State of the Game 5 monts ago

I have hit the October State of the Game Address post October 17, 2012. We are rapidly approaching the present. Today I came home from work and curled up with my girlfriend who had stayed home ill today and we slept until 10:30p It was a good nap...not particularly productive, but a good nap.

There are some nice points in this entry.

The first point discusses a general philosophy in MMO design. "You have to make a metric boatload of content." Further "It’s not enough just to make content, you have to get real live players in the game."

I think it's more important to look at the things they've been implementing into the game that maybe hasn't been shown off yet. ... BTW it impossible to read something written by Jeremy Gaffney without hearing him in your head.

He talks about leveling content, that they have been building out mid level content especially Dominion focused content. By doing so he indicating that they weren't ready to introduce us to the Dominion yet but it was something to look forward to. The wait must have been excruciating to everyone...I think I see it on my calendar next week.

For instanced content he says they have "completed a number of dungeons" and are working on "many more" He doesn't indicate numbers, but says they are almost ready to start testing the ones that are completed. He mentions that they are designing and mapping out raids and indicates that the heavy movement based combat system makes for very interesting large group play.

Instanced PVP has been confirmed as being in early testing phases. 20 v 20 was the number given, but this is very early and they aren't showing anything to the public or even to the beta testers yet. It will be interesting to see what form this takes as development progresses. We have a lot of models out on the market.

He references an update coming from the Economy team soon, and provides no other details. I am a little sad because that is not something that appears on my radar for the list of blog entries to comb over. Maybe it's hidden behind a more obscure subject title, but it looks like the system may still be not ready for consumption as of yet.

The final point made is about how they are continuing to grow their testing process. They have brought players into their office to get first impressions and offer them access to the Friends and Family Beta, reiterating that feedback is key to his design philosophy.

It's a good read, and I look forward to seeing how everything shakes out. There are some key systems that make up an MMO that the details are just not available on yet. Crafting, Guilds, Elder Game Objectives, Structured PVP, as well as a host of things that aren't popping up in my brain as being super obvious. The style of Wildstar continues to keep me interested while these details emerge.