That was a really lovely podcast, and not just because it was set to Greensleeves. I'm not sure if you wanted feedback on the game design you presented, but here is some anyway:
Most of what you said sounds really interesting, and something I'd like to play too. I've particularly enjoyed your description of how the world came to be as it was, your views on the amount of fantasy in the game, your approach to classes and crafting. Your comparison of WoW and Risk game design was revealing. So overall I'm looking forward to see how this game turns out.
Here's two elements of the game design that I'm not so sure about
:
1. Tanking. Although your concept of legendary rating makes sense, players need their own niche where they can excel. For example in WoW when I play my mage I don't care if the tank is more or less accomplished than me, so long as their play is good enough to let me be a great mage. How is that going to work in Evensfell?
2. Turn-based combat. I understand there's all kind of technical and fairness reasons that combat must be turn-based but... I just don't know. I'm not sure I'd play it. It breaks immersion and I think it's really hard, though not impossible, to design turn-based combat that's fun for casual players.
At the risk of raising things that you already know well, here's two other browser-based games that you might want to take a look at:
Dofus (
DOFUS :: MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). This is a cartoonish MMO implemented in flash. It's commercial. The main things to note here are that the game is fairly large, and it couples a turn-based combat engine with real-time exploration. You might take a look at it technically, although I must say I hated the turn-based combat.
BattleMaster (
BattleMaster). This is a two-turns-a-day conquest and politics game. It's a low-tech engine that's just a stylized forum with text, tables, and the occasional picture of a map. However the game design is outstanding. Key concepts of the game are trust (you gain positions of power in a realm), balance (the map is in flux, but nobody wins), and communication with all its subtleties. The game is also, largely, a monograph, so you might want to meet the creator, Tom Vogt.
