IGN: So what were the big problems with Champions of Norrath that you really wanted to fix this time around?
CW: We really wanted to optimize the engine. In the first game we had some framerate problems and we really wanted to address those. I mean, the game looks amazing. We've always been really pleased with the quality of art and the gameplay. But once you have framerate problems it really doesn't matter if the game looks photorealistic because the reviews will be bad and everybody's just not going to be happy. So we went back to the drawing board and did some optimizations in that field.
The other major area that we wanted to change was the online component. It was kind of an afterthought the first time around. We wanted to have it in there, but we didn't really have the time to do it the way we wanted so in this one we went ahead and redesigned the entire lobby. We added friends' lists, added different chat rooms and basically it's our effort to make it the online lobby that should've been there in the first title. So now players can get on really easily and we have server side saves for characters to prevent cheating. That was one of the complaints we had from the first title because players would get online and others who had used Gamesharks and things like that had amazing amounts of money and armor and it just wasn't fun.
IGN: Is there anything that you're doing this time to deal with lag that might be brought on by someone with a slower connection?
CW: You still run into issues here and there with people who might have service problems and one of the things that's new to Return to Arms is host migration. If you're playing a four-player game and the host drops, then it will just move to one of the other players and everyone else can continue to play.
