Derek hired a few of us from the boards to start play testing about a week ago. It's been kind of a secret, but he's going to be making an announcement about it later today or tomorrow. At first, I was a little surprised by the transition to First Person from WoM. But, I continued to play and really love it. Although still very buggy, and some of the commands don't work, it's a pretty cool game. I know peopled are going to bitch about it being turned into a FPS, but it reminds me more of how Vampire: Masquerade and Fallout were changed into first person games while retaining strong RPG elements. And yes, it keeps a strong 4X gameplay by interacting with stone masons, smiths, merchants, etc in an RPG fashion then switching to a God-view to place buildings and build your city. It's pretty cool how you build your city, hire heroes and craftsmen, and then roam your created city in first person. The armies are a little iffy though. You quest and fight in first person like you would in Bethesda game, but during a "WAR!", they really need to think of a better name, you have a map of the battle field kind of like Dynasty Warriors and you assign armies and heroes specific spots on the battle field where they start and then give them specific orders, guard this, advance here, etc. And during combat, you can change their orders, but you have to find a messenger soldier to give them the message, and I swear he gets killed 10 sec after you send him away. But, overall, a great game.
Oh, and the above was complete and utter bullshit, please disregard all of it, posted in good fun.
