IGNPC: To be honest, we haven't had this much reader feedback on a single issue for as long as I can remember. For the Combat Upgrade, what do you feel are the main issues that need to be addressed?

Julio Torres: The first obvious issue that's impacting our players is that it's a fundamental change. Players, specifically our hardcore players who've been playing for 20 months, have to relearn how to play. What they're used to doing, what's familiar and what they've been having fun, is now not there. It's quite a shock to have such a huge dynamic change in what you used to be doing every singe day. Now we're asking them to change. I think that that's by far one of our biggest challenges, to get them past the painful thought of "Oh my god, why do I have to do this differently?" so they can actually see what the changes will give them in terms of benefits. That's definitely a huge hurdle. That's the top one.

Then of course, there are the other particular issues which are, once we release it to the public and actually have enough people to actually do testing on it -- as opposed to our local testers where we just have many 30-40 people -- new issues arise that can only happen in that test bed which we obviously identify as bugs. What we need to do is tackle those bugs, communicate that we're handling those bugs and let the players understand that, with their help, we will be polishing the changes that are in there that are not intended because of the bugs. I think that that communication needs to be constant and flowing so that they understand that, in the longest run or the shortest run (meaning as fast as we can) the game will settle and all these people who are participating can enjoy it.

Dallas Dickinson: The thing to keep you eye on here is that we did make a fundamental change to the way the game was being played, but we made it for a very good reason. We made it because we felt that the existing combat system was not going to serve the game going forward. We believe we put in a far more interactive, a far more intuitive combat system, and they are going to be some growing pains as people adjust to it. I think Julio was speaking to this at the beginning. Because it is a new system, especially when you're a veteran player and you have a whole lot of high-level skills you use in combat, it's going to take you a while to use the new system.

There's already a huge shift among our players. They're saying, "I actually get it now. I'm starting to understand how to use my new skills." The immediate reaction was "Oh my gosh! I can't play anymore. I don't know how to play. I either always win or I always lose." People are now seeing that the system is a complex or as deep, I should say, as the previous system; it's just different. They're learning that now.

The people I've been playing with, especially over the last two or three nights--We've had some really cool events where we've run around with players to see how they play. They are all, to a person, saying it took a couple of days to figure out, but they're seeing the benefits of it. They're seeing the interactivity of the combat system as compared to the previous one and they're really enjoying it.