The History of Wish Editorial

The Wish Vault has published an article that discusses several events that have transpired during the development of Mutable Realms’ UMMORPG, including many design choices and details about employees that have been hired… and let go. An excerpt:

Dave Rickey, a former world builder at Mythic Entertainment, visited the Wish booth at E3 and about a month later accepted the opportunity to head the design department of the team. There was a man who had previously worked as a world designer on Dark Age of Camelot and had his own personal view on how some things should be in mmorpg’s. Even though there was little of all this to be noticed for the alpha testers, some new ideas and design concepts were now beginning to surface. One of the most important aspects of this new evolution was the House system: guilds could now ‘upgrade’ to the rank of Houses. These houses gained a form of territorial control and could play an active role in player government and most importanly: Player vs Player warfare. This system with its focus on PvP, whereas previously James Moffet had only made notice of very limited forms of PvP such as in arena’s, seemed like a new addition coming from Dave Rickey that was immediately bombarded all the way up to the status of “unique feature”. At some point it was even literally said by Dave that the way PvP was explained in the FAQ wasn’t correct anymore. The whole goal of it was that player actions would actually matter and that Wish would become a real fantasy “world”, instead of a combat environment. No doubt Dave’s concept was an extremely ambitious one. It relied heavily on player responsibilities and actions, which needed a good deal of balancing on all fronts: economics, PvP, guilds, skills. Yes, skills. That was another thing setting Wish apart somewhat. Not only did Mutable Realms opt for an extensive skill-system, not surprisingly resembling that of Ultima Online, but with Dave on the team, they also planned to introduce a new sort of linear-power advancement model.