Hi. I don't usually make threads but I'd like to share my thoughts, after reading a recent interview with Alex Afrasiabi, J. Allen Brack (src:
http://tweakers.net/reviews/4144/2/w...artifacts.html)
Mostly concerning these paragraphs:
First thing that caught my eye was the part about 'organizing'. Blizzard announced, specifically Afrasiabi, that these would be world-intergrated spaces. It doesn't seem to be integrated if there's no reason to interact with others except to inspect them, that's what capital cities are for, except this is segregated by the classes themselves.
I don't see how they can promote them as world intergrated if they're not developing any incentive, whatsoever, to do things with other mages, or other paladins, et cetera. Tweakers addresses this in the follow up question:
First sentence seems pretty much like they're thinking of a runeforging type system, that's fine. But that doesn't really intergrate anything into the world.
Second sentence is concerning, because he's essentially saying, again, that they're not worried about everyone being the leader of the rest of them, whilst simultaneously being a part of everybody elses' army - in an open-world MMO it doesn't make sense. Tweakers also mentions this again;
"That's just how the story works." Did they ever consider re-fitting the story to be more in line with what an MMO is? Or am I just having a stroke or something?
They've admitted they're trying to give the impression you're 'the guy' - when in game you're raiding with many other guys, other guys even belonging to your own class, interacting with them, in guilds with them, in class orders with them. It doesn't make any sense to treat the player character like this unless you're expecting one guy to play the game.
It blows my mind how they want to persue a story that is inherently single-player, in a huge MMO. Afrasiabi just said that that's how the story works - then why the fuck is that story being considered in the first place? Is everyone that big a narcissist that they'll proclaim they're the shitting Thane of Whiterun whilst 500 other people simultaneously proclaim the same thing?
It's so beyond stupid to treat the player character like this. They're completely oblivious to the fact that this is an MMO where you play amongst and with other people.