Former lead for WoW was supposed to make an MMO for League of Legends, now his own game relies on specialists like in LoL

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Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street talked about the design of the classes in his new MMORPG with the project name “Ghost”. He draws an exciting alternative to MOBAs like League of Legends.

Who is Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and what did he reveal? As lead designer and spokesperson for Blizzard, the veteran developer set the direction of World of Warcraft for several years, after which he worked for Riot Games on the new MMORPG for League of Legends.

Last year he founded the studio Fantastic Pixel Castle to work with other veterans on a new online role-playing game called “Ghost”. He recently spoke on X about the class design of the MMORPG. Here are the most important findings:

  • Ghost is designed to value your time and be very twink-friendly.
  • For this reason, the classes of the MMORPG cannot be generic, according to the motto: Here you have the fighter, there you have the magician.
  • On the contrary, “Ghost” is intended to offer 20 different fighter and magician classes in the long term, each of which plays differently.
  • This is only possible if they specialize heavily, similar to the champions from MOBAs like League of Legends. The difference is that the characters in “Ghost” have your name, were created by you and are not predefined hero figures.
  • “Ghostcrawler” cites games such as Gloomhaven, Pathfinder and Darkest Dungeon as further sources of inspiration for the class design.

    • In the following posts, the developer confirms again that “Ghost” will offer the holy trinity of tank, healer and damage dealer. Hybrid classes that can take on multiple roles are not currently planned due to the focus on specialization.

    Greg Street introduced his new studio with this trailer:

    Ghostcrawler presents its new development studio in a video

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    Concepts that are slowly becoming reality

    What else do I need to “Ghosts” knowledge? Even though Greg Street often talks a lot about his new MMORPG, the project is still very early in development. This is underlined by his last post on X about class design:

    A lot of it is still on paper at this point. We’ve got most of it implemented in software, but the variety of playable classes is still very limited at this stage, so we may need to change some ideas. That’s all part of talking about it this early.

    Greg Street via X

    However, the lively exchange has made it pretty clear where the journey is headed. The foundation of “Ghost” is formed by the flying land masses that cover the sky of the game world. These come in two versions.

  • The red zones are reminiscent of traditional MMORPG areas such as dungeons and raids, with aggressive monsters, world bosses and foreign players.
  • Blue zones, on the other hand, function more like a sandbox. Dynamic events are supposed to take place there, and every visit is different. These zones could even function as a private area for you and your friends, with the option of defining your own rules or improving and customizing your area (keyword: housing).

    • The combat system is supposed to be somewhere between New World and Black Desert on the one hand, and WoW and Final Fantasy XIV on the other. Controller support is planned in addition to the usual PC control via mouse and keyboard.

    The perspective should be third-person, like in WoW and the like. Community add-ons should only be supported if they increase comfort or accessibility or change the interface. Mods for combat are not allowed.

    The MMORPG is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 and the developers have placed high priority on the integrity of the client and protection against exploits and bots from the start. A buy2play payment model without microtransactions is planned.

    If you want to take a first look at the current prototype of “Ghost”, you can do so! However, please note that this is a very early version made up of placeholders. The actual assets have yet to be developed: Former WoW lead shows his new MMORPG after only 4 months of development

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