Former WoW devs announce new studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle
Former WoW devs announce new studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/13613260
Greg Street (aka Ghost Crawler) and Bryan Holinka are 2 names I recognize.
Side note: Is the "former wow-devs" population larger than the current staff?
I'd bet that the "former WOW devs" population encompasses like 30% of all working game devs at this point. It's been going for so long and I'm sure a lot of small roles were filled with short-term employees.
I'm not really interested in any MMOs these days which all deemphasize player interaction and prioritize content completion. I'm sure it appeals to the widest audience and thus is the easiest way to pay the bills, but it also makes for a braindead experience.
I'm reservedly optimistic given the wow vets involved, but if they do stuff like:
- adding fast travel portals instead of reliance on player mages,
- random dungeon finder,
- random cross-realm interaction at the cost of fostering server communities,
- and otherwise make a single player experience where other players might happen to appear,
then It's not interesting to me. Also, I don't think being a retail wow clone will be enough to dethrone retail wow.
Honestly the dungeon finder is super helpful to people like me who have a small amount of time to play. I think they should have treated it like Raid Finder though and had it give lesser loot to encourage doing it properly.
RDF is useful if the goal is completing content, but not if the goal is interacting with other people, which I believe is a crucial part of the MMO acronym, even when I don't have much time to game. If my goal is to complete content, there are more interesting single player games I can spend my limited amount of game time playing than WoW.
IMO modern WoW is designed to give you the sensation of completing content so rapidly that you mistake the resulting dopamine hits for the feeling of having fun. Meanwhile, anything that could interrupt that cycle of hits has been optimized out, which includes virtually any dependency on another player. (Vanilla has quests that require you to find another player to craft you an item! They never made that "mistake" again...)
I currently run a 10m "dad" guild in WotLK classic. We're only on for 1 night a week for 3h to raid, and virtually every week at least 2 people can't make it due to work, family, or other reasons. And it's fine. Yeah, we progress slower, we still haven't even fully cleared Ulduar which was 2 phases ago, but it makes for a more rewarding experience IMO. The goal isn't completing content, it's interacting with other people.
Meanwhile, when you queue in RDF, no one talks, everyone already knows all the fights, and if you don't keep up you will be vote kicked. I don't see the appeal. TBH I don't even see anything "massively multiplayer" about WoW these days. Everyone else running around could be bots and I wouldn't have any way of knowing. The hardcore WoW servers are probably where the most interesting multiplayer experiences are happening these days.
Haven't there been multiple MMOs from former WoW devs that have all gone under by now? I remember Firefall used to have the biggest presence at PAX, and Firefall is no longer a game that exists anymore.
Think their new game will be packed full of racist dog whistles too?
Looks interesting. Not the biggest fan of survival mechanics, but they do specify that it will just be "like" a survival game so who knows what will look like. The fact that they are promising it won't be pay-to-win upfront is a good start. Of course, these are all just promises and there's no telling what the actual game will be like, but at least they seem to have a clear idea of the game they want to make.