Wish E3 2004 Impressions

Mutable Realms is showing off Wish, a massively multiplayer game so large that it has spawned a new class of online role-playing, the ultra massively multiplayer game. While most online RPGs actually consist of a number of different servers each hosting a few thousand players at a time, Wish promises one gigantic virtual world that can support 50,000 or more players on it at once.

Why the huge number? Mutable Realms wants to get away from the focus on level grinding found in most online RPGs to focus on the social aspects of the game. So not only will Wish allow for tens of thousands of players to potentially interact with one another but also the game’s designers want to create a dynamic and evolving world. While the game will ship with a few quests, Mutable Realms expects to have a staff of 10 to 20 dedicated game managers who will create quests and interesting situations on the fly by using powerful creation tools. Though they won’t be able to manage each player’s experience on a one-on-one basis, what they can do is change the conditions of the world. For example, your group may be asked to defend a village from some monsters. Whether you choose to help or not will affect the world.

Mutable Realms wants a game that also doesn’t have static quests or any kind of predictability. The idea is that there won’t be Web sites out there listing all the quests in the game and their solutions. Instead, players will constantly wonder what’s next in the game.

Wish will handle player-versus-player conflict in a number of ways. Each town or city will have an arena where you can arrange a friendly conflict, but another way PvP comes into play will be if you take part in what are called rogue games. If you rob a non-player character convoy on the road, the survivors may report you to the local authorities. Your character will then become an outlaw, and other players can try to cash in on the bounty on your head.

The game will have six playable races, and it has a very flexible skill system that will allow you to experiment freely with your character. Wish is looking to go into its second beta soon, and whether there will be an open beta has not yet been determined. The game is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2005, and we’ll update you with any developments on the game.