Unconfirmed: Blizzard Developing a First-Person MMORPG

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Written by BuckGB on January 19th, 2010

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Despite the fact that this is just a rumor, it really got me thinking. The biggest problem with MMOFPS games is the interface. Traditional MMOs have a well-established interface, and this interface allows players to interact with NPCs one minute, then cast fireballs at monsters the next. This system has been refined for many years in MMOs themselves, and in single player RPGs for several generations prior to that. It's a pretty smooth, well understood system at this point in the genre's development.

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One of the central innovations of HGL was, in fact, its interface. On the surface, the interface was the standard FPS interface, in which your gunsight was controlled by your mouse, and you walked in different directions by using the WASD keys. There was no (tab targetting) like in standard MMOs; you put your sight on a target, and you squeezed off rounds. The game addressed the disparity between ranged and melee weapons quite well, by simply giving melee characters a fairly long reach, and a nice wide swath whenever they swung their swords or maces. Basically, a melee weapon acted as a small, short range, AOE attack. The whole combat system worked quite well.

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