Video game designer Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Street has re-emerged with a new massively multiplayer online role-playing game codenamed Ghost set in a new fantasy universe.
Street, who worked on World of Warcraft at Blizzard before joining Riot Games to work on its upcoming League of Legends MMO, has formed a new studio, called Fantastic Pixel Castle, owned by Chinese entertainment company NetEase Games. It’s made up of who worked on the likes of World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and Guild Wars 2.
Hello! 👋
We are Fantastic Pixel Castle, a new games studio making an epic AAA MMORPG codenamed Ghost.
To learn more about our studio and vision for Ghost, visit our website at https://t.co/34jbooP5JE.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/ZdGYJABs23
— Fantastic Pixel Castle (@FPCStudio) November 2, 2023
Here’s the official blurb on Ghost:
“As players, we are deeply in love with MMOs for their promise of social worlds. But we also feel that the genre has lately struggled to provide a community that you care about while still making your character feel heroic or special. We believe MMOs have moved too far toward solo adventuring, where other players often just slow you down. We want to bring back as central pillars of the MMO experience both playing with friends and building a community. We want to bring back the chance to impact the world around you.”
And here’s the setup of the world of Ghost:
“Imagine standing on the weathered cobblestones of an ancient city. In the sky above you are seemingly endless shards of broken worlds, a cornucopia of biomes that promise unlimited adventure and mystery. You are one of the survivors of an apocalypse lost to memory, and the rebuilding of the world now lies on your shoulders.”In Ghost, you travel to world shards to power up your characters, bring back resources, and build your fledgling civilization by growing and supporting the city’s diverse and ever-changing factions. In turn, you’ll see the city grow and evolve over time based on the choices and actions of players just like you, as an epic story unfolds season over season.”The World of Ghost is an original IP designed from the ground up to create rich and immersive gameplay. It is a fantasy world of heroic adventure, where you seek clues to uncover the mysteries of the world and engage with allies and enemies who have diverse motivations, actions, and secrets. You will fight with axes and crossbows and magic, but we do want to avoid the tropes of fantasy that you’ve already seen hundreds of times. For example, there are no elves or orcs in Ghost. We are pouring our passion into our IP development early, in order to build something that you can enjoy for decades to come.”
And here’s information on Ghost’s gameplay:
“In our game, you will alternate between private realms that we’re calling Blue Shards for you and your friends, and more public Red Shards that deliver a more traditional massively multiplayer experience.”Blue Shards play a bit like a survival game – you and your friends can gather resources, construct bases, and adventure out into the wilderness. Blue Shards are extremely variable, ensuring a place full of new discoveries and challenges, guaranteeing that you’ll never see the same Blue Shard twice. Because the Blue Shards belong to you, your effects on them are persistent and permanent. If you prefer a more competitive experience, you can host or join Blue Shards focused on guild rivalry, or even guild-versus-guild PvP.”Red Shards are crafted by some of the best world artists and encounter designers to provide a signature massively multiplayer experience with many players at once. Red Shards are some of the most challenging places in the game to survive, so your group will need to band together with other groups to defeat world bosses, collect critical resources, and even open the gates to the end-game raiding instances. We expect some of you may prefer Blue or Red Shards, but the core way to play Ghost is to travel between both regularly as well as to Ghost’s central city.”
Street left Riot, where he was executive producer on the League of Legends MMO, in May. That departure came just over two years after Riot announced the game. At the time, Street assured Riot fans that the MMO spin-off was still in production.
“The MMO is in good hands and it’s the right time to hand over the reigns for the next phase,” he wrote. “I plan to stay in game development and I have had a number of exciting opportunities presented to me already. And I will be with you all playing the Riot MMO when it comes out.”
Street first joined Riot as the lead gameplay designer on the original League of Legends in 2013, according to Riot’s website. He announced the League of Legends MMO in 2020 via a tweet, though in 2022, he said there was “no guarantee” the game would come out.
Fantastic Pixel Castle will livestream an AMA on November 8 at 10am PT to talk more about the setup.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].