PlayStation.Blog live entertains gamer Q&A with Zipper Interactive, developer of M.A.G.. Below you will find a few keypoints from that discussion which can be found on the Playstation Blog.

[Comment From eagleeyes23]
do you have a relase date target
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Release is targeted at “Fall 2009″ — definitely this year

[Comment From kingofnexus]
Will MAG be a downloadable PSN title?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Kingo – MAG is too massive to be a mere downloadable title :)

[Comment From McDewbie]
after you choose a faction, is there any way you can change to another one? and will you have to make a avatar sorta like in WoW or do you get one per account?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Yep, you can change over to different factions, but there will be an associated EXP cost

[Comment From CmOwns]
How about an interactive MAG website where we can moniter stats?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: CmOwns — yes, we’ll have a website up where you can see stats, state of the game world, all that good stuff

[Comment From Stan]
What is the secret for having absolutly no lag?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Good question Stan! Lag is tricky…
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: We’ve put a great deal of work into the servers to make sure to minimize it. The fact that we’ve got dedicated servers up there forwarding the most important info will really help address LAG.

[Comment From Joey]
To what extent will vehicles play a role in MAG if at all?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Joey – The larger maps have driveable/mannable ground vehicles that players can use tactically, as well as play a part of the 128-player map mission objective. Air vehicles are used for insertions and support strikes but aren’t pilotable. The smaller maps don’t have vehciles, we want to focus on the infantry-level experience for those

[Comment From TJ]
Are you guys going to show MAG @ E3?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: TJ – we’ll definitely be showing off MAG at E3!

[Comment From PSN = drownedphoniex]
What are the various game modes? We already know about Domination, but is there a Capture The Flag type mode?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Phoniex – there aren’t the traditional game modes you might expect from smaller FPS titles. Basically each map has an associated game mode. We have a more tradiitonal team v. team mode for 64 players. We have a “capture the objective points” game mode for another set of 64 maps. the 128 maps have Attackers trying to steal a vehicle from the Defending side. 256 is an all-out battle for control points.

[Comment From P-Sheddy]
How is voice chat going to work with that many people?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Voice chat uses MAG’s command structure to maintain sanity! Squads can talk together, then squad leaders talk up the chain, and so on…

[Comment From silentscope101]
Will there be a way to join games that our friends are all ready in?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: silentscope101 – if your friends are already on your PSN friends list and they are the same army as you (so, you’ll only be able to join friends playing for Raven, if you’re a member of Raven), then you’ll be able to quickly join them in their game.

[Comment From Silent_wolf]
How big/balanced are the maps? Where in the world are they held?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: The biggest maps are about 1 square kilometre .. so big! The maps are based on three global regions – Alaska, Central Asia and Central america. How balanced are they – I’m gonna say perfectly balanced ;)

[Comment From LunarHybrid]
How are you going to handle cheaters?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Ah, cheaters… the bain of the online community!
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: We’ve got a number of things we’re doing — and are most excited about our dedicated servers (have I mentioned that before? :-)) It really allows us to do some cool things in the game, including *much* better cheat detection. We haven’t decided on “specific” responses for when we find the cheaters though.

[Comment From Omen_20]
What kinds of missions do squad leaders command, are they from a list of choices, or do they just make them up themselves?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: The missions are whatever the leaders in the match feel is important to win. there’s a tonne of different objectives to choose to hold/defend/destroy. As the game progresses the OIC, ‘toon leader and squad leader will all co-ordinate to determine what the squads need to do to win. there are no pre-created missions, though there will be “default” objectives for squad leaders to make sure a squad always has something to work towards.

[Comment From Rijckaert]
How long have you been working on this game ?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Rijckaert, we’ve been working on this game for quite some time. If pressed, I’d say we’ve been working on it for about 3yrs. Wow, that feels like such a long time…

[Comment From coolfondo]
will there be some sort of punishment for team kills? (like negitive xp)
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: coolfondo, we don’t have any “negative xp” system — although your rating will drop off pretty quickly if you’ve got a habit of team kills… Our servers will be looking at that aspect as part of the cheat prevention tech as well.

[Comment From Sunfrog]
If your squad leader gets killed does someone else take over?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Sunfrog, if the leader gets killed then they’ll be back at the next respawn. If they drop out, then someone on the battlefield will be promoted. That someone will still need to “opt-in” for leadership and meet the rank-requirements.

[Comment From Trioptical]
Will the training section allow players to sample the weapons of each army before commiting to one of them?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Trioptical – you have to pick your side before you go into training, but you will be able to move between the armies.

[Comment From cros1625]
How will the respawn work?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Wow… respawn in a 256 is a complex thing to describe. Let me summarise… you spawn in “timed waves” and you spawn in with your squad. Some lucky squads get to paradrop into the combat zone or ride in on APCs.

[Comment From Grintoth]
Can you go prone?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Grintoth, oh yea, you can go prone and sneak behind enemy lines or try to snipe from a distance.

[Comment From Zach]
Would you guys somewhat call this a MMOFPS
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: It’s an FPS first, then it’s and MMO. But the massive part is how all the games played come together to affect the world of MAG. There’s no sitting around waiting for a cleric to show up :)

[Comment From Johnny Rzeznik]
So… how do the games played come together to affect the world of MAG?
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: Rzeznik – let’s just say that every mission/game played affects the global state of the shadow War… and the state of the Shadow War conveys bonuses and advantages to those in control of different global “contracts”

[Comment From Guest]
Huge fan of Zipper Interactive’s work here. How are the 256 player matches coming along? I mean how often do you guys test such massive battles and have you run into any issues, like lag or frame rate drops? Do you feel confident that the game CAN be released this year?
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Lots of questions there… We’ve been running live 256 player tests since late last year — they’re really coming along. We run them near-daily (with bots) and then about every week with real people. We take advantage of those tests to monitor all the servers and make sure the network code is working as we’d hoped.
Mike Gutmann – Vice President @ Zipper: Yes, I’m CONFIDENT MAG will be relesed this year!
Ed Byrne – Creative Director @Zipper: When a 256 game starts, we queue people up and you won’t be stuck in a lobby with a list of names (you can tool around in the UI, work on your character etc.). when enough players have signed on to that game (we have a % for each gametype) the game will launch. Jason, our guru of all things complicated, is working on a system to make this as painless as possible.