Highlights
- Former World of Warcraft developer Greg Street has founded Fantastic Pixel Castle (FPC) and announced the development of an ambitious MMORPG called Ghost.
- Ghost will be set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world and feature both private realms for collaborative gameplay and larger, open-world PvP areas.
- FPC aims to involve the community early and often in the development process, potentially fostering goodwill among MMO players and hoping to capture the spotlight in a genre dominated by World of Warcraft.
Former World of Warcraft developer Greg Street has announced that his new game development studio, Fantastic Pixel Castle, has begun the process of developing an "epic AAA MMORPG," which is currently being called Ghost. Street recently founded Fantastic Pixel Castle (FPC) alongside a team of industry professionals, and the studio is taking on the ambitious task of developing an MMORPG as its first project.
Greg Street has worked as a game designer since 1998, when he joined Ensemble Studios to work on the Age of Empires franchise. From 2008 to 2013, Street was the Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, during which time he became well known in that game's player community through his frequent interactions with fans on forums and social media. He was especially engaged with the community during the public beta test for Wrath of the Lich King, one of the best World of Warcraft expansions in the game's long history. Street left Blizzard to work at Riot Games in 2013, eventually departing to found FPC in 2023.
On November 2, the official FPC Twitter account posted an announcement that the new studio would be developing a brand-new MMORPG, which is currently being referred to under the codename Ghost. The post includes a short video of Street announcing the project and hinting at FPC's plans for Ghost. The game is still in the earliest stages of development, but Street explains that he believes "the way to make the best possible game is by talking to you all, our community, early and often." This community-focused approach, coming a few months after Street's former employer Blizzard angered fans with its community policies, may be intended to foster goodwill among MMO players. Fans wishing to learn more about Ghost are invited to join Street and other FPC team members for a livestream on November 8, where Street promises to share more details about the studio and their plans for the project.
The announcement post also includes a link to the studio's website, which contains some basic information about the Ghost project. The game will be set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, where players must navigate between floating shards of a shattered world, of which there will be two types: Blue Shards and Red Shards. The former are intended to be "private realms for you and your friends," smaller in scale and focused on collaborative gameplay, while the latter are meant to be larger, more public areas capable of delivering vast open-world PvP experiences. All of this information is subject to change as the development of Ghost progresses.
As of now, there is almost no concrete information available about Ghost, but what little has been announced hints at a very ambitious project. Considering that MMORPG titan World of Warcraft is slowly fading in relevance after dominating the genre for 19 years, FPC may be hoping that Ghost can take that spotlight. MMO fans will surely want to keep an eye on this project as it develops.
Ghost is in the early stages of development.