INTERVIEW: With Early Access Dates Revealed, We Chat With Legacy: Steel And Sorcery's CEO To See What The Game Offers Players

Notorious Studios has revealed that their upcoming MMO/Extraction game Legacy: Steel and Sorcery will shed the "testing" tag and move to early access on my birthday, February 12th. I'm sure they totally did that on purpose, right? Anyway, at that point, the team will be asking for $24.99 on Steam with plans to let the community help develop the remainder of the title.

Now I'm a big believer in the idea that asking the public for cash, even in "early access," opens your product up for critique as it if were released. Companies can hide behind the "this isn't launch" excuse all they want, but sorry, you asked for straight cash, not a support pledge here.

With a few other extraction games eschewing the shooter genre lately, I caught up with Chris Kaleiki, the founder and CEO of Notorious Studios, to get scoop on exactly what this team of ex-World of Warcraft devs was creating, what it offered that was different, its payment model, and more. Whether you plan to play solo or a group of 3, are finishing quests in the MMO-like progression systems, killing other players, going after that sweet loot, or just hanging out, let's see what Legacy is all about.

MMOBomb (MB): Can you take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers and talk a little bit about what you do for Legacy day-to-day?

Chris Kaleiki (CK): At Notorious I am the Founder/CEO. Every day is different, but these days it is a lot of playing the game, giving feedback to the team and chatting with players about the game. But for the development of Legacy I was the main vision holder for the game, mostly from a systems design and core experience standpoint.

MB: Tell us a bit about Notorious Studios. You have quite the list of WoW veterans, yourself included, and devs from other well-known titles. What brought the studio together? Was it Legacy right away or did Legacy evolve from previous projects?

CK: While I was at Blizzard they did this thing mostly each year around the Holidays where we could work on whatever we wanted for the game (World of Warcraft) for around a week. I worked with another designer on making the game work on a controller. As you can imagine, the combat system doesn’t work very well for a controller and so I started to redesign it. The team really liked this idea and the combat system.

One thing led to another and I ended up pitching a project to the studio that had this type of action-based, sorta soulslike combat system with spells and abilities. But I didn’t quite know what the game was just yet – it was mostly just a combat system. And so it didn’t work out. But I liked the idea of working on my own game, thinking about the foundations, and building a team. At some point, I took the leap to form our own studio and create Legacy, which is a combination of what our team loves – fantasy, RPG, great combat, PvP and PvE, and worldbuilding.

MB: What’s the deal with Legacy? Take us through the gameplay loop.

CK: When we started Notorious and Legacy “extraction” wasn’t even a genre title yet. The game’s vision is World PvP, a feature which you find in a lot of MMOs. Interestingly, there are some World PvP games today like Escape from Tarkov, battle royales, etc but not very many fantasy ones (ironically since it started in Ultima Online). World PvP is one of my favorite aspects of an MMO, and it has never had a chance because it is a small, footnote feature in an MMO among a huge list of other features like raids, dungeons, questing, etc.

The core loop of Legacy is “open world” PvP. I put quotes around open world because as a veteran MMO dev I expect a persistent open world, which Legacy is not. It is a session (or “instanced”) experience. However, the map experience feels pretty open world – as open world as you’d feel teleporting from a city into a zone then back again in an MMO (which, these days, is what that open world experience is like). The player enters the world, can go loot, kill creatures or players, and then leave (“extract”) back to town and upgrade their gear, complete quests and other progression systems.

MB: The “extraction” genre has seen quite a few titles getting away from shooter games with Dark and Darker and the recently announced “Project Pantheon” extraction APRG. How does Legacy stand out from some of these titles?

CK: For Legacy we’re really not trying to chase a genre or trends, but instead realize our vision of a true fantasy RPG World PvP game. That said, it is what players would consider an extraction game in the current market for sure. There are a few things that set the game apart: the combat system, the rich progression and crafting and worldbuilding. We spent a lot of time innovating on what we think is the next iteration of action RPG combat – which is a blend between soulslike (heavy/light attack, evade, block etc) as a base mixed with spells and abilities with the classes. I worked as a WoW class designer for 14 years and I think our class design on Legacy rival the best in the industry.

Secondly, the game is more about gearing (looting and crafting) than it is extracting, or even PvP. Something that is I think misunderstood with Tarkov (which is the main extraction game in the genre) is that it isn’t even very much about PvP – it's about the looting. As RPG MMO devs, we love crafting and loot and the systems in Legacy are some of the best, even compared to other traditional MMOs.

Finally, we took a lot of care and attention to creating the environment and worldbuilding in Legacy. We want it to feel immersive and dangerous. I loved the worlds we built while working on WoW, but they always felt like a pretty backdrop – you couldn’t interact with them. In Legacy, you can mantle up areas and even destroy some parts of it.

MB: What should we expect from monetization? Based on the Steam page it looks like there will be a box fee, but will Legacy be a “live service” with seasons, are you thinking about just selling DLC? What’s the plan?

CK: We will have a box sale at release that will be reasonably priced. Since the game is online and we want to continue to add more zones, classes and other content, we do plan on having some additional monetization later on but it will be more muted than what you’d find in AAA. It's likely we’ll do some cosmetics as well as play around with monetizing stash tabs, as you find in Path of Exile and some other modern RPGs.

MB: You’re self-publishing Legacy at the moment, right? Has Notorious secured all the funding it needs to reach a full launch for Legacy or will early access funds be required to reach the team’s final “launch” vision.

CK: Notorious is among a small select group of studios that were formed between 2020-2023 that were backed by Venture Capital (VC). This is a bit different than most studios that were funded by publishers. What this gives us is a lot more freedom to explore more innovative, niche experiences than the traditional publisher who usually wants you to make a sequel or copy of something already proven.

MB: Letting players be “part of development” via early access is a lip service buzz phrase we hear a lot these days. How will Notorious actually be letting players be part of development?

CK: You’re totally right! In some ways I’m annoyed we’re doing EA, but again, when you stop to think about it the intent for EA is to really have this phase of development where the game is out there to players, you get raw feedback that you iterate on, and most importantly you are tested in the market. More games should go into EA (or at least, public open alpha) to find out if those devs should spend another 1-2 years of their career finishing something that the market wants. Who wants to waste their lives working on something nobody wants, or plays?

Legacy is more like an MMO than not, and it's almost impossible to develop an MMO without players playing and testing the game – it's just too big. The players testing the game are critical for us to understand if our vision and design intent is landing or not. We’ve made significant changes to the game and experience already, like pivoting to adding a tutorial (FTUE) and intro questline (“campaign”). It's impossible to know what pivots and changes we’ll do once we’re in EA, but it's exciting!

MB: Initial feedback when it was revealed, including from my own pieces back then, said the combat looked like it needed work, and some impact added. On your Steam page it says, “Feel the impact of your attacks” almost like it is addressing those early opinions. Take us through how things have changed since early reveals.

CK: In the past decade or so we’ve seen a surge in 3rd person action combat games, like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring. I think this is awesome because for far too long in games (especially American ones) have we been inundated with FPS games. But this 3rd person combat system is quite a challenge to build, for a multitude of reasons.

When we revealed the game last year in the summer we got some feedback that the combat looks “clunky” (a game designer's favorite word!). Some of this has to do with animation, with impact effects or animations, lack of VFX or sound, or screen shake. Over time, we have made tons of adjustments and additions to flesh it out. I think today it’s quite good, but could still more polish which we plan to do in EA.

MB: Your materials advise that major updates will cause players to “experience fresh starts.” Will that always be the case or is that just an early access thing?

CK: Legacy is going to have a seasonal “reset” model, similar to Escape from Tarkov, Diablo or Path of Exile. This gives a lot of advantages – most which you get usually in a new MMO expansion. Player power resets so you don’t get power creep or a stale metagame, players are on a fresh start with others so they feel like they can jump in without being behind.

That said, we’ll continue to do what’s best for the game and what our players want. There is something cool to evergreen progression and economy as well, so it's possible we may explore that at some point.

MB: What else would you like readers to know? Any tip you can give our readers to get a leg up on early access launch day?

CK: Making games is hard. I’m blessed to have worked on games that I personally want to play and love – both World of Warcraft and now Legacy. But making games is hard, and marketing them is even harder. A challenge with Legacy is that it is a tricky game to describe, and it is much more than an extraction PvP game. It is a culmination of over a decade of learning from developing WoW from its combat and systems design.

We have an ambitious vision for where we want to take Legacy, and I think the combat system and world experience is a great preview of what we can expect for next-gen fantasy MMORPGs. Or at least, I hope it is.

It won't be long now until players get the full Legacy experience and they can judge it for themselves. We'd like to thank Chris for spending some time with us.