While waiting for Archeage to release, I've been hunting around for other MMOs that I have overlooked that might fill some time. I stumbled across a relatively unknown title that looks like it may have some promise.
Project Gorgon is being developed by a small independent team headed by two individuals that have prior MMO development experience with Everquest 2 and Asheron's Call 1 & 2. They claim the game is inspired by EQ and Asheron's Call with some new ideas as well.
http://projectgorgon.com/
The graphics and animation are fairly basic as you might expect with a small team (roughly similar to EQ2), but there is some creativity and humor in the game play. There are a few things that have stood out to me in my few hours of play.
1. No classes or character levels. Everything is skill based so your character evolves based on the skills you choose to develop. There do not appear to be any limits in the number of skills you can advance, although you'll naturally put more time into some than others.
2. Your relationship with NPCs is more complex than in most other games. You can gain favor with them in a variety of ways which leads to a number of new skills and benefits.
3. Open exploration. While the beginning area offers some tutorial hints, once you leave that area you're more or less on you own and free to explore the world and see what happens.
4. The game is designed to be a PVE experience. The developers are trying to create a cooperative culture, not a competitive one. They may offer some optional PVP experiences for upper level characters in the future.
5. Novel death penalty. The death penalty varies from no penalty in most situations to a significant penalty for unique situations (like fighting a boss). You can decide the degree of risk you want to take. You can also accumulate death experience which helps if you want to develop your necromancy skills.
Project Gorgon is still in development and will release late 2015, but you can dowload the client now and play for free at this point. They indicated that while they may reset some skills and perhaps currency accumulated, they're going to do their best not to delete your characters and their progress. There appears to be a small but supportive community of players that exchange feedback actively with the developers.
Project Gorgon is about to go on Kickstarter to raise some funds. I hope they have success, it would be good to see efforts like this which attempt to capture some of the positives of old games and also develop new ideas get some support. For now, I think there is some fun to be had, although I'm still early in the game. It did have the effect of "calling me back" once I logged off, which is often not the case with some of the newer MMOs.
Here's a nice video hot off the press from the lead designer indicating his ideas for the game along with some game footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrWTFJLTLfc
