More good omens, and gathering momentum for what I hope will be an almighty High Fantasy RPG Backlash some time soon, along with subsequent Renaissance, with a fascinating GDC interview over at Virgin Worlds, with the chaps behind the upcoming Stargate: Worlds MMO, in production and possibly due out this year:

Virgin Worlds: Podcast #60

Must admit, I'm quite keen on the idea of a Stargate MMO, as it does rather seem to be the kind of idea that can't go wrong. If it's good, it's good, and if it's awful, in all the ways we all know only too well, it's still funny - a lot like the TV show, in that regard!

Still, it seems to have come on a long way since I first pointed and laughed at the idea, just over a year ago, and the thing is starting to seem a lot more concrete. Now we have screenshots, class lists, race lists, and now, thanks to Brent & Brendan, a pretty in-depth examination of the kinds of gameplay we might expect.

High points include the ability for all classes to do the basic business of shooting bad-guys, wearing kevlar, and using medical kits - making pretty much everyone a Tank-mage-priest from the word go, and completely upsetting the Holy Trinity class design apple-cart from the word go. There's also to be a significant puzzle element to gameplay, providing something other than Shooting and Crafting to be getting on with, and I expect it'll be somewhere between Puzzle Pirates and Vanguard's Diplomacy, only with more hieroglyphs involved.

Much talk of stories. SG-1 was never really much of a hotbed of mind-bending 'Hard SF' in the traditional sense, being more of a kind of long-running episodic action romp in space, without even much in the way of tedious 'We must not interfere' Directives getting in the way of a good firefight. Still, sounds like a lot of work is going into the lore of it all, and since, according to the interview, the business of grinding out levels is being kept intentionally very shallow, the story-lines will take the place of the usual xp bar in providing long-term focus. All quite novel, and good, IF it can actually be pulled off of course.

This sounds like it will also depend on we players being able to actually comes to terms with being 'finished' with a character, rather than desperately hanging on forever and ever, chipping away at what Tobold calls 'Meta-levels' once the real cap has been reached - endless gear refinement and faction work, etc. Should we be expected to exercise self-discipline, or is it entirely the responsibility of the game devs and designers to entertain us?

No mention of PvP in the interview, but I expect there will some kind of conflict available. In any event, it looks like a very World of Warcraft style of team breakdown; Good vs Evil, and likely to be very similarly lopsided, I shouldn't wonder, with everyone wanting to be ONeeeeeilz37, and very few people wanting to be Generic Loyalist Jaffa Guy #58. Still, I'm game, and well up for being a megalomaniac alien invader with glowing eyes, big wardrobe, and one of those neat red and gold glove things that can fry people's brains! Where do I sign? Of course the trickiest bit will be picking a decent name - a perennial problem compounded by the fact that in Stargate Country, all the System Lords pretend to be mythological gods, to better confuse and subjugate simple people, and if I'm to do the same (something I've always dreamed of doing!), I shall need to be quick off the mark with my amusing deity name! I'd go for one associated with cynicism, if that didn't quite defeat the point. Oh well!

Find out more and gawp at screenshots here: Stargate: Worlds

Anyway, all sounding quite good so far, and a breath of fresh air. What with Pirates of the Burning Sea, the above, Tabula Rasa, Huxley, the Star Trek Game and the Warhammer 40k game all arriving in the next few years, things are definitely looking up for the 'Sci Fi ' and 'Other' categories. It's about time we moved out of the Dark Ages, if you ask me!