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pailhead: Now one question I have is, will the outcome of the war be pre-set for the Allies to win or is the outcome totally based upon the players Axis's ability to win the war?

Chris: All outcomes will be left to the actions of the players. Our infrastructure and strategic systems allow players to effect the world dynamically with persistent results. If one side takes out a bridge, for example, it'll stay down until AI convoys from that side come out and re-build it. If the attackers keep the pressure on, and interdict the convoys, that bridge can stay down indefinitely. Throw in the resource flow from cities and factories, and a side's ability to store resources, all interdict-able, well, it' makes for the most dynamic combat environment we've ever seen online. It's quite something. The outcome is totally dynamic, and all the result of player actions.

You can read the full interview here.

Server issues have been keeping us on our toes. Integrating strat and mission system stuff into the host loop has been a major undertaking. It’s becoming more and more stable as we debug the combined comm. systems and it’s looking like we’ll be able to handle a lot of players without a problem. With the sheer size of this first environment you can imagine how much info needs to be managed, all the cities, bases, their ownership, status, players, their side, country, position, velocity, damage state…it goes on and on. Now if we can only find a few extra bits laying around for convoys and signposts :)

You can read the rest of the post, and the resulting thread, here.

What will make WWII Online distinct and different from other Massive Mutliplayer games?

Sheesh... where do I start?

The carnage! On a grand scale! The game is PvP, kill or be killed, and you can do it in so many ways. :) As well the technology we are working on should allow everyone to play in one world, no shards, no zones required. The game will combine traditional sim genres, but the FPS aspect is really new. For FPS crowd they will be fighting in by far the largest MMP game world ever made, not a shoe box like most FPS games, with real visual ranges in miles instead of a few hundred feet, and real weapons with realistic ranges from a handgun to an 88mm AA/AT gun. That's our version of a BFG.

Come brothers, drool along with me.

IGNPC: Tell us a bit more about the strategic aspects of World War II online, like how to capture enemy factories and cut their supply lines. How big of an effect will destroying factories have on troops on the front lines?

John MacQueen: Well, the world is set up much like reality. Cities are resource producers that supply everything. Factories modify those resources in a few potential ways. As well inter city resource traffic occurs whenever necessary, say if the neighboring city gets leveled or is building a large capital ship. In fact the building of the capital ship will require a stream of resources that will end up being supplied by many cities. These resources travel from city to city to the shipyard by train or truck and destroying them, or knocking out bridges etc. in their path has an effect.

You can check out the rest of the interview here.

RH: I would have to say that the time/distance factor was the biggest nut to crack. You have movement rates that vary from walking speed to driving speed to flying speed. Those relate to distances to combat and time to combat that have to be balanced to keep the game enjoyable and playable. You have to ensure that none of players moving at the aforementioned rates has to travel too long to get into a fight.

Check out the rest of the interview for yourself.

My bad for sure on this one. We were fairly confident that Phase V would be ready before the end of the month, and in fact it's running here now. It's just not refined enough for release, and that's nobody's fault, it's just how fast the code goes I jumped the gun in letting that January estimate out, I made a bad call there.

The confidence here is high, and we thought the end of the month was no problem, but alas, integration of the strat system, the mission system, and map technologies have turned out to be quite a bite.

You can read the beginnings and endings of the discussion forum thread here, with Chris' post somewhere about 60% of the way down.

We're going to do everything we can to make the interfaces and basic mech