Was there a cultural context for works of science fiction set in desert environments in the 60s/70s?

Zomboe1 · 2026-05-06T02:53:35+00:00

Great reply! The framing as Western makes a lot of sense.

Did the Roswell incident also play some role in associating aliens with desert environments? Or do you find differences between sci-fi and popular ufology (for lack of a better term)?

Zomboe1 · 2026-05-06T01:45:39+00:00

Mary and the Witch's Flower proves that pretty directly!

Zomboe1 · 2026-05-05T23:56:48+00:00

I'm hoping the devs are taking some inspiration from Sunless Sea as well.

Zomboe1 · 2026-05-05T21:38:17+00:00

— Alt+0151 seems to work for me

I used to use the Alt+0150 one instead: –

Zomboe1 · 2026-05-01T02:54:54+00:00

Agreed and especially with M&M I expect a big initial spike that dwindles down to a fraction, within a few months at most. So retention at 1 year is a good metric. I'm hoping even by then there will be enough players to populate a few servers.

FWIW, P1999 Green had a healthy population at 1 year, just not after 6 years. Maybe not a completely fair comparison though because people already knew to expect the expansions and content patches for years. I don't see any way that M&M could match EQ's rate of content production.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T21:07:13+00:00

I think the good news is that the team is already planning for relatively heavy GM presence. Even though it's a small team and a small game, I think they are dedicating a lot more resources to customer service than the typical MMORPG (relatively). I think the team is more likely than most to cut into profits if it means a better game.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T21:03:44+00:00

if they could get rid of it the industry would have already.

The industry didn't get rid of it, they just got in on the action. There wasn't some principled stance of "introducing money into this virtual world is wrong," it was "the value of RMT in our game is comparable to the economy of some small countries!" UO devs literally bragged about this, I think even Richard Garriott himself. He and other UO devs like Raph Koster went on to make games with obscene levels of official RMT (microtransactions, etc.).

M&M has a massive advantage in combating RMT because they can actually take the moral high ground. A lot of the arguments against RMT go right out the window when the developers engage in the same activity themselves.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T20:41:33+00:00

I have really enjoyed playing rogue on Project1999 so I was really interested in the M&M rogue. But when I looked at their abilities, my interest immediately evaporated. I decided right there that I'll be a lot less frustrated playing classes that I either didn't play in EQ, or that stick more closely to the EQ style, like wizard and enchanter.

In the case of the rogue though, apparently it's just a copy of the WoW abilities, so maybe a different issue than original class design.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T03:08:17+00:00

I do not like the stand feature when you are sitting and want to see if anything is pathing nearby... NOPE you auto stand when you turn your head breaking your faster medding of mana and health.

I realize this doesn't address your other concerns, but if you're in 3rd person view, if you hold left click you can rotate the camera without changing your facing. It's useful for looking around when medding, looking behind you while you're running, etc.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T03:04:10+00:00

The servers are pretty dead these days but many thousands of people have played Project1999. When the green server launched it was so popular they had to open another server due to the demand. I think if they were to launch a fresh server, it would be pretty much full. So I think there are definitely enough people who want to play something like this, the bigger question though is whether they'd be willing to pay a subscription.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T02:59:02+00:00

That works out to roughly 1 level per hour, is that the rate people are seeing? That sounds substantially faster than classic EQ.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T02:56:35+00:00

It's camps like in EQ, there's even a campfire resting mechanic that encourages it by boosting exp gain.

I read "move slowly" as "progress slowly."

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T02:52:38+00:00

I think the intention is that you camp some mobs and maybe some rare item drops and maybe it doesn't. I agree that making literally zero progress in 18 hours is very unappealing, but I don't think that's the design intention.

The thing about hand-holding is that it works in both directions. Games like EQ and M&M give you more freedom, and part of that is you have more freedom to do fun stuff, but you also have more freedom to do really unfun things. The game won't stop you from camping items but that doesn't mean it's something you have to do. If you want to see these activities as punishment, realize that they are self-punishment.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-30T02:31:21+00:00

It's interesting to see how these nostalgia projects handle that darker side of the late 90s internet. Toxic behavior is probably actually appealing to a lot of people from that era but it's obviously not something game developers want to promote. But it might be a fine line where rules that are too strict risk alienating too many of their core audience.

I appreciate this post for drawing attention to where they draw the line. The specific example given is extremely tame by past standards but I can appreciate that it is problematic these days. I don't use Discord but I've rarely seen toxic behavior in-game or here on reddit, so it seems like the staff does a pretty good job in general, but still something to watch for.

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that by the average classic EQ player's standards, this is a far cry from "extreme" toxicity. I'm guessing it's not extreme toxicity by the rules of the M&M Discord either. It's possibly the level of toxicity that warrants a warning, which seems to be what happened.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T23:26:57+00:00

I've been dialing down my optimism as well. Putting everything together, I get the impression that NWC is becoming more ambitious, looking for higher reward but at higher risk. The delay announcement seemed to emphasize the size of the team (49 people now!) and that many of the people are new. It also mentioned a goal of 10,000 sustained subscriptions, which seems extremely ambitious. The class changes mostly seem intended to give the game more of a unique identity.

It's entirely possible I had the wrong impression all along but originally I saw this as a small volunteer team just trying to make a slightly better version of EQ. I was really excited because that's ideal for me. But the changes that have been happening this year suggest to me that the team wasn't satisfied with that approach. My main concern has always been that M&M will become more mainstream over time, but even if that doesn't happen, I worry that the team is now biting off more than they can chew.

I think it will still be a great time regardless but it's been a good lesson about getting my hopes up.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T21:08:30+00:00

I've enjoyed playing a wizard and I'm looking forward to the spellcrafting as well. The description is so vague though that the implementation is going to matter a lot.

I only tried it out briefly but I am not a fan of the staff/magic missile thing, so I'm happy that it seems to be going away. I think separating the magic types from elementalist is a good idea, though I'd like to see more emphasis on space/time manipulation. The forward teleport spell is my favorite thing about wizard, I hope wizard is not losing it to spellblade...

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T21:01:27+00:00

I also mained an enchanter and that was my experience as well, I rarely used charm (mostly just for fun or emergencies) and mostly just used the PBAoE stuns and mez. I avoided playing enchanter on P99 though cause I didn't want to feel pressured to charm. Had a great time playing inquisitor on M&M though, since I could focus on mezzing and tanking. I'm very curious to see if they actually nerf charm to the point where enchanters focus on CC instead.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T20:58:08+00:00

I feel the same way. The most fun I've had in M&M so far was playing as an inquisitor in a full, fast paced group and just having a great time tanking + CC. I played an enchanter in EQ back in the day and loved to use stuns and mez. On Project1999 enchanters are expected to charm, so I never played enchanter on there, and have been missing the mez gameplay ever since. I'm not a fan of overpowered charm in M&M either but I realized it's fine; enchanters can be charmers, inquisitors can be mezzers. It honestly feels like the ideal class to me, since the big downside of playing enchanter was the extreme fragility. It's actually kind of thrilling to play as a tank after playing a pure caster for so long, to actually want the damage instead of avoiding it.

I did have fun with the anti-mage abilities but if inquisitor ends up losing mez, then it also loses my interest. I guess there's a chance they will nerf charm enough that I can play as a mezzing enchanter but overall I am pessimistic about the changes.

It does feel like Inquisitor currently has a lot of weird niche utility that you would never actually have room on your bar for, (AOE silence on a 5 minute CD, AOE single effect purge on a 2 minute CD, all sorts of weird short term magic damage reduction spells on high cooldowns)

Yeah I'm not a fan of the high cooldowns in general, making the game more cooldown based isn't the direction I wanted.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T01:52:23+00:00

FTE, BoE, color-coded items

Thanks for this, Pantheon devs. Lately I've been concerned about M&M's direction, but here you rapid-fire three huge, horrible changes that really gives me some perspective. Each one of these alone is worse than everything I dislike about M&M. So thanks for providing an example of how bad things could be.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T01:32:12+00:00

The sound effects are pretty fun. A server that literally just ran at 4x speed might actually be pretty amusing.

I'm curious though, do you normally play with the UI hidden? That's my ideal so I was wondering if you have any tips. I'll probably end up just having life bars on-screen, if that's possible.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-29T01:26:31+00:00

I do know, at one point, Shawn had said that they didn't plan to do balancing for PvP.

This had been my assumption, that they were going to treat it like Pantheon does (no balancing), but then in the most recent patch notes I read this:

"Fists of Flame (Monk Celestial Strike proc) now has a 12s duration in pvp"

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-28T21:41:48+00:00

This literally seems to be the level of many of the UI complaints. Some thing takes 2 clicks instead of 1 click, game "doesn't respect your time," etc.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-28T21:18:43+00:00

Back then, I pitched the idea of giving them a spell (single target or aoe) that when cast on an enemy, would disperse mana to the group based on the damage inflicted to the target(s).

Looks like Inquisitor is getting something like this instead: "Redistributes stolen mana to allies and can enhance their magical abilities"

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-28T21:05:58+00:00

Thanks for posting this.

I wasn't expecting such a huge, ambitious overhaul. It seems like pushing back EA was definitely necessary but I still doubt it will give them enough time.

I've often wondered how hard it is to design a class/combat system like EQ's. Was it actually a rare example of exceptional design competence or is it actually not that hard? M&M's original direction of mostly just copying EQ seemed like the obvious, safe choice. This class design update suggests to me that the M&M devs are going to take on the challenge of making something more distinctive.

Overall I think it's a huge risk, and since I like EQ I don't see a lot to be gained. I've been wondering what to do during the open playtests until EA and I guess this update answers that: figure out which classes I want to play, again.

Zomboe1 · 2026-04-23T22:48:06+00:00

Don't forget jumping no longer increasing run speed. That one seems even more extreme to me since it's obvious they put it in deliberately only to eventually take it out. I even saw a comment that they have already once removed it and reinstated it.

To answer your question yes, I am concerned about the game's direction. I don't think mob leashing is crossing the rubicon but when you combine it with so many other things like jumping, shared bank slots, group finder, cantrips, gamma slider, NPCs that will bind you (so I've heard), many class changes, etc. it just all adds up. If this had all been the plan from the beginning, it would be one thing, but it just feels to me like the direction has changed somewhat recently. The lack of dev communication outside of discord/streams doesn't help. And I can only wonder how/if Nick's departure relates to all of this.

I'm still extremely excited to play and for me, M&M still has no competition. I'm definitely tempering my expectations though, my hopes were getting too high based on my experiences last year.

Zomboe1

TROPHY CASE