@ozone.birb.house can you apply the Game Dev label to me please?

A lot of the genesis of the Blue Shard idea, is to give players a puzzle to solve that they can't just go look up on a wiki. (And I don't literally mean puzzle, like sliding around pieces or whatever - just a challenge with no obvious solution).

I agree actually. My favorite memories are sitting around trying to solve the puzzle given our group makeup and skill. I don't think this means raid leaders are bad, just that it shouldn't be just about watching a video and then trying to excecute.

Maybe I am just old and jaded, but I am kind of over giving players busy work. If they are out of "real" stuff to do, then maybe it's okay to take a break until the next content drop?

I don't think we can scratch the MMORPG itch without meaningful vertical progression. We hope we can marry that with cosmetic chases, collections, and other things like that. FF does a good job here IMO.

Great question. We aren't actively designing any at this moment, but it's a common archetype and we will need a lot of classes so I'd predict eventually.

It has been a long time since I've had to try to build up communication lines on a new social media channel. Anything related to game design (or our game design) y'all want to talk about?

I hope the team feels some pride in what they’ve accomplished in such a short time. We will share more about our playtest goals and what we learned in a blog update soon

My hopes for our small public playtest last night were that players could get in the game. But they explored blue zones for ~hour and then grouped for the final boss and many said they had fun! This was a tiny playtest but we will do more. Our release is definitely not imminent

Playtest tonight! I'll report back if it goes well and ghost you (heh) if it's a trainwreck