I was doing my normal daily routine of catching up on news (and avoiding work) when I noticed the below tidbit quietly hidden away on Slashdot.
(If you’re not familiar with Otherland, I’d suggest brushing up on it over at Wikipedia real quick.)
There’s a few reasons I’m excited about this. One of the attributes of Otherland that is made very obvious in the books is the ability to completely ignore the rules when designing an area of the net. Bug-sized avatars in a giant world, corrupted versions of childhood stories, other planets – these all happen in the novels, and I fully expect the game to be the same way. Each place could have it’s own physics, it’s own rules. It would definitely make for a much more dynamic environment than most MMOs currently have. It sounds like they’re also hinting at the possibility for player-created areas. So cool!
There’s also another reason that I have fairly high hopes; Tad Williams (the author of Otherland) is directly involved with the creation MMO. According to his website he seems to be pretty happy with how it’s going, and it looks like he is having a huge role in the design process of the game. This is definitely good news, and is at least a guarantee that it won’t be the player slogging through the story that’s already been told – it will instead be an extension of the books.
I’m definitely looking forward to checking this one out.