Sunvale Nostalgia

[Aionlasting]

Hello Citan,

I don't know if your goal with sun vale had some particular old imagery in mind but I have to tell you the zone reminds me of a slice of Arramora in Asheron's call 2 and the 'sanddogs' in Project Gorgon remind me so much of the Armadillo's found on Arramora and the Reed sharks of Osteth... thanks so much for that little piece of nostalgia. Damn. I wonder if we will see some sort of bug threat in this game similar to the Olthoi? Something that even looks similar to an Olthoi? That be awesomely nostalgic.. hah. Sorry, dreaming again of a bygone era. Anyhoo... I had to share that. I really like sunvale because of that, if only it could be as large as the Arramora content of Asheron's call 2! I hope unity will one day support such massive landscapes that the older MMO genre's were known for.

Anyway, thanks for the great game you're making, really just wanted to share with you this thought. Thank you to Srand as well and the other developers behind the scene.

Kindly,
Aion

[BetaNotus]

Now I don't know if anything in this upcoming quote is still relevant to the game, but here's a quote from Citan in a January 2013 blog post.

"One of the cities in Project Gorgon is under constant attack by a horde of demons from another plane of existence. They can’t be bargained with or reasoned with and they won’t stop coming. In other words, they’re perfect classic video game monsters that you can feel no remorse in killing.

I was basically thinking of aliens from Aliens, or Zerg from Starcraft, or maybe even a fantasy version of Borg. Later it occurred to me that this monster also fits the same ecological niche as Olthoi from Asheron’s Call (a game I worked on long ago). So to amuse myself I named them Ulfoi as a kind of homage.

They have a few similarities: they’re both a little reminiscent of Aliens, and they both have a scary queen who’s a boss monster. Here’s Will’s initial sketch of the queen, an egg-laying tentacle beast:

But when you get down to it, they’re not very similar at all. Olthoi are insects while Ulfoi are demons. The only reason you’d likely even compare them is because I gave them a similar name.

So that name is a problem. I’m afraid people will say “you stole that from Turbine” or other such nonsense. And really, the name “Ulfoi” just feels like… it’s trying too hard to be clever.

[Aionlasting]

I vaguely remember that quote Beta. Thanks for the find! Its exciting to read!