Age of Wushu Exclusive Interview

Age of Wushu is set to launch tomorrow April 10th and with that in mind we sat down with some of the developers of Age of Wushu in order to gleam some final bits of info before the game sheds its closed beta bonds and steps out into open beta.

MMOBomb: You postponed the launch date of Age of Wushu until April 10th. Can you give us a little insight as to what necessitated the delay?

First, we’d like to apologize for the delay in launching the game. We did some adjustments based on players’ feedback during the Closed Beta. During this period, we polished the localization and improved the game’s UI to make it better fit North American players. We hope that our players will have a better gaming experience.

MMOBomb: Looking back, what was the most challenging thing your team had to deal with when converting this game for Western audiences?

As a game that presents Chinese culture, Age of Wushu contains very rich cultural elements. During the localization process, we have encountered various difficulties and challenges. Our localization team in both China and the US are working hard on these, trying to provide the players a gaming atmosphere with a true Chinese feel. We have discovered problems and also received feedbacks from players about the issues in the localization, and our teams are currently resolving them. Players will definitely see a better localized game at its official launch.

MMOBomb: I have heard a lot of complaints from players stemming around the game being too confusing. Not because of its complexity - which Age of Wushu certainly possesses a lot of - but due to its confusing interface. Can you elaborate on any plans you have to address these UI issues?

Improving game UI has long been the focus of our work. During this period, we worked on the UI system to make sure that the interface meets the needs of different languages and players; we are also considering a creative way of presenting interfaces, since introducing the game with a lot of text can be tiring. I believe that our players have seen our hard work and we hope that players will have more faith in us.

MMOBomb: Can you comment on the recent issue affecting World Stalls? I understand quite a few players lost items due to the daylight savings time change. What sort of compensation can players expect?

We would like to apologize for those incidents, and are now handling the daylight savings time change issues – of course we will compensate those players who suffered a loss. We have also been considering how to meet the needs of North American users in both design and technology. It is our hope that our endeavors will be recognized.

MMOBomb: Do you have any plans on adjusting who can vote for school leaders? As it stands, a player can create a seemingly unlimited amount of alts in order to apply to a certain school and then vote for the current leader in order to keep themselves in power.

We pay close attention to guaranteeing fair play in-game. We are developing a way to restrict infinite alt voting. Ideally, electing School Leaders will be based on both player skill and democracy. We will be evaluating player skills from the result of personal and group organizations, and by limiting infinite alts voting, we’d like to strengthen the effectiveness of in-game democracy. In later versions, the School Leader will be given more tasks regarding school management.

MMOBomb: Will you be launching a new server for new players joining the official launch that want to begin with a new slate?

New servers will be available based on current server status to try and give new players a fair new point to start.

MMOBomb: Age of Wushu has a large variety of events to participate in. However, these events are bound to specific times and are often unavailable for a large portion of players in particular time zones. Will you be adding or adjusting the event times in order to better serve those players?

We are currently working on a backstage event system, and via this system, maintenance team staff will be able to organize events in a flexible way. This system is now being improved and soon players will be able to see more events that fit their time arrangement.

MMOBomb: Unlike most MMORPGs which sell cosmetic items in the cash shop for permanent use, Age of Wushu has many cash shop items available just to rent temporarily. Is this something you have considered changing to meet the expectations of the western market?

Yes, changes will be made according to the habits of players in NA, and it is already in our plan.

MMOBomb: What plans do you have for expanding the PvP within Age of Wushu? Currently there tends to be a “zerg” mentality whereby individual player skill importance doesn't matter as much due to the large numbers of players.

The PvP system in Age of Wushu is quite powerful, including 1v1 and 3v3 modes. In later versions, personal skills will be extraordinarily important, and we believe the current situation will get better.

MMOBomb: Going forward after the official release, what are your plans for adding new content to Age of Wushu? Will you be working towards releasing localized updates much faster in order to bring the Western version up to speed with the Chinese release?

The development team of Age of Wushu has been working on game design, new gameplay content, and new versions. Our localization team has also been working hard to provide the North American players a localized game version. Soon there will be a new patch in the North American server which consists of two major versions in China (Hua Mountain Competition and Rage Skills). After this patch, a further patch is currently under development by our Chinese PD team, which introduces new gameplay content: Jianghu Forces. Players will be able to join different Forces in the Jianghu, and have different experiences compared to players in the schools. Beyond that, we are staring our global operation strategy in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Russia, and North America, hoping to deliver a consistent gameplay experience while adjusting gameplay, functions and interface according to the habits of various players. However, Chinese Kung Fu culture will remain the theme of the game. We are cooperating with top-level companies to improve the quality of the game, and working on the game to bring it to a high quality level.

MMOBomb: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions!