Wish Interview
Wouter "Hyrrix" Ryckbosch, 2003-07-22

Wish is an upcoming mmorpg currently in development at Mutable Realms. They call the project an ultra-massive multiplayer RPG, because of the size of the world and the large number of players that should be able to log in on the same world together. Set in a medieval fantasy world, the game focuses mostly on questing and little on PvP. Dave Rickey, the lead game designer of Wish, took the time to answer our questions concerning Wish.

Dave Rickey: Personally, I worked on EverQuest in a minor capacity and as a world builder and designer for Dark Age of Camelot. The rest of the team is a mixture of folks from various disciplines, some of whom have worked on games and others who worked with ZeroC. ZeroC is one of our software partners which develops the Internet Communications Engine (ICE), a software library that we use for our core distributed network architecture. Our server is built on top of that to support the demands of an MMO server in a highly scalable fashion.

Dave Rickey: Mutable Realms is privately funded by direct investment from some of the founders.  We're fully funded for the duration of the projected development cycle for Wish.

Dave Rickey: The ongoing story of Wish is going to be what the players make of it.  The setting is roughly that civilization has recently suffered a great catastrophe, and much of the world has fallen to barbarism and chaos.  Recovering control and establishing peace and order is going to be the ongoing process by which the players shape the world.

Dave Rickey: Wish has very different approaches to Combat vs. Non-combat activities, although both are based roughly on "Learn by doing".  Those skills that have a direct impact on combat are divided into groupings based on the core archetypes of fantasy (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, and Rogues), and within those groupings the player chooses what to make the focus of their character. For example, if you choose to follow the Cleric's Path, you'll have a choice of development in Blessing (buffing spells), Harming (debuffing), and Healing. Warriors will choose what options to emphasize (to make a plate-wearing brawler vs. a dodging magic-using hybrid, among many others), and so on for Mages and Rogues. No single player will be able to master all combat roles, but within the limits of the archetypes what roles your character fills will be for you to direct.

Outside of combat (and there's a lot) the player is able to choose with little restriction from economic (lumberjacking, mining, etc.), knowledge (of weapons, creatures, etc.), or tradesman (armorcraft, weaponcraft, etc.) activities, without affecting of or dependance on their combat capability.  One key wrinkle is that there are limits to the amount of gain you can get from any particular activity (making X item, hitting Y monster, cutting Z type of wood), so you need to switch up your actions rather than just grinding through the same thing over and over again.

Dave Rickey: This is not yet fully determined, the current thinking is that race will affect the speed with which you learn various skills or improve your stats. Dwarves may find it easier to learn smithing skills, and Elves be faster learners in the creation of magical items, just as an example.

Dave Rickey: There will definitely be a heavy emphasis on economic structures and incentives, this type of thing is an area where I have experience and I'm really looking forward to using the economy to provide greater depth of gameplay. Crafting and resource gathering will definitely be important parts of this.

Dave Rickey: Myself, I'm looking forward to the chance to be a Toolmaker, which will focus on apparatus of all kinds from picks and shovels through the components of magical equipment. We certainly hope to provide enough depth to the crafting and tradesman gaming style to make it worth playing Wish for these alone.

Dave Rickey: This isn't ready for discussion of specifics yet, but PvP is definitely going to be a significant thing in Wish, significant not only in the amount of it that occurs but in the importance of the results. We believe we can structure it in such a way that although totally opt-in and not an imposition on those that choose to stay away from it, it remains attractive and significant for those that do.  Yes, that's a tall order, but we believe it can be done.

Dave Rickey: This is an area where it's very easy to promise too much and deliver too little. We are working very hard to make Wish quests novel and interesting, but getting too specific now would be dishonest.

Dave Rickey: Wish is intended to be very socially oriented, but through carrots rather than sticks. We're trying not to say "This is your box, here are the people that will share your box, now play *this* way."  Rather the intent is to let you make the character that appeals to you, and to make your way in the world each session in whatever way appeals to you at that time. You don't group to get faster advancement, you do it for more security and opportunity, or for friendship, or because the other player compliments your playstyle well.

We intend to make it possible for characters of radically different levels of combat power to freely adventure together, each contributing as they are able and receiving gains in accordance with their contribution. Your newbie buddy may not be able to do much more than chip off a couple of scales on the Dragon raid, but he won't feel like he wasted his time and you and your other friends won't feel like he took more than his share.

Dave Rickey: Certainly. What's the point of risking being toasted by the Dragon, if not the hope of getting lucky and using his hide to make a cool set of armor to show off?

Dave Rickey: We have enlisted  a domain expert in pathfinding that has worked with us for over a year to integrate a cutting edge pathfinding solution with the Ice architecture. This allows out pathfinding to be done by systems that are specifically optimized for the purpose.

Dave Rickey: I think that we're going to see increasing emphasis on the social engineering side of them, building game systems to ennable and shape the communities formed by the players. To make the actions of the players carry more of an impact on the world. Ultimately all of the art, gameplay, and technology exists to allow people to meet and do interesting things with other people, and games are going to get better and better at doing that.  Certainly the technology will continue to advance, and taking advantage of the latest gee-whiz features of sound, graphics, and connectivity will be neccessary, but that alone will not let a game find a playerbase in this increasingly competitive market.