MIMESIS ONLINE EXPLAINED [Author: myschyf]

Not. 🙂

Well, there’s actually something behind that smoke barrier of
pseudophilosophical blathering. I became interested when I saw they’re
looking for beta testers. Not that I wanted to betatest anything, I’m not a martyr type. But it was about six months from the moment when the game was nothing more than wishful thinking. I went to their website and discovered that while there was no evidence of working game engine, the website has grown enormously and shows signs of serious conceptual work going on. Yeah, I know, the same could have been said (and was) about Dawn. But what they wrote about their project – as far as I, being no developer myself, can say – made sense. There were no fetapults and whatnot.

Still, there was no sign of working engine either. I emailed supposed
producer of the project and asked him how they’re going to start beta in the end of August, when in their Developers Diary one of their key developers was still pondering some key design quiestions: how to make a game that isn’t clich\’c3\’a9d, that is intriguing and surprising, yet at the same time has a smooth learning curve and remains attractive for many players. If they’re wondering how to do it… the end of year launch they were claiming to aim at seemed absurd.

I received response stating that during the beta phase they are going to test the graphic engine, communication system, PVP and PVE balance and character development (for the first of three races only). No mention about quests and storyline consistency (which seems to be well developed, at least on the paper/web site). So this beta is rather an alpha. But… it seems that the game is actually being tested now. It turns out that Tannhauser Gate, the company behind the game, is a working business dealing mostly with rendering TV ads. Additionally I received a word that the devs of MO are six or seven
guys from there who are working on the game in their spare time. You know. They’ve got THE VISION (TM).

While I wish them all the best, I doubt if they know what they’re taking on. Maybe they just hope to be bought by some venture capital. Who knows. But for now, it’s just amazingly big and colourful dream.