Levelling

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It has been an extraordinary sabbatical. So much has happened. After 18 months working in the USA, I have had the enormous good fortune to spend a year tripping around SE Asia including Indonesia, Dubai, China, and the Philippines. For now, I have landed in Singapore where I’m working as senior designer on a unique next-gen MMO at a company called RealU.

The game is called Otherland. It has been officially announced and is based upon the novels of the same name by Tad Williams. I can’t say too much yet, obviously, but I want to use this blog to help me formulate my thoughts on the many design challenges we face. The process of creating an MMO from the ground up is everything I expected and hoped. Getting the chance to work on a game like this has been my goal for the better part of 10 years, and I intend to make the most of it. It is already stretching me, in a good way.

As an aside, I have been spending a lot of time fishing in WoW - which is a slightly incongruous pastime for a level 80 character decked out in some of the best combat related items in the game. But I am finding the mini-game’s simple mechanic, and deeper (subtly emergent) meta game strangely enjoyable in an admittedly Pavlovian way, and instructive. Blizzard got the design 90 percent right. The missing 10 percent is something I hope to be able to bring to our game, in a different form. I’ll explain more in my next update. With pics!

  posted by monty · 10 months, 3 weeks ago · comment?