“Blue Zones – Red Zones”

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Greg Street held a crucial position at Blizzard during WoW’s golden age: as “Ghostcrawler”, he was WoW’s lead system designer and the public face of the game from 2008 to 2013. Today he works on the new MMORPG “Ghost” and has a new idea for the old concept of zones.

What do we know about the new game?

  • Very little is currently known. Ghostcrawler originally wanted to design a LoL MMORPG for Riot, but for personal reasons he has now become self-employed and is working on a new MMORPG “Ghost.”
  • So far, the game is characterized primarily by the fact that it is a mix of several ideas: You want to be a theme park and a sandbox at the same time, and offer both single player and multiplayer elements.
  • One idea that clearly shows this “dual approach” is the consideration of zones.

    • Ghostcrawler introduces its new development studio in the video

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    Classic MMORPG zones and procedurally generated chaos zones

    What are you planning for zones? A current podcast (via YouTube) goes into more detail about the idea of ​​the “red and blue zones” that the MMORPG should consist of.

    Red zones are zones known from theme park MMORPGs. They are elaborate maps with points of interest, world bosses and resources that spawn predictably.

    You can learn the special features of these cards and thereby gain advantages.

    There should also be blue zones that are randomly generated and therefore promise dynamic content with location-specific quests and goals. This is where we deviate from “linear” gaming.

    How does the experience of the zones differ? In the podcast, Candance Thomas, a content designer, explains:

  • You can imagine the red zone like the WoW dungeon “Death Mines”: It is always the same pattern, with minimal deviations. Mobs might change patrols or maybe a rare boss would only spawn once, but basically the zones followed clear patterns
  • Blue zones are more like Valheim, you can’t just look up where you have to run next on the internet. The tasks are like FATEs in Final Fantasy: You go to an area and complete tasks there, i.e. dynamic events that also change. Here you can’t expect everything to be permanent

    • How should you get to these zones? Details are still unclear here. Players should be able to consciously decide whether they go to a red or blue zone, and there will then be a transition, but Street doesn’t know what that will look like at the moment:

    “Hopefully it’s more exciting than a loading screen!” he says in the podcast.

    Project is still in its early stages and will struggle to be relevant

    That’s what lies behind it: The MMORPG is currently still in the early stages of development. Ghostcrawler apparently has similar ideas for its new MMORPG that have been circulating for almost 10 years: dynamic events that react to player actions should provide “endless content” and break the feeling of experiencing the same process over and over again.

    Everquest Next promised us this ages ago.

    However: The current podcast has 1,100 views – this now shows that Ghostcrawler is facing new challenges. At his old employer, Riot Games, the LoL MMORPG guaranteed him the attention of hundreds of thousands of viewers interested in LoL: With “Ghost” he will now have to start all over again and fight to be relevant.

    Former WoW developer explains why his new MMORPG is so much better: “Uncompromisingly relies on multiplayer”

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