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"Gods and Heroes is a unique online action role-playing game that takes the gods, the creatures, the monsters, and the mythology of ancient Rome and plunges you headlong into the chaos of war, the battles for power, the jealousy of gods, and the epic struggles for greatness."

1)                  What is the major difference players should expect from the minions one is able to have in Gods and Heroes as opposed to say, henchmen in Guild Wars?

Our squad systems are very robust. First of all our minions are entirely user controllable, through a variety of means: they can be placed in different following and fighting formations; stances can be used to set their general behavior; and they can be given a wide variety of orders, from general to unit-specific.

Further, there are the three different minion roles of Infantry, Skirmisher and Spellcaster, each with a tremendous variety of minions that can be recruited and used in those units. Plus, rather than acting as a substitute for grouping, our minions are in addition to grouping. There’s a lot more, but this should give you some idea.

2)                  Will our minions start out at the same level as ourselves and level at the same time?  Or are they static level NPC’s that we need to replace with a higher level set later on down the road?

There are many different minions available in the world, including fairly common lower level ones that can be found easily in cities and towns to ones that the player must explore the game world carefully to discover, to ones that are only available as rewards for the completion of certain quests and finally to myth creature minions that will only join characters aligned with the proper god.

Minions appear at a variety of levels and will level up as they gain experience from combat in the player’s service. Their equipment can also be upgraded so even the first minion you ever hired can remain in service if you’ve grown attached to him.

3)                  Loot!  Everyone likes loot.  Is there a loot feature in the game that allows you to acquire items/money from defeated foes or will all monetary and personal assets (such as weapons/armor) come from the quest giver once the mission is completed?

Absolutely! No one likes loot more than me. Quests will certainly provide some of the monetary and items rewards, but there will also be plenty of loot in the world, both dropping from defeated NPCs and from chests. The item and looting systems are rooted in my experience on the Diablo franchise, and will be similarly robust and rewarding—you never know what you’ll get!

4)                  It has been said that there will be a banking system in Gods and Heroes.  Will there also be an auction house/bazaar type feature that allows for in game trade/sale of items?

We make it easy for players to buy, sell and trade items in game. As to auction houses, we like this feature, but we’re trying to figure out the best way to incorporate it so that we don’t get large numbers of players all gathering in the same spot, which brings performance to a crawl.

5)                  Is there collectable/trophy loot in the game?  Meaning maybe not something you would necessarily want to use but just display instead.  Such as for simple bragging rights or just because the item looks cool.  Also, with the lack of traditional player housing is there a way to display such items in camps if they do exist?

There is collectible trophy loot in the game. Some of the rarer items will be well worth bragging about. As to camps, they are essentially private player housing, except that everybody gets one, and we’re looking into making them as customizable as possible.

6)                  Let’s now move onto guilds (societies).  Will there be a limit to the number of members a guild can have in Gods and Heroes?

The sky’s the limit. If you can get a thousand guys to join your guild then by all means do it!

7)                  Will there be any type of guild hall, structure or other common area that a guild can call their own and have it recognizable as such by other players?  What other guild identification may there be?

We really want to do a lot with this stuff that we haven’t gotten to yet… We see the camp system as the nucleus of creating private instances that guilds can share and personalize.

8)                  From the available movies and the reading I have done, the combat looks great!  I have read that if the player character dies, that their minions will keep on fighting (if they are still alive at the time).  Does this allow enough time for the player character to spawn and re-join their minions in battle?

If you’re revived in place by another player character, it’s quite possible! Generally, although they will fight on, minions won’t be too psyched if their leader dies, and will disband and return to camp if he’s away from them for too long.

9)                  In one video, we see a character perform a piledriver on their enemy.  I have also read about another grappling move called “The Ladder”.  Not to mention the Minotaur who impales its enemy with its horns and then proceeds to shake him about before “flicking” its head and tossing him back to the ground.  Can we expect to have a lot of this type of “physical” interaction during combat or, are these special moves that are few and far between?

Every fightable NPC in the game has signature moves; player characters have lots of them. This is an integral feature of the game and we make extensive use of it.

10)              It has been said that a player can set allegiance to a mythical Roman god.  Also that one can fall out of favor from said god.  How far out of favor can one fall?  Is there a period of time that “your god” will not respond to you until say, you do a series of quests to once again prove your worth to your god?

That exactly right. The gods demand obedience, and will require you to perform tasks to gain standing with them and thereby the ability to call upon their powers. Donations to the various temples of your god can also help to increase your standing with him.

11)              I have read that a player can skip doing any quests until they have reached their maximum character level and then go back to do the quests.  Also, that a quest you would normally have at level two would then be scaled (difficulty wise) to the level you are now at.  This seems like a really nice feature.  If one chooses to do this, what can they expect to be doing to advance/level themselves if they are not doing quests?

We don’t actually scale the difficulty of a quest to your level—we scale the rewards down if you’ve out-leveled it. If you don’t want to follow the various quest paths, you can certainly level up by exploring the world and defeating various NPCs as much as you like.

12)              One last question.  What one part/feature of Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising stands out the most to you and makes you sit back and say “Darn, now this is cool”?

I think it really has to be the squad combat. As I outlined earlier, there are lots of parameters you can control both while setting up for battle and during a fight, the coolest thing to me though is that you don’t have to do any of that stuff if you don’t want to—if you simply wade into battle without doing any of that tricky stuff, your minions will just follow you and behave intelligently on their own, engaging enemies, using feats, defending themselves and healing each other and you as needed.

 I would like to thank both Stieg Hedlund and Chris “Binky” Launius (Community Manager Lead) for making this interview possible.  For more information on this game, please visit http://www.godsandheroes.com .  For more information on Perpetual Entertainment, please go to http://www.perpetual.com where you can also find information on the pre-production title; Star Trek Online.

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