Greetings from San Francisco

[Corax]

I was watching youtube videos about upcoming MMOs and one of them mentioned this game, so I am now downloading the demo, checking the wiki, and looking at the forums. I played and loved World of Warcraft (gnome warlock) from launch to halfway through Burning Crusade, and I played Guild Wars 2 (norn ranger) intensely this summer until I rage quit from how horrible the "personal story" stuff is. WoW is still my benchmark for a good MMO, in spite of some poor design choices. Guild Wars 2 gets a lot right, but what it gets wrong, it gets so wrong: the aforementioned story stuff, 20-minute dungeons and fractals, skills that only work in particular zones, and more. Anyhow!

I was a technical writer & software engineer in Silicon Valley, where I worked at NeXT, PDI (while they were making the films Antz and Shrek), and Apple. I am currently retired and using my time to learn tango, aikido, and do some gaming.

A quick look over the general structure of Project Gorgon won me over: no classes, just skills; no class-based armor restrictions, rather armor affects what you do; presence of pets. :-)

I am curious about how the early access process works and how things will change when the game is formally released, things like content release schedule (the three additional planned races, for example), and the like.

That seems to be enough by way of introduction. Cheers!

[ShieldBreaker]

Hi Corax, welcome to Project:Gorgon

Early Access in this case means that the game is in its beta phase. The game has been available to play for a good number of years, and has come a long way in that time. There are lots of additions to be added to the content and there is a new patch coming up near the end of the month. Not sure what is in the patch but it is for higher level stuff and some new features according to Twitter. When the races are going to arrive is uncertain.

[Deldaron]

One thing to note about the early access stage is there is a planned partial wipe. This will wipe currencies and NPC reputation, but not skill levels - mostly functioning to reset the economy.

I played WoW during the same time as you and have since hopped MMO to MMO looking for something to scratch that itch. PG has done that wonderfully. I've been playing for a couple of years now and there's still so much to do, it does a good job of making small maps feel thick and encourages you to re-visit areas often. Every NPC has their own favor level/reputation (and personality) and the game really encourages player interactions (Saturday at noon CST is a weekly poetry reading and party). It definitely reminds me of the days of naked gnome races and player held events of vanilla WoW.

The last I've heard (unofficial - so don't quote me) is that the goal for full release is sometime 2020. There are new maps to be added and rework for existing maps. The devs manage to keep a steady sprint cycle and usually push updates every two weeks (which is incredibly impressive given their size). The current cap for combat skills is 70, but that should be increased a couple times (in increments of 10) before full release - clearly a lot still in the works.

Hope you enjoy your time in Alharth!

[Daguin]

Fellow SF'er here, welcome to Project: Gorgon, adventurer! Hopefully your rent making in-game is less burdensome than IRL. :eek:

[Corax]

Thanks for the warm welcomes! I managed to play for a few hours late last night and will do a writeup in the suggestions forum on my experience. Unless this is where the devs would rather see such stuff.