Battleground Europe is scheduled for release across Europe on August 26th 2005. While we wait for this exciting new release Game Chronicles takes a look at this innovative new massive multiplayer game with an exclusive GCM interview.

GCM:	Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions about your upcoming, and very exciting game, Battleground Europe. Could you begin by first introducing yourself and your development staff, known in the community as the "Rats"?
Sebastien Pacetti :	I’m Sebastien ‘Lindir” Pacetti the International Product Manager, I’ve been working for Playnet.Inc since 2002. I joined the company to help our foreign communities and find partners outside North America. We have about 30 persons working on Battleground Europe.

GCM:

Currently, the game is nearing the point where it will be released for purchase. At this point, the game covers the European Theater during the years 1940-42, involving the French and British as Allies and the Germans as Axis. I recently read another interview done by Jason "pailhead" Pratt of Mindless Games . I don't know how current that interview is, but there are some future plans for the game mentioned in that interview that seem to indicate that the scope of the game was going to be much larger than the current game covers. Many other World War II games focus on the later years of the war and especially on the American involvement, specifically focusing on the Normandy invasion. At this point, WWII Online features a time of the war when the Americans haven't even gotten involved yet. Will the later years of the war be ultimately included? And with that, will more advanced technologies and weaponry be available to players as time passes?

Sebastien Pacetti :

This review is VERY old; it was made in 2001 before the release of World War II Online. The game that we are about to release, Battleground Europe, is a complete new game that will be released as a stand alone in September in most European Countries and North America. Battleground Europe is the first volume of the Virtual Battlefield series, we plan to work on an expansion pack in 2006 that will include some new features including a new army maybe two. Americans and Italians are on the top of our players wish list so we will take in consideration their will. This expansion might also include what will be necessary to run a Battle of Britain. We plan to introduce the North African theater in the Volume 2 of the Virtual Battlefield Series. We will provide more information about these expansions and new volumes after the release of “Battleground Europe” that represent the beginning of the biggest online war ever.

GCM:

In regards to additional vehicles or weapons, one thing that I've noticed from playing the game is the lack of indirect support (mortars, artillery, etc). Will the ability to call in indirect support, or man a mortar, for example, be part of the game in the future? And what about snipers? Will rifleman ever get a chance to have scopes on their rifles?

Sebastien Pacetti :

Indirect fire support is on the list of things to add like many other features, we plan to add Mortars after the release of Battleground Europe. Long Range Artillery is not a priority right now because it would bring some gameplay issues that we need to solve. We believe it might be too easy to “camp” an enemy base 5 miles away with it right now. However we believe that it is a very important part of World War II so we will include it, and the Navy will certainly be the first branch to take advantage of it. It is already possible in game for a Destroyer to shoot over 2 miles away, and players use this all the time to lower the enemy defenses when they are sending troops to assault costal towns. We don’t plan to add scopes on rifles right away, it wasn’t standard in 1940/42, we plan to add them later though. But not anyone will have access to them, we believe that scopes should be a special load out. So most likely the use of the scope will be tied to your results as a regular rifleman, as in reality only the best could be certified as a Sharpshooter and get special stuff). Not everyone will have access to them, and if you die you may loose it as well. We will provide more details when we will add this feature. Anyway right now in game we already have sharpshooters without scopes, they can kill a moving target at 500meters. It is very very hard, and it requires a lot of training. Those guys are rare and don’t need scopes to be terrific snipers.

GCM:

One of the most amazing things about this game is that there is really something for everybody in it. If you're into FPS style games, you can play as infantry, if you’re into flight sims and you want to fly a plane, you can do that, if you want to sail the open seas, that's available as well. And all those aspects interact with each other to make for a very dynamic environment, giving the players the feeling that they are really taking part in an all out war. How many players is this single server game going to support at any given time? In other words, how many players are you expecting to be playing this game at once, upon final release?

Sebastien Pacetti :

Right now we are confident that our servers can handle 10 000 simultaneous players in the same arena, they can all interact with each others. It isn’t a hard limit because we use a Cluster technology that allow us to add more clusters to handle more players. We will run a Stress Test the 25th of August, we welcome everyone to test it with us. Feel free to check our website www.battleground-europe.com for more details.

GCM:

The game is amazingly complex and detailed, covering an incredible amount of space, but one of the best things that I've discovered is that I definitely get the feeling that I am contributing to the war effort as I am playing. I don’t feel like my one rifle or airplane or ship is meaningless in the overall goal. I feel like my efforts are helping sway the tide of battle one way or another. What features are you most proud of that allowed you to bring everyone into the game and make them feel 100% involved?

Sebastien Pacetti :

The whole Battleground Europe project is a challenge because we must make sure that all these players that enjoy different types of gameplay enjoy themselves. Think of soldiers riding a trucks rolling, that get strafed by a plane which get downed by an Anti Aircraft Gunner that will be killed by a tank. This tank will be sapped by paratroopers to prepare the beach landing of cargo ships escorted by destroyers. That are shelling the coast. Well this is Battleground Europe a virtual Battlefield with thousands of players fighting to gain ground. So we are proud to have managed to make all those different units coexist in a virtual environment. Players can organize themselves to have a bigger impact on the war or just play alone on the front to fight. We also like that in our game a Private or a High Rank officers have the same chance to survive. There is no ‘leveling’ needed to enjoy the game, a bullet can kill anyone. There is no “I need to be level 50 to enjoy PvP.

GCM:	I was impressed with how each city in the game is unique as far as overall layout. Are the plans to the cities accurate to how they looked at that time?
Sebastien Pacetti :	The landscape is accurate, we use real maps to do it, the localization of towns is accurate as well. The layout is a bit different, but we try to do it if we can and if we have historical resources.

GCM:	The buildings themselves are rather cookie-cutter, relatively undetailed, and 2-dimensional, using fairly basic bit-maps. Are there any plans to eventually add structural detail to the building models to make them a little more unique and realistic?
Sebastien Pacetti :	Yes, we are trying to update the graphics all the time, in huge towns like Charleroi, Luxembourg, Metz, Köln etc… we face performance issues. Those towns are miles long if we want our game to be playable on reasonable computers specs we need to be careful when we add details. But we keep updating the graphics and we work on a new engine to help.

GCM:	There is an impressively realistic day/night cycle in the game, but what about weather? Right now, every day is the same. Is inclement weather, like rain, snow, or fog, going to be an addition in the future?
Sebastien Pacetti :	This is definitely on our dev plan; we have a few more important features to add before this.

GCM:

The scope of this game is massive and it has been in production for several years. How does it feel to know that you are nearing the end-point where you are confident enough in your product to release it to the public? Is the job ever going to truly be “done” or will you continue to perfect it indefinitely?

Sebastien Pacetti :

One of the coolest things when you work on a Massively Multiplayer Game like Battleground Europe is that the project never comes to an end. Our team will keep working on this project as long as it’s possible to add new features, keeping it up to date graphically, tweaking the gameplay etc… I don’t think we will ever stop to develop the game because World War II is such a big theme. We still have thousands of things to add in the game. With the computers becoming more and more powerful it opens even more possibilities. We hope that our community will keep supporting this project, a successful launch of Battleground Europe will allow us to hire more people to make this huge project move faster and help us to fund the addition of new armies like the Americans, Italians and new Theaters like North Africa.

GCM:

What is your personal favorite aspect of the game?

Sebastien Pacetti :

My favorite aspect is Infantry, in most other games the maps are small and the action somewhat funneled so everything is predicable. In Battleground Europe the map is so huge with over 500 towns it is always a new experience. You can hide in a place for hours, even days without someone finding you. So it is great to organize ambushes. It is also very fun to cut a paratrooper plane wing and see all the paratroopers trying to escape the plane about to crash.

GCM:

Is there anything about WWII Online that you would like readers to know about that I did not cover?

Sebastien Pacetti :

Yes, Battleground Europe also includes some outstanding features like Realistic Ballistics and Damage Models. The vehicles for example don’t have a Hit point system but a real detailed damage model. Firing 30 times with a small caliber on a tank front armor won’t do anything at all. You have to know the tanks weak points to have a chance to disable it. Know you enemy if you want to survive is the key. If you use a rifle you must know that your bullets will start dropping after 400/500meters so you need to adjust your aim according to the distance, the speed of your target and the direction, in BE you can see vehicles miles away ! and you can shoot them that far ! Unlike most other games there is no weird “fog” around you, and your shell/bullets won’t “ disappear/drop 200m away. In Battleground Europe it is more realistic and also more deadly !

Thank you again for your time and I wish you all the luck in your upcoming release. I look forward to seeing you and many, many new players on the battlefield in the next few months.

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