Sabertooth Games legitimized the rumor we’ve been hearing for weeks now: the company has signed a deal with Sony Online Entertainment Inc. to create an EverQuest II Collectible Card Game. Tentatively titled Guild Wars, the game will pit players against each other as guilds fighting for prestige on a server. The CCG will hit stores a month before EQ2, providing a peek at the new incarnation of the most popular MMORPG in the world.
While some tabletop gamers might see this as the first true sign of the apocalypse, I think it’ll be interesting to see if Sabertooth can pull it off. I mean, the EverQuest RPG (tabletop version) from Sword & Sorcery isn’t exactly gathering crowds, and a couple years back, the Age of Empires CCG was a tremendous flop. But as long as a session of the EQ2 CCG doesn’t cause any screams of “Train to zone!”, I’ll give it a try.
We joke about the discrepancies between EQ’s game world and the culture of its online implementation… but I actually think a card game with camping spawns and zoning would be pretty fun.
Don’t forget to add cards for ninja lootings, PKing, dropping carrier because your character is in trouble, packet sniffing and attempts at cyber-sex from pre-pubescent kids and you’ve got the whole EQ experience nailed.
Exactly! Frag tried to get some of this, but the game as a whole was centered on things that were supposed to happen in the game world, with just the one deck (infrequently drawn-from, in my experience) devoted to meta-events in the real world, like lag and cheats. I guess there’s little chance of much meta-humor appearing in an officially licensed game, though.
This CCG will suck just like all the other licensed CCG crap out there…
Point of discussion: is it even possible to launch a new CCG today that _isn’t_ licensed? (And anyone who thinks that all licensed CCGs are crap hasn’t played Game of Thrones.)