SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

The Moulding of Angel Arena

The article was contributed by Archi Lin, the project assistant for Angels Online.

First off, let me say that I’ve always considered Angels Online to be the perfect game for PvP. Some have commented that the game is too cute and lovable to ever have decent PK matches, but I think those assessments are just plain wrong. The theme of Angel’s and Demons, Heaven and Hell and Good vs. Evil are the most classic confrontations of all. It’s the original PvP! With that said, the PvP elements included in the game so far were good, but insufficient. Players had become all too familiar with the battlefields and strict 1v1 duels. We wanted something that would inject some intensity and passion back into battling, but we didn't want to create just another battlefield that would become stale after a few months. We wanted to create something that would endure and challenge players for a long time. It took us awhile, but we finally hit on a tournament style competition with multiple rounds players would have to fight through.

From the beginning we were looking beyond the standard dueling aspect and Guild Wars sides of PvP. It was a lazy day late in winter, Christmas and New Year’s were history, in that time when all you have to worry about is Valentine’s Day and keeping warm. Now in an effort to keep us on our toes, or to keep us from hibernating, the heater was, how shall I say, “on the fritz”, and our manager told us to bring coats to work instead, how very thoughtful. With design on the ‘new’ PvP going nowhere fast I had settled down to ESPN.com and my NCAA bracket to get a jump start on the March Madness. After filling in a couple of schools, I realized that if I was at work, busy on this tournament bracket 2 weeks before it tipped off, what would happen if we adopted a similar strategy for AO?

I did a quick check on the Angels Online website to see what the current level rankings looked like and after grabbing a pencil, my NCAA bracket quickly transformed into an AO bracket. Bursting out of my office, ok cubicle (who am I kidding?) and heading into the design office, I began trying to organize the tournament into a ‘one and done’ format that would require winning in several rounds before going for the top prize. It was after this initial burst of inspiration that I ran into the first problem. With so many players at different levels, how could we organize an event that would be as fair as possible for all involved? After about a day of discussions, our team had smoothed out this problem by organizing different tiers of competition, 10 levels to a tier, from 60-100+ for a total of 5 groups. This seemed to be the most balanced option we had considered and kept high level veteran players from overwhelming the competition.

The next question was ‘where were we going to hold this massive tournament?’ This was answered when we saw the designs coming out of the Graphics Dept for the new version. The new maps included lush forests, jungles, wastelands and deserts. It seemed as if Angels had answered our prayers! The Jungle and Desert made perfect arena’s, and we then added an Underground Arena, and a Deep Sea arena in homage to last expansion. The tiers would be divided among these arenas and Angels would battle until there were 10 left from each. Those that survived would move to the next round in the forbidding Dark Den Arena and the pleasantly named Beach Arena. Here, the remaining Angel’s would again fight until only 10 were left in each arena. The 20 Angel’s that had made it through the previous two rounds would then be gathered for a winner take all match in the Huge Woods Arena. Although the last 10 Angel’s all win prizes, the final winner gets some pretty sweet rewards, along with the title “Battle Angel”.

It was at this point that we were feeling pretty good about the system and decided to hold an impromptu tournament in the office. Now, we can get a little competitive, but we didn't think it would end up like Super Bowl ’07 - boy were we wrong. One of our top designers, Tommy, was in an intense battle with another colleague and it was really turning into a war of attrition. Items were being used up and they were both near the end. As Tommy went for the win, our colleague suddenly disappeared. Looking across the lab, we realized he had teleported out to preserve his PvP reputation. Well, we decided right then and there that there were going to be restrictions on items available to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. Imagine player’s teleporting out in a real competition! It would have been a disaster. So, big thanks to our conniving colleague for helping us discover a big loophole and closing it.

With the release of House Party, the new Angel’s Arena went public, and it has generated some really passionate battles among our Angel’s. It has turned out to be everything we expected and more. Who said that Angel’s were too cute for PvP?