Russ Brown and Cindy Bowens Talk Trion’s Upcoming Fantasy MMO, Rift: Planes of Telara

Steve has a seat with Russ Brown, VP of Development, and Cindy Bowens, Senior Community Manager for Rift: Planes of Telara, to discuss Trion’s upcoming  fantasy MMO.

The trio delve into such topics as setting Rift apart from the competition in a crowded market, the use of focus testing to refine the game’s features (and title), and how much of a role community will play in the game’s development.

[As a personal aside, I realize this may seem like an odd mixture of job titles for one interview, but Cindy Bowens is an old friend of mine (and is married to an even older friend), and I couldn’t resist bringing her along for the ride… even if I am a bit out of practice interviewing community managers.]

The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you both please introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what you do at Trion Worlds.

Russ Brown: My name’s Russ Brown, I am a VP of Development. I basically run the development team for Rift at Trion Worlds.

Cindy Bowens: I’m Cindy Bowens, I’m the Senior Community Manager for Rift.

The MMO Gamer: Now, the first thing that really piqued my interest since the last time I saw the game: Why the name change, from Heroes of Telara to Rift: Planes of Telara?

Russ Brown: That’s a good question. We actually did some focus testing, we talked to some people, we got some gamers in… and the word “Heroes” just didn’t do very well.

People were sort of like, “Well, if everybody’s a hero, then I’m not a hero!”

And that was the main thing that people were talking about; they don’t want to be called a hero, they want to earn being a hero. So we took that name out.

Then we started looking at what sort of gameplay we have, what sort of things we’re doing, and the feature that really stood out was our rifts. So we said hey, let’s call our game Rift.

The MMO Gamer: City of Heroes, take note: This is free focus testing for you.

Russ Brown: [laughing]

The MMO Gamer: Aside from the name, what else has changed since our conversation last year?

Russ Brown: The main thing that’s changed is last year we had this idea that you could be any class any time. You could swap on the fly.

Once again we did some focus testing on that, and one of the things that came back was, “Hey wait, if I can do anything, then I’m not special. Why would a guild need me, if everybody can do my job?”

So we said okay. We still want customization, we still want people to change and dabble with things, so we basically broke the class system up into “callings.”

We have Warriors, Rogues, Mages, and Clerics, right? What that does is we still allow you to have this idea of souls, but the main difference is you start with a certain soul, you pick the soul for your starting class, and that’s what you were before you died.

Then as you adventure through the game you pick up more and more souls which you can swap out. Then you decide how you want to invest into a soul, how you want it to play.

For example, when I’m playing my Rogue, I start out as a Riftblade, I believe it’s called. Classic PvP rogue. Then when I want to get some range, I’ll put a Ranger in, I won’t go very deep into it with pets, but I’ll go deep enough that I can start building up my points with melee.

So my playstyle is, “Pew pew pew,” shooting the guy from ranged, and then by the time he reaches me, he’s almost dead and I can do a finisher.

The MMO Gamer: Interesting. Two questions, and two answers that you changed something big based on focus group feedback.

Russ Brown: Yes.

The MMO Gamer: Does that happen a lot?

Russ Brown: Well, it can’t constantly happen, but in the beginning you have to test and listen to what people are saying.

One of the things that always frustrated me at other companies I worked at was we did focus testing at alpha or beta. If I’m focus testing alpha or beta, I can’t do anything. I don’t have time to react.

If I’m in beta, and I say “What do you guys think?” and they say, “Well, if you did this it’d be a lot better…” It’s like, “Great, but I can’t do that! It’s beta, we need to ship the game!”

So we had focus testing earlier to make sure that we were on the right track. And then when we work with the community, when we have our closed and open beta tests, we can sit down and iterate things with them.

The other thing we did is, we added sides. Before we didn’t have sides, we didn’t have two factions that you started with. And the reason we did that is people were saying, “You’ve got no sense of being. You’ve got no sense of he’s my friend, he’s my enemy. I like this guy, I don’t like that guy.”

It immediately gives you guys you group with. It sounds simple, but when we were just saying don’t worry about sides, it was kind of confusing people.

The MMO Gamer: Cindy, I’m sure the first question a lot of people are going to have for you is, with a game this far from release, how much of a community is actually out there for you to manage?

Cindy Bowens: Right now we’ve got a couple hundred people on our forums regularly. It’s growing exponentially, and I can’t wait to see how many we have when I go back next week.

But the thing about this community that’s just awesome, is it’s all old MMO gamers.

I put up a thread my first day there, and said “What MMOs have you played?” They’re all old EQ, old DAoC… some World of Warcraft, but it’s mostly the people who have been around for the last decade, who have played these games, know what they want, know what they like, and know what they demand from a game and from the company making it.

One of the first things I’ve tried to do is introduce them to the team, let them know what the team wants to hear from them, and that their feedback is valid, and that’s been going great.

We have a lot of well-known MMO players in the community, my first day there when I logged on there were a number of people who popped on and said, “Hey, remember me from Vanguard? Remember me from EverQuest?”

I couldn’t be happier, because that’s going to be the roots of our community.

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