WISHful thinking
Wouldn’t you know it? I haven’t spent money on a MMORPG since Ultima Online several years ago. Now I get a shot at the 2.0 beta test for a game called Wish, and I’ve been loving it all week. This afternoon they made the announcement that the game’s getting cancelled.
Apparently, the current results of this beta have led them to the conclusion that Wish isn’t feasible. I had suspected this when I signed up for the beta (early last year). See, they were aiming for one game server to handle everyone, so there are no different servers or shards or whatever. I suppose they realized that they’d have to charge way too much for anything but a very dedicated player base.
But damn it if the game wasn’t fantastic! If you’ve played Ultima Online, you know all about a skill-based character system. Wish took it all further with more skills, a much more in depth crafting system, and Live Content. The whole point behind Live Content was to offer players more interactivity with the game world. As Live Content events unfolded, player actions during these would help shape the game itself and how the overall story and history of the land of Ganedan played out. After an incident newspapers were sold in the cities with details on what happened with actual players denoted in the story.
It really is an absolute shame that this game has been canned, especially so far into development. Heartfelt thanks and best wishes to the members of Mutable Realms. Of all the betas I’ve been involved with, they’ve been the best to work with and it’s been a pleasure helping them as much as I could.