If you’ve been wishing for horses and western MMORPGs, then saddle up par’dner — we’re about to ride off into a glorious sunrise.
PC Gamer got the exclusive scoop on a brand-new MMO in development called Wild West Online, which is slated for a late 2017 release. In a nutshell, WWO is Red Dead Redemption made massively multiplayer, a project tackled by devs who were frustrated that this sort of game hadn’t happened yet. It will be an open-world PvP title with lawmen, bandits, gambling, prospecting, bounty hunting, and bank heists.
The game is being developed by a brand-new studio, 612 Games, which contains veterans from League of Legends and Crysis. So far, only broad strokes are being used to describe the game and its features, as some parts (like how progression will be handled) haven’t been decided yet. It does sound as though Wild West Online will be far more PvP-oriented and not a cookie-cutter MMO, lacking elements like fights against NPCs and any announced questing system.
Stephan Bugaj, the creative vice president of publisher DJ2, said that this type of game has been a long time coming: “There’s an audience for this that just wasn’t being served on PC. So we wanted to make this big, open wild west world with a bit of a twist that, like the best MMOs, is a place where people can really live in.”
The website is running a 14-day countdown to more details, which will probably coincide with Wild West Online’s planned Kickstarter at the end of May. The studio is seeking $250,000 or more to help flesh out the core game with more features, such as playable female characters (yup, they don’t come standard) and train robberies.
So what do you think? Is this the western MMO we’ve been hoping for? Does this team sound nervous about making the game too much like an MMORPG? Sound off in the comments!
