A group of former employees of ArenaNet, the developer of Guild Wars 2, has come together in a new studio. They aim to revolutionize MMOs and online games and have an exciting vision.
What kind of studio is this? When the president and founder of ArenaNet Mike O’Brien left the studio in October 2019, some developers followed him, some of whom had been employed at ArenaNet since 2000.
Together, they founded ManaWorks, a new developer that has provided insights into future plans over the past 4 weeks. And these sound very interesting and above all ambitious.
Zero Latency for a New Online World
What is ManaWorks planning? The developers plan an online world where players can interact and experiment with their environment and fellow players in real-time. According to Mike O’Brien, players would spend more than half of their online playtime just hanging out with friends or in the game world.
The game could be something like the ultimate sandbox. He mentioned various examples of what is possible in single-player games but is mostly not utilized in MMOs and online games:
- You should be able to move boxes that other players stand on, which then get moved as well.
- You should be able to jump from high cliffs onto a moving vehicle or onto a fellow player’s mount.
- You should be able to swing on a rope that fellow players hold or can throw to you.
The developers of ManaWorks believe that solving puzzles and tricky challenges in an online world would be even more fun.
As an example, they mentioned the popular The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is considered one of the best open-world games ever and has also impressed MeinMMO author Leya Jankowski. The desire for an MMORPG in this style has been expressed before.
What are the challenges? The crux of the plans is latency, as everything you do comes with a delay due to the internet connection and spatial distance when it reaches the other party.
Their goal is therefore a project with Zero Latency, as they call it, and they even presented it in a video.
The video does not show real and finished gameplay but only “dummy material” to illustrate what the developers want to achieve. They also use in-game material from GW2 and WoW, where they hold a race in which both players believe they have won from their perspective:
High Ambitions, but Can It Work?
The team at ManaWorks has recently been very active on Reddit and discusses their ideas in various threads. They see the launch of a new studio as an opportunity to start fresh and come up with their own concept.
As Mike O’Brien writes, it would take months of work just to end up jumping onto a fellow player’s mount while in flight. And that does sound like an incredibly cool idea.
He also emphasizes that there is no finished system yet and certainly no game. What exactly kind of online game it will be and what scope the project might take will also depend on a future publisher.
ManaWorks is not the only studio working on a new online game. We have presented the 8 most promising MMOs in development here.
