Wish Interview

Wish Vault has conducted an interview with Mutable Realms' Marc Laukien and Dana Massey, asking the president and world designer several questions about the MMORPG now that the first beta phase is over. A snippet, as usual:
Q: The live story events in the last weeks of the first beta phase were very popular, and are now one of the core design principles of the game. By mmorpg developers in the past it has been argued that continuous and non-repetitive content created by GameMasters, as will be the case in Wish, is too expensive for the small percentage of players that is reached by this GM-created content. Will this have an effect on the pricing scheme for Wish? Also, how do you plan to reach as many players as possible with the live story content?

A: Those developers are correct in the traditional MMORPG model. It would be completely impractical to effectively run a story across 20 shards, even if you ignore the fact that each world would have to evolve independently. Staffing would be impossible to maintain. Wish is uniquely situated to deliver in this area. With only one world, we can entertain more people with less full time staff, and tell a more effective tale since we do not have to worry about multiple instances.

Live Content will have an impact on the monthly fee of Wish. However, we believe that players would rather pay a little extra for a top notch RPG, than less for a static, immutable world. The last three letters of MMORPG have been lost in this industry, and it is our goal to restore them to their rightful place as the focus. If doing that requires people to spend a little bit extra each month, I do not believe many will complain.