Order & Chaos: Online was hacked towards the end of 2011. In general, we wanted a very low subscription so it doesn't preventing people from continuing to play, as it can be on PC. We thought $6.99 price was a classic on iOS for such a big game. In the end the decision was made to fit the price to the device we worked on. We could have gone free-to-play with lots of IAP and no subscription at all, or high quality game price ($6.99 as with our FPSs), low subscription, or low price (99c), high subscription and so forth. What were your expectations during development? Our expectations were to become the first MMO on the App Store! Why did you decide to go down the paid with subscription route? This was, of course, a critical subject throughout the development. The game took $1 million in the first ten days after launch. So, we have to rework the priorities to ensure a good general evolution. Obviously we can't create everything at the same time. Now the difficulty is different: we have tons of ideas in terms of adding content to the game and dealing with players' requests. Overall, our work has paid off well in the year following launch - as we're still the clear iOS and Android leader. Gameloft was new on the MMO market, so we had to learn lots of things. Firstly, we has to build an entire world with so much content that it would keep people hooked for months, or years now! We know how to do that at Gameloft, but the scope was impressive The other challenge was making the game to be as technically flawless as possible for example, ping, server capacity, security, general stability and so forth. What was the biggest challenge you faced? During the core development period, there were two main challenges to overcome. The difference is that we developed our own level editor to be able to easily edit wide open worlds. We used an in-house engine that we've used on other games. Regarding the time, it was longer than the other big Gameloft games, perhaps one and half years with some design and art pre-production done beforehand. How big was the original development team and how long did it take? The core team was a little under 50 people, but there are of course far more people on the project taking care of QA, localisation, sound, and so forth. People may think about WoW because it's the most famous MMO, but it's actually the same elements that you find in older universes such as Dungeon & Dragons, Lord of the Rings and Warhammer. Then, in terms of background, we decided to build it in a known heroic fantasy legacy because we know this pleases players. It had to be as rich as any classic PC MMO, with races, classes, groups, loot, guilds, quests, rewards, trading, an auction house, PvP and so forth. In light of this observation and despite the huge technical challenge it represents, we wanted to take the opportunity to start one! How much inspiration did you take from classic games such as World of Warcraft? We've all played lots of MMOs before, but what we wanted to build was focused on the number and quality of features we wanted to fit in. So, in short, there was no real MMORPG experience on the App Store. Pocket Gamer: What was the original goal when you started developing Order & Chaos Online? Gameloft: We looked at what was on the App Store, and while there were many online games, there were only a few persistent action games. So, following Order & Chaos Online's first anniversary, we spoke to Gameloft about its aspirations while creating the game, how it dealt with the security breach, and its plans for the future. Dubbed ' World of Warcraft for mobiles', Gameloft's MMORPG has enjoyed soaring subscription rates, but with a security breach under its belt, it hasn't had everything its way. Released over a year ago on iOS and followed by Android, Order & Chaos Online has had quite a journey.
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