You know who has balls? Those Guild Wars 2 dudes. Ethan pointed me at this, which is in line with our current discussion here. So while I’m still banging away at part two, here’s an example of one planned method of creating the living world.
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Ha! I was just coming over here to point out this article!
Hmm, thanks for linking this! Looks like it really could be an amazing game. The setting has the potential to be one that gives you that “first time” feel all over again. Looks beautiful. Plus, ‘cmon: shapeshifting bear-man barbarian from the North? Yes please. The original article from the site (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/dynamic-events-overview/) goes into greater detail about dynamic quest systems. The only critiques I have are these: 1) I hope the little things don’t get lost in all the epic-ness floating around. There’s a time and place to save the farmer’s daughter from bandits just like there’s a time to charge screaming into hordes of enemies. 2) There wasn’t anything directly stated about players directly affecting the world. I’d like to be able to have my band of adventurers and I set up a guild keep and venture out into the world to storm our neighbors, or engage in diplomacy so a more powerful guild doesn’t overrun us. Hopefully this will be somehow doable in the final iteration.On a side note: Wasn’t Arenanet founded by a lot of the guys who made the original WoW and left in disgust when the “theme park” faction overrode their original vision? I seem to remember reading a lot about that in the past. It’d be ironic if their project is the next real evolution in MMO gaming, to be sure.
Yep, Guild Wars was built by some of the Blizzard alums who wanted to do a game that moved in a different direction. I don’t think the personal or individual stories will get lost in the epic scale. The hard part is building the engine that does all of the determining when and where and how to introduce new elements into the world. Writing individual stories of whatever scale to be dropped into the world is something that’s a little bit easier on a per-story basis, but the volume of those stories that need to be written and dropped into the world (and playtested for functionality, and balanced with proper rewards, etc.) is an evergreen portion of the development.
Great link there. This is a lot like what Warhammer Online was slated to do in its first iteration. There was a talk of monsters dynamically banding up, forming camps, and eventually spawning quests to take them out. That was before Mythic got their hands on the license.Aah, how great it could have been.