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Lineage II elicits a great deal of excitement from players, thanks to its fantastic game play and magnificent graphics! The entire world seems alive with refined characters that move with individuality and beauty. Players often ask, "How could Lineage II portray such a fantasy world that seems so perfect?" You may be curious as well to know how this world was made and who created it. We hereby present the "Story of Making Lineage II", which includes exciting stories of the development team that you won't find anywhere else. |
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3. Developer Q&A (Chronicle 5) | 4. Developer Q&A; #2 (Chronicle 5) | 5. Visiting NCsoft Seoul (Interlude)

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Here's what I want to ask first of all. What was the most difficult aspect of realizing the enormous Lineage II world in graphics? |
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Team Head Cheol-Woong Hwang (hereinafter, "Hwang"): Making the quantity of graphic resources that can fill in the wide fields and achieve a structure from the content that existed only in document form so that it can be realized in the game system in a way that can be played were both difficult tasks. If there had been someone to tell us correctly about this, we could have done things twice as fast (laugh). In one village, it's difficult to calculate the correct time for manufacturing processes, so it took about 2-4 months just for that. |
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Oh, really.
It's always a problem to find things out correctly.
When looking at Lineage II, the atmospheres in the
villages are different for each race -- how did
you grasp the concepts of each race? |
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Hwang: The concept for humans was quite ordinary. But for Elves and Dark Elves, we made a lot of efforts to create unique environments. The Elves boast of a brilliant culture, even though the race had gone to ruin, so rather than making it dazzling, we designed it so as not to lose the natural and royal high-class feeling. On the other hand, for the Dark Elves we designed for a feeling of a somewhat grotesque and serious feeling in order to express the rough history of these who had been expelled from the Elves. We were really satisfied with the results. |

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The players often joke around that the Dark Elves make them think of "Sister Mania" and the Dwarves of "loricon". Of course, the Orcs were designed for "muscle mania" (laugh). |
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Hwang: Originally,
the Elves and Humans were designed with a concept
for the Korean market, the Dark Elves and Orcs for
the US market, and the Dwarves for the Japanese
market. It's true that the results came out in this
unexpected way and there haven't been satisfactory
responses in certain countries regarding races designed
for other countries. As might be expected, it's
very difficult to find a design concept that satisfies
everyone internationally. |

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Was there
a race that was particularly difficult? Was there
a character that really felt like a huge troublemaker
all around? |
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Hwang: Of course! (laugh). The race that was the most difficult was the Orcs. Orcs had never been a leading race in previous MMORPG games. And in the other games, they entered the game as the bad guys. However, the Orc race in Lineage II worships fire and has the image of a strong warrior race that occupies a high position. It was very difficult to design a race that no one's seen, just based on the word "Orc". We stopped and started work on this multiple times for over a year to achieve today's Orcs. |

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The continent
is set up so that the land gets higher and higher
the farther north you go. Was there a particular
reason or purpose for this? |
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Hwang: There are actually
flat areas at Talking Island or Giran. But it is
true that the general trend is for the land to rise
as one goes inland. This is something we intended
to do from the time of the first world design, so
we designed it so that the heights of the mountains
rise from west to east and from south to north.
The purpose of this is so that as a player starts
to play in the start zone, he can start moving as
his level increases and the scenes change consecutively
little by little. |

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I'll go around and take a close look at the scenes of the area in the future (laugh). In that case, were there any problems caused by differences in the planning and actual work? |
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Hwang: It is
natural that the game designers have an understanding
of 3-D structures that is less than the graphic
designers. This means that the graphic work must
progress to a certain extent in order for the proper
plan to be completed. Therefore, I can say that
all maps were designed in draft stage and then we
revised them based on feedback from the Game Design
Team so that the final completed versions were reached.
For example, castles for sieges have gone through
five revisions until now and we expect it will take
another six months to finish it completely. That's
because the feedback regarding it is endless. There
aren't many places where the plan and graphics were
forced to match each other. However, this is just
what must be done in order to complete the game. |
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Finally, please say a word to the players regarding Lineage II. |
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Hwang: Lineage
is the only online game in the world where you can
turn back from the mist of the early morning hours
to feel the wind on your back, with your compatriots
looking over a hill from which the ocean while the
morning sun rises over the horizon. |
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Did you enjoy reading the Story of Making Lineage
II? Even today, players are roaming around and
adventuring in the wide-open Lineage II world.
Lineage II is always evolving for you.
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