Sunday, October 27, 2013

Fanterview: Joshua

Joshua aka Flow-

Name or your preferred online alias
Name: Joshua
Online Alias: Flow-

Which country (or Country/State) do you hail from?
Canada eh? :)

What do you for work in real life?
At the moment i am in school and unemployed.

What is your favorite food?That is probably the hardest question i’ve had to answer in a while :)
Either popcorn or steak.

Favorite movies/tv shows/books?
I am typically a fan of anything that blasts your mind or contorts it in weird ways, like Inception.

Or Ironman…. because it’s Ironman :D

How did you first hear about Missing Worlds Media (MWM) and their first MMO project?
Back when CoH was up i was talking with someone who was supposedly on the Plan Z team. In about March i remembered that Titan Icon was not the only project out there, so i logged onto my Titan forums account and looked up ‘Plan Z’. I have kept a close eye and tried to participate in any way that i can ever since :)

Why do you think people should support the Kickstarter campaign for MWM’s first MMO project?
I have a few reasons:
1) I am an 8 year veteran of City Of Heroes (Keep in mind i am 16, so CoH was about half of my life). I have played 11 MMOs since shutdown and nothing fills that void, it would be nice to feel home again. The superhero genre niche needs to be filled, and i think that MWM is the perfect one to do it. So much…. Love, you can just feel it.

2) If there is something that Social Studies has taught me, it is that history repeats itself. I just finished with learning about the French Revolution. In many ways i see MWM as the spark to a revolution in gaming. City of Titans is the first MMO i have ever heard of that is being developed by not only a company without a publisher, but also with volunteers.

I think that when CoT comes out that there will be very solid evidence demonstrating that you don’t need a big corporation to push you around to make something great. It only takes a push to get the ball rolling, and judging by the press, you guys have pushed pretty hard :).
3) I find there is always a sign of care with anything that has heart and soul put into it. When something like a videogame has real passion pushing it forward, you can feel it almost holding itself together. I’m not too sure how to explain it, but when i play a game like the new Star Wars MMO, i just get this vibe of…. greed. Like they used the IP of Star Wars to farm cash from its fanbase (To any players, think about the event that happened at the end of the Foundry Flashpoint on the Imperial side).

It sounds like I am bashing SW:TOR now :) No worries, i am a big Star Wars fan and have played SW:TOR to completion on about 4 different classes. But throughout the game i couldn’t shake this feeling of a 100 million dollar time sink. The speeders for example, the flying low atmosphere starships with thousands of years of technology behind it. In the game it costs 340 000 credits for your T3 license and around 100 000 credits for the actual speeder bike. Crunching the numbers with a T3 license that improves your movement speed by 110%... that is about the speed of a bike, a regular, pedaled bike. Why not allow the player to move at 400% speed? Two words: Time sink.

With MWM, i can see the passion emanating from every orifice. On the forums i can see the devs participating in most posts and i can see there is careful consideration behind every decision, not just from a business standpoint but from a social standpoint. I just can’t help but feel this massive wave of respect for the amount of love that CoT is and probably will receive. That is the selling point for me. I can’t imagine a game breaking mechanic at launch simply because MWM has such a close relationship with it’s community. The fact that i, a regular 16 year old guy is being interviewed should be a testament to that.

What was your reaction to seeing the KS campaign explode in the first three days?
At the time when the Kickstarter hit its goal i remember just sitting here on my computer with a stupid smile on my face thinking, “Wow, this is actually happening.” After that i was just speechless and proud.

Where do you think the campaign is likely to finish at?
Hmm… i am kind of scared to guess :)

If i had to venture a guess though…. maybe 550 000?

Any specific tier from the KS you look forward to seeing reached?
I like auras :)

I know we’ve leaked very little so far about the game, City of Titans, but what are things you’d like to know about?
How customizable can the classes be? What exactly does being each class entail? Is there any slight overlap in roles? Stuff like that :)

What will be the first thing you do in Titan City when the game launches?
I would love to say do all of the story or make the perfect costume, but i would just be too excited to fight things, even in CoH i barely followed the story simply because i wanted to tell my robots to attack stuff. I will probably do the same thing i did at CoH’s shutdown, admire the city and street sweep for about 6 hours, perhaps badge hunt. :)

What feature are you most excited for in City of Titans?
The feeling of being a chess piece in a tactical game of gods.

Heroes or villains - which is more fun to play?
I like being the bad guy, the somewhat unstable martial artist that can enjoy his life the superpowered way.

In other words, rob banks! >=D

Have you witnessed any acts of heroism lately that have inspired you?
I was having some issues with physics homework the other day and so i asked the CoH community for help. 2-3 hours of help was given to me from people i had not only never met, but never even talked to. It was a very kind action and taught me a lot about what i was doing.

What is your favorite quote and why?
“Pride is like a shield. When it breaks, you’ll soon follow”

In the fight against Bacon and Chocolate who would win?
It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you eat the bacon.

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