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Tucked in the back corner of PAX in a small booth was Metor Games. Their booth was simple, three monitors and a display to let the workers (dressed in simple fantasy garb) be pictured for those who visit the booth. But what they were showing off was a pretty unique product, whose features could eventually change the way players in MMO's interact.
Twin Skies starts off as a fairly standard casual MMORG. There are going to be a few races and classes (though that selection is pretty small at the moment). There will be everything from witches, to soldiers and scouts to choose from, and while the game doesn't try to pull to heavily from the classic Tolkien-style of fantasy, its hard to avoid some of the archetypes.
While these aspects can be interesting, it was my conversation with the company's Lead Cross-Media Developer, Thomas Mannino, that really sparked my interest. Those three monitors in the back of the booth had three very different views of the same MMO scene. On the right was the standard 3D world featuring a pair of fighters taking on an endless horde of little demon things. The middle monitor looked like a Flash game, and lo and behold, the same two characters (in 2D this time), were being attacked by the same number of demons. Interestingly enough, when the characters on the 3D monitor attacked, so did the 2D version. The last monitor had a very simple web page. The only thing that really stood out on that was a bar that lets you choose the time of day (night, dusk, day, etc).
So what does this mean. Basically, Twin Skies will have multiple ways of accessing the same core gameplay data. The idea behind this is that players can be in the 3D world playing your typical MMO quests. But another player can log into a Flash game and affect those characters. An example given by Mannino was a flash game where you rain down lightning bolts on two characters running through a cave. Meanwhile, those two characters are actually people in the normal game dodging the same lightning. As an added bonus, the Flash player could type something in a chat window and in the 3D world, those characters will see that same message, but with the prefix of “A booming voice from the heavens says..."
So what about that last monitor? The one with a simple website on it. Mannino moved the day/night gauge on it and when he set the meter to different settings, the sky changed in both the Flash and 3D worlds. While this particular aspect isn't really something that the developers will be able to give players access to, a more valid example would be an armory type page (similar to WoW Armory) where you can not only view the types of equipment you have on, but also change it out and purchase new items, and when you return to the game, there's your stuff. Another example would be monitoring and bidding in an auction house. Both the website and Flash access to the main game is a really interesting aspect of Twin Skies, and something I know Geck0 has been asking for for a while now.
Twin Skies also tries to break the MMO issue of having people join a guild and stay in that guild until they leave the game. According to Mannino, the biggest problem Meteor Games saw was that people were not constantly meeting more players, they formed a group and stayed in it. Well, Twin Skies has a few game mechanics that they are working on that they hope to fix that.
While these mechanics aren't nailed down yet, Mannino implied that ideas like gaining more experience when questing with people you don't know, or helping out random characters that you see and don't know, could bring the difficulty of the quest down.
While you can create your character now through the game's website, the fully interactive game has not yet been released. Meteor Games plans on releasing the client-side program in Q1 of 2009 and offering it completely free. Players will still want to purchase things like clothes and pets, but the gameplay experience itself is free. Eventually (in Q2), a premium package will be available for purchase (around five to eight dollars). With this, you will have a few more freedoms in the various aspects of Twin Skies. There is also the possibility of making a one-time purchase to have access to individual Flash games (like the cave-run lightning game). As it is, you can go online now and create a character on the website and play a few of the existing Flash games.
If this sounds interesting to you at all, then help support it by going over to Twin Skies and creating your account. If you are looking for a more casual MMO, or something else to play while you are waiting for your raid, then Twin Skies looks like it will be a good investment. |
