Saturday, July 12, 2008

The Shandalar Project - Your turn

My apologies if the Shandalar discussion has been too one-sided up to now, but that is the nature of a blog: I get to describe my ideas first and readers can only add comments. Not much I can do about that, unless I turn the blog into a Wiki or some other form of more interactive media. But me stating my ideas doesn't mean I'm not listening to yours. There has been a lot of very good input, amidst some not-so-constructive criticism of the "this will never work" type. Not that we'll ever find out whether it will work, as nobody, not even me, is ready to really develop Shandalar the game.

Now I propose we discuss how we could continue the project. Do we just leave it there? Do we vote on various points? Do I try to write it all again, modified by your input? What can we do? In which direction do we want to move our hypothetical game Shandalar?

As I'd like to contribute to this general discussion as well, here is one thought: How close should Shandalar be to classis games like World of Warcraft? The chapters I wrote were deliberately aiming for as different as possible, creating a game without levels, without classes, without stats, without gear. But of course we could as easily make a game with levels, with classes, with stats, with gear, a game which would be a WoW clone with cards for combat. What features of World of Warcraft would you say Shandalar absolutely can't work with, and what features would you say would be better to leave out to differentiate ourselves from WoW?

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