Interviews// Codemasters Online's Ed Relf

SPOnG: What are you most excited about that you’ve got on show?

Ed Relf: There’s a number of things. Obviously, the two big things are the hands-on reveal for (NetDevil's) Jumpgate Evolution, which is our next big MMO coming out later this year, and clearly Mines of Moria, the expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online being announced by our good friends Turbine is a massive exclusive for this event.

We’ve been working with NetDevil and Turbine incredibly closely over the last six months to really leverage their support for this event. It’s really thanks to those guys doing the activities they’re doing that it’s been so successful for us.

Other than that, we have loads of events going on. Lot’s of people here, consumer-wise, are playing our other MMOs.. There are players who play RF Online here, Archlord, Dungeons and Dragons Online. So, those games obviously already have established communities. So, there was always going to be a fairly large contingent of those guys. So I’m hoping they like what they see with Mines of Moria and Jumpgate. It’s a good launch platform.


SPOnG: Where do you see LOTRO in terms of Codemasters Online’s Portfolio?

Ed Relf: I mean… you ask this question to various people at Codemasters and people will say it’s the jewel in the crown. OK, sure, it’s the game that we have most players for. So, in that instance, sure, it’s the jewel in the crown. It’s the one game that sets us apart from anyone else in the industry, right? We like to feel that Lord of the Rings is a true contender to the goliath that is World of Warcraft, which pretty much dominates the entire marketplace right now. Being a contender to that game and being fortunate enough to have a game like Lord of the Rings puts us in a really nice situation where we’ve built a tremendous amount of experience at Codemasters now in the MMO business and we’re now in a great position where we can take that experience and do other games like Jumpgate Evolution, for example. Without our other games, we wouldn’t have the experience to do that.

We have other games and they’re incredibly important to us. Dungeons and Dragons Online, RF Online and Archlord all have very very active communities and they will play a very major part of our plans moving forward.

So… I guess the non-controversial answer is, they’re all just as important to us.