MMORPG: Can you give us an example of what type of evolved experience you are working on?
Chris: It’s evolution versus upgrade. We are not trying to fundamentally change experiences per say. We are trying to pick up where we left off due to technical limitations. We want to continue this premise and see where it ended with EQ or Vanguard. Where could it go from here? Where would the natural experience take us? We have some exciting things we want to share but I can’t get into too much detail now. We are trying to take the open world premise, modern games have conditioned players, we log into the game and we aren’t looking around, we aren’t looking to see what excites us or catches our eye. We are conditioned to log in and look at our minimap and look for arrows and we follow that. We may look up and see something cool on the horizon, but there are no flashing light that tell us to go there. We want to take that sandbox concept and renew a sense of story and quest contest. You should head to that golden ruin in the distance.
You don’t know what you will find when you get there. That amazingly tall tree that is different than other trees? You may not have quest for it but we want to try and explore uncovering content because you see it and you want to go there. This isn’t Pantheon, it’s Visionary Realms. It will be a hallmark in other games that we do too. We want to recapture storytelling and recapture immersion. We don’t want to break the openness of the world. We also have climates and atmospheres. We're going to be exploring meaningful climate. If you want to go to that golden ruin you may not be prepared for the brutal winter at the top of that peak. If it is brutal cold or blistering heat in a desert. We have several climate types listed out: anaerobic, pressure, and toxicity. These are naturally occurring phenomenon. Climates that you would experience in the real world. There will be an acclimation system. With atmospheres they are unnatural phenomenon: fear, rage, insanity, supernatural darkness. Some will make up large areas and some can be very small. Sometimes there will be a clear way around it, sometimes there won’t be. This should emphasize the cooperative nature of the game.
We are passionate about the simple basic stuff that made these older games so sticky. There is a lot to prove. It’s currently not represented very well. We don’t want to just throw a game out there. We want it to be definitive of where this genre is going. We want to set the pace. There is a powerful audience, some that know they want this kind of game and some that don’t know it yet.
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MMORPG: How about the dreaded 30 minute corpse runs?
Chris: Death in general is one of those mechanics that screams evolution. It’s one of those mechanics that has always been done a couple of ways overall in different implementations, as much as people would think we are set it’s still very much being conceptualized. Death is going to play a significant role. Death is something we want the player to reckon with and have a healthy fear of. We want players to know the difference between being in danger and not being in danger by how they feel as a player. We are not afraid of a death penalty or a corpse run. We are not afraid of them. We are carefully considering the mechanic as a whole.
MMORPG: At one point crafting was a stretch goal. Are we going to see crafting in Pantheon?
Chris: We are going to have crafting. It is also something that Corey is passionate about and super excited and he has bounced ideas off me and we are going for it.
MMORPG: Has there been any major design changes in the last 12 months?
Chris: Nothing major. Nothing fundamental or transformational. We have solidified our design stance on some things that had not been clear. Example. Are you going to be able to camp mobs versus dungeon runs? Some thought that we might be trying to get away from camps. We have decided that camping is a quintessential thing that has made those games the experiences they were. Things you need to work around. The payoff is massive. We have an opportunity to make a game that does camping well. This helps us get away from the linear content motif.
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MMORPG: Will there be instances?
Chris: The only place we are willing to explore would be quest related experiences that are for a characters solo experience. No instanced dungeons or cities or hubs. We may explore content that relates to individual character pay offs.
MMORPG: Have you aligned with a publisher?
Ben: Not yet.
MMORPG: Thanks guys. We’ll get back together at the end of September to find out what you alluded to earlier in our chat.
