Vengeance

Do you guys remember David Allen? He developed the original Horizons concept, back when it was cool. He's got some great ideas, but appears to be completely insane.

Here's his new project: World of Crusade (http://crusade.qol.com/)

sounds like it has potential. I like the idea of CSR's actively participating in the world and events, and personalized quests (if they arent completely bugged and lame...which i could definetly see happening) could be very cool.

couple thoughts from the mmorpg.com interview with him:
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=620&bhcp=1

"Your progression system combines a class based approach with a skill based usage system. However, you only have six classes. Do you think character diversity (in terms of internal statistics) is a problem?"
"I’ve always liked the saying “More isn’t always better – sometimes it is just more.” While there are only six core classes to ‘start’ from, those core classes can expand into a multitude of subclasses. That was our goal – instead of having a typical level-cap pyramid structure where you have tons of options to start off with, but in the end they all end up being similar or the same with no room for progression, we decided to turn the pyramid upside down and start off with only a few entry points to get the player familiar with the basics, and then allow them to grow the character exponentially."

what games have the "pyramid" style class system? every MMO that ive played starts with more generic classes and allows specialization as you progress...

"Combat is something a lot of games have tried to spice up, but after years, we still hear people talking about “go get a sandwich combat”. What are you doing in Crusade to address the tedium of some RPG mechanics?
Combat is a double-edged sword in MMOGs. Many people like the simple “command and execute” while others want more FPS-style “tweak” control. I wish I could tell you we’re designing the next best combat system, but the fact is that we are simply going to design the system that works best for our game. Will it be similar to other MMOGs? Probably. Will it be revolutionary? Probably not. But will it be Evolutionary? Yes. Point in fact, if our players are too busy enjoying the game to think about how they don’t like combat, we were successful."

this certainly worries me. i think the main reason i didnt like horizons was that the combat was so freaking boring. obviously combat is a big part of these games, and if it sucks im not gunna be "too busy enjoying the game" to notice.

(Edited by Lifesbane at 2:22 pm on June 8, 2006)

I find that drugs help with not noticing how boring the combat is in these games.  :D

I think what he really meant about combat was, "I'm a visionary, I don't bother myself with stuff like combat mechanics." Combat mechanics (tactics) is the main reason I play multiplayer games. If it's got an interesting combat system, I'm too busy enjoying the combat to notice how boring the rest of the game is. You could say that about Dark Ages -- there was tons of issues in that game, but the multiplayer tactics side was pretty fun.

I kind of know what he means about everybody ending up the same. There's a particular set of "best specs" that most classes boil down to. I don't really see how his suggestion to start off with six basic classes and then subclass out as you go, avoids that. In fact, it sounds exactly like every other game I've played.

I think the dystopia he's describing is the UO-skill based model, where everybody became a GM in everything at some point.

in regards to the pyramid, you could look at WoW's talent trees... there are many more options available to you at the lower end of each tree, and then there is basically a single uber talent at the high end of each tree.  Because of this, anyone who goes all the way in that particular path is going to have the same uber skill, and any difference between two toons who fully utilize the same tree is only going to be noticed at the lower end (which can still be useful, but typically the higher up in the tree you go, the more game-changing the talents are).  I can see his point... it would be interesting if every 20th level frost mage had to choose 4 skills from a set of 5 or 6... not much difference between them.  However, there might be 10 different uber frost talents at the top of that tree, so that at level 60 you could have several mages with the same primary talent tree who still had noticeably different tools ( ! ).  It's kind of along the same line as DAoC starting everyone as a "fighter", "rogue", "acolyte", etc., and then having you specialize further once you hit level 5 or 10.  If you then had another fork in the road just before you got to max level (or maybe even at max level), you could further differentiate your character from everyone else.  Of course, that's all in a vacuum.  If they do a crappy job of developing and balancing those skill sets, there will be one FotM skill set and a bunch of sets that are perceived to be gimped, which defeats the purpose.