Fragoria Interview With Sergey Sholom
Questions by Bryan King (Bryan), OnRPG Journalist
Answered by Sergey Sholom, head of business development
OnRPG: Hello, Bryan King here, I am a Journalist at OnRPG.com. Please introduce yourself to readers.
Hi there! Sergey Sholom, head of business development glad to talk with You!
OnRPG: For our readers, who are hearing about Fragoria for the first time, please give them a brief summary of the game.
Fragoria – is a really unique game on the market for now. It is standing on the top of performance browser based games and require no installation. Client is based on Flash and all You need to play is just any browser and connection to the internet. The game is still under development and we improve it year by year to satisfy our players. Fragoria really deserves at least to have a look. Just imagine game Diablo and Ultima Online style with better graphics and very deep world with tons of features inside. It’s like WOW in your browser actually…
OnRPG: Can you tell us a little about the backstory or storyline which is introduced to the players in the game?
Though we have now servers started for english, german, spanish, french, polish languages besides russian anyway we have an Ancient Russian style with many stories behind. We have tried to move away from common heroes like dwarves and elves and our users are happy about it. Our main goal was to surprise our players and surprise them from all the sides and not only with performance in browser.
OnRPG: You’ve given the gist of the storyline content Fragoria has, can you give us an idea on how the story will be presented in the game? How will players find out the details behind the characters in the lore of the story? Do NPCs present it? Is there PvE content that allows players to experience the lore for themselves?
We are trying to make this game acceptable for all the players at once without any advantages to some side of the gameplay. We have a very strong PVE content but at the same time we have a very strong PVP base. Our player is free to choose the way he’d like to play. He will enjoy the game whatever he choose: solve quests and follow the storyline, fight with other players, join guilds to solve more serious tasks, become a crafter and fight for resources on cross server lands, participate in many different PVP games with short lifetime but fun in action and many others… We let our player make the choice and we think this is the right way.
OnRPG: With the seeming graphic and feature limitations of the game compared to client-based MMOs, how does your team expect to gain players who primarily play client-based MMOs?
It’s a very good question Bryan. Actually Fragoria is standing somewhere between classic browser based games and hardcore client based games. We have lot’s of casual players but we have tons of hardcore players as well and lot’s of them have played such a games like WOW or Lineage before. We do not have any limitations in features. In opposite we even have more that some client based games . Also we can hold thousands of users online with more then a hundred on one screen. Our PVP battles on cross server lands deserves to see it. Right now all our international servers are linked together and german players for example can fight against others and protect their honor in a fair battle.
Also i’d like to add that not many client based games can demonstrate such a beauty on your screen. 2D graphics gives You not only limitation but in opposite much better picture at the end. Just have a look on the screens or simply try the game on http://www.fragoria.com
OnRPG: There are plenty of other browser-based MMOs available. How do you plan to compete with them?
We have a much better visualization and a very deep world with many many choices for player what to do. We are just different.
OnRPG: How hard was it to integrate a Russian-developed MMO to suit North American audiences?
Localization is always take the time especially for a such huge game. All the rest i will be able to say after the massive promotion we will start to make soon.
OnRPG: Speaking of audiences, there has been complaints on your forums about a language barrier between Russian and English speaking players. Do you guys plan to address this? If so, how?
It was a long time ago. As i said now You can simply enter http://www.fragoria.com and play with any of 5 different languages except russian. That time where it was a problem has gone away. We have our own servers located in one of the best Data centers in EU with a fastest connection to the internet and we are operating all of these international servers.
OnRPG: What age audience do you think will appreciate Fragoria the most?
We have a very wide range of players for now. Seems like all ages like Fragoria. It’s interesting. It’s free to play. It’s fast to enter and try with no downloads. We are happy to see any user in our game.
OnRPG: What type of player? Hardcore, casual? A mixture of both?
Mixture of both. And it’s so interesting to see how the players who get used to play a simple browser games growing in their game skills after entering Fragoria and at the same time it’s interesting to see how very experienced hardcore players find new staff for them there.
OnRPG: Cash shops are a controversial issue in many F2P games. You guys have a cash shop that sells gear, how do you guys keep an even balance between users who do pay and those who do not?
Here we try to make our best to give the users who never pay the same achievements like others have. And for that we ask for them to play more. So, simply saying in our game players pay for the economy of time. All of our team who develop Fragoria are players and we love so much what we do and most of all we want to hear that people love what we do and it doesn’t meter will they pay or not after that.
OnRPG: Upon entering the game, I was personally very impressed with the music. Is there a special team of people you worked with to create the music?
Yes. We have created everything from zero for our game. Music and sound effects has been created with a special team and i am glad to hear another kind feedback about it.
OnRPG: Can you introduce readers to the PvP system(s) you guys have in Fragoria?
Well. It’s hard to describe it in two words. Many guilds from different servers fights with each other on special lands and on special boss events. At the same time we have many PVP games like “Capture the flag”, “King of the hill”, “Last man standing” where players can enjoy the game and get the reward with a short time.
OnRPG: What can we expect in the near future for Fragoria?
Next year we will present 3D client based on Unity technologies and much more fun for guilds (conquer lands and alliances). Also we are going to improve the achievement system soon and present PVP subscription with many new fun PVP games.
OnRPG: Can we expect anything new from SubaGames?
Subagames is one of our partner in NA. We expect and wish the game a great success with them and awaiting a promotion start with their help. There are many other partners on the way to join us and help move Fragoria forward.
OnRPG: Is there anything else you would like to tell readers?
I think that’s enough. Much better simply have a look on what we’ve done for all these years with our love.
OnRPG: Thanks for your time!
Thank You Bryan a lot and thank You all who read our discussion! Take care!
