So what are the design goals of Domain of Heroes?

JW: The biggest thing for me was the desire to have something that I could play while I worked. The way you controlled the game had to be "semi-automatic," so that I could give my character minimal instruction and have him still make progress, and it had to be low-profile so that it wouldn't call too much attention to itself, and so that people can get away with playing it at work. Normal MMORPG's can't fill those niches for me; I can't concentrate on one monitor if the other is filled with naked dancing elves and yeti attacking my dwarf.

I also wanted Domain of Heroes to be something that you could play casually, for twenty minutes at a time, and feel like you're getting somewhere. We don't want to waste a second of a player's time. You can log in and instantly start leveling, then close the game without having to worry about what happens to your character. The game isn't set up in such a way that that can be considered cheating or unfair in any way. We've also spent months and months crafting a big world with lots of characters, lots of humor, lots of fun stuff for people who take the time to read everything and try every combination. We've still got a lot to add, but it's been picking up steam. And the community adds to it, which I think is the coolest thing, and we encourage it.

AM: From a designer standpoint I've really made an effort to be completely willing to throw out any feature that isn't fun, and entertain any reasonable idea from the community. We initially set out and created a much simpler game, but when we started our limited beta, we received so much quality feedback that we felt obligated to listen and react to the community. That was the start of a pretty large redesign of everything from the UI to nearly every major system in the game.

From a technical standpoint I've been determined to create a scalable architecture that will support every player in a single world while keeping the hardware and bandwidth costs as small as possible.

JW: We have some ground rules that we're pretty firm on. It's a text-based game for starters, and that's mostly to facilitate the low-profile, no-plugin, low system spec goals, but it's not going to change. There are some graphics -- avatars, spell animations, maps -- but they don't call attention to themselves and they're mostly for flavor. I went through a period where I began to worry about that and was afraid nobody would give us the time of day because of it, but we've got a few thousand beta players and they are really into the game. As for the other goals, we just made sure we took things one feature at a time, one component at a time, and kept constantly re-evaluating the game to make sure each addition didn't pull us away from that vision.

AM: We're now on the 3rd rewrite of the server software, but this one is here to stay. Ironically the game seems very simple because it is primarily text, but we've had to innovate in many areas in order to achieve the goal of creating a browser game that requires no plug-ins, no Flash, no download, and no fast hardware to run.

What socialization options do your players have?

AM: The first thing you see when you get into the game is a chat window. There are various chat channels in the game, and the player is automatically entered into the appropriate channels... Global, Local, Faction, Guild, etc. The player doesn't have to contribute to the chat, but will start lurking immediately. Players can also trade, start/join Guilds, join Faction battles for control over land, compete on the leaderboards, and participate in the forums.

JW: They get to chat in real-time on the main game page, and the chat is tabbed off into subcategories. There are also the forums, which aren't technically all THAT removed from the game since the game itself can be run in one browser window and the forums in another. And of course they can PvP.

I notice you're a browser-based MMORPG but you're going for the micro-transaction model.

AM: Personally, I hate paying for subscriptions because I'm so busy that I don't know when I'll have free time to play. If I could pay 2 dollars a pop to play WoW, I would. With this in mind we wanted to make a game that had only one barrier to entry: an email address. We know most players either don't have money to spend, or won't play enough to feel compelled to spend, and that is okay. For the players that like the game and spend time with it, we think they'll find some of the for-purchase content compelling.

You aren't offering item sales, however. Why did you take this method?

AM: This is our big risk. We are directly going against the two major revenue streams in MMOs today: Subscriptions and Item/Currency sales. I've been calling our approach "The Three Cs", which stand for Core, Customization, and Convenience.

Core gameplay is free. We don't charge players for quests, items, or expansions. As I've said, I hate subscriptions; I also hate paying for items. Our optional content comes in the form of Customization and Convenience features. Examples of Customization would be changing the player's chat color, or giving their loot mule a name so it can appear on the Mule Leaderboard.

Convenience features are another area that players are really responding well to. Players can upgrade their inventory levels to carry more gear. This is not critical or required to play the game, but some players don't like the idea of having to sell rare items to make room. They shouldn't have to. Another feature is the option to hire a loot mule that will travel with any of the player's avatars. This provides a quick and secure means for transferring items between avatars. This came from my memories of joining a game of Diablo 2 and trying to "hide" my gear somewhere with the hope that nobody else would find it on the ground.

We hope this model will also prove to be "fair" in the sense that rich player's won't have a fundamental advantage over a free player... which is important when considering that up to 90% of modern free-to-play MMOs never make a purchase.

A big concern is that we're too lenient with what players can do for free, but if the game isn't fun or compelling enough to sell wishes, then it shouldn't succeed.

JW: I think when you are generous with your players, they are more likely to be generous with you where they are given that opportunity -- but like Aaron said, that might be wishful thinking on our part.

Do you see a future for this model?

AM: I personally would love to see this model succeed; if not in Domain of Heroes, in other games. Being so different from than the status wuo is always a scary and exciting place to be. Fortunately for us we are a self-funded independent company so we can experiment with new ideas.

JW: If it's successful, I foresee other indie shops giving it a shot, but maybe not bigger companies. If you employ thirty full-time developers, then doing things this way starts to look scarier probably. But my optimistic side would sure like to see a few other people give it a try.