Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



User Tag List

Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 30
  1.   Click here to go to the next staff post in this thread.   #1
    Administrator Citan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    589
    Blog Entries
    34
    Mentioned
    68 Post(s)
    Tagged
    4 Thread(s)

    Dev Blog, August 5, 2017

    Real quick update! We're extremely busy right now on the next snapshot, which will include a major overhaul of South Serbule as well as a new community activity.

    Say Goodbye to South Serbule ...
    ... And hello to the new Serbule Lowlands!

    New players often think that "South Serbule" is a location on the Serbule map -- as in, "the southern part of the Serbule zone." On the one hand, that's easy to fix: somebody tells them it's an entirely different place, and voila, no more problem. But on the other hand, it's a newbie zone, and there's already a tremendous amount for newbies to learn. I don't want to add more confusion for no reason.

    But on the THIRD hand, the lore dictates that the area is part of the duchy of Serbule -- lands historically ruled by the Duke of Serbule -- and that fact will be important in the future! So I'm hoping that "Serbule Lowlands" sounds enough like a different place while still being obviously related to Serbule.

    (And if you have other name suggestions, now's the time to share them!)


    New Landscape, New Stuff
    The name change is just a small detail in the overall revision of the area. We've remade the map from scratch to focus on the interesting things going on in the Serbule Lowlands: a full-on ranalon invasion force has set up camp near the big lakes; in response, the goblins of Sedgewick Forest have barricaded the road into their lands to keep the ranalon out.

    In the meantime, there are farmers and other mostly-innocent people trying to make a living from the land -- and having a very hard time of it, since the fighting has basically cut off all trade. (Good thing players will be coming along to help them!)

    Mix in some politics, some spiders, and some mysteriously abandoned locales, shake well, and we'll see what we can make of it.

    Or rather, we'll see what you make of it -- because we're going to need a lot of playtesting for this one. The Serbule "revamp" was just an art revision, but this revamp leaves very little unchanged.


    The Other Way To Leave Anagoge
    There's a dungeon on Anagoge (the newbie island). It's surprisingly long for a newbie dungeon, and then you get to the bottom, and ... nothing happens, so you have to walk all the way back out. That's because it's unfinished!

    The end of that dungeon is supposed to lead you out to South Serbule -- or rather, the Serbule Lowlands. (This new name is going to take some practice.) That connection is finally being added, giving newbies a second way off the island. Parts of Serbule Lowlands will be newbie-centric content, similar to what's in Serbule now (such as cooking recipes, vendors, etc.).

    It'll probably take some iteration and feedback to make this new newbie-exit work well. There are so many little things that need to be learned, discovered, or unlocked, that it's very hard to make sure newbies find them all!

    I expect having a second way to start your character will help a lot when there's more players, because not everybody will be driven to the exact same dungeons or to kill the same beasts at the same time. It also means that newbies will be learning slightly different sets of skills at first, so they can help each other more. Plus it's always nice to have different content to experience when starting an alt character.


    Plus... Poetry Readings!
    Another feature that's ready for the next snapshot is poetry recitals. Bards need levels in Poetry Appreciation in order to level, but poetry books are hard to come by. The answer? Recitals!

    You start by finding a poetry book. But instead of reading it privately to yourself, you go to a poetry podium. (There's one in the Serbule tavern.) From there, you can "recite" your poem, which gives you and everybody nearby some Poetry Appreciation XP, plus the buffs that go along with that poetry book.

    So what poems do the players actually see? Well, I wasn't about to write poems for all the poetry books in the game... that's your job! The person doing the recital will be prompted to provide a short poem in the style of the book (such as "Nature", "Funny", or "Inspirational"). This poem is shown to everybody nearby (within about 40 meters), and they're asked to indicate if it's actually a poem (or if you just entered junk), and whether they liked it or not. You then receive their aggregated reviews.

    The poem and the reviews don't affect how much XP you earn -- that part is just for fun. But I think the sort of people who are interested in being a bard are also the sort of people who might be willing to look up their favorite poem and paste it in, or to write some poems of their own -- dirty limericks count!

    [srand points out: you are still limited by the Code of Conduct, of course. So no racist limericks, please.]

    The interesting thing about poetry recitals is that the reciter doesn't earn as much Poetry Appreciation XP as if they'd just read the book quietly -- only 33% of normal XP, in fact. But everyone nearby ALSO gets that 33%. So if a few people reciprocate and read you their poems in return, you'll all easily earn more Poetry Appreciation XP than if you'd just read your own books by yourselves.

    But if you need a little bit more incentive, reciting poems also earns you Oratory XP. The more people that hear your recital, the more Oratory XP you earn, so you'll want to cajole people into gathering 'round to hear your recital! (Raising the Oratory skill gives synergy levels in skills like Bard.)

    I like these sorts of "community" mechanics. It'll probably require some tweaking and iteration, though, so we'll gather feedback and see how it goes.


    Other Stuff Too
    The next snapshot also has a bunch of other changes, including improvements to many existing food recipes, various treasure mods changed or added, a bunch of bugs fixed, and some new crafting recipes to discover. I'll cover those changes in more detail when the update is ready.

    There's a lot of work left to finish for Serbule Lowlands, so I'm not sure when the snapshot build will be ready. I'd say odds are slim -- but not zero -- that it'll be ready this week. More likely it'll be ready in a week and a half, or thereabouts. We'll keep you posted!

  2. #2
    Member jackybah's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2017
    Posts
    46
    Mentioned
    2 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Good morning Citan,

    Thanks for your update. The Lowlands part in the name feels a bit weird for me, since the player will be traveling UP into the mountainous area of ' normal' Serbule to reach the portal to South Serbule / Serbule Lowlands.
    Have you considered Serbule Highlands ?

    Kind regards
    Jack

  3. #3
    Senior Member Oxlazr's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    124
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    So I wonder when changing low level zones what sort of approach you want players to take - I'd guess in some capacity you'd have high level players go through and steamroll the content without being able to really gather any meaningful feedback.

    I know that additional character slots were meant to be a premium feature or some such later on, but is there any chance we could at least temporarily see that cap go back up for things like this?

    Ideally I'd like some other tools to play the game differently each time I start fresh, but that's another discussion.

    Anyway, failing that, it might pay to actually promote the game to new players in some capacity when these sorts of updates go live, seeing as they're most likely to provide the most useful feedback.

  4. #4
    Senior Member kazeandi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2017
    Posts
    175
    Mentioned
    7 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    Any news on Animal Handling damage?

  5. #5
    Senior Member Khaylara's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    396
    Mentioned
    20 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    I'm excited about the poetry changes (i think there were few suggestions along those lines). About character slots, yup it would be nice to go back to 8, right now I'm using a second account to test stuff but it's not really handy (plus I'll have 8 slots anyway at launch). I am aware most would use those as mules but it's still handy for testing purposes.

  6.   Click here to go to the next staff post in this thread.   #6
    Administrator Silvonis's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Posts
    381
    Blog Entries
    5
    Mentioned
    21 Post(s)
    Tagged
    3 Thread(s)
    Just to nip this is the bud, we don't intend on increasing the character cap at this time.

  7. #7
    Junior Member Gervase's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2017
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    29
    Mentioned
    4 Post(s)
    Tagged
    0 Thread(s)
    When the UI is updated. I'll probably start playing again. It was teased so much a few months back and nothing has come from it.

  8. #8
    Senior Member Khaylara's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    396
    Mentioned
    20 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by Silvonis View Post
    Just to nip this is the bud, we don't intend on increasing the character cap at this time.
    Idc either way, I don't do mules so just a suggestion...and smart marketing. Do you think a player who got used to 8 slots will go back to 4 or pay a subscription? My guess is people will sub post-launch in order to keep their 8 chars. If you make it clear that the default will be 4 character slots imho it's fine to let us have 8 during testing (providing the slots are used for testing and not for mules, you can ban mules usage as far as I'm concerned).
    Also not saying you should "at this time" but if more stuff is added for lower levels count this as a suggestion It kinda breaks my heart to delete characters in order to re-start from scratch to test newbie stuff.

    Sorry for (ever so slightly) off topic
    Last edited by Khaylara; 08-05-2017 at 08:54 AM.

  9. #9
    Senior Member drivendawn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    176
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    Awesome, I am looking forward to exploring all the new things in the lowlands.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Niph's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    433
    Mentioned
    16 Post(s)
    Tagged
    1 Thread(s)
    About poetry recitals, the way I read it, it would work like this: someone with a Poetry book, and with enough level in Poetry Appreciation to be able to read it, goes to a poetry podium. This is, I guess, a new static interacting item, like a chair or bed. When they click it they are prompted to put in a book, then to paste some text. The recital then begins and everyone around can read the text. After some delay, they get a prompt with "Like" and "Dislike" buttons, and after some delay everyone can see something like "10 people liked this recital, 2 people disliked it". Everyone receives the poetry buff and xp, the reader receives some Oratory xp.

    Thoughts:
    . I like it.
    . I don't know if you want to restrict recitals to a specific place like the Serbule tavern, for some reason. If not, maybe we could craft podiums with carpentry? There must be some better place in the world than a mere tavern for nice recitals (Lord Sedgewick's throne room? I can't remember how it looks like).
    . Any chance high level in oratory can increase duration of poetry buffs when given in a recital? Some of these buffs are actually useful in combat, like the +Max Armor ones. I typically use a book once my group is ready to go, inside the dungeon, in the hope it lasts until the boss. With recitals I must add the time it takes to get to the dungeon and be ready to go.



Thread Footer

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •