Stargate Worlds hunkers down until WoW War Conflict over

A recent interview conducted by Massively has shed a little more light on the upcoming Stargate Worlds MMO. I had known very little about this game other then their art direction which seemed to be a slightly stylized. Their characters don't have the exaggerated shoulder pads and weapons made famous by World of Warcraft, but neither are they trying to create photo realistic Fabios like Age of Conan. All in all I thought the graphics look like something I might see on a console game based on Stargate SG-1. I'm going to assume this means minimum hardware requirements to run the game which is a big relief after Age of Conan.

Also forthcoming were some basic design elements then went into the game play. Looks like the game is going to be organized into small squads which look like they might only be four members. They plan on using the Stargate as the perfect mechanism to explain instancing in the game. Some "worlds" through the Stargate will only be a single zone while others are going to have multiple areas. Its seems a lot like how Tabula Rasa set itself up only with wormholes instead of teleport pads. Also interesting was that the developers were full of confidence that they could release at the end of this year if they were so inclined.

However, the developers implied they didn't want to complete directly with Warhammer or Wrath of the Lich King. I can see the intelligence in such a decision though the vague details on combat and itemization made me think they are still far from completion of the game. That more likely then the WoW War Conflict is the reason they aren't going to be pressing a 4th quarter release. While I hate to judge a game so early I definitely don't see Stargate Worlds being the MMO that opens up the sci-fi genre. I simply don't hear any impressive new ideas from the game design team. The one different idea I heard in the interview is the archaeologist class which could despawn mobs using conversation skills. Ummm, while it fits how annoying Daniel Jackson was in the tv show, I'm not sure it would be a fun feature to actually play.

Then again I typing this up without the interview opened up in front of me so maybe I'm judging it a bit harshly from memory. Still the more I hear about Stargate Worlds the more I think its just going to be an average game. I think we'll have to wait for either a Starcraft MMO or KOTOR Online to make sci-fi popular in MMOs.