Farlan’s Stéphane Quilichini talks about Dark and Light as the game draws closer to release
By Michael Lafferty

“DnL is a MMO that wants to bring total freedom to players, and wants to offer them the opportunity to create the MMO they imagine.”

It is billing itself as the largest massively multiplayer game and when it comes to the actual area of the world, Dark and Light is certainly at the forefront of the MMO genre.

Dark and Light has been in development for quite some time, but the massive nature of the world and the vision of the developers at Farlan have been a driving force, and intriguing proposition, that simply required the time to get it done.

The world of Ganareth is a fully three-dimensional world in which players can vie for the favor of one of the gods, fight against those of the opposing faction, build forts or farms, or even ride a dragon up into the clouds, where snowflakes tease the upper atmosphere but never quite make it to the ground.

The game is, to say the least, impressive in scope. But to know more, GameZone.com decided to go straight to the source. We were presented the opportunity to talk with Stéphane Quilichini, lead game designer at Farlan Entertainment, about this title.

Question: DnL is a huge world, seamless with massive topography. How hard was it to create a world so incredibly diverse without creating zones or encountering massive lag spikes as players traverse the terrain?

Stéphane : This is linked to two facts: on the client side, we use a procedural method to generate the terrain, which is streamed while the player moves. On the server side, there is a replica of this terrain, but all the calculations are shared between many "cells." The more gamers are connected in an area, the more cells are taking care of this area. So, the power of the server farm is adjusted geographically according to the number of players. It's a kind of "geographical load balancing."

Q: The combat in the early beta was rather spartan, at the least - very straightforward and not a lot of diversity. Now that you have settled into the SoG phase, what have been the biggest changes to the game's combat, how has it evolved, and do you have plans to take it further? Is the game wide-open PvP or are there non-PvP zones?

Stéphane: Players will experience more rhythm in combats thanks to the motion-capture integration (such as the short video produced mid February). The new skill system management allows an efficient and dynamic special attacks sequence.

Dark realm, Light realm and cities are PvE only, non PvP zones. The ten other realms are open PvP. The PvP in Dark and Light is between alignment, between Darks and Lights. PvP is not possible between Lights (versus Lights) or between Darks (versus Darks).

Q: Tell us a little bit about how guilds will work and the faction system within the game? How will the gods of the world affect the way the game plays out?

Stéphane: Nine factions in the game are connected to the nine Gods of Ganareth. Each NPC or mob are connected as well to a God. Interacting with any entity in the game automatically influences the faction statistics level.

For instance, during a quest involving NPCs, your faction must be strong enough to proceed with the quest.

Another example: You encounter mobs. You may have fight before with mobs whose god allegiance was the same as the mobs you just meet. If this happened, the mobs will attack you as you defeated other mobs whose allegiance was to the same god.

The nine factions are interacting together. If one faction increases, another decreases.

The total sum of the factions always equal to 0.

Guilds are not related to the god factions. They only depend on players’ alignment.

Q: At one time it was intimated that players would be able to settle and build houses almost anywhere in the world. Has that changed? Will there be building zones? Can players create new villages within this world?

Stéphane: Players will be able to settle and build forts and farms where they want in the PvP realms, according to a maximum number of forts and farms per barony. As soon as the quota is reached, forts will have to be attacked, farms destroyed to be able to build yours.

Individual houses and villages will be available after the release of Dark and Light.

Q: What will your server cap be in terms on player population? Will you be launching more than one server? When will the beta phase end and what is the expected launch date of the title?

Stéphane: Servers are configured to welcome around 50,000 simultaneous players at the release of Dark and Light, including, among others, more than 200,000 monsters. We will adapt the server capacity to the evolution of players in-game. As Dark and Light offers a unique world, we won’t have to manage timezone servers such as other games. The server is configured to be regularly and quickly enhanced by new cells as needed anytime.

The beta Dark and Light is planned to reopen beginning of April. Dark and Light is due to release April 27^th.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the crafting system. Will any player be able to craft? Is crafting something that adventurers/warriors can do, or will it be a class in and of itself? Is crafting on a tiered skill system, where you have to level abilities to be able to move up to create better items? How will environment affect crafting, if at all? Are crafted items better than mob drops?

Stéphane : Any player can develop his craft experience, thanks to the craft evolution axis.

To reach the following craft level, the player must have created enough objects. To do so, he must have enough experience and training to craft these specific objects. An additional skill system exists as well: if the players decided to give points to this or not, this skill system allows to optimize the speed of objects creation or training. This allows to spend less time to craft objects fo equivalent quality.

Gods and constellations affects the craft for more complex objects (quality, speed of creation) and bring a more efficient access to craft.

Each environment is linked to a God (desert, swamp etc.). Depending on the constellation of the period, if the players craft in a specific environment linked to a God, under the constellation of the God (which is cyclic), he will be granted a success bonus. This bonus can become very useful for complex objects.

Q: How extensive is the questing system likely to be at launch? How will players obtain quests and will some quests be related to faction or profession, or the like?

Stéphane : Some quests are given according to the faction, the class or the race. Around 500 quests will be available at the starting of Dark and Light. They will grow day after day.

Q:  Some of the more impressive elements of DnL occurred within the context of weather patterns. Even just flying up in the clouds and encountering snow that does now make it down to the ground was rather amazing. How does weather come into play in the game?

Stéphane: The weather does not directly interact into play in the game, but it deeply contributes to immersion and atmospheres enhancement.

Q:  The gaming industry is rife with MMOs at the moment, but the majority seem to blend together in common ideas and mechanics. How does DnL break that mold?

Stéphane: The two evolution axes (Craft XP and Fight XP) and the spirit of the game.

DnL is not quest based. DnL is a MMO that wants to bring total freedom to players, and wants to offer them the opportunity to create the MMO they imagine. We try to offer MMO players a virtual world that needs to be built, conquered and managed. It is a huge project that took longer time than planned to develop, but freedom and evolution are the main goals we have always followed while working on the project.

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