Project Wish  
Project Wish
Project Wish
hardwired

Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )

> Opening Pandora's box
Not rated V  (0 votes)
Post Feb 1 2008, 03:29 AM

Since I plan to be here for awhile, starting a blog seemed like a good way to keep whoever is interested appraised of the storybuilding progress I'm making, even when I stumble and have to backtrack.

For starters, let me say upfront what a privilege it is to be welcomed into the Project Wish team. Mutable Realm's "Wish" remains the most unique game I have ever played and to be part of a team dedicated to reviving the qualities that made the game memorable is exciting beyond belief.

I encountered Wish halfway through Beta 1.0. To be honest, I am not at all certain how they found my e-mail address because I had never heard of the game until the day an invitation arrived in my inbox. Expecting the worst, I went ahead and applied. To my great surprise, I was almost immediately accepted into Beta!

When I logged in for the first time I made a female gnome, partly in jest. Almost immediately I discovered I had stumbled into a truly unique game. Over the next few days my little gnome became a powerful Wizard specializing in Elemental Fire magic. In addition to throwing fireballs at enemies, I grabbed up a double-bladed axe at first opportunity and set about hacking down every tree I could find with viable resource potential. The combination of Wizadry and Lumberjacking also made her a potent fighter who could take off the majority of an annoying monster's life with a series of firespells and then finish it off almost casually with a couple axe blows. Wish's unique, interlocking, open skill system meant that with every tree I chopped down, my little gnome became that much better of a warrior.

The open skill system also meant I never encountered game time where I had nothing to do. As long as she carried the right tools, she could mine simple minerals, harvest fruit and flowers, chop down trees, hunt for meat or animal products, and even make simple cloths or refine basic metals! Since I decided I did not want to spend time Taming a mount, I told everyone she encountered that she was afraid of horses because they were so much bigger than her and had such huge teeth. Even walking, she was able to travel far and wide and visited many different cities and lands. Every day became a new challenge of finding out what lay over the next hill or around the next bend in the road. And every step she took contributed ever so slightly to her strength, constitution, and so on, improving her combat skills another notch.

I remember in one human town far from her home a human player asked her if she had any palm wood, a rare commodity in his lands. She sold him some. The player then began shouting for Belladonna, so she interrupted him and offered to sell him some of that, as well. Ever so casually, he then mentioned that the only thing he still needed was some sulfur for a reagent, so she dug around in her pack and added some to the trade window. All of those resources were items she had gathered on her own during her travels. No other game I have ever encountered allows such diversity of harvesting skills. Granted, without masteries Foraging and Mining were never as successful as Lumberjacking, but they were still possible!

I still vividly remember the day Wish suddenly shut down shortly after the start of Beta 2.0. Crazy as it might seem, that remains as one of the most disappointing, shocking moments of my life. I had already started asking how retail would be handled and begun arranging my budget so I could continue playing when Beta finished. It is hard to believe the closure of a game could have made such a lasting impact. No game cancellation before or since has hit me as hard, not even the closure of Auto Assault which I deeply enjoyed playing both in Beta and in retail.

And now here I am three years later. I owe a million thanks to Jerky who has done more than anyone to keep the dream alive. I owe a million more to the writers, programmers, artists, musicians and so on who have followed his lead and left a lasting mark on the current project. Maybe it sounds soppy and melodramatic, but I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to add my own meager contribution to the ongoing vision of the Project Wish team.

I will do whatever I can to make the next three years even more successful than the first three!
Go to the top of the page
  Print

> Comments for: Opening Pandora's box
Jerky
post Feb 1 2008, 02:47 PM
 


Former PW Project Manager
**********

Group: PW Admin
Posts: 1,610
Joined: 11-January 05
Member No.: 62




Thanks for sharing that!!! Excellent beginning to something that will hopefully be a lasting success.
User is offlineProfile CardPM
Go to the top of the page

RSS
> Info/Links
About the author
Brotoi



PM   Profile Card
Blog categories
Blog stats
Views: 6786
Entries: 9
Blog created: Feb 1 2008, 02:18 AM


Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 28th March 2024 - 11:53 PM
Original skin by: b6gm6n | Conversion by: Chris Y
hardwired
  hardwired
hardwired hardwired
hardwired hardwired