what sane person will still work on SoD?
Do any now? But anyway, map editing sounds like the inverse of what we've ever done or tried to do.
No way I'm gonna watch an hour long video of empty hype, but I read a couple articles (of empty hype). Very skeptical of dynamic this and permanent-but-non-deterministic that, mainly from the perspective of people doing work.
The idea that different servers may end up being significantly different seems particularly at odds with the concept of constant on-going world events. Any permanent, but not
certain, change represents a limiting of options for future events. "Let's send players to city A for this next step." "Can't do that, it was destroyed on servers X and Y, and never came to be on Z." Anything that would require server-specific workarounds or branching paths -- i.e., exponentially more work as things go along -- would not happen. At the same time, just ignoring anything old whenever an event happens would be pretty lame and make the world pretty small, with only one or two areas being important at any one time (kind of like with the old games they apparently said they want to avoid making again, natch). So, I would expect potential change to be explicitly limited to only those things that are considered to be
insignificant at any given time. World events and their outcomes would presumably be deterministic for the same sorts of reasons -- any branching of paths that isn't simply irrelevant implies increased workloads in the future. Maybe one or two non-deterministic events really early on to be extra special, but that's it.
Maybe I'm the only one who thinks the idea of falling in holes all the time because someone cast a spell is silly, but I don't really get the hype of destructable stuff. From the sounds of it any destruction players can do will not last, anyway. That underworld you opened up a hole to will be different every time (if they have a random underworld generator, they're gonna use it), and any battle scars in the earth will heal (they're not gonna let the whole world be an endless, cratered, uneven wasteland the moment you step out of a destruction-exempt area, obviously).
Non-strict classes sounds neat at least, though I prefer would prefer completely fluid roles with complete freedom, dunno why every fantasy mmo needs classes (other than forced replay/alt value and more consistent visual cues/iconography).
Might be good though, who knows. I haven't played games in forever, not sure what the point is anymore. Though I expect the conceptual purity they are harping on (emergent ai! dynamic world!) to give way to marketing concerns (does it keep players hooked, are there enough repetitive tasks, consistently reachable short-term goals, instant gratification elements, etc) before beta hits.
