The new “Ghostcrawler MMORPG” is already in development. There are already screenshots and concepts – but that’s probably not what you expected.
Many know Greg Street as “Ghostcrawler.” For a long time, he was an important member of the developer team for World of Warcraft. After that, he moved to Riot and worked for several years on their “LoL MMORPG” before leaving the studio a while ago to start a new one. For several months now, Fantastic Pixel Castle has been working on its first major project called “Ghost,” which is intended to be an MMORPG.
The game is still in a very early, conceptual phase – but that hasn’t stopped the developers from giving many insights into the game.
What has been shown? In the first four months, the developers spent their time developing a very early prototype version of the game, in which only the simplest, fundamental elements function. This includes movement, simple combat, a health and level system, and some initial abilities. Additionally, players can die – and respawn.
Will the game look like this later? No. All graphics shown in the screenshots are placeholders and come from the standard database of Unreal Engine 5. The actual assets still need to be developed. This is just a playable prototype to test initial concept ideas.
What is so unusual about this? For large games, especially MMORPGs, it is common to share images with the public relatively late in the development process. Typically, the game is already far along, details like the art style or character design are finalized, and a trailer is generally well-edited to appear convincing.
However, for Ghost, it seems they are tossing all of these norms aside.
How far along is the development really? Still “in its infancy,” and even that might be a generous exaggeration. So far, discussions are ongoing about the most fundamental mechanics of the game and the conceptualization of the game world and story. Many developers in the team are still missing – as they are still looking for people to ultimately work on turning the ideas into reality.
Why are the developers doing this? They reveal this directly in their own blog post: They want to involve the community and potential players as early as possible in the development, even if the release of the game is many years in the future.
That strong engagement of fans in development can have many advantages and ultimately lead to success has recently been demonstrated by Baldur’s Gate 3. Here, players could already play an early access version years in advance and give plenty of feedback, which ultimately led to one of the best RPG experiences of all time.
While it’s obviously nice to see a game in such an early state, it also means that it will likely be many years before a playable version lands in the hands of fans. One should definitely have patience – because in the coming years, “Ghost” is unlikely to be released.
What the “blue zones” and “red zones” in Ghost are about has already been revealed.
