Because we can never get enough games based on ancient Roman lore, or MMORPGs with gods and half-naked warriors, here's Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. One thing we can say for certain is that Stieg Hedlund really loves the gladiator class.

You've guessed it, in this video is yet another introduction to RPG fans who always pick the grunts that can deal massive damage. The gladiator is a master of most weapons, either one-handed or two-handed. Not only can he rip enemies apart with all kinds of blades, a gladiator with battle gloves is also deadly. No gold to buy anything? Gladiators can also wrestle with all those grueling moves.

We kid you not, it seems pretty obvious who's got the biggest package in Gods and Heroes. Take it from Hedlund himself. Here's the video:

Perpetual Entertainment's upcoming MMORPG, Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, is shaping up to be a topnotch title that you'd want to invest hundreds of hours on. Not only do you get amazing spells, but also various minions to control. Like other games on the online market though, Gods and Heroes features different character classes to choose from. Design Director Stieg Hedlund found out which class is closest to his heart, and picked the gladiator.

In this video, the man Hedlund himself introduces his favorite warrior. It turns out that gladiators have good stun abilities to make your foes' heads spin, leaving them defenseless. Coupled with the god Fortuna, Hedlund's choice for the critical attack bonuses, a gladiator in the hands of someone capable can dispose enemies quickly before they can even act.

 

What we have below is an interview video about MMO video game Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. It features Design Director Stieg Hedlund from development studio Perpetual Entertainment as he discusses the title's "Minions" feature and how these can be customized to fit any player's style of play.

Think of Minions as your very own party while wandering around the ancient city and nearby areas. According to Hedlund, there are many ways to obtain Minions. Some of these guys will join you simply by giving them money while some others will require you to perform quests first before they render their services to you.

It's quite a simple feature but it can get very complicated if that Minion you are trying to obtain is playing hard-to-get. To know more about this feature, just watch the video clip below. Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising is currently in closed beta testing and Perpetual Entertainment currently still have open slots for those who want to participate.

It's the question many will ask when they try out a new MMORPG, or any other gamer for that matter - what makes this so special? What makes this hack-'n-slash deal so different and special compared to the other guy's hack-'n-slash deal?

And so began GamersInfo's interview with Gods and Heroes' Stieg Hedlund, a veteran of titles like Diablo II. The interview began with Hedlund's view on the game's unique trait - that it followed mythology rather than fantasy. As Hedlund explains on the difference of these terms:

Certainly, the fantasy settings borrow considerably from mythology, but what we’ve created is a world that distinctly embodies the Roman mythos as well as their history. Of course we've made some changes for the sake of entertainment, such as the marrying of myth and history and a few anachronisms, but at the same time we’ve done a tremendous amount of research and remain quite faithful to our source material.

Moving on with the interview, Hedlund also explained in depth the game's specific strengths such as its immersive PvP system. That, and the the squad system that - among other things - is a historical reference to Rome's reliance on team tactics to beat the odds (Read: Testudo). These two feature were the highlights that Hedlund hopes to make the game's immersion unique.

On that note, Hedlund promises that there's something to do for every level for this game. For the low-level guys, that means a whole lot of quests and battle for their tier. For mid-level gamers, a little bit of PvP'ing and levelling. And for the guys who hit the end-game mark, the game shifts to a more story-oriented setting, their days now geared for building up the game's central story.

As expansions, players can expect each to be something in the lines of "Who're we declaring war against next?" with the expansion meant to expand to new civilizations and cultures to help move the game' immersiveness forward. Also expect new treats for the PvP-savvy, though there are no details on this yet.

For now, a toast to the game's release, and as for a beverage, Hedlund makes this choice, as did the devs:

Caecuban wine, clearly—Falernian wine is not as smooth and it’s more full-bodied than Alban wine—but that vintage is pretty hard to find these days. You could simulate it with a modern wine from the slopes of Vesuvius such as Lacryma Cristi Mastroberardino—2001 is a good year.

Apparently the Diablo II reference we used in the last Q&A was dead-on accurate, or at least a very interesting co-in-a-dinky: Stieg Hedlund also worked on the Diablo series as a designer. Anyway, that's one of many things he tells Ace Gamez about Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. And many of the many things he told them, he told the Game Musketeers, so we won't touch on those, But he did reveal a few details about PvP, though.

Although we did see more-or-less mano-a-mano PvP in a previous trailer, it's the full-on squad-on-squad PvP, with players accompanied by their minions, that helps define what this game is about and sets it apart from, ahem, WoW (you know, made by Blizzard, which also made the Diablo series Stieg used to work for, co-in-a-dinkally).

There will be squad-on-squad PvP - simple enough - but the full-on arena battle royale, well Stieg says Perpetual Entertainment cannot promise that at launch because they want to perfect it. Interestingly enough, as the game progresses so too will the PvP. With the first expansion to Gods and Heroes, Stieg reveals that they'll throw in a second culture to play as (er... Gallic? Or somewhere closer to home?), and Nation-vs.-Nation. Maybe we will get our wish to, at Maximus' signal, unleash hell.

Expect minimal voice acting, along the lines of flavor and SFX, but dialogue will be text-based. "It's hard to deliver that experience to multiple users at the same time and instead there's this cacophony where all the things that might've been minor issues in the recording are now exaggerated and multiplied." Also expect a traditional, subscription-based model to log into and play the game.

Perpetual Entertainment's Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising's NPC squad-centric gameplay system should prove quite interesting. You know, like a Necro raising an army of anatomically-correct skeletons in Diablo II and making them do all the hard work. Anyway, back to topic: game lead design director Stieg Hedlund reveals to The Game Musketeers how this squad-centric approach shaped many aspects of the game.

With, first of all, story. Its Roman Republic setting was a conscious decision by the devs because of the squad-centricity. (a) Warfare in ancient Rome was centered on the Legion and, drilling down to the lowest levels, the squad. (b) Republic, partly because all that pre-Empire turmoil gave any landed citizen of Res Publica Romanorum (did I get the Latin right?) the reason - or excuse - to recruit a squad and bear arms.

Then there's the MMORPG's equivalent of housing and amenities. Or in this case, the Camp. Each player gets his own camp, says Stieg, where he can visit his NPC squad members (Stieg calls them "minions"), and outfit and setup his boys for war. Perpetual has plans for larger, guild-level ("tribe") housing. On to the minions themselves.

Minions will act very reasonably on their own, and many commands are very easily done as well. We don’t want players to have to micro manage their minions, but give them standing orders and then call special unit feats from time to time to get them out of tough situations.

Squad combat is a very important mechanic in GnH. You get a minion early on and your squad becomes larger as the game goes on, to a maximum of eight. When you form a group with other players, you can have five group members so that group with full squads is 45 characters, which is a small army. Epic battles are certainly one of the big payoffs of the system, and we’re presenting some very cool scenarios that showcase that.

Rather interesting. Although, technically speaking, 45 Legionnaires of Ancient Rome wouldn't compose a "small army," but rather a very-small Century (something like the platoon of the Ancient Roman Army), but that's just this writer's historical nitpicking. It would be interesting to see massive PvP battles of rival armies or Legions, don't you think, Perpetual? Wait a minute, this game's not at the Roman Civil War yet...

Still counting down the days 'til Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising comes out? Or have you become resigned to the extent that all you're even wishing for right now is a Beta test version release?

Well, while we can't really do anything about that (much as we'd want to just ship the freaking game to stores already), we do have something that could possibly ease the pain of waiting...an arena-full of info for the upcoming Roman-themed MMORPG. Why settle for dwarves and elves and spell-casting when you can battle it out gladiator-style in ancient Rome?!

Anyhoo, Gamespot was able to score an interview with the game's design director Stieg Hedlund, and according to Hedlund, the game is now currently in the preliminary stages of a beta test and their focus right now is to get the classes, minions, and quests all geared up and ready for launch. That's gotta be good news, right?

In a quick Q&A with Design Director, Stieg Hedlund, several details were revealed about Perpetual Entertainment's upcoming Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Here are some of the more interesting bits from it:

As far as the Action Combat System goes, the Design Director says that it will be a hybrid between standard point-and-click MMO systems and console fighting games. He says that they're continuing to fine tune the system and that when it is already fully tested, it should provide players the best of both worlds. Anymore details would be telling, or so he says.

He says that at ship they plan to have around the usual PvP stuff you expect from MMOs. Dedicated servers, standard duels, all that. However, he does add that they've got big plans for the future. For one thing they're working on an area fighting system with a full lobby and a ladder system that can work around cheating like fight throwing and other such dastardly deeds. He says that it will be part of the end game content. They also plan to include other nations in future content releases such as the Carthaginians and the Germanic Tribes.

When it comes to the minion system, he says that there are three main types of minions: Infantry (hand-to-hand fighters) Skirmishers (ranged fighters) and Spellcasters (who obviously cast spells). Early in the game you can only have a single minion in your squad, but later on you can have as many as eight. Squads can contain three units, a unit being any number of minions of a particular type, so the mix of units that your squad is made up of becomes strategic as well. Well, Romans do love their slaves after all.

He goes on to say that the maps in the game have stuff to offer people on both sides of the instanced maps issue. He says that there are 26 areas in the public world, each of which is about two square kilometers plus the instanced areas. Good thing that multiple modes of quick transportation are available so players don't have to hoof it all the time.

As expected, the interview ends with the Director saying why we should go out and get this game. Well, since you guys are probably used to hearing that already, we're not putting that part up here. Anyway, we'll update you when we get more details about this game.

The upcoming MMO, Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising is really something to watch out for, specially for those history and mythology buffs out there.

According to Stieg Hedlund, Design Director of Gods and Heroes, this game fuses history and fun. In it you will see the Colosseum, as well as the infamous Medusa. In fact, developers even made an effort to make the map as accurate as possible. Neat, eh? It's like going on a Roman history tour, with a twist.

In this game, players get to have a lot of freedom with character customization feature. According to Hedlund, "In our game, when you equip a breastplate for example, the asset first checks to see if it's for a male or female and then it checks your body type. After this, it then displays the asset depending on those characteristics, thus the male and female equipment, while similar in looks, is actually two different assets!"

Hedlund adds that Gods and Heroes runs on SLI-based machine, so we could expect a one-of-a kind gaming experience with that kind of horsepower.

Gods And Heroes: Rome Rising will be different in several ways from other MMORPG's. Part of this involves what are called "minion" and "tribe" systems. These seem to be analogous to the guilds and clans common in other MMORPG's, but will operate slightly differently. In a recent interview, Stieg Hedlund explained some of  these differences and how they work.

"The minion system is one of our most crucial systems in the game," Hedlund says. "[We gave] the players as much, or as little, control as they wanted.

"Minions are broken in to three sub-groups, Infantry, Skirmisher, and Casters. This allows you to issue commands to individual groups and essentially micro-manage each sub-group of your minions. In these sub-controls you can independently set varying levels of aggression, agro radius, and even what they should be doing.

"If you don't want to deal with these sub-groups or micro-management you can just issue orders from the main commands and they will respond accordingly. Of course if you just set them to an aggressive behaviour, you might find yourself in a few more fights than you originally anticipated!

"As far as the maximum number of minions you can have in your camp goes, we're playing around with some numbers, but really it won't be decided until we get into beta and we see how people respond to the minions we have implemented."

Most MMORPGs have guild systems. In GAHRR, these are called "tribes." How do these compare to traditional guilds?

Hedlund says: "Our tribe system (guilds) is not unlike most guild systems in many other games.  Right now tribes have many of the standard features like a ranking system, full-featured control for officers, tribe-chat, and we're even talking about adding some additional tribe features to help us stand head-and-shoulders above the norm. It shouldn't be too unfamiliar to those experienced with other guild systems."