound, enter areas like the Steel Citadel, and your ultimate goal is to meet and fight Beleth, the biggest baddie in the game right now. So I think it will be significant. It definitely is, in terms of story, the higher-end content. And we do have a good group of roleplayers that always know the storyline and progression in that way.
Raid bosses are easily in my opinion the most important aspect of MMORPGs. Games that fall into a different genre may be more dynamic, but only here will tens and sometimes hundreds of players need to come together and work together to defeat an epic boss in a raid. Just simple getting together as many players as possible is not enough to determine your success. Players usually need to use trial and error with a number of different strategies before they can actually take down the boss. All this is done in order to test the weaknesses, come up with an effective approach and correctly coordinate players in the raid.
Over time, the concept of an “epic boss” has become rather blurred. Colossal monsters, the destruction of which requires a long preparation time, and then became just another episode from grandma’s fairy tales. Some raid bosses have already gained the “cult” status, and veterans of MMORPGs could tell you a dozen stories about those legendary fights. Fextralife's author tried to select the most powerful bosses who once upon a time, caused a burning sensation and will certainly awaken stirrings of nostalgic feelings from experienced raiders!
Haha, yea that's why I had to quit FFXI in the mid 2000s. The game had so many ridiculously long raids and fights. Not to mention the long ass NM camps w tons of gold selling bot users waiting to snatch the kill. So frustrating bc they were always there. Some were close to 24 hour camps if I remember. Some shorter. I loved the game & community, but had to walk away. Too demanding. Pandemonium is after my time.
New updates can change an MMO beyond recognition. This is exactly what happened to Lineage 2. Old school players may surely remember the heyday of Lineage 2 in times of C4 – Interlude Chronicles. Today, you will find only the outlines of that game, if you will look at the main version – Lineage 2: Orfen. The original concept of the game has been completely redesigned.
At some point – and I wonder how this happened – hardcore MMORPGs began to protect players from any gameplay difficulties. Key items that were previously difficult to receive or were made by heavy dwarvish work, became available in regular stores. The developers introduced countless instances, thanks to which players could no longer strongly influence each other. Lineage 2 has lost what made it unique – an open hardcore world in which you need to fight for any content. Moreover, the game has switched to a free-to-play system. This was the last drop for many players. Lineage 2 completely changed its audience as a gaming product.
The previous hardcore players audience hasn’t gone away. NCSOFT (the developer of the game) decided to return to what they once started. Lineage 2 Classic was released like a kind of tribute to all the good things in the game. It is not the old version of the game, but its complete rethinking with the old school mechanics and borrowing modern developments of the last years. There is nothing surprising that Blizzard took over this experience and is now developing World of Warcraft: Classic. After all, everything new is well forgotten old.
Oh! Now it all becomes clear with the WoW Classic. Nice to see good ol' hardcore making its way back into mainstream MMOs!
Personally I'm a fan of different massive online role-playing games games, but Lineage 2 might seem kinda not that old good Lineage that many people used to play ten years ago. However, its Classic version is developing and surprisingly still alive and pretty popular among NA and European players.
Lewterslounge: "This winter I found myself alone at the party: two of my best friends got children in 2017 and were busy with their families, whereas my romantic partnership wasn’t promising at all, as my fiance left for Bolonge for studies. So I decided that nothing can cheer me up better than long winter evenings spent in a fantasy world, and that is why I started looking for an MMORPG to play. I was nostalgic for the old Lineage 2, like C4 Interlude Chronicles. So I browsed through the options."
