Staff writer Patrick Do speaks to the developers of MechWarrior Online about the much-anticipated action title.

When asked how the ranking system would work, Eckman stressed that, “Your rank as a player or pilot will not determine your access to content. This was important to us. We don’t want to force players to grind and grind to unlock their favorite mech. We want them to be able to jump into their favorite mech as soon as it’s available through purchase whether it’s through real dollars or in-game currency.”

While I applaud Piranha for taking such a liberal stance on the subject of in-game grinding, my personal fear is that players who are willing to pay more will have access to objectively better mechs right out of the gate. This is the inherent danger of the ever-mercurial item shop. For now, I remain cautiously optimistic that Piranha will be able to balance the game for players—regardless of wallet size.

The cosmetics of your mech will be customizable as well in MechWarrior Online, with players having the ability to change color schemes as well as add a faction emblem. These emblems will be pre-made out of the gate but Piranha has plans to incorporate a custom emblems once they sort out the nasty business of copyright law.

MechWarrior Online will be based around match play. Matches will consist of 24 players (12 on 12) and winning or losing these matches will have direct ramifications on the geographical landscape of a persistent universe known as the Inner Sphere. Player guilds, or factions, will fight for dominion of the planets within the Inner Sphere. The system that the team has in place seems fairly convoluted but genuinely interesting. Basically, as a player, you may join a faction, a mercenary group, or choose to remain neutral as a lone wolf. What you decide will determine which planets you will contest and how your rewards and experience points are awarded. You can find more information on this matter at the official MechWarrior developer’s blog, so I won’t hurt myself trying to figure this one out.

I was worried that the city shown in the repurposed 2009 trailer would be copied and pasted into every world; but the planets in the Inner Sphere will vary from dystopian cityscapes a la Terminator, to opulent jungle worlds and austere ice planets. Battles used to be very open: players would be able to see enemies coming a mile away; but MechWarrior Online promises to feature up-close and personal combat, where the terrain becomes another weapon—or obstacle—in the battle.

This point brings me to another concern I had about the game. Piranha confirmed on Monday that there would be no melee in the initial release of MechWarrior Online. Melee has been a mainstay in every MechWarrior title up until this point and is something fans have been clamoring for since the game was announced. There’s something visceral and satisfying about ripping another mech apart with your bare (robot) hands (or hand equivalent) once all your weapons have overheated and your mech is on its last legs (or leg equivalent). Piranha is fully aware of this oversight and has hinted that a post-launch remedy is on the horizon.

There is a cavalcade of reasons to be excited about MechWarrior Online, and it is a game that I really want to succeed. I grew up playing the MechWarrior games, and I generally enjoyed them, but I would always find myself dreaming up ways in which they could have been better, deeper and more realistic. The technology wasn’t quite there, at the time, to realize the game I had dreamed up all those years ago; but, if Piranha can deliver on the lofty promises they’ve posited, MechWarrior Online has the propensity to be everything I ever wanted out of a MechWarrior title and then some.

Patrick “BakersMan” Do, Staff Writer.