This interview has been done exclusively for Rookie.com.pl, according to one of the privileges of promoted Tibia fansite specified by Fansite Programme. Copying the material without the explicit consent of the administrator is forbidden.

(This interview was originally published as part of the 29th edition of The Rookstayer magazine, but the whole thing is not available in English.)

Hello, Knightmare! I'm glad that you have found a bit of time for us. So, everybody knows you as a father of Rookgaard, but it would be better, if you were introduced more precisely. Who is Knightmare?

Knightmare: Knightmare is a Pixel Character I created years ago. His first incarnation did not even have a vocation, as the game had none at all. His first experiences in Tibia were very similar to the Rookgaard experience and I think I tried to recreate as much as I could from my own early experiences in the game when I worked on Rookgaard. The world back then was rather limited in scope and challenges. There were only a few monsters. The game pace was rather slow but it was exciting to wander around, discover enemies and explore new areas. You slowly learned to handle the foes and how many of them you could manage and so on.

Venturing into the unknown I made first friends who proved to be valuable allies in my fights. Later on, Knightmare became a paladin, a blind choice. We were informed back then that vocations would be implemented and we'd have to choose one class in advance, so I didn't know what a paladin would be like. For a while Knightmare even competed in the top level player list, though I always tried to help new players with their first steps in a world that had become more complicated.

After some changes in the game, levels were roughly cut in half, with more reduction to the highest levels in order to bring all players to a similar level. That was the point when I stopped competing in the Highscores and concentrated more on helping other players.

It became more and more clear, that low level players alongside high leveled players now faced a different kind of challenge than we had to face in the past. The new players often missed the important first steps in the game such as an item progression, for example, due to discarded items or presents from higher level players. They also often fell prey to the more malignant players. Some other low levels were only secondary characters to annoy other players without fear of retribution. This was the time the idea of Rookgaard was born. Later Knightmare somewhat retired ingame and began to work behind the scenes.

We know that you are a creator of many epic places in game, but I would like to ask about just one. Did you remember how Rookgaard was founding? What inspired you then? If such a place on Rookgaard exist, which one do you like the most?

Knightmare: The first iteration of Rookgaard was a bit smaller than the Rookgaard that you know. I had an eye on the equipment available by shopping and monster drops to introduce a form of progression. As I explained, that item progression had been lost on the main continent for lower levels, because new players rather equipped with the stuff other players discarded or left on the battlefield. There was even a situation when the best armor in the game dropped of dragons that were spawning just east of Thais. To make matters worse, the stuff was unsellable and littered the landscape. A new player would walk out, pick some stuff up and would be overpowered for every monster that he was supposed to fight. This was a situation I wanted to avoid in Rookgaard. So you could say the major inspiration was one of my own initial experiences, as well as the things we all could see going wrong in this iteration of Tibia.

It was not too hard to choose the monsters for that area, since as I said, the earlier versions of Tibia felt quite 'rookgaardish' before the vocations were introduced anyway. The look and feel that the old Tibia transported was what I was aiming for. I was allowed to make slight changes in the loot and monster power but nothing too drastically. So some items were removed and others were added to the low level monsters. Though Cyclopses were available in the early game versions they were beefed up in the new Tibia and would no longer fit into the progression that I had in mind. So they were replaced and the relatively new minotaurs found their way into Rookgaard. Obviously, the monsters shouldn't be too over the top, so we see no dragons on Rookgaard. With the later changes we were able to introduce some new monsters so we got a more diverse set up.

Even in the choice of scenery I used less then was available and worked with the most basic assets we had at our disposal. Nothing too fancy all in all, so the change to the main continent had a little more of a 'Wow!' effect for a player. Later it was decided that it wasn’t necessary to be that shy with some fanciness and Rookgaard got a facelift to show off a bit more what Tibia had to offer.

What do you think about Rookstayers? Do you know any of them? Are you proud of the fact that such players exist, who still love your map and make a community?

Knightmare: I personally like Rookgaard of course and the fact that people still like that kind of content proves me right. Rookgaard has it's own, slower pace which is a welcomed change from the main continent for some players, so they have secondary characters that remain on the island. It's also the only pace they like to play at for others, so they choose Rookgaard as their home with their main characters. I think I understand the decision to stay on Rookgaard with some characters and enjoy another part of Tibia. It can itself be a whole separate game and it is nice to see that a separate 'world' has evolved there over time. Even if there are no content updates and most general updates have only little effect on Rookgaard, people still enjoy the content that was created so long ago. I assume most of the Rookgaard players have one or more higher leveled characters on the Main continent and visit Rookgaard as a form of vacation from the loud and hectic world of paladins, druids, sorcerers and knights. In the end it is important that the island holds an important space in the hearts of so many. I have to admit, though, I personally never had a significantly high leveled Rookgaard character. Some of my characters never left Rookgaard but I rather started a new one instead of levelling an existing character too much.

Nowadays, we have two supported fansites about Rookgaard. Have you got an opinion about that?

Knightmare: I'm astonished that this 'old' content still has enough followers to warrant this kind of effort. I'm sure it helps to keep the Rookgaard community and Rookgaard itself alive. So I appreciate these efforts very much. The living community is one of the most important parts of multiplayer games. I think the scale and scope of Rookgaard helps much in knitting a community together but in the end it's the efforts of dedicated people that keep a community alive. So the praise for this community goes far more to the players than to my work.

When Dawnport has been added, plot of the game became slightly changed, like when Tutorial Island has been added. What do you think about rejection of Soul Vortex concept?

Knightmare: I don't see it as a rejection. The full-fledged introduction of the vortex is something that still has to be done some time in the future. With graphics and in all glory it deserves. But there are other projects and more pressing issues that have to be addressed. It also might get easily overlooked when you delve into a game for the first time so that it would most likely not be that appreciated anyway. But the vortex is neither rejected nor forgotten. It is a part of Tibian history and lore and is still 'existent' in the world and the world-logic. We will try to revisit that theme at some point in the future but there are no current plans to touch it.

I'm sure that you discussed about Rookgaard, after improving new novice island, more than once. I would like to know, what will you do with Rook currently, if you could?

Knightmare: Well expanding Rookgaard in some way would be a nice touch of course but right now we have a delicate balance and adding new monsters and items would possibly upset this balance. Of course some new cave here and there and a selected few new enemies and bosses would already be a nice but that is obviously not on our agenda in the foreseeable future. I don't think though there is something that has to be 'fixed' or that there is something that annoys me that much, that I want it replaced.

But letting my imagination run wild: Sometimes I wonder how a server with Rookgaard rules applied to the whole world would look like. Would it be playable? Of course lot of work would have to be done to make the framework even feasible and in the end the reception would probably not warrant the effort, sadly. Many areas would be too dangerous to ever set a foot into and some monsters would become unbeatable. Perhaps it would need some kind of low level magic to make even the most basic areas huntable. But as you see, those thoughts are just the tip of the iceberg and there would be so many things to be planned ahead and balanced, that this will probably stay just a wild dream forever. But at least such a world would certainly be hardcore at least ;).

A big part of players think that Tibia had become pay2win game. What do you think about webshop?

Knightmare: The content team is not really involved with the Webshop and the Store. Personally, I don't see where it would be pay to win. Even more I doubt there is a 'win' in Tibia at all since it is open ended. Generally speaking though, you have this kind of problem in many games. If two people have the same dedication to a game but one of them has less time due to work but therefore more money, is it really such a problem if someone spends his money to catch up? In the end both parties are spending resources. The problems of pay to win are quite different and the term is just used way too often in a general form. Pay to win is buying something that gives you a huge advantage that is not available in the game itself and not available through other means. And as I said, I don't see that you can really buy a 'win' in Tibia.

What do you do except working in CipSoft? What do you like to do, have you got any interests, passions or obsessions? Generally, who are you privately?

Knightmare: Privately, I'm just an old story teller who enjoys sharing his stories ;) Of course I'm interested in books, comics, roleplaying games, PC games, TV- shows and the like. In my youth I started as a SciFi fan. I watched Star Wars and Star Trek and was eager to watch everything remotely SciFi, which was rather rare by then.  Due to fantasy roleplaying games suiting me more than their rare SciFi counterparts, my focus shifted more towards fantasy quite early. One of my fellow players recommended me The Lord of the Rings and that kick started my interest in reading fantasy books. So I've read a lot of fantasy books over the years and now and then find the time to write a story myself. I lack the time to read SciFi and Mystery and so these themes are more prominent in my television watching habits. I play a lot of PC games, mostly strategy, RPG's and builder games. I never really got into console gaming, perhaps just because I usually watch TV while playing but I'm really not fond of controllers, it always feels I'm lacking a hand or two to use them adequately. I have played pen and paper roleplaying games since over 20 years. While I don't play them as much and intense as in the past we still have a regular game schedule. Aside from the RPGs I play, I read a lot of source material and rules of other RPGs.

And what I expect? Well, I hope to be able to continue my storytelling for quite a while. There is so much about Tibia to be told and so many issues to be touched, it can take quite a while to tackle that all.