MXM has been shrouded in mystery for quite some time. Though it went through testing in Korea a long time ago, the player reception has been a mixed bag. It also has been in development for a considerable amount of time, considering the first announcement was at NCSoft Media Day in 2008. The game unveiled at the event was under the name, Metal Black: Alternative, featuring more or less a different gameplay. At any rate, the development for the game began 9 years ago.

NCSoft has much on its shoulders. Though they intermittently released mobile titles, they had been mostly quiet when it came to PC online market. That said, NCSoft consistently made MMOs, but the genre has long been outside the interest of mainstream PC gamers. Naturally, the company had much to prove with its newest launch.

Then MXM was launched after all the wait. Contrary to most people’s expectations, it wasn’t released in Korea, but in the US. Much thought had probably gone into releasing it first in North America. Inven visited NCSoft Orange County office in Aliso Viejo, a little more than an hour drive south of Los Angeles. Not long after, three people who are in charge of servicing MXM in different capacity greeted us in the conference room. It was a new experience for us to talk about a Korean-developed game in America, but who better suited to talk about supporting the game than the locals? We sat down to hear about their recent launch, goals, and much more.

Could you briefly tell us about who you are and what you do at NCWest?

Deirdre: My name is Deirdre Hollis, and everyone here knows me here as DD. I’m known as Sunshine online. I’m a community manager for MXM. I’ve been with NCSoft for 3 years.

Sean: I’m Sean Orlikowski, a brand manager on MXM. I’ve been with the company 7 years, and I help with marketing, analysis, and being a spokesperson for the game.

Julianne: Hi, I’m Julianne Harty, esports manager for all of our titles including Blade & Soul and the upcoming MXM.

Why did you decide to launch in NA first even though MXM was developed in Korea?

Sean: We’re excited because it’s the first time we’ve taken a Korean-developed game and launched here first. I think much of the strategy behind that is MXM has different genres thrown into one game. We have obviously the 5v5 MOBA mode, a PvE mode like RPG dungeon crawlers, and 3v3 battle arena, among others, all of which resonate well with the NA audience. Dungeon crawlers are really popular here, not to mention 5v5 MOBA. The culmination of all those things together made launching here first a good way to gauge the interest in the game and to show this side of the world all of the different options available in the game.

Do you have plans to launch MXM in other parts of the world?

Sean: Other territories will be the ones who will be announcing their launch, but we will be launching in the Americas and Europe. This is the first launch anywhere, so the development team and us are focused on working out the game, getting player feedback, and reflecting them in the game. Announcements from other areas will be coming from them at a later time.

What are some of the feedback you’ve been getting since launch?

Deirdre: Many players are saying positive things about the tag mechanic which lets them tag in masters and use different skills, nodes, and weapon upgrades to outfit their characters. Another refreshing aspect is the Dredgion Bridge, which is a common community place where people can engage in conversation, listen to cool music from an in-game jukebox, talk about theorycrafting, and which masters are cool to play at the time.

Sean: To piggyback on the idea, the Dredgion Bridge is something that we hadn’t seen done very well in especially in MOBA. Most of them just have a launcher, and you go into a game, looking at a friends list where you interact. When you’re done, you’re back out onto the launcher. We wanted a place where players could see and talk to each other — show off their skins, dance around the jukebox, make their own fun, and be silly. Players are able to do things like dance parties. It’s been very cool to see people make their own fun when you give them a social tool like this.

What are some priorities you’ve been working on?

Sean: we’re getting a lot of community feedback. It can be challenging because we’re balancing the game for people who like PvE and those who enjoy PvP as well as hardcore players. Since we just launched the game, we’re closely listening to everybody to make sure we discuss feedback as a group with people here and the development team in Korea. We are working to make sure player opinions are heard and taking steps to address them whenever we can.

What about people who are only interested in PvP? Do they have to play PvE to get access to some parts of PvP content?

Sean: Not at all. The only thing even remotely close to that is our some of NCSoft characters have stages that are associated with them, in which you play those stages to get items to unlock them. Those characters can be still purchased with X-Coin, and you can earn X-Coin by playing the game. So, you’re not forced into anything because you get experience no matter what game mode you play. Experience levels up your account, giving you free currency you need to unlock characters. If you want to do nothing but mini games on weekends, you’ll still be getting experience and earning things to unlock characters. We don’t want to shoehorn anybody into having to PvP or PvE.

What makes MXM a good esports title?

Julianne: MXM is a great game for esports because it has good competitive elements. Obviously, a game that pits five people against five people in a goal-oriented environment, as is the case in Titan Ruins, helps making an esports title, but my personal philosophy is that it’s not enough to have a competitive game, but it is also necessary for people to watch. If you have the chance watch a match in Titan Ruins, you’ll see how exciting it is to watch see players in their battles and skirmishes. The Tag mechanic, for example, allows for knowing the point in which someone’s getting cornered then switching to another character that turns the tide of a battle is really fun and exciting. I think that’s going to make a really strong esport for NA and EU audience.

What are some things you do to support esports?

Julianne: One of the things that we launched straight away was the spectator mode. I think it’s absolutely necessary to watch other people’s games. It also helps in building grassroots community. Speaking from my experience with B&S esports, we’re seeing this with MXM as well. Many people are excited about this opportunity, coming into a new game, getting really good, competing on high levels, but they’ve got to start somewhere. Community groups looking to hold their own tournaments have already reached out to us and said the spectator mode really helps them getting it out the door. We spent a lot of time looking at the UI and thinking how the spectator mode is going to work to make sure it is beneficial for both players and spectators. And that’s just one of the features that we’ve been working with the development team to help establish MXM as a legitimate esports title.

Could you walk us through the process of collaboration between Korea and US offices?

Deirdre: We’re actually a very cohesive team and constantly communicate with the Korea office. There are meetings every other day, if not at least daily communication in some way, shape, or form. MXM is our priority, and collaborating with them has been seamless. They really listen to us, and we really listen to them in making sure MXM is fun and engaging for our audience.

Sean: It’s fortuitous for being on opposite sides of the world. We can do our work during the day and figure out the things we need to bring up to the development team. Then we have a meeting at the end of our day, which is the beginning of theirs. They work through their day to fix what needs to be fixed. When we come in the next day, we have a build, an update, a solution to a problem, an answer we were looking for. We can start our day with that information. So, it’s not a difficult communication because of distance. It actually helps us a lot in some ways because we can work around the clock with all of our different teams.

Are there any upcoming special promotional events for MXM?

Sean: We’ve gotten some community people reaching out to us to run tournaments. Even during beta, we helped organize community tournaments and people to cast said tournaments. We want to embrace what the community wants to work with.

Deirdre: We support community initiatives and its members are hyped about the game. Running tournaments and livestreaming are a word of mouth thing. Additionally, we give them ideas because some people come to us with passion, but not the know-how. We support them with knowledge on how to best run a tournament and making sure the rules are set up in a certain way. We want to encourage them to run community tournaments themselves and also have plans for running our own. We have many plans to keep players excited about MXM from outside the game.

Any plans for seasonal events and sales such as localized holiday events like 4th of July and Chinese New Year?

Deirdre: Absolutely, those are all in the works. We’re working diligently to get seasonal items out that would impress our players. Some of them have already been seen during beta, so players have an idea of what’s coming out during the summer. In fact, Lifeguard Vonak appeared in our livestream today. We’re also excited about end of year items as well.

Sean: People appreciate cool skins and decorations whether or not it’s something related to real holidays. As long as skins look cool, it doesn’t specifically have to be for 4th of July. That said, we’re working to figure out exactly which major holidays are global ones we want to incorporate. There’s going to be fun stuff for all different territories no matter what those end up being. If it’s a fun, wacky skin for a character they like, they’re going to enjoy it regardless of being a certain holiday. We’ll be sure to keep everyone from all territories in mind because MXM is a global game.

Were there any challenges to bringing an Asian game to meet the taste of a western audience?

Sean: Not really. It’s been a collaborative process between us and the development team. Both of our regions are big into MOBA, and we had feedback from different areas around the world in closed beta. I have to commend the development team for looking at the feedback from different points around the world and deciding the best choice for the game. They’ve done a terrific job so far because it’s definitely no easy task to take feedback from so many different cultures and find out what people want before putting it into one cohesive game. Every region will influence the game and make it one great experience.

What are your current goals since the game has officially gone live?

Deirdre: From the community standpoint, our short-term goal is to provide the best in-game experience by engaging our audience as they come in and being there for them 100%. It’s actually a holistic approach. We take in feedback in order to take it to developers, so they can mull it over and design a core game for the player’s taste. Long-term goal is to continue to engage them in other ways, once we build up an audience and have a dedicated core group of players. Esports tournaments would be very good long-terms plans. At the end of the day, the pinnacle, the importance, and the priority is our playerbase and fans.

Sean: From a gameplay standpoint, we have a number of content updates already in the works. We’re planning to release 6-9 new masters a year, new skins for the entire roster of characters, and a new PvE mode debuting in a few months. We’ll be starting ranked gameplay for 5v5, and the next month will be our preseason. So, players can get used to what ranked is and how it affects characters differently with nodes and draft. We’ll be going into the official season 1 after the preseason. We also got recurring game modes, and 4v4 will be playable soon. We’ll keep providing new content for players to look forward to.

Speaking of gameplay, how are you doing with new player experience because it feels like MXM has much information for new players to take in at once?

Deirdre: we have a very expansive in-game tutorial. There’s a ton of information in the game, and we’ve done our best to make sure little signals in the game are intuitive for new players. For example, you see an exclamation point that flickers in the UI, and you can click to open a window to different tabs and various PvE/PvP options. In Titan Ruins, you can go through two tutorials in order to learn nuances of the mode. Additionally, we have a player simulation match, which puts a brand new player into a simulation that would replicate exactly what it’s like to play during a competitive 5v5 match. There’s also a lot of new player information in tutorials that help people to learn quickly while having fun.

Sean: From outside the game, we’re doing a video series to help people learn. Meet the Masters series talk about individual characters, skills, strengths & weakness, and how to play against and as them. It’s ongoing series that will keep coming as we introduce new characters and catch up on the ones we need to finish. There’s also How to be a Master series, which goes in depth on specific functions of the game like nodes and Titan Incarnate. We livestream every week, where we play games with people and talk about what’s new as well as what’s coming up. We’re trying hard to hit the learning part of the game. We understand it could be pretty overwhelming at first with so many characters and combinations. We’re trying to teach people as well as we can.

Do you have any message for people who are enjoying MXM or thinking about trying the game?

Sean: If it’s especially about people who are thinking about playing MXM, play MXM. [laughs] One constant feedback we’ve heard from all the press tours in talking to reporters and gamers is that overwhelming amount of people had a very different impression of the game when they actually played it. They came up to us, saying how this game is really fun because they thought they were going into just another MOBA and came out with so much hype. Every single press stop has been that way with people being genuinely surprised by how much fun they had with the game. Besides, it’s a completely free-to-play game. You can earn every single character just by playing. There’s not a reason to not try out for yourself. I would encourage people to utilize the free to play aspect of the game and just try it out for themselves. We’ve seen so many people who were pleasantly surprised by it, liked it, and stuck with it.

Deirdre: And MXM is not just a MOBA. We have a very large PvE content portion of the game, so if you’re a solo player, you don’t have to group. If you like to group with a few people, but don’t like the competitive aspect of PvP, you can get into PvE mode that challenges you — getting triple S rank is pretty hard, especially on Nightmare. There’s so much more to MXM than just a MOBA. I would say it’s a focused gaming experience.

Sean: One thing we wanted to do was to be respectful of players’ time. 5v5 match, which is our longest game mode, is 25 minutes. There’s never going to be a time when you don’t know if you’ll be able to finish a match. If you have to leave the house in an hour, you know you can get a match in and you know it’s going to be over, instead of going into a match and having it end up being an hour and half because people can’t finish the game. You know what you’re getting into with every single match. 3v3 is 5 minutes, mini games are a couple minutes each, and PvE mode is 5-15 min, depending on difficulty. Whether you have half an hour or an entire day to play, you’ll always have different things to do.