This year’s Gamescom dropped a bunch of sequels on every gamers’ head, but interspersed through it all were a couple of all-new titles – and even some that were straight-up MMOs, such as NCsoft’s Cinder City, which we first discovered as Project LLL in previous years’ investor reports.

Now thanks to an interview from WCCFTech, we have a clearer picture of just what this MMO shooter is planning to play like – and yes, we’re filing it as an MMO shooter because those are the words directly from the horse’s mouth.

“The primary genre would be large scale MMO shooter,” says BigFire Games CEO Jaehyun Bae. “The major part will be the open world online shooter where hundreds of players can play together simultaneously in the same field in a vast 7×7 kilometers wide city.”

As for what those hundreds of players are doing, that will include some world bosses that up to ten players can square off against, instanced dungeons that players can matchmake for that promise boss fights that are mechanically dense, and a variety of side stories and dynamic events.

Group makeup primarily focuses on players specializing in tactical weapons that bring specific skills. Additionally, while there will be somewhere between seven to nine playable characters in the game with distinct abilities that they bring, certain tactical weapons will allow for shared abilities among the roster while other tactical weapons will be character-specific. In other words, this one has pre-built heroes instead of fully custom player characters, though customization of these hero characters is promised.

Other answers in the interview confirm that a business model for Cinder City hasn’t been tied down, promise that an open beta will begin “between early next year and sometime in the middle of next year,” and outline a rough post-launch content update plan that will involve more new dungeons and new characters. Unfortunately, there are no release windows offered beyond that open beta timeline, but at least we can all confirm that this is squarely in our wheelhouse. Until then, a demo of the opening single-player mission from the game’s main story can be seen in the video below.