f13.net

UO:  "Hey!  I saw those punters first!"

Wish:  "If you don't want someone to jump in, don't leave your
                          gravesite open!"

http://www.mutablerealms.com/wishForUOPlayers.html

I don't recall goats in UO. Sheep, hinds, dogs, cats, even bunnies, but not goats. So that is a point in Wish's favor. I think.

I have never quite seen that kind of advertisement on an official site, a fan site maybe, but even then it is rather awkward and pathetic.  It reads like, "Wish wants UO players and not EQ ones." - just strange.

I think I was in the Wish beta for about 2 days and then they booted us and chose new beta testers.  It was all very brief... I tested for a couple of hours, I think, over that period of time.  All I remember is goats.  I even had a pet goat that helped me kill other goats.  I did feel a bit guilty about that.

UO has goats AND mountain goats.

Obviously you never were a tailor.

It'll attract EQ players too, due to the "What, you think we're not good enough?" syndrome.

To me, the advertising and the game info (http://www.mutablerealms.com/faq.html) sound like a newbie company that's got a lot of faith but are setting themselves up for major exploiting.

One example is the rogues; I like how they talk about them as a special class, when in fact their system is skill-based and anyone can pick up the skills.  And everyone will, probably, depending on how easy it is to get rich with it, and how easy it is to grief others.

Another is their confidence that GM events will be the thing that will make their game a success.

Wish is going to be good for a lot of amusement, that's about it.  Not the good kind of amusement, but the "Hey, GM events get visited by jackholes looking for uberloot?  No shit, Sherlock." sort of amusement.

There has been little answer to what happens when 10000 people try to crush into a small place, other than vague references to magic code that hides most everyone from you.

Wish is the game that's being developed as if nothing since UO has come out. It's fine in concept, but I totally agree with Ajax in that I just didn't feel like the team that's taken over in the last six or so months really knows what they're getting into.

Not wanting the EQ asshat is fine. Purposely saying a game isn't for them is like telling a 14 year old they're not allowed to see an R-rated movie.

Disclaimer: Not all EQ players are 14 years old. Not all 14 year olds want to see R-rated movies. Not all R-rated movies are worth seeing by anyone, much less 14 year olds. This isn't to imply 14 year olds can't think for themselves nor that they flock to EQ nor to see R-rated movies. There, that cover everything?

So they'll come to Wish. They'll try it, dislike it, and loudly proclaim the game is broken, stupid and doomed to failure. All in beta.

Having said that, at least their vision(tm) hasn't changed all that much. I do recall a more liberal use of PvP early on, but I'm glad they pulled back from that. This seamless non-templated skill system they've got is going to be a bitch to balance without adding a PvP mechanic that has yet to prove it's been worth the money.

And their Ultra-massive architecture is an interesting point. They keep advertising it as if anyone cares. With games returning to smaller/instanced-focused content (NC Soft stuff, EQ2, WoW), it'll be interesting to see how a game that's going the exact opposite way will do. And 10,000 people per server logged in? Let's see how many they can get in one area before the game crashes. Then it's a relevant marketing bulletpoint.

When you have people in the same area, the amount of server effort required goes up SQUARED to the number of people.  It doesn't take many people before the problem becomes unworkable, regardless of your server archetecture.  That's why people have to work in ways to limit it.  For FPS games, they cap the number of users ingame.  Some games may cap the number in a zone, others will just not send messages to people beyond a set amount (UO does this with chat), no matter how many are on screen (although some things, like movement, are still a problem).  If you leave the ceiling open, though, the server will come to a halt.  Guaranteed.

What UO did you play?

Wow, the desparate get.... desperater. Or something.

Wish was mildly interesting in Alpha 6, grinding in Alpha 7 and outright stupid in Beta 1. Once they got rid of Dave Rickey, I haven't seen anyone at that company with the balls to say anything about why the Beta sucked so hard.

Goats were great, 12 hides for the mountain goats I think, and the little bastards would eat anything. Give'em a lit torch, down the hatch it went.

That is starting to sound vaguely familiar...maybe I do remember the goats now.

Well I agree with those sentiments. Players with an EQ mentality always annoy the shit out of me. It's like a pothead trying to hang out with a crackhead.
After that brief stint in their beta though it would be a huge leap to becoming what they say it's gonna be.

So wait... There's goats?

*There should be goats issued to every player as a pet the minute they walk in, because you sure as fuck can't melee anything without at least one, or preferably two goats handy.

*Paraphrase from Soulflame

Hmm, "point and click" movement?  No thanks.  I tried that in Shadowbane and it's annoying as hell, and that was just running around and fighting monster spawns!  You can't PvP with that shit.  A good PvP game needs much finer movement control than point-and-click can give you.