This is an article I wrote in italian during the December 2004 that was supposed to appear in the most popular paper magazine about games here in Italy (also the one that spolied the WoW’s expansion before the official Blizzcon, if you remember).
It was a preview of “Wish”, the game developed by Mutable Realms and Dave Rickey. It was supposed to appear in the issue of February but it never did. Just a few days after the New Year’s Day (if I remember correctly) Dave Rickey was kicked out of the position of lead designer (to never be replaced) and the game took a really bad turn. One year later it was definitely canceled.
The article never appeared because all I wrote was wiped from the game along with Dave.
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Another MMORPG is coming into an already overcrowded market and people wonder, as always, if it is worth it.
This time Mutable Realms, developer of the game, has a modest team and resources, but looking solid. The path they chose (the lead designer Dave Rickey in particular) is about going in a different direction from all the other consolidated patterns that every mmorpg seem to repeat, to try to bet on original, well thought ideas, instead of trying to go directly against the genre behemoths and rinse and repeat with yet another pointless, boring clone.
It’s not simple to summarize in a few words the differences between this project compared to others, however two are the main points.
The first is about the character progression. The second is about the structure of the world and the dynamic relationship between its parts.
Concerning the first, the progression of the skills will be “linear”. Every character, newbie or veteran, will have from the first minute in the game the possibility to group with other players and have a small, positive role. Without the need to spend hours to reach an “appropriate level” in order to be able to join his friends. Moreover, the focus of the player won’t be on a infinite, obsessive level growth, but will be instead shifted directly on the game mechanics. If you are going to kill a goblin it won’t be to see a skill going from 1.5 to 1.6, but because that action has a meaning within the context of the game. A context where it’s the player to decide his own objectives and where the game world reacts appropriately and actively to those actions (quests in particular).
In short: an idea closer to that ideal of a “virtual world”, on which the very first mmorpgs moved steps and that now seems completely forgotten.
All this leads to the second point. There’s a lot of ambition behind these ideas on which the game will be developed. The final result and concrete value will depend strongly on the execution, but the premises, one year before the planned launch date, are very good. Beside the fact that these ideas will bring a “wind of change” in a genre that has so much potential but that seems now swamped on the same redundant ideas and styles of game.
To explain better concretely, Wish will be developed around a concept, a pivot, around which the whole game will revolve. This pivot is called “House vs House”. To those experienced with DAoC this concept could be easier to grasp.
The idea is about creating a world with villages and outposts spread around. The players will begin the game in one of these villages and will find outside an hostile world. The travels from one village to the other won’t be risk free. These players will have the possibility to form guilds, more or less big, that in this game will be called “Houses”. Once this step is done, they will have the possibility to move out of the starting village and try to go clear and conquer one of those villages under the control of the monsters to claim it for themselves. When an “house” gains control of a village, the village becomes their property and they can then establish a NPC guard system and taxes (beside the usual services such as vendors, blacksmiths etc…)
Essentially both the PvE (Players vs Environment, aka players vs computer controlled monsters) and the PvP (Players vs Players), will be completely immersed in the same game world pivoting around these villages/forts.
The monsters not only will overrun the villages not controlled and defended by the players/houses, but they could move out on their own to attack one of the players’ outposts, becoming an “active” element of the game and not just standing still under a tree waiting for a player to pass by to kill them.
Obviously the “rival Houses” will be able to declare a war on each other and then poke each other with sharp sticks everywhere in the game world. This will still leave the “neutral” players relatively safe, but still subject to the conquest system and the taxes, since thew world around will see a continue evolution.
The goal is to make converge all the positive and “fun” aspects of PvP coming from games like DAoC (of which Dave Rickey was an opinionated designer) to make them converge and then “signify” in a world that reacts actively to the players and just doesn’t remain in a state of staticity and neutrality.