Poll on MMORPG settings

[varkar]

For the poll, as a thought experiment, pretend a MMORPG comes out a few years from now which is overall good enough that you might be leaning towards playing it almost regardless of its setting.

Which of the following setting would you be most likely to play, not just try briefly but play for long?:

Setting #1: A classic fantasy setting, ranging from medievalistic technology up to the blackpowder pirate era, mixed with magic. The basic setting is thus not unusual or novel, but the game is innovative in other ways. Besides, the historical popularity of similar settings exists for quite a reason. Both melee and ranged combat specialities particularly readily feel fitting. There are rogues, warriors, mages, healers, and so on. The world has a feel of adventure to it, of many unknown new lands to explore, dungeons and islands with dangers and riches, etc.

Setting #2: This is like the above in many ways, including just as much magic and uncharted areas to explore, even with clothing and architecture styles often overlapping, but it mixes in more technology. For instance, there are still pirates and privateers, but they are now using airships, magitech-biotech submersible raider vessels on the seas, raiding merchant caravans on land, etc. Playable-species civilizations were pushed back to the brink of extinction in the recent past but now are expanding.

One class wields twin revolvers. Another uses a steampunkish rotary grenade launcher, with various types of rounds. There is occasional situational usage of indirect-fire long-ranged mortars for combat variety. The setting aims to maintain a variety of melee or close combat specialists too, with teleporting warriors, vampiric wraiths, spies using magic illusions to get close enough for silent daggers, etc. There are classic magical healers and ranged mages as well as shaman-like geomancers who aim to fight up close and personal, etc. I won't list all classes. There are tradeoffs, though. For example, rifles do have greater range than bows, so you would be less likely to be able to use a bow as competitively, although crossbows still have a situational niche in stealthy silent usage and poison delivery (gun silencer technology not being developed yet in lore).

The lengthier description of setting #2 may artificially skew the poll towards it, but try not be skewed by that in itself either way; just be accurate.

[Larynx]

So it's basically medieval fantasy, and medieval fantasy with airships?

Like the Goblins/Gnomes of WoW, or Charr/Asura of GW2 sort of, for #2?

[melodramocracy]

I'd lean a bit towards 1, simply because for me personally I dig magic / very medieval settings when it comes to anything RPG related.