Project Gorgon – The New Black?

418 words.

About a year ago I installed Project Gorgon and played around in the starter cave. It was mildly interesting but of course it wasn’t finished, the graphics were terrible, and there are so many other things to play. So I put it away again, filing it in the back of my mind.

Now suddenly everyone is talking about Project Gorgon. And by everyone I mean MassivelyOP which apparently has turned into the all-Gorgon-all-the-time site. :) Not that there’s anything wrong with that I guess-it’s not like Project Gorgon is a multi-billion-dollar corporation. It’s just a guy and his wife. At this stage in their development it doesn’t bother me to see them getting a media spotlight. And besides, it’s such a niche game that a thousand suns of media spotlight couldn’t possibly make it a mainstream hit.

Anyway I installed it again recently and played around in the starter cave, which is much better than it was last year. It’s still mildly interesting-maybe even somewhat interesting-but it’s still not finished and the graphics are still terrible. If we were living in 1999, the graphics would be awesome, but alas we aren’t.

Hey, it's a shrine just sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. Cool!

Still, there’s something very appealing about the game. Maybe not the game itself but the idea of the game. The idea of throwing out any pretense of trying to make a polished audio-visual experience and focusing in on interesting RPG elements is a revolutionary idea. The idea of making a game for role-players is revolutionary, and I think that’s the main reason MassivelyOP is so enamored with it. (I get the impression that 90% of their staff are role-players.)

For myself, I thought it was awesome that I could charm a rat.

The game definitely has a lot of old-school nostalgia appeal to it. It feels a lot like playing Asheron’s Call back in the day. (AC is my nostalgic MMORPG, not EverQuest.) It doesn’t play anything like AC, but the sense of “I wonder what’s over there and I wonder what that is?” is definitely there. The world feels really vast, too, which is something that’s lacking in a lot of modern MMORPGs.

 

Besides, how can you not love these kinds of patch notes? “Bugs! There are some.” LOL.

"Weird stuff happens routinely!" That's awesome.

Anyway I’m still keeping an eye on it and I hope it goes the distance.

Posted on Blaugust Day 15. Read all of my Blaugust posts here.

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Archived Comments

Syl 2015-08-15T15:38:30Z Oh god, starter cave really?? :D Geez. Now I admit am getting interested in this game but at the same time, I should probably know better. I am not much of a roleplayer and I’m really not nostalgic for the times when MMOs looked baaaad. :P

Ysharros 2015-08-15T22:21:02Z

Another AC player reporting in – it’s where I met the spousal unit, actually, back in the waybackwhen. And one of the reasons my character last name tends to be Solclaim (where allowed) – ACers recognise it when they see it. :D

I have pretty much the same take on P:G so far but was too unmotivated to do a real review post today.

Ysharros 2015-08-15T22:21:26Z Starter cave = let’s make the EQ players feel comfortable. ;)

UltrViolet 2015-08-15T23:20:57Z

Ha yeah it does look a lot like what I remember of that first cave in EQ. :)

I haven’t played more than a couple of hours total.. about enough for me to say, “it’s worth a look since it’s free but if they can hire some artists and modelers it’ll be 1000% better.”

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