Richard Garriott recently sat down with Warcry for an interview, which they had to break into three parts. Two of these have been published so far, and in the second Garriott makes a point of calling out the World of Warcraft model of MMORPGs, labeling it “completely trodden into the ground”.

However, it’s the first part of the interview that’s really the more interesting. In it, Garriott discusses a feature that player-made items in Shroud of the Avatar will have:

Garriott explained that drains on the economy are an important part of maintaining balance, but destroying player-made items that have a history would be a complete waste. Instead, those items will be recycled back into the game for other players to find and use. “If someone’s ever killed 100 orcs with a sword, that sword would have the tag ‘Orc Slayer’. All of that data is already on the weapon, so why destroy this thing that has this real history? So why not recycle that right back into the game? And that way the actual sword, the actual history, is still a part of the game. You can go find the person who made it.”

We also got some more information about the conversation system the game will use. We already knew that it was built around an Ultima 6-like text parser, but the system actually gets rather more complex than that behind the scenes:

“I think the constant over-simplification of games has left us with something that’s completely brain-dead…In Shroud of the Avatar there will absolutely not be a quest log, there will absolutely not be an arrow on the map. There absolutely is not going to be any dialogue menus. You have a conversation with an NPC by having a conversation in typed English.”

The conversation system in Shroud of the Avatar is a huge shift not only in game technology, but also in game design. Though NPCs in Shroud of the Avatar won’t know everything, they will boast an impressive repertoire of knowledge on anything that matters. “We’re actually tracking everything that players say to NPCs. That way we can see when people ask questions that the NPCs don’t know, and we’re going to improve their knowledge. …The way I guide my team is I say, ‘Write in anything that might be mentioned or referred to within the game’…so if the bartender has a sign outside that says he’s got the best chicken in town, he’d better know about chicken. Provocation is where we draw the line for NPC knowledge, along with the occasional Easter egg.”

Of course, in addition to calling out World of Warcraft, Garriott said something else controversial during the course of the interview, which has led to no small amount of angst on the Shroud of the Avatar forums:

On the subject of Shroud of the Avatar’s business model, Garriott said that he’s looking to take a hybrid approach with the game. “The game will have a retail price, plus some in-game transactions…So we’re going to charge $40ish to play the game…There will be a demo space that’s available for free, as well. While we’re giving some [in-game property] plots to backers for helping to game to get going, for everyone else who comes in later, there will be a load on that, $5 per month, or something like that.” Garriott doesn’t feel that the charge on property will be a detriment to the game, however. “We’re going to try and avoid the issue of selling power, but we do want to say that if you want to be a player in the world, you need to be supporting us…We’re going to have some caps on things such as inventory, but if you don’t want that, you can just pay us $5-10 per month and just forget about it. And in fact, we’re also making it so that players can pay their rent with in-game currency too.”

None of the above is at all unreasonable; it makes sense that Portalarium would need some kind of after-launch revenue stream to keep the game’s servers going and to help finance development of the four planned sequels. However, this being the Internet, people have of course assumed the worst and taken Garriott’s words to mean that Shroud of the Avatar will be crammed full of microtransactions.

Which…no. Just no.

The First Age of Update: Starr Long weighs in on the transactions issue, and basically says that monthly fees won’t be happening, that Garriott was musing aloud and not speaking of actual systems that will be put in place.

Revenge of the Update: The third part of the interview, which focuses on Garriott’s history as a game designer and his thoughts on the role in its modern incarnation, was posted a couple weeks ago. Not sure how I missed that.