Quote:
Originally Posted by Kika Maslyaka
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Your example with Merfolk is interesting one, but maybe too pushing. There was a game that tried something like that. I believe in Horizons you could play dragon, but you had to actually MATURE with time, rather than gaining levels, and it took forever, and game mostly failed. And that was even before WoW success.
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I don't think it's
punishing that Merfolk would need to stay underwater until a certain level. That would just be part of playing the game, if you pick the race. If you don't like the idea of playing underwater and being separated from other races until you level up significantly, then you just don't pick that race. This could have been the case with Vah Shir too; it's not bad design because it's restricted to something the player chooses. Race selection can be more than just physical appearance in a game; to me that should be the main point of what you choose actually - getting a different kind of gameplay experience (not just different in starting stats, or attributes like regeneration).
Horizons was originally planned as a very ambitious game with tons of great ideas, and would have moved the MMORPG genre in a very beneficial direction. Unfortunately it got ruined by money-hungry people who just wanted to make a quick profit for their own benefit. It was actually going to have a Merfolk race, with restrictions like I was talking about, but that race and the underwater zones got scrapped altogether. I don't know how the Dragons eventually got implemented in the very sad release version, but that's definitely a tricky thing to do.