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

ZAM: LOCO plans to be a free-to-play MMO game for all players to enjoy. What sort of monetary system will be in place, if you don't plan to charge a subscription? Will LOCO be more of an item-mall game, where players can purchase items for their characters to be used, or will you lean more towards purchasing content, like characters and new maps?

Burda:ic: As part of our gaming platform, alaplaya (www.alaplaya.net), Land of Chaos Online will feature all our usual services (registration, game client, playing, enormous support, etc) for free. Just as it is with the other games on the platform, it's up to players to decide what to buy and how much to spend on their characters, but LOCO only can live with a fair and working economy. That's why we keep always a strict eye on the pricing and the balancing of the game. Both paying and non-paying users are very important for ensuring the game is fun for everyone. In our eyes, the key to a successful F2P game is listening to the community's input about the monetary system.

ZAM: LOCO's action-based combat is something that has yet to really make it to North American markets. Interestingly, one of the biggest problems most developers run into when they bring a Korean MMORPG to North America is that Korea's internet infrastructure is faster and packed closer together than North America's. In this way, Korean developers often design their games under the assumption that players will be playing with anywhere from 10-50 ping to the hosting servers, while in North America, the average ping is anywhere from 150-300. The problem here is, obviously, with action games like LOCO, latency could pose a large problem in terms of smoothness of game play. Has Burda:ic considered this latency problem, or do you think this will even be a problem with LOCO?

Burda:ic: That's a great point, and the LOCO developer is fully aware of this "issue". Originally they planned the netcode as a P2P concept (as many Asian games do), but switched during development to a Client - Server netcode. That should be the best solution for the problem, and a complete server infrastructure for LOCO in the US is also planned to guarantee the best possible game experience.

ZAM: It appears as though much of LOCO will focus on PvP, like Guild versus Guild wars. With the eSports industry getting bigger by the day, are there any plans to host LOCO tournaments or exhibition games?

Burda:ic: A clan system is always the heart of a good game, and we plan to provide an extensive guild system from the start that lets users organize themselves, plan battles, and more. Weekly tournaments and competitions are also planned, and there may even be a special guild item mall.

LOCO is heavily focused on online PvP gameplay. Each faction does have their own NPC monsters, but they are mainly cannon fodder. A good army needs heroes, and these heroes are our users. Up to twelve players can fight each other in different game modes (6 vs. 6) at the moment, but there are more PvE elements planned as well for future patches.

ZAM: Finally, when is LOCO set to hit North America? Will there be a closed beta test, or applications to join such a beta test?

Burda:ic: Interested players can join our community right now by signing up at www.alaplaya.net, and we plan to have the closed beta in mid-2010. We are going to raffle off quite a few CBT accounts to our community, so people who are signed up on alaplaya ahead of time may have a good shot at getting one!

ZAM: And those are all the questions we have for now! Thanks so much for talking to us about LOCO - Land of Chaos Online, and we can't wait to see how it will turn out!

Burda:ic: I'm excited as well, and quite sure that our users will love it. See you in LOCO!