This one just keeps looking cooler and cooler. I got to sit in on a pretty long demo of it last week, and it looks like the team of Nevrax is definitely shooting for something interesting. What strikes me the most is the character system. Like a few other games, it totally eschews the concept of levels. Rather, your character's abilities gradually increase as it uses certain skills. Using a one-handed melee weapon, for instance, will increase the appropriate skill.
I'm your mommy, I'm your daddy...
Things get crazier when it comes to magic. You know how in some games, there will be two spells of approximately the same level of power, but with mildly differing attributes? For instance, a pair of fire spells that do just about same amount of damage, but one takes a few microseconds longer to cast? You end up having to buy them both, for completeness' sake, and it's a total waste. The way Ryzom buries that ridiculous concept is by allowing you to, in a sense, design your own spells. Let's say you want to create a ranged fire spell. Depending on what you set its range, damage, and casting time values to be, it'll cost more energy to cast. And you can tweak these any time you want. How cool is that? From what I gather, you can even have multiple versions of spells prepared, to have on hand in a variety of situations. This is the type of customization that I get real excited about, and it's great to see it being implemented into such a cool-looking game.
Guild Wars
I'll briefly touch on this once, since we have a major bit of coverage planned for it in the near future. Don't want to scoop myself, you know? Anyway, I've been messing with it a little bit, and it looks like crazy fun. It's definitely shaping up to be more substantial than I had expected to be. There's a neat, loose character system in place that reminds me of a bit of Final Fantasy XI's, with it's whole primary- and secondary-class thing. While I wonder how effective some of those combos will be (Monk/Ranger, anyone), the prospect of so many different skills intermingling in all these interesting ways is pretty enticing.
Legolas would have been climbing on that thing's face 10 seconds ago.
Given that the team is comprised of ex-Blizzard developers (specifically, heads who worked on StarCraft and battle.net), it should come as no surprise that the game is heavily influenced by Diablo. One half of it is, anyway. The WarCraft font that the client currently uses doesn't help, either. In any case, the cooperative modes play just like you would expect a 3D Diablo would; it's fast, it's loose, and you'll get your ass handed to you, if you aren't mindful of what your teammates are doing. One of the cooler elements is how you can instantly teleport to a civilized area (called an outpost) if your friends happen to be gathered there. No walking involved. Some cool, subtle touches were added to the multiplayer game, but for any info on those, you'll have to wait for our preview, in the not-too-distant future. But rest assured: it's looking hot.
