Hello, Guido! Thanks for taking this interview with TibiaRP! To get things started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm one of the founders and managing directors of CipSoft. My main responsibilities include managing all aspects of our online game Tibia. Before Steve, Uli, Stephan and I founded CipSoft, we four worked on Tibia as a kind of hobby during our studies. I studied physics in Regensburg, and I'm 36 years old now. I'm married and just recently I became a father to a little son.

Jumping jellybeans, congratulations on that! :) What about in your free time? What sort of hobbies do you have?
What's free time? Hehe... Unfortunately I don't have a lot of free time, but in the little time I have between CipSoft and my family, I enjoy computer games and the trading card game "Magic the Gathering". My favourite computer games at the moment are "Titan Quest" and "Project Reality", a "Battlefield 2 Mod" that I can really recommand if you like team shooters on a hardcore level. And next to computer games, I also enjoy meeting with my friends and travelling with my family... Ah, too many things to do, too little time...

A creator of CipSoft, eh? What’s that like, and what do you generally do during a working day?
Usually I start my working day with checking my mailbox and having briefings with the colleagues involved in current projects for Tibia to get an overview about the daily situation. Then typically, I have several meetings about all kinds of concepts that are at a planning stage still, and I'm coordinating things with our developing team.
I'm mainly rushing from one meeting to the next, and between those, I spend my time with bug fixing or answering emails, or like today, answering interview questions. So, I coordinate teams and projects, plan and analyse many different things, for example by checking statistics and feedback.

Since the start of Tibia, have you had any funny, special or memorable moments which you would like to share with the rest of the Tibia community?
There are a lot of great moments in Tibia and CipSoft in general, but spontaneously, I remember one incident that I had a good laugh about. During the last years my field of work has changed greatly. Some years ago, I was mainly responsible for the Customer Support, developing the department, and all processes that customer support requires. So it came that we were discussing name rules for the first time. I then was confronted with the character name "Super Pokemon Master Hero" and thought that was hilarious.
Personally, I rather enjoy moments within the team a lot. You can have very interesting conversations, and we also laugh together, which helps during difficult situations. I can say that I love my job.

Sure, Tibia’s the game you currently work on … but do you ever play it just for fun?
I have phases of playing Tibia intensively. Some months ago, I even started a new character. I have not reached the ranks of a high level, yet, but I don't have to be ashamed of my character, either. This time I'm playing a druid, which is a new experience for me, because before I mainly played knights. Currently I'm not levelling much anymore though. I'm more into testing different things, using different tactics on monsters, doing some quests, so I currently focus more on other aspects of the game than pushing my character.

Why was the ‘roleplaying is dead’ grave put beneath Mt Sternum?
Well, good question. At one point a member of the content team put it there as a kind of joke. Something to smirk about...

What do you personally think of the current status of roleplaying in Tibia?
There are plenty of definitions of "roleplaying". For me, it means taking on an artificially created role. Playing out a character that does not resemble yourself. From my experience though I think that people usually don't do it like that. They create a character, and then act just like they are, they do not take on a different role. They use their own language, and they do not act as if they were somebody else.
Roleplaying is not forbidden in Tibia, everybody can do it, we simply decided not to support it actively. Also, we do not want to force anybody to roleplay. Tibia is a playground for roleplaying for the people who enjoy doing it. The problem is that roleplayers often feel disturbed by non-roleplayers, and vice versa. Combining these groups is difficult.

Does CipSoft have any plans for Tibia which could improve the roleplaying possibilities in-game? We have already seen the marriage system, can we expect any more?
Well, if we have the opportunity to easily implement something that encourages roleplaying, we do it, but it does not play a central role in our planning. We are of course open to roleplaying topics.

Can we get any comments or opinions on the proposals of roleplaying servers in general?
Of course. Well, to put it straight, there won't be a roleplaying server.
Please let me explain. On such a server, roleplaying would be mandatory, and that is against our overall notion not to force anybody to participate in active roleplaying.
Further, such a server poses many questions that can hardly be answered. There is no overall definition of roleplaying. Roleplaying would have to be enforced on such a server, which would have to be done by a extension of the Tibia Rules. Such rules would only meet the taste of a few people, since not all roleplayers want exactly the same thing. It would also have to be made sure that non-roleplayers would avoid the server, in order not to disturb the roleplayers. One way of doing that would be to abolish the ability to level the character, for example, however that would even be too much for most people who call themselves roleplayers.
So you see, we have heard about the proposal of a roleplaying server of course, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

The Lightbearers event has gotten many Tibians excited! Will we see any more events like these after this one?
We also think that such events that occupy a larger part of a server's community are a chance to get people to start working together, to have players following one goal together. Many Tibians were excited about the event, but also many were disappointed afterwards. So from this first event we'll have to draw our own conclusions, we'll have to work on improving the things that were criticised. I don't think it's unrealistic though that more quests like the Lightbearer event might happen in the future. We will definitely talk about such events, with the content team, the community management department and the rest of the product management.

Could you confirm if there are actually any quests, big or small, which are yet to be discovered?
Uhm - no. If I'd tell you this, I'd probably be killed by the content team. They enjoy creating mysteries, and watching players speculating about stories and quests they have created.

Why was Yalahar designed so differently than all the other cities so that all the spawns were accessible – with ease – within minutes?
When the content team started planning Yalahar, I liked the suggestion to build a city that way. Areas differ from their look, their difficulty level, some are for low levels, some for high levels. The same goes for cities, and one trait of a city is which kind of hunting grounds it is surrounded by. The story around Yalahar justifies its design, it's one further variation of cities in Tibia.
For me, hunting grounds close by a city is something nice. I might be able to find something to hunt quickly there - and I don't mind walking a couple of minutes to find a hunting ground a bit further away, in case the ones close by should be crowded.
The architecture of Yalahar does not imply though that this is a general direction we are taking when building new cities.

Many players across practically every Tibian world complain about power abuse from guilds. Does CipSoft have any plans to take an active stance against this problem now or in the future?
With the optional PvP worlds we tried to offer an alternative for everybody who wants to play without having to fear random player kills.
The motivation behind player kills simply cannot be judged objectively. You can't really distinguish between a player killing a lower level for good or for bad reasons. The lower level might have stolen from the higher level, or provoked him verbally - or he might have simply had the bad luck to cross his way. Nobody could tell for sure, so trying to solve such conflicts via a fair rule enforcement is not really possible.
Being able to kill almost anybody, almost everywhere, almost every time is a core feature of PvP worlds, and valued by many players. So punishing a players for doing exactely this contradicts itself.
On open PvP worlds, we tried to reduce the number of kills a player can do. That way he still has the chance to defend himself, or take revenge, but can't go on massive killing sprees. This also means though that he might use his power against a possible victim. Of course we will continue to watch the situation, optional PvP worlds have just been introduced the way they are now, also the war system is fairly new. At least minor corrections and some new features will be introduced in the next year. In the end it is our duty to work on a problem until you - the players - are satisfied.

Okay, on the subject of cheaters: what do you think about account sharers, macro users, botters … and any other form of cheating?
As a player myself, I like mastering challenges in games and I also enjoy the entertainment of a game. It's a nice experience and it is sad that there are players that try to take a short cut to achieve goals in games on the costs of other players.
If somebody plays a single player game, he could cheat all he wants, nobody would care. However, in a multiplayer game, where there is competition, a level of fairness is required. I think it is pretty low to cheat to gain an unfair advantage. What for? You can't be proud of what you have accomplished, since you have not accomplished anything yourself.
I also don't understand why so many people accept it if their friends cheat. Some players tell us that all of their friends cheat. So it seems that on a personal level, cheating is accepted by many.

Do you feel that on average the more aggressive/prone to power abuse the player is, the more he/she is likely to cheat?
Yes, I really think that this is the case for the majority of cheaters. I see a clear connection between power abuse and cheating. In my opinion, the reason for this is that an aggressive player wants to abuse power and cheating is a way to gain more power faster. So cheating makes it easier for an aggressive player to achieve much quicker what he wants to achieve.

Do you think that a high amount of cheating in a game world causes damage to the community as a whole?
Principally, yes. All players within the community compete with each other, for example, to be the highest level on a game world or to have the highest amount of money, and so on. So if somebody cheats and you want to be able to compete with him or her, it's very difficult to do so by playing fair.
Several players have told us that this is the case for them. They say that they would stop cheating if others would stop as well.
We try to break this cycle step by step - to reduce the power one player has over the other, and to reduce the possibility to cheat and the motivation to cheat.

What do you personally think about OT servers and what is CipSofts stance on these?
I am personally not fond of OT servers at all. First of all, such servers pose a security risk to everybody who connects to such a server. On the other hand, people creating such servers also steel from CipSoft, and I cannot approve of this. Most OT servers, however, only attract a small amount of visitors, so we currently don't do anything against them actively. Of course we do reserve the right to do something against them legally if things get out of hand.

Many argue that although the auto-ban system is detecting and banning many botters, many more still bot freely and that GMs should still be banning these botters. What are your thoughts on this?
Before the automatic detection tool was introduced, a lot less people were banished for botting or macroing. Banishing a botter was extremely difficult for a gamemaster. They had to check each report manually and watch the player for a while to make sure he was really using a bot.
Then many botters had an alarm installed that warned them if a gamemaster was present. So it was not only extremely difficult, but also often impossible to banish the player. Each single case was checked by a real person. This process was also a bit error-prone. Gamemasters are human beings, and sometimes situations were mis-interpreted. It was not fair to put that much pressure on the gameasters and to let them fight the fight against cheaters which they couldn't win. This entire process was very inefficient. The automatic system is more reliable, more efficient and more just.
Nevertheless, we still have a cheating problem in Tibia and we are not satisfied with this situation ourselves. We take the worries and the criticism of our players very seriously and we have to improve the situation, there is no doubt about that.
We could consider allowing gamemaster to banish botters again, however, we hope to find a better solution. It does not have to be this way or the other.

Hundreds of tutors cheat on the tutor test. Do you have any comment on this problem? Any ideas on how to solve it?
Somebody who cheats on the tutor test and doesn't have the required knowledge to pass the test, won't be able to do a good job as a tutor afterwards. So if he submits too many wrong reports, or doesn't do anything at all, he won't be a tutor for very long. If somebody who cheated on the tutor test does a good job as a tutor, it's still not good that he cheated on the test, but at least he's doing something good for the community in the end. We are also thinking about improvements in this area though.

Have you ever accidentally banished someone? And how long did it take you to notice?!
Áh, actually, yes. It wasn't a dramatic situation, though. I remember a case some years ago. I clicked on a player in the chat console to banish him. I then got a reply back from the system and read the character name I had just banished. Thank God I noticed immediately that it was the wrong character name, so I could fix the mistake in a matter of minutes.
Nowadays, I'm hardly banishing anybody anymore. Our customer support team was extended, and I'm not involved in rule enforcement anymore - a mistake like this simply cannot happen to me anymore.

There are several pictures all over the Internet showing a dead body on the Isle of Solitude – many years ago, with you standing over them. Why did you punish people in this way?
Oh geez, that must have been ages ago. I hardly remember this incident. I guess this player behaved in a very rude manner. Back then I sometimes used such means to get a message across. But, we don't do things like that anymore.

Many players are mad that rares are becoming everyday things. For example, the Elvenhair Rope used to be a legendary item which players spent uncountable sums of money on and spent hours trying to find them! But now it is a common item found in many adventurers’ backpacks. Do you have anything to say about this?
Hmmm... unfortunately I don't recall the exact reasoning in this particular case anymore. I'm afraid that I cannot really answer this question.
There are thousands of items in Tibia and their value is not carved in stone, it is rather dynamic. It can happen that a item that was quite rare becomes quite common, but then it was a decision that we made. Sometimes we simply want an item to be used more. A rare item is usually wanted by many people, and sometimes it makes sense to spread them more, so more people can use them. There are also others though, which are intended to be kept rare right from the beginning.

Many players are calling out for double experience weeks/loot events. Do you feel that these types of things are good ideas?
Such events are definitely interesting for us. We have tried it out before to see if something like this would work for Tibia. As with most newly introduced things, we were able to identify a number of unexpected advantages and disadvantages with the help of player feedback afterwards. The evaluation of this topic is not completed, yet, so I can't tell you at the moment in which way or in which situations such events will occur again. Of course we try to exclude the disadvantages.
Actually, I'd really like to grab this chance here to thank all players for their feedback. It really helps us in many decisions.

Have you ever been Rick Roll`d on the job?
Hehe - unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure yet to enjoy any Rick Astley videos ^^
To be honest, being rick'roll'd is quite uncommon in our office, even though we often share funny emails.

The popular video game Counter Strike was banned in Brazil, does CipSoft have any worries that Tibia will also be banned? In any country? If this did happen, how could it affect the game?
I personally think it's a bit crazy to ban a game like Counter Strike. Such sanctions aren't necessary for a game like this in my eyes, and they won't lead to any success, either.
I don't really worry about the same happening to Tibia. The reason for banning a game is often a realistic illustration of extreme violence, and this does not happen in Tibia.
In case there ever should be a local banning of Tibia, all I can say is that the internet is pretty open, and it's questionable if there's really an effective way to block anything once and for all.

Recently, several gamemasters have retired, but we haven't seen any gamemasters being recruited. What are CipSofts plans for gamemasters in the future?
Of course we know that rule enforcement in Tibia needs a makeover. We are currently having internal discussions about this topic, however no definite decisions have been made yet. So I'm afraid that I cannot really give you any details concerning this topic.

I, personally, have never seen an advertisement for Tibia … anywhere. Will you ever, or are you currently trying, to advertise Tibia a bit more?
Ah, that's actually correct. We rarely had any typical advertisement actions for Tibia. We plan to increase advertisement for Tibia, however, only in very focused actions. We won't spend much money on large advertisement campaigns on TV or anything the like.

In the past, members of CipSoft could be seen at events every now and then in-game. Why did they stop visiting events?
Well, in the past Tibia and its community was a lot smaller, and there were a lot less ingame events. It was then still possible for members of the CipSoft team to visit such events. Nowadays, CipSoft has grown and everybody who works here is pretty busy with all sorts of tasks during work time.
Several CipSoft members are playing Tibia in their spare time though, and also participate in ingame events, just as other players do. Visiting ingame events officially would most likely be part of the job of a community manager, if at all. Our community managers cannot participate in all player events either, though, time simply doesn't allow this.

TibiaCam. A popular device used by many Tibians to record their hunts, wars, events, or anything else they want. Could it be a program which will be supported by CipSoft in the future?
We will not officially support any third party programmes. We cannot control what somebody else codes, so we could not guarantee that a third party programme would be save to be used.
Further, we cannot foresee what difficulties a programme that was developed by somebody else could cause for our Tibia client. Any programme that interferes with the client can cause unforeseen and unexpected difficulties.
Of course Tibiacam is a nice device and many players enjoy using it. We don't want to destroy anybody's fun, either. So nobody will ever be punished for using Tibiacam, however, everybody uses it on his own risk. If their client crashes because of it, or they get hacked through Tibiacam, we cannot offer any support. All we can do is raise the awareness of users that they should not accept any files from anybody else. That always poses a risk.
We could create our own Tibiacam, however, there are currently way more pressing topics on our desk that need to be dealt with first.

The proposal of players being able to change their skin colour in-game has been brought up various times on the proposals board. Could you give us any information on it on behalf of CipSoft? (eg: it may be used, no chance that it’ll be used, being thought about, etc.)
This is a very old topic, indeed. I remember this proposal peresonally from many years ago. There are several aspects why we did not and will not offer different skin colours in Tibia.
First of all, the world "Tibia" does not know different skin colours. Nothing in Tibia points in the direction that humans have different skins. Tibia is not a copy of the real world. There are different races, like dwarfs, elves, etc - however, humans are humans. Why should we introduce a different skin colour for humans? When you look at a Tibia character, you hardly see the character's skin anyway. There's not much room for letting anything appear differently.
So not even looking at the extra work that we would have to put into this, adding different skin colours would also propably lead to further ingame conflicts between players. So - many years ago, when the proposal first came up, we talked about it, and decided against it.

Why do you think Tibia has been deteriorating these past few years, and do you think it is too late for CipSoft to save Tibia from losing more and more players?
Not at all, to the contrary! During the last years, we had a very fast growing community. This has changed only during the last year. I assume you think that Tibia has been deteriorating because you checked the amount of players online. However, it is not as simple as that. The amount of players online is not the size of the community. Just take one example: The cheaters. One factor why the number of players online has decreased is that there are less bots online.
It is true that in some countries we have lost players, however, we have also won players from other countries. The features that we have introduced have led several player into leaving Tibia for good, however, these features also made others stay, and attracted new players. We are satisfied with the size of the Tibia community, we are one of the bigger online games, and Tibia has been online for many years already. We will of course try to further enlarge the community, and we do this by trying to make updates that show good quality and bring fun to the many people.

Any last words before we wrap up this interview, Guido?
Oh, over already... It was a pleasure. I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak directly to the community. Because of the development of Tibia I hardly get to do this anymore, I work more in the background now, managing different things. You have asked many interesting questions, and these questions also showed me what you are interested in. I promise that we will try to find good solutions for all mentioned problems. Good solutions for as many players as possible. It's unfortunately impossible to satisfy everybody.
Personally, I wish you lots of fun and success with your fansite. Roleplaying is very important for part of the community, and it's good that your site exists to give the roleplayers a bigger forum.