Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Online MMORPG Announced

[Verdande]

My first impression: Lawful Indifferent: Pathfinder MMO?

Additional comments: They have got to be crazy to throw their hat into the already super-saturated RPG market by taking a brand new team with no games under their belt from a man who's never led a game company before and making an expensive, complicated project based on an existing IP.

That's like ten amateur mistakes in the first announcement alone.

And yet, I hope they make it.

 

[Reynard]

Mildly interesting, but I'd kill for a Skyrim set in Golarion.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm just getting into MMO's (Wizard101 and a bit of DDO) and this sounds interesting. I especially like the idea of scaling up to being able to build and control settlements, rather than forever leveling just to kill more and more creatures.

I kinda wish they had held off until they had some content or even a demo, because now the wait will be interminable.

 

[Xorial]

Answers

At GoblinWorks there is a faq that answers many questions raised here. The game system will not be OGL, therefor not directly compatible with the tabletop game. GoblinWorks is a seperate company from Paizo. That means if, heaven forbid, the game tanks, it will not affect Paizo overtly. The game is in the investment phase, so there isn't anything to announce except the plans for what they are striving for.

Paizo thread for the game announcement

GoblinWorks FAQ Page

 

[Agamon]

Mildly interesting, but I'd kill for a Skyrim set in Golarion.

I'd have XPed this, except that this isn't even mildly interesting. Good luck to Paizo, but an MMO, really?

I'm about to go play my own version of Pathfinder Online, and it ain't no MMO. At least, I wouldn't call any of my players massive.

 

[DaveMage]

I'm not really in the MMO market, but I'll take a look once the bugs are worked out.

Since no release date has been announced, I'd guess we're still years away. (Heck, I'm still waiting for them to put out a decent iPad app. iFumble and iCrit are nice and quaint, but I'd like one with some more substance to it.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Good luck to them -- I hope they can make it big with this. MMO development is incredibly expensive and takes a vast amount of time to do right. The industry is littered with the all-but-dead bodies of games their developers thought would be exceptions to one or both of those rules.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

IF they keep to how characters are in the tabletop version, it should be dope.

They can't. Twenty or even 30 levels is far too few when people can (and will) play 24/7 for weeks at a time. They need to create enough content for those guys at the same time as providing a sense of accomplishment for the guy who is also paying his $15/month (or whatever) and can only play two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

That inevitably changes how levels work -- DDO split them up into sub-levels, or something -- or raises the level cap to crazy-ass numbers that will give the non-MMO people hives. (My World of Warcraft character is level 85, for instance, and in a few months, the next expansion will take things to level 90. He's done the equivalent of low level epic stuff, but he's hardly a demigod himself, so the numbers don't even remotely map to Pathfinder, unless you chop them down by 75 percent or more.)

Similarly, there are a lot of abilities that work great if you can spam them like crazy that need to be addressed from a power standpoint. There's also the issue that some folks' connections will be slower (and experience "lag") and it's not fair to them that the people on better connections, possibly through no one's fault by their ISP being great or crappy, have a better chance at competing. So they'll want to do some stuff to even the field there.

Once you start ripping apart those systems, the game will start to look pretty different.

 

[Erik Mona]

One thing that "worries" me is that they do the Privateer Press thing; focus so much energy on the new hotness of the game that's bringing in all the dough that they basically drop the RPG market altogether.

Goblinworks is an independent company creating this game under license. It's likely that our current staff will be involved in some of the initial design and brainstorming and stuff, but the current plan is to keep the teams separate so as to avoid what you are talking about.

The Pathfinder tabletop RPG lines are making a lot of money right now, and most people seem very happy with them, so we have no plans to divert resources away from them at the moment, and no intention to do so in the future.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Goblinworks is an independent company creating this game under license. It's likely that our current staff will be involved in some of the initial design and brainstorming and stuff, but the current plan is to keep the teams separate so as to avoid what you are talking about.

The Pathfinder tabletop RPG lines are making a lot of money right now, and most people seem very happy with them, so we have no plans to divert resources away from them at the moment, and no intention to do so in the future.

Good calls all around.