Today we bring you the interview that we have made to Alex Billaud, Associate Producer for Echo of Soul, a new MMORPG that is coming to Europe and North America after harvesting numerous successes in Asia.

In the interview we asked him about the game's main features, their lore and why they think that the game is going to be a success in NA and EU.

• First of all, many thanks for granting us an interview on Echo of Soul. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?

No problem! Always happy to chat about the game. I’m Alex Billaud, Associate Producer for Echo of Soul.

• Which terms would you use to describe your game to somebodywho hasn't heard of it yet?

Whether you’re an experienced MMO player or a newcomer to the genre, EOS is designed to be the only MMO you’ll ever need. It’s a huge world packed full of enough content to keep you going for years (with new content continually adding to that, of course). Different players enjoy different things, and EOS delivers more than enough options to satisfy the whole spectrum of MMO players.

• In your opinion why is Echo of Soul better than the existing free-to-play MMORPGs?

We focused on perfecting the things about MMORPGs that fans love, and building a massive, immersive world around that. PvE fans have nearly 60 unique zones to explore, tons of dungeons (both for solo players and parties), and over 1,600 quests. But PvP players have just as much content, with battlegrounds, arenas, and large-scale guild wars. You can start PvP’ing from a low level and gain experience from battlegrounds all the way up to the level cap if you want. The greatest strength of EOS is that everyone is free to play what they want, when they want to.

• Being an Asian game, do you think that Echo of Soul will convince the players of Europe and North America?

Our localization team has done a fantastic job adapting the game for Western audiences. We did more than just translate the text; we bulked up the lore and added some awesome new elements to it. In doing so, we hope to make the NA and EU versions the definitive versions of the game.

• Tell us more details about the game's storyline and the classes that we can play.

In EOS, the world was nearly destroyed after an ancient war between Gods and Giants. Even though the Gods were victorious, the blood of the Giant King, Ymir, remained and became the Shadow Soul. Players control a Soulkeeper in the present time, chosen by the Gods to wield their power and protect the world from the Shadow Soul.

Soulkeepers can be one of five classes: Warrior, Rogue, Archer, Guardian, and Sorceress. Warriors, Rogues, and Guardians are melee characters, while Archers and Sorceresses fight from range.

• How we will customize and make progress our characters?

The level of class customization is quite high in EOS. The classes are gender locked, but the character creation process has some very detailed options to help make your character look unique.

As far as character progression goes, each class has two specializations available that really define your style of play. You can switch between different specs whenever you’re out of combat, so you can quickly and easily take on a different role as you see fit. Specs are customized even further with Souls, giving your abilities extra power or utility.

• Can you give us more details of the Soul System?

It’s very simple and versatile. When you kill enemies, you automatically collect Chaos Souls from them. The Chaos Souls need to be purified before use, and we encourage cooperation between players by granting extra Souls when you purify together.

The purified Souls have four different types, and can be used in several ways. You can consume them to activate temporary buffs to give yourself that extra edge in combat, or use them as crafting ingredients.

They can also be used to modify your spec’s ultimate abilities, based on the type of Souls used. Take the Guardian’s Lightning Spear ultimate as an example – the normal ability is a direct AoE damage spell, but you can use Souls of different types to reduce the cooldown time, increase the damage, or add defense and speed debuff effects. With three ultimates available to each spec, there really are a ton of possibilities!

• What can you tell us about the combat main features?

It’s best to start with the most unique aspect of combat in EOS: we don’t have a traditional healing class. Every class has support abilities that they’ll need to use in a party in order to manage incoming damage and stay alive (some more than others – the Bard spec, for example, has a larger focus on support spells), but there is no spec that’s designed to sit back and spam heals all day. The combat is designed this way so that every player is participating directly in the action, and the shared responsibility for survival puts a greater emphasis on teamwork.

• Let's speak about the game's PvE! How many quests, dungeons and raids is going to have Echo of Soul at his launch?

First of all, there’s a lot! We have 1,600 quests at launch that take you all over this gigantic world. As for the dungeons – solo dungeons offer a unique personal challenge culminating in a one-on-one showdown with a boss. The loot you receive from solo dungeons is guaranteed to be usable by your class, so it’s a perfect way to gear up for five-man Party dungeons – the next logical progression in the PvE experience with even better loot.

We also have Infinite Dungeons for solo players and groups, featuring randomly generated maps, enemies, and bosses. You can choose from seven difficulty levels when you enter and get increasingly better rewards based on the difficulty and how far you make it.

As for raids, they’re coming soon! We can’t give away too many specifics, but it will take groups of up to 20 players to complete the most epic boss battles in the game!

• And now let’s speak about the game’s PvP options. There will be open world PvP areas or just instanced arenas and battlefields?

Both! We have two Battlefields, Mettle’s Theater and Tribulations Vale. These are 15 vs. 15 instanced maps with objective-based team play. Teams race to 10,000 points by capturing resources, holding bases, and killing target NPCs.

At the level cap (currently level 60), players can queue up solo or in a group for 5 vs. 5 arena matches. Matchmaking is done through an ELO system and teams will compete for high ranks and rewards each season.

Open-world PvP can break out when guilds set themselves to “hostile,” enabling some good-old fashioned ganking against other hostile guilds. But the ultimate guild combat happens in Valhalla, our daily instanced guild Battlefield. Hundreds of players can compete in Valhalla, fighting both rival guilds and the giant world boss at the center. The guild that lands the killing blow on the boss gets the loot, so it’s a tense battle all the way down to the wire!

• We have discovered that the game will have a system that will allow us to know what is happening inside the game even when we're not online. Can you give us more details about this interesting feature?

That would be our mobile companion app, which we plan to release soon for iOS and Android. Players will be able to use the free app to keep up with the game on the go, with Auction House access, in-game mail, guild and friend chat, and a lot more!

• Are you going to implement a cash shop into the game? If so, what we can find within?

Yes, Echo of Soul is free to play, with additional items sold in the cash shop, but that doesn’t mean Echo of Soul is a “pay-to-win” game. Cash shop items are for convenience and customization – we even chose to remove player stats from the cash shop costumes in our version of the game specifically to keep things fair and balanced for spenders and non-spenders alike. Most items in the game are still earned the old-fashioned way through quests, dungeons, and the like.

We also have an in-game currency called Magic Eggs, which are obtained through login bonuses and special events. Magic Eggs can be exchanged for cash shop items as an alternative to real money. In fact, we even have some items that can only be directly obtained with Magic Eggs!

• When have you planned to release the game in Europe and North America?

Open Beta is available right now. We just wrapped up a very successful closed beta period throughout May, and the game is now open to all players. The game client can be downloaded directly from the website.

• Thank you for answer all our questions. Would you like to add something else?

Thanks for the opportunity to share our enthusiasm for this great game! We hope to see you all in Open Beta soon!



If you want to know more of the game, take a look at our profile by clicking on the Info button below. In addition also you can take a look at our analysis of the game's closed beta HERE.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2015 at 9:19 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.