(DISCLAIMER: The developers at En Masse Entertainment have enabled TeraHispano.com to share this information from the FGT2 with the community. Keep in mind that any of the information found here is subject to change as the game continues to develop.).

Greetings from TERAHispano, Jason! Recently E3 finished – how was the experience?
It was a fantastic experience for TERA and En Masse, and for me personally, as well. We went to E3 hoping to get TERA on the radar of as many gamers as possible, and judging by the quantity and quality of coverage after the show, I’d say we succeeded! It’s great to be part of such a caring and dedicated team with an ever-growing community and fanbase—I consider it a personal achievement.

You are En Masse Entertainment’s Community Director. Would you mind explaining to us what a Community Director does?
A lot of game companies (and other companies) have Community managers, but En Masse has gone a step beyond that and hired someone at the director level to think about community engagement more strategically. Community is such a new field in Marketing and Communications that companies don’t necessarily know where to put it—under public relations, or marketing, or even production? In reality, Community overlaps with all of those things. It's a great fit for me because of my unique background. I was doing community work as part of PR, and I was a gaming enthusiast before we were even calling it “community management”—it was just “talking to the fans on a budget” back then!
My job here at En Masse is to work with the PR, Marketing, and Web directors to ensure that our strategies are all designed to work together toward a common vision, that the stuff we do in Community fits in with all of the company's initiatives, and most importantly, that it’s fun for you guys. If I had to summarize my job in one sentence it would be this: think about all the times I’ve been involved in communities and thought “holy crap, wouldn’t it be cool if they did this,” and then make this a reality here at En Masse for the TERA community.

How was your experience working with Xbox 360? What are the differences between that company and En Masse?
My experience with Xbox 360 was as part of a PR agency, which is always a different relationship than being internal at a company—agencies are vendors, and I worked for other clients, so 100% of my time wasn’t devoted to Xbox. That being said, it was a really great experience for a lot of reasons: Xbox is on the cutting edge of console gaming right now, and a lot of what they’ve done is rippling out across the gaming industry (achievements anyone?). Going from a gaming startup to the world’s largest privately held PR agency working for the world’s largest software developer is quite a change too, as you learn how to adapt to the processes and methods of a big business. These are helpful experiences and tools to bring with you when you return to a gaming startup as I’ve done.
Apart from working on TERA, a great game, the attraction of En Masse is that the company is small enough—and daring enough—that the marketing team (including Community) has a lot of latitude to do some really cutting-edge stuff.



You are, I think like all of us, a game player. What are your Top 3 favorite games, and what game are you currently playing?
Top three: the Civilization series (including Alpha Centauri, which any Civ fan counts as part of the series), the Quest for Glory series, and the Wasteland/Fallout series. I was involved in the Fallout community for a long time several years ago. I’m playing a lot of TERA right now, and at home I’m working my way through Red Dead Redemption, which becomes more and more awesome the more I play it.

Some of the old forum users have expressed discomfort with new users who are spamming the forums. In short, they said: more moderators, less spam. Are you considering including more moderators in the official forums as the TERA community grows?
We’ve actually added more moderation staff within the last week, so hopefully their vigilance is already evident! It’s a really good thing that we’ve got so many community members, and I think it’s helpful to understand that we were all noobs once, and that sometimes new members’ enthusiasms can outweigh common sense and use of the search function. New members and active conversations are never a bad thing as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s experience.

Sam Kim noted in his TERAHispano interview that each race has its own home but currently all players start on the Island of Dawn, and Dave Noonan said the Island of Dawn is the first mystery the players will face. Could we say definitively that the Island of Dawn will be the initial starting zone for all races?

Yes.

Sam Kim noted “one weapon for each class.” Will there be more than one weapon for every class, for example will Archers be able to use a bow and a crossbow?
The plan for TERA’s launch is exactly as Sam said: one weapon per class. Archers would only use bows in your example. Additional weapons would come at a later time if we decide to go that route.

Will you offer payment options other than credit cards or prepaid cards?
We don’t know at this time, but obviously we’ll want to offer people as many options as is feasible.

Will we be able to equip helmets?
Not in the current build of the game, no. Maybe in the future!

Previously you’ve said TERA would be released “next winter.” Now the new release date is “2011.” Can we triangulate this to say TERA would be released in Q1 of 2011?
We’d much rather release a polished and complete game that’s up to our rigorous standards than rush it out the door. So with that said, TERA will release in 2011.



Argons are described as the real enemy for all TERA races, and high-level content. Will they only be in the underworld? Will they attack cities? Will they be an active enemy, or high-end raid bosses only?
Argons won’t just sit around in their dungeons waiting for adventurers to come and kill them. They’re much more insidious than that, and they have a whole host of minions to do their dirty work for them.

Concerning equipment: will I be able to get the same high-end items from mobs/raid bosses and from crafting?
The current plan is to make the highest-end items exclusive to raid boss drops, but crafted items can come very close to these high-end items. We’ll talk more about the crafting and enchanting systems soon, and get more in-depth about what exactly that means.

Will there be in-game events? If so, which kind?
Most certainly. A big part of my role with the company is to plan in-game events, which will range from cool one-off events for individuals to big (even server-wide) group events. I’ve got some good ideas (in my humble opinion, anyway!), but I'd love to hear suggestions. If you’ve always thought to yourself “I really wish an MMO game would do this as an event," then hop on our forums and tell us!

Some users are worried about the jumping action. How are you going to avoid those users who will continuously jump in combat, say in PVP?
Jumping won’t be so beneficial that people will be able to take advantage of it in that way. In the words of one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets:
“You've got to roll with the punches and get to what's real / Can't you see me standing here, I got my back against the record machine / I ain't the worst that you've seen / Can't you see what I mean / Ah, might as well Jump.”

Brian Knox said recently that En Masse is working on a way to increase skills with skill points. What happens if a player makes a mistake assigning skill points? Will the player be able to back out or do it over?
We’re still testing this for balance. I expect that whatever the final system is, we’ll have internal safeguards for this sort of thing, which ought to please the min/maxers out there.

Thanks for your time Jason! Any last comments for the TERA Spanish community?
As always, it’s a pleasure speaking to you guys! If anyone out there is planning to attend San Diego Comic-Con, be sure to come to our community event there as we’ll be doing something really cool—and previously unseen by anyone outside of our offices!