Kendricke at Warcry reports that Jason “Dymus” Roberts has left his position at SOE of EQ2 Lead Designer. It’s rumored that he may join the crowd at 38 Studios in their unannounced MMO.
38 Studios has some great talent. But if they come out with another generic fantasy MMO that tries to be everything for everyone, count me out.
Here’s hoping all that high power gaming talent has the vision to try something NEW. The design of pick a class, grind to max level, start raiding used by all current fantasy MMOs has already been done. A lot.
You won’t get eight million players by copying WoW. Or EQ2. Or Vanguard. I figure LotRO is going to be the last traditional model MMO I ever plan to play. Nothing new there, but it’s cheap and I like the IP.
38 Studios, if all you have is that “OUR Elves have better spell casting animations and at level 20 all characters can fly!”, just give up now. Great things are expected from you.
Plaguelands comments on a Brad McQuaid posting on the FoH forums about how Vanguard’s message of supporting all styles of play from casual to hardcore was somehow lost (though that has been his core message all along), and that they will be adding features to Vanguard to make it even easier to play (like faster travel and lessening of some penalties in the game).
I venture that Vanguard isn’t doing better because people expected something radically new, and what they got was something very much tired. Even his long posting points that out – this bit should be familiar to EQ1, we got this bit from WoW, this part looks similar to EQ2.
I would have been more heartened if he had said, “We’re so hardcore it will take you TWO YEARS to get to max level and at level 7 we toss you into the wilderness naked and you either come back a Spartan Adventurer or not at all!” Toss away those xp bars and levels and rise in stature as you meet and defeat challenges. Something TRULY hardcore and different. Just … NOT more of the same, please.