By Mark Rollins

Call of the Warlords, an exciting graphical strategy browser game from Gamalocus, has produced a PC game sequel. This came, called Call of the Kings: The Mirror Black, has been in development for a long time, and is described as a hybrid strategy MMOG. We tried to find out as much about it as we possibly can while talking with Lars Nielsen Lead Design.

MPOGD: Call of the Kings: The Mirror Black is described as a hybrid strategy and role-playing game. Considering that strategy gamers and role-playing gamers tend to like one or the other type of gameplay, how will Call on the Kings appeal to both styles?

Lars: Call of the Kings is a Real Time Strategy game that focuses on Player vs Player combat. Unlike classic RTS games the RTS element is applied to army movement, espionage, diplomacy and estate improvement and not tactical troop movements and resource gathering. You might say that the game style is closer to computer games like Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic and board games like Stratego and Junta than RTS games like Command and Conquer or Warcraft.

The gaming sessions in the release version of the game consist of two distinct types. The player has the main family of his noble house engaged in the Khadorian Empire where the game flow spans over 3-5 months and thousands of players participate. A few 5 minute logins per day to update your estate, move armies and cast votes on global politics will be sufficient to sustain your influence on the game outcome. In the meantime and when you have the time to spare, you can send distantly related families of your noble house into the colonial frontiers where the game sessions will keep you occupied for 1-5 hours of swift strategic warfare against 6-100 other players.

The First Beta will only include the fast paced colonial Frontiers and not the slow paced Khadorian Empire.

There is as much or as little roleplaying as you wish to make of it. The world is rich in politics, intrigue and subterfuge and it supports many different play styles. Even the small players can win if they are part of the kingdom that completes one of the endgame victory conditions. Ultimate territorial domination is not the only goal of the game. There are several subgoals that will earn you victory points for the family. That includes such things as having the most underground headquarters, the most trade routes, the largest navy, destroying most dungeons etc. There are also plenty of opportunities to improve your family and customize your heroes as they gain experience, new abilities, magic laws and enchanted items.

MPOGD: I noticed that you actually get to play five characters instead of the usual one in MMORPG. Was it easy to come up with an easy-to-use interface so that one player can work multiple characters?

Lars: You will not be able to move your heroes through the world in third person view like in the MMORPGs, so the interface does not have to handle the simultaneous control of your heroes like if it was a RPG party. The heroes are the tools in the strategy game that allow you to move armies, cast spells and extort taxes from your peasant minions. The heroes can be customized and gain experience like in RPGs, but we have placed most of the player identity in the Family. The Family is the truly persistent entity in the game with its heritage, family skill masteries, heroes and retainers.

MPOGD: I noticed that your site has stated that the game is persistent and "will continue even if the player is not playing". Does this mean that it is all up to strategy, and certain battles will rage on without any direct interference from the user?

Lars: All games are persistent meaning that you can login and out as you please but the battles rage on. Your families are also persistent meaning that their heroes and family skill masteries are carried over from one game to the next.

You can be attacked while offline, but in the slow paced Khadorian Empire you can plan many hours ahead, and there is usually time to react adequately on hostilities, unlike in the faster frontier games where your holdings can crumble under coordinated enemy attacks within minutes. Thus you will not voluntarily log out of an unfinished frontier game, but if your boss stops by, the laundry needs to be done or the computer crashes you will still be able to login later and resume control of the estate.

All families start in a stronghold with an initial piece of land. The stronghold can never be destroyed nor conquered by enemy players. So even after the worst onslaught by fierce merciless enemies you will still have a base for your family to return to the game with a vengeance. Slain heroes can be resurrected by your priest heroes within a time limit or at the end of the game. Only old age can permanently kill your heroes.

MPOGD: After episode 5 there will not be a linear storyline, but will be created by the players. Does that mean that everything, including the lands, peoples, etc. will be player-created? How will that work and will it strain on your server?

Lars: The episodes 1-5 are single player and cooperative games that introduce the player to the game features and background story in a "safe" environment. After episode 5 the players are released into the competitive world of politics and conquest. The world geography is predetermined, but town ownerships, dungeon and mine locations, alliances, npc hostilities will change as a result of player actions.

In the final version of the game we will also have a game of global politics where the families in the Khadorian Empire can propose new Conventions in the Imperial Council for all players to vote upon. These conventions will be able to change the game logic and determine the Imperial definition of right and wrong in all the games.

MPOGD: You supply the names for the characters. How will you insure it so that you can fill the demand? So that there is no names like "Tudor877" and such?

Lars: The players will be able to select an alias for themselves and their noble house of families. The only restriction is that we do not allow obscenities, numbers or special characters in the alias.

We created a random fantasy name generator for our old browser game Call of the Warlords and there will be plenty of appropriate names to select from when naming families, heroes and even new kingdoms. Duplicate hero names are allowed and they are not a big problem, as they can still be identified by their family name and player alias.

MPOGD: Is this a game that one can play solo, or is it like other MMORPGs where you have to fight in groups in order to achieve certain aspects of gameplay?

Lars: There are ways to solo the games. How much you cooperate with other players is entirely up to you. However the games are won collectively by the kingdom team structure, and while you can be alone in your own kingdom having plenty of fun hunting for items, improving troops and heroes, improving your estate or stealing from the rich, you will have a very hard time competing against the larger kingdoms in the war for the Imperial Throne. You can also be part of a large kingdom and abstain from team play. All kingdoms through history have had their share of black sheep.

MPOGD: Considering that this game has a huge timeline, can a user use his or her heirs to "create offspring". Will this mean the army can multiply by natural reproductive means?

Lars: Yes, the families will produce new heirs as the old heroes die from old age. The chances of getting new offspring depend on the race of your family and a fertility skill mastery. A typical Goblinoid family will have 6-8 noble heroes that last only a few games, while the Elves will have only 3-4 noble heroes, but they will last many games. So if you prefer powerful heroes instead of a larger strategic reach then you will choose an Elven family over a Goblinoid.

Matchmaking and weddings are not supported in the first versions of the game, but grand weddings as a means of strengthening alliances and political influence (and improving assassination attempts on the wedding guests) are on our wish list for future add-ons.

MPOGD: Your magic system promises more than just a bigger magic gun to take out an opponent, but a whole city. What is the system of that like? Do players have to earn magic points to cast "more powerful" spells?

Lars: The "magic" available to the players are based on several categories. Examples are the true magic schools like the Law of Fire, Law of Spirit, Law of Rituals, Law of Earth etc. Other professions also use the magic system to gain additional options. This includes the Code of Assassins, the Art of War and the Way of Nobles. If a hero knows one of these categories he potentially knows all the spells in that category. However to cast spells the hero must spend mana and the mightiest spells will cost amounts of mana only obtainable by high level heroes. Mana is regained quite slowly making the time interval between high level spell sufficiently large.

MPOGD: Diplomacy and subterfuge play into this game a lot, that it is not all battles and war. Do you think a player could win if he or she just used diplomacy and never raised a weapon? That would certainly be how we would want the real world to work.

Lars: The players in a kingdom win as a team and while individuals in the kingdom may be focusing on economy, trade routes, gathering intelligence, using covert ops, hunting items etc. the expansion of the kingdom will depend on the ability of the kingdom to either conquer strategic locations and towns or to intimidate enemies into becoming vassals. So just like in the real world there can be players who never raise a weapon in battle, but their taxes still fund the military of the standing armies and their intelligence may still be guiding the arm that wields the sword.

MPOGD: With quests to find certain items, will this be the door missions that you see in most MMORPGs?

Lars: Quests will not be enabled in the beta, but when they are added, they will in some ways be similar to standard missions as seen in most MMORPGs. Emissaries from different Imperial NPC factions will present themselves at the player's court and ask that the player finds and destroys bandits, constructs certain buildings or just solves a dispute between multiple factions by supplying funds or a weighted answer. However by being a competitive strategy game there will ALSO be many quests where the quest targets are the holdings of other players. And we all know that live players make more challenging opponents than 8 rabbits, 12 kobolds or 5 fungal mushrooms.

MPOGD: As far as science and industry, how far will this game go? Someone who gets a machine gun could seriously turn the tide. However, I am assuming this will stay with magic/fantasy style technology, am I right?

Lars: Yes, we stick to medieval fantasy technology. Hopefully we will not be upsetting game balancing too much with our Gnomish Caterpillar Warmachines, but that is for the beta testers to tell us.

MPOGD: I saw a Pirate Nation on the map. You planning on have a little pirate game in here?

Lars: I have always loved the Pirate games. But while we will have no swashbuckling cannon ball sprouting buccaneer frigates, there will be plenty of ships available to fight naval battles and carry troops. One of the 10 available family heritages is the Sailor Heritage that gives your family better ships, good trade income and increased effect of pirate raids when plundering the countryside around towns from the sea.

MPOGD: Call of the Kings certainly has much potential for lots of action, strategy, intrigue, on a massive scale. Considering that players help create much of the game, we look forward to seeing this world evolve in the next few years.

Lars: Thank you. Yes, we have been blessed with some very dedicated fans from the old Call of the Warlords browser game, and they have been helping us immensely with suggestions and critique along the way. Being a very small team of developers with minimal funds available to us, we have been through some very tough and dark stretches in the development and production. The old veterans have been our main motivators the last few years and without them we would probably not have been able to come this far with an independently developed MMO.