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by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, February 18, 2013, 03:55 (4300 days ago) @ Jillybean

I have a question about this shared world idea.

Is it going to be akin to the Fable series where your character can ask to join somebody else's world and then toodle about for a bit, earning mana/gold/leprechauns until they bugger off back to their own dimension? That isn't very new, but is more like what we see on consoles.

Or will the world persist when I am not in it? This is much more novel for a console games, although MMOs and text-based roleplaying games have been doing it for year. If the world does persist when I am not in it, what does this mean for the story I am following? No chapter can truly have that much impact on the world and that doesn't seem to me to be the sort of thing that would be worth of the name Destiny.

What is my world and how do I share it?

I have a feeling it may be a little of both.

Probably each chapter has some seminal encounters or events that every player can and should experience. These will probably wait for you-- they'll still be around if you don't do them right when they're available, and who knows, maybe you can play through them more than once.

There might be other things, though, that go on without you and that affect the persistent world-- arena areas where players battle it out, and perhaps other areas where territorial struggles go on between factions.

I'm hoping they find a balance that works. The only thing I can end up thinking of are WoW boss encounters, where you put the Big Bad in the ground on Tuesday only for him to resurrect for the next bunch of players to kill on Thursday.

Has to be a way to do this and make it seem organic and emergent without making the events seem insignificant and canned.