Cynagin: So we're back from Austin and whew, things have not slowed down. I'd say, if anything, work on FE has increased dramatically in the last two days. Things are hopping, and work is charging ahead. With convention season almost behind us, everyone is back on Fallen Earth, so things are chugging along nicely. There's the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose in October, but only Lee and Colin are going to that. In the mean time, we've begun working on some of the towns mentioned in our earlier newsletters like Post 23 and Haven.

The Austin Game Developer's Conference went very well. We had lots of interest in Fallen Earth and did more interviews than I care to count. These have already begun cropping up online, but you'll probably see a good number more over the next week or two. Thanks to Dustin (Andreeon) for coming and helping out at Austin. In such a hectic environment, it's always nice to have another pair of hands to help out.

1. How will characters be handled? Will they be all tied together, like in the Guild Wars system when you join a guild and all your characters are automatically in it?

They won't be tied together. Players will be able to have different characters join different guilds.

2. I would like to know more about a previous statement you made: "you can roll up your jeans, button or unbutton your shirt, turn you cap around, and more." Can I really roll my jeans up? Is every piece of clothing able to be modified in the way you wear it?

Not every piece of clothing is modifiable, but many pieces are. For example, there's not a lot you can do to change the way you wear a t-shirt or a bullet proof vest, but many of the jackets, pants, baseball caps, etc have modifiable elements. Generally these clothes have various options that can be selected through the gear window or by clicking on the appropriate piece of clothing on your avatar.

3. Is it going to be mandatory to fight for AP? Or will there be missions or something so people that don't fight can advance their skills?

It is not mandatory to engage in combat to gain AP. Non-combat characters will pass up some opportunities to get AP, but there are plenty of other ways to advance characters. Each tactic has its advantages and drawbacks. Players who just do crafting, harvesting, and non-combat missions are likely to advance more slowly than combat oriented characters, though the combat oriented characters will likely have inferior gear for their level unless they have a lot of crafting friends.

4. From what I understand, the game will not be rated M.

Not that this is really a question, but we plan that the game will be rated M. We will be applying the same standards to beta as we will to selling the game. The process for age verification for beta hasn't been finalized yet.

5. How many recipes will be found in the wastes and how many will be gotten from NPCs in a town? If we have to go find them, how difficult is it going to be to find them? Will only one group of people out in the wastes have a particular recipe? Or will there be a large number of different groups of people that will have it? Or are the recipes just randomly generated on just about everything in FE? Or can we expect that all of these are the case?

Recipes can be gained a number of ways:

1. From merchants. Usually only common recipes that everyone gets can be found at merchants unless the merchant has some sort of limitation on who he will deal with, such as a faction merchant or a merchant in a faction town. Those limited merchants often sell recipes that are rare or cannot be found elsewhere at all. For example, a merchant in a Tech town will only sell recipes to people with the appropriate Tech faction rating, and the Ballistics, Science, or Armorcraft recipes he sells will be more advanced than the recipes of a similarly leveled Vista merchant. On the other hand, the Vista merchant would have more advanced Nature and Cooking recipes.

2. From missions. Most towns will have a few recipes that are unique to that town that will be gained through completing missions. Also, factions and sub-factions may give out certain recipes if you complete certain goals for them.

3. From Teaching: You can teach most recipes to other players, but you cannot teach all recipes. For example, faction specific or certain rare recipes will not be teachable.

4. From Scavenging/Looting: Sometimes you'll find recipes through looting bodies or scavenging, though this will not be common.

6. There has been a lot of talk about how just a few factions will have a deeper storyline, so I'm just wondering who these "major" factions will be. I'm always interested in the story, and it would suck if I, as a Tech, would miss out on a lot of the story, if say, CHOTA and the Enforcers where the main factions of the game. So the big question is, will I miss out on a lot of story if I'm not in a "main" faction?

The six factions on the wheel (Enforcers, Techs, Travelers, CHOTA, Vistas, Lightbearers) are all main factions. The secondary factions are villain factions, the Bankers, and Franklin's Riders. The main factions have equal amounts of story and content compared to each other and more than the secondary factions. So a Tech and a Vista will see the same amount of story as a Traveler or CHOTA, but more than someone who stays neutral or just pursues villain faction stories.