Last week we reported on the upcoming release of Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot. Reactions to the announcement were mixed, however, because while more Borderlands could only be a good thing, the details initially revealed about the expansion made it sound rather “meh” at best.

Apparently we weren’t the only ones to feel this way, as MTV was quick to track down Gearbox designer, Jon Hemingway, and ask him if more arena was really all that we could expect. Thankfully, Jon was more than happy to set us all straight.

“Basically the idea is that we have this character, Moxxi. She’s running this underground coliseum tournament arena thing. You go in and fight waves and rounds of monsters, and then she starts changing it all up. She throws out what are called ‘Moxxi Maxims,’ these rules that dramatically change the way the game play. She’ll be like, ‘Vampire Rule!’ which makes it so that the player’s health is constantly draining, but every time you get a kill you get a whole bunch of health back. Now all the players are like, ‘Holy crap, I have to play amazingly aggressive,’ so you have to charge in before you basically bleed out. Another example, she’ll go ‘Shotgun Challenge,’ where all shotguns do bonus damage and all other guns take a penalty.”

“There’s a small tournament and a big tournament. The small tournament takes probably about an hour, and most people will be able to get through that. The big tournament…one of the things people have been asking for is for something that challenges them, and that’s what the big tournament is. I think the last time I went through it, it took me six hours to get through a big tournament. You can’t save your progress, you have to do it in one sitting, but you can stop, walk away from it and come back. It’s really hardcore. To get through the big tournament, you’ll have to get some friends who are very good and you’ll all have to plan out what people are going to do and what weapons you’re bringing.”