Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street talked once again about the design of his new MMORPG with the project name “Ghost” and revealed one thing that is supposed to make the game much better than the competition.
Who is Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street? The American developer was lead designer of World of Warcraft for several years, then he worked for Riot Games on the new MMORPG for League of Legends.
Last year, Greg Street founded the studio Fantastic Pixel Castle to work together with other veterans on a new online role-playing game with the project name “Ghost”. A special feature of the project: The community is involved in the creation process from the concept phase.
With this trailer, Greg Street introduced his new studio:
Coincidental, but really good?!
How does this inclusion work? The communicative developer regularly communicates with a team on various channels to gather feedback from MMORPG fans on specific points. In his posts on X, “Ghostcrawler” often complains about the status quo of the genre and how “Ghost” wants to do it better than the competition in detail.
This includes, from the perspective of the lead developer, the uncompromising focus on multiplayer content, the increased value and significance of the leveling phase, the appreciation of the time of all players, or even a class system that resembles the unique champions from MOBAs like League of Legends.
What is the current discussion about? In a number of current posts on X, Greg Street explains that “Ghost” is supposed to do something better than the competition in the design of areas as well:
- Like many other games, “Ghost” also relies on procedural generation of zones. Unlike the maps of the competition, however, the counterparts in the new MMORPG are supposed to always feel “hand-crafted”.
- To make this work, there will not be an infinite number of areas, many of which you would never get to see.
- Instead, the focus will be on a limited number of biomes, which are particularly well-developed and have a mature ecosystem.
- By ecosystem, Street means the interplay of gameplay features, creatures, stories, factions, and NPCs, which should convey a sense of “everything fits together here”.
- So when you leave one zone and enter an area with a different biome, the new area should feel and play completely differently.
- The mob spawns in a zone should be simulated accordingly so that, for example, bandits and nobles react appropriately to each other in a region.
- Across the different zones, an overarching story should guide you so that you are never just wandering around grinding mobs without any further objective.
By the way, this discussion is only about the randomly generated blue zones of “Ghost”. In addition, there are red zones that are reminiscent of themed party MMORPGs and are supposed to offer predictable elements like world boss spawns, resources, or points of interest. You can find out how the system behind it works here: How the former boss of WoW wants to rethink MMORPGs now: “Blue Zones – Red Zones”
