A casters wet dream

During my shift last night at work, I was aimlessly drifting through my route of favourite sites as usual, looking for a juicy morsel of MMO related news when I saw a shining light off in to the distance.

It beckoned me ever closer, begging to be /inspected. On closer examination I discovered that the report staring back at me from the monitor was nothing short of manna from Heaven.

Before I go any further, take a gander at this...



Yes, that's really a player controlled character.

Yes, it does look totally awesome!

If you take a look at any current MMO which has a caster class or two, what do you see? Yet another glass cannon who wiggles his or her fingers, before unleashing a bolt of fire/ice/shadow/lightning.

What if you could do more?

What if you could enter a casting state where energy and magic continue to build, throwing more and more spells into a giant melting pot before finally being unleashed?

Now you can.

The future is bright...

The future is Spellweaving.

Now the balance monkeys out there will probably already be shouting 'NERF!' but I say 'slow down there monkey boy'. What if, although the power of the spells were drastically increased, the chances of doing lethal damage to yourself was also a large factor for consideration?

Clever huh?

The information released by FunCom to IGN goes on to say that, once the caster enters the spellweaving state, it progresses through 6 stages.

According to Andrew Griffin, FunCom's senior systems designer, each stage will grant an increase to passive spell buff damage but will also have the chance to land a harmful or helpful effect to the caster.

As far as I am aware, this is a fairly revolutionary concept when it comes to empowering us of the 'squishy persuasion'. The ability of players to mix up different spells to create unique attacks based on their adversaries is an innovative move.

Granted there can only be so many combinations available, but when you mix in the chance of a helpful side effect kicking in, it adds that extra spice to make things interesting.

I'm sure as players progress and their characters become more powerful, we will see casters throwing out FOTM nukes at poor unsuspecting healers in PvP. That is all but inevitable. But it gives me hope.

Hope that, some developers are starting to realise that gamers aren't just going to sit back and take badly written code and rehashed quests thrown at them anymore . We need advancements in concepts and storylines alike to keep our interest alive.

Instead of choosing to bank on old tried and tested game mechanics, developers should be constantly trying to push the virtual envelope.

Those who disregard this simple fact will see the gaming community vote with the only weapon they have available.

Their wallets.

Anyway, before I go off on a tangent, head on over to IGN.com for the full source post . It will give you a more in-depth view on how it will all work and save me the effort of plagiarising the article!