In this interview, Burda:ic reveals some key information about their upcoming MMORPG, Land of Chaos Online (LOCO)

ZAM: Could you tell us about a few of the thirty unique characters that will be available in LOCO, or perhaps some of the team favorites or some of the more interesting characters in LOCO?

Burda:ic: We mostly abandoned classical hero ideas like elves or dwarfs. The characters of LOCO are absolutely individual and unique. As I mentioned earlier, each character has his-or-her own motivation for why they have joined the battle. "Atin," for example, is searching for the one who slaughtered his clan. "Octavian" was sent out on a mission by his church to find why the evil forces are moving toward the Thunder Mountains. Players can find more interesting stories and information about the first twelve characters in the Book of Heroes here (www.loco.alaplaya.net/chronicles). The skills and abilities of all the heroes are very different, so users have a lot of possible combinations to choose from as they build a party.

ZAM: The thirty unique characters to choose from seems to suggest that LOCO's game play will be similar to "room-based" MMOs, where players can join different games and choose their characters at the start of each game. Is this the case with LOCO? If so, how will character progression take place?

Burda:ic: Character creation is the core of the whole game. Users can equip characters with unique weapons and items in the global part, but at the beginning of a match everybody has to start from scratch. During the match, users gain more and more experience by killing monsters, conquering strategically important stations, etc. With this experience, they can gain more levels and unlock the use of equipment chosen before the match.

There are two different level systems. One is a global one (current max level 30) that mainly affects the user's ranking and the other one is a temporary, in-match level. Maximum level for a match is level 17, and this is divided into several sublevels (1, 5, 9, 13, 17). Once a character has reached one of these sublevels, he-or-she is equipped with the items the user chose before the battle.

ZAM: Your character design and in-game graphics are impressive, to say the least! Some would say, however, that LOCO seems to be leaning more towards "cartoony" graphics than realistic graphics - were there any reasons behind choosing this artistic style over others?

Burda:ic: It was always the goal of the creative team from Danal to develop something unique and special. They didn't want LOCO to be too serious or too childish. The tone of the game should appeal to everyone, and this distinctive style has definitely seemed to work.