NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruemere" data-source="post: 5737165" data-attributes="member: 5515">A few musings.TIME LINEMMORPG development cycle lasts at least about two years. Larger companies, like Blizzard or ArenaNet (too many MMORPGs to list here) can afford 4-5 years. Smaller companies, like Runic Games (guys behind Torchlight) had to get financing (bought off by PerfectWorld owners), and yet they still have problems with completing the game, satisfying themselves with Torchlight 2.So, assuming that Ryan is successful, and assuming that the development has been ongoing for at least a year, we are looking at beta release in 2013 (with beta meaning "a lot of bugs, but playable").THE SYSTEMD20 won't work for standard MMORPG formula - you accrue experience too fast. Then your character is in 20th level end-game with nothing left to do.  Alternative system (Ultima Online), lots of levels (Lineage, MU Online) or incredibly challenging PvP and PvE with prestige rewards (Guild Wars) could work, provided they are designed by professionals, and tested to death by beta-testers.  There are also issues with special abilities, like spells, which may be impossible translate into computer RPG.So, anything but d20.THE BALANCEIt's a simple problem with complex solution: how do you keep the world with hundreds of superheroes running around?  Use MMORPG equivalent of E6, i.e. there is a low power ceiling, beyond which your characters grow in power horizontally (Guild Wars and incredibly well thought out skill system) instead of vertically.Not really supported by d20.THE CONTENTProbably the most resource consuming part of MMORPG design. You need those hills, the architecture, monsters, scripts, weather, sounds... you need a lot of it.  The only game offering such things freely at professional level is World of Ryzom (they went open source, IIRC) with their very well developed world.  Otherwise, there are Korean companies -- yes, I am entirely serious here -- which produce a lot of derivative, yet stunningly well-looking games (Requiem: Bloodymare being a prime example). These relatively low budget products seem to be based on somewhat reusable assets (or possibly they just look overwhelmingly similar to each other), so maybe, just maybe something like that can be used to stage a game.SPARK OF HOPERyan is a miracle maker. He brought us D20. He has experience in the field. So, against all these misgivings, I'll be waiting [1].See you in 2013.Regards, Ruemere[1] Caveat: I already sold my soul to Guild Wars, so I will have to convince someone to pay in my stead <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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