RTS MMO gaming is a new segment in the MMOG market.  Saga is a unique submission that will offer the MMORPG and RTS enthusiast an alternative to the standard Fantasy 1st person / 3rd person MMO games that have saturated the market.

Produced by the independent studio of Silverlode Interactive, Saga seeks to allow the gamer a persistent world into which they can build a massive empire.  Saga is currently in open-beta and thus Jason Faller took the time to answer some questions concerning the ongoing development and progress of Saga.

Let's read what he had to say:

For those not familiar with your RTS MMO please give a brief history about your current project: Saga

SAGA got started in 2003, on a jetplane coming back from Canada. The original concept was that tabletop games like Warhammer or Magic: The Gathering seemed to be brick-and-mortar versions of RTS games. The same strategic maneuvers, the same massive battles with hundreds of troop units; RTS games are simply a virtual extension of what has been done for years on tabletop; with one major exception: collectibility. A lot of the fun of playing tabletop games is collecting the game pieces. Essentially, we thought "why wouldn't that work for an RTS?" The other source for inspiration came of course from the MMO games out in the market, such as Everquest and WoW. We saw that RTS could benefit hugely from the same persistency and long-term character-building that MMOs offered. In fact, these elements are even more important to a strategy game, where realism is at a premium. Traditional RTS games become quite unrealistic, in that you build a city and army, amass resources and then throw it all at your opponent and try to win the battle, even at the expense of a total loss of all buildings, resources and troops. In SAGA, you build your cities and lands slowly over time, every battle is just a battle within the wars, the big picture really counts, and the better you play, the better you progress in building your empire.

Another key development was the decision to keep battle separate from resource-collection and city-building in SAGA. This is another unrealistic traditional RTS element. When in a battle, the last thing you should be worried about is chopping lumber or increasing your peasant population. In Saga, the persistent world allows for a separation of empire management and battle. Empire management is still key to your ability to win in battle, but the actual decisions for managing your cities and lands is left for the periods between battling. SAGA battles are won by strategy and preparations before the battle, not by amassing the most gold or wood or food or buildings DURING the battle.

One last event in the history of SAGA early development was deciding to go with a traditional fantasy theme: elves, orcs, dwarves, giants, dragons etc. We decided that this was the best way to launch a new genre. There's enough new about SAGA that we wanted to at least keep the setting familiar to players.

What was the driving force behind the creation of this RTS MMOG?

I'm a huge RTS fan. So the driving force would have to be to make my dream RTS: an RTS that is online persistent MMO. Lately, I've sort of taken up a crusade in general to transform the RTS into MMORTS, the same way RPG has turned into MMORPG. I think RTS hasn't fundamentally changed since its inception, and fans are looking for the next-gen RTS. (laughing) I guess the driving force is that I want a more exciting and realistic strategy game!

With an emphasis on RTS action, what features will Saga use to attract the
MMORPG 'purist'?

I think one way of looking at it is that SAGA has a lot in common with an MMORPG, where your nation is your character, your troops and buildings are your equipment, and your guild is... still your guild. In addition, you are doing a lot of things that you do in an MMORPG. You still go on quests with your friends against mobs to get treasure and better gear (but in SAGA, you have a whole army to outfit with new weapons and armor etc). You still work the markets for good deals and try to trade or purchase your way to upgrades. You still fight PvP with opponents, especially those of your opposing faction... I think the MMORPG player will have a great time with SAGA. Imagine you had a whole army of WoW characters to command in a battle, and that you could build cities and fortresses in WoW. That's what we are trying to accomplish with SAGA.

 

Now that your beta is in full swing how has development been progressing?

Beta's going great, we're finding all the bugs and balancing and rebalancing gameplay, and the players are loving it. They're buying booster packs of troops (this is the optional payment that SAGA uses as its revenue) at an astounding rate considering this is just Beta. We still have a way to go in terms of completed game content and are still adding to the feature set, so we'll be in Beta for a while still. Our servers are stable with only an occasional hiccup, which we are very pleased about. We're learning a lot from the Beta players. Saga's getting better every day.

With the information gathered in beta, what difficulties have been your biggest obstacles.

The first week was rough, with server disconnects and significant bugs. We had thousands of players pouring in in just the first couple of days, and we learned a lot about server loads very quickly. But we fixed the problems and have been more or less stable since. Other than that, the only 'difficulty' has been reading the thousands of posts on the forums, and responding to player feedback. Our team is excited to keep moving ahead, and we feel that Beta is going extremely well.

What has been the most rewarding part of creating the world of: Saga?

(laughing again) I'd have to say that after years of work, the biggest reward is to finally have a community playing the game. It's fun to develop the game internally, but the real satisfaction comes from seeing a game community having fun playing your creation and contributing to it. I can't wait for the full release.

What has been the benefit of using a RTS game model to create your MMO World?

RTS has traditionally been the biggest genre of PC gaming (in 2004, RTS was 27% of the PC market, and RPG was only 10%) but has recently been overtaken by MMORPGs. I think this shift toward online persistent gaming will take place in RTS games as well, and when it does, RTS will again be the dominant form of PC game. So, using the RTS model, as you say, for our MMO world just seems like a good choice, and is far preferable to competing with the MMORPG market  where there is such steep competition.

As an independent developer and publisher what freedom has this given you in content creation and gameplay?

Total freedom. It's been fantastic to make SAGA without any corporate interference. We are able to take player feedback and directly apply it to SAGA to make it the ultimate persistent RTS. We've been able to take risks that non-indies would never take. None of the big studios are making MMORTS at all, because it's a market they can't push through their sales and marketing teams, who are stuck in the past. I doubt any big publisher would have allowed our current revenue model, where players can play for free without any subscription. We're very happily independent.

In your opinion, what is the most compelling reason for the RTS and MMOG crowd to join: Saga?

I think it's the persistency. Players can build an empire and have a real sense of pride in their armies and their cities. Imagine Age of Empires had fully persistent lands that grew slowly over time, where your battles actually counted for something in the big picture, and players had a real community to play in. SAGA has the next generation of RTS, and players are ready for it.

For more information concerning Saga
Please visit them at: Saga Website

Average user rating