Confused By What Stars Reach Actually Is? The MMORPG's Team Gives A Tour Of The "Whole Thing"

Look, I certainly won't deny that when an MMORPG starts trying to build up their hype train, things can be somewhat confusing. When the game in question also happens to be more of a sandbox MMO like Stars Reach is, things can feel downright nebulous each time you get some new detail. While I've loved how Raph Koster and the team at Playable Worlds have been sharing various design philosophy decisions, offering previews of skills, and having some fun with content creators, it is totally fair for gamers to still be like, "Great, I can mine...but what do I actually DO?"

Koster's response? Fair question. Here's a full blog post on just that.

First off, the post calls out right away that Stars Reach is a full MMORPG, not some smaller-scale survival game. Expect thousands of planets, thousands of players, and a full shared setting. Each player will be one of eight planned kinds of humans. That may sound visually boring with everyone being human, but expect each of the 8 humans to look wildly different, with one example given being "sasquatch-ian." You'll then customize your individual look and your stats. This is an "RPG" after all.

The galaxy itself is made up of thousands of planets and the team calls it "the most alive game world ever." Winter freezes lakes, new planets are discovered as the game engine runs, and the system runs with or without you. Hell, you can drive a species to extinction then bring it back if you happen to have their DNA.

That's great...but what do you DO? Literally: Go make your mark.

Build a business, do some farming, go fight monsters, entertain at the bar, maybe even chart your own maps and sell the damn things. It's a literal full sandbox. Here's a "typical session" according to Koster.

This means leveling skills, working with others, making up rules for how to govern planets, and more. All of that comes together into a game that doesn't have a true "endgame," per se. Instead, the ability to "PvP" via economics, political policies, or hell, literal "PvP", all provide an almost "never-ending" elder game.

Koster even draws out how they feel the whole game fits together.

The post is well worth the read, but I'm still tempering my excitement for Stars Reach. While I have been all over the title and eagerly looking forward to everything the team posts and shows off, the recent announcement of a Kickstarter campaign when the team previously said they weren't going to fund that way has me a bit more cautious than I was a few weeks ago. I'm very curious to see exactly how much the team will be looking for from players to "finish" development.

I still believe that Stars Reach could be a genre-shifting moment in MMOs, but if you temper expectations then it's harder to be disappointed.