A very quick post before I head off for a few days. Goblinworks second blog post is up where the area of the world for initial gameplay for Pathfinder Online is explained. Divided into a hex system, it is about 133 square miles in total, with three NPC factions already present, (making for a nice paper/scissors/rock scenario). To compare this, the entire world of Azeroth at launch was about 80 square miles. Throw 4500 players per month for the first seven months and I think the game has the potential to build up pace quite nicely. There is also a crapton of room available for future content development. The world is there for you to see. No mysterious land masses rising from the depths of the ocean needed.
Check it out for yourself and I’ll go into it in more detail with my thoughts next week.
December 24, 2011 at 9:35 am
Thanks for your coverage. This is really shaping up to be a ‘must watch’, personally speaking.
December 24, 2011 at 1:57 pm
You’re excited about this, aren’t you?
And that’s a good thing, if you like MMOs.
December 24, 2011 at 2:42 pm
I’m not exactly sure what they mean by having 4500 people playing. Is that the total number their one server will be holding or is it the number of pathfinder online accounts activated for the one server?
If it is the latter and there will be around 4500 people online on the server it would be about 33 people per square mile. Hopefully though we’re talking around only having about 1000 people online at a time. That’s still about 8 people per mile which for a fantasy based sandbox mmo is a little to small if you want my opinion.
December 26, 2011 at 3:50 pm
@Adawde, I believe they are restricting the number of people that can start playing the game to 4500 people in the first month, and will allow a further 4500 people each month in the first twelve months.
They’ve also catered for inactive players, and people who simply stop playing. They actually only expecting 25% retention each month, and expect to have about 16000 people at the end of the twelve months.
They’re going to quality over quantity, and will find it easier to deliver quality to one environment, rather than make players suffer through realm instability.
If they can last the year with that business model, then more power to them.
I’m wondering, what other fantasy based sandbox mmos are there, at this point?
January 5, 2012 at 8:34 am
new blogpost is up at goblinworks!
January 6, 2012 at 12:32 am
Thanks, Dunwich. Checking it out now.