[MUD-Dev2] Fallen Earth

[Amanda Walker]

On Sep 16, 2009, at 11:26 PM, Mike Sellers wrote:
> Sean Howard wrote:
>> "Mike Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:
>>> If I'm already playing WoW, or have played it in the past,
>> why would I
>>> play Fallen Earth instead?
>>>
>>> And if I played WoW and didn't like, why would I play this game?
>>
>> FE isn't for WoW players.
>
> So FE is going to try to attract enough people who like MMOs but who  
> *don't*
> play or like WoW, and/or attract people who don't play MMOs at all?
>
> If they can do it, terrific -- and man, I'm glad to see someone's  
> trying a
> more sandboxy crafting-heavy game.  I hope it's fun, and not just  
> different
> -- this seems to me like a very difficult hill to climb.  

It's possible to go after the "non-WoW" crowd, though.  Guild Wars has  
done very well at the "PvP & squad combat all the time, no downtime"  
with a single-player story arc for achievers.  It pretty much does  
away with leveling, and allows all PvP characters to have top notch  
gear and abilities, leaving it mostly a player-skill game rather than  
a "character grind" game.

Doing this for crafting is an interesting challenge, though, since  
I've yet to come across an MMO which has any kind of complex crafting  
game.  Crafting is hard to simulate unless you create a general  
simulation system--and as SL shows, if you do that, you end up with a  
"paper dolls for adults" system rather than an MMO per se.

--Amanda