I've been browsing through some old interviews with Luca Pancallo and found two of them to be fairly interesting. Perhaps other forum viewers will enjoy a little refreshment.
A couple of notable quotes from the
First Interview Erik - A mmorpg is probably the most complex piece of software ever, is a team made by volunteers enough to build it?
Luca - That's a good question, and surely one of the most important aspects on which I work and brainstorm often to ensure things are going into the right direction. The responsiveness from developers is overall quite good, but dealing with a community of volunteers brings some issues. I must say that I'm amazed by the professionalism of most part of our team and on the rhythm of work that these people can keep in their free/spare time. But in such a team the main issue is stability and the effort required to handle new prospects. We have quite a good process for handling new people, but it happens really too often that someone decides to join and then leaves after we spent hours explaining how and what he has to do. That kind of attitude really drains a lot of time from us and delivers nothing. So my request to the community of developers is to join if they really want to contribute and work with us for a long time. If I look at our team 1 year ago, and 2 years ago, i can say that we are getting stronger and better at every release, since the attention of devs increases and more people are willing to contribute.
Erik - What you need to complete CB and next releases of PS? Is the current team enough?
Luca - At times I get messages from people who think we are all set, and the team is more than enough. That's absolutely wrong, we surely need more people to speed up development and to add new features. The department that needs more people now is surely 2d/3d. Given the need to expand the playable areas and to provide more graphical content, there is a good amount of work required on new buildings, new models, new textures.
The second interview is from a site called "GamerGod.com", which no longer exists. But thanks to Waybackmachine.org, it is still viewable.
A few notable quotes from the
Second InterviewGamerGod: To make a character unique in-game we have seen games go the route of offering different paths for the player to choose, whether that be different spell lines to choose from, sub classes, or skill trees. Will PlaneShift be offering this type of uniqueness within the classes? If so what are some examples of what a player can do within a class?
Luca: The choice we made long time ago was to have no classes, but a skill based system. This approach gives great flexibility during char creation and progression, where the player can choose the skill mix he prefers. A single character will be able to master magic and fighting at the cost of time. We are pretty sure that specialization will occur anyway as many players will choose to become more proficient in a few arts only or even just one. The end result will be more customized and unique characters, not limited to predefined classes. On the other hand, we have a set of "Paths" for the novice player which is a predefined set of skills at char creation based on the usual stereotypes (wizard, fighter, etc ...). Even if the player chooses the Path option, he will be able to add any other skill when he gains more experience.
GamerGod: Will a player be able to survive in PlaneShift if they are someone that does not like to group much and tend to go the way of the true rogue character only looking out for themselves?
Luca: As far as evil characters, we have grand plans. We are against player killing since it detracts a lot from player enjoyment, so PK will not be allowed, but we believe that a realistic world can't stand without evil characters. The idea is not only to create evil NPCs, but to give players possibilities to expand their power and fame amongst other evil aligned races. In particular the Death Realm (the place where people go when they die) will be the perfect place for evil aligned characters to build their houses, guilds and more. In CB we have a very small portion of Death Realm implemented, but it will grow quite fast. Solo adventurers will have their place more easily in DR than in the world of the living.
GamerGod: Will you be placing instanced dungeons/zones in-game so that players can enter these areas and not have to compete with the larger guilds for mobs? And on the opposite side of things, will larger guilds have areas to raid to tackle larger tasks?
Luca: One of the aims of the project is to create a realistic world that evolves by itself. Realism is very important to having an immersive experience, and I think instanced dungeons go in the exact opposite direction. Instead of those, we plan to add some nice features for NPCs to build and expand our world. We want to create a world that players find interesting for exploration and day by day activities, not only for leveling. We plan to give guilds certain special abilities and powers, as much as possible different from one guild to another, so that players will have more ratio in choosing a guild than just number of members. Guildmasters will be able to acquire those powers from quests or special NPCs. [special powers 
]
GamerGod: You have said their will be no classes, but a skill-based system of progression for characters. Can you give our readers an example, or a teaser of what it will be like in-game?
Luca: Players can decide to specialize only in a certain skill, turning their char in a professional of that particular skill. On the other hand, they can practice a great number of skills to have a more flexible character. There are no limitations in the combinations possible, so a char can master two-handed swords and magic for example. We preferred a completely open system, to give players maximum flexibility in defining the traits of their chars. The only limitation imposed in the one based on races. There are certain races, like Kran, that are not inclined to magic and so will have some mild limitations [mild ] in that art.
That's it.
