Raph Koster from Star Wars Galaxies Reveals “Stars Reach”, a Revolutionary Sandbox MMO where “Everything Reacts” to the Player

Playable Worlds, established in 2019 and led by Raph Koster, designer of Ultima Online and creative director of Star War Galaxies, has had a week-long countdown. The studio has been developing a novel MMORPG that they are officially introducing this week.

Today is the day they are unveiling it.

The new MMO is titled “Stars Reach” and is projected by the team as a sandbox MMO like never before. Koster expressed, “I have been striving to develop this game for three decades. Now, with the advancement in technology, we can manifest the immersive alternate world we had fantasized about while contributing to the MMORPG category.”

Stars Reach aspires to design a universe where gamers can hop from one planet to another, create a dwelling place, engage in construction, and carve their unique path through an arbitrarily generated, no boundaries, world. Sounds familiar? Well, we’ve heard it already.

But what’s the distinctiveness here?

The team and a supplementary interview video below state that Stars Reach operates on a ground-breaking architecture partially based in the cloud. This creates a universe where grass propagates, forests can get devastated by fire, and weather changes affect the local flora and fauna. Every action is dynamic; be it locating a desert planet, a rich rainforest planet, or a molten lava planet as a base. Any changes made to the environment are permanent and visible to all players. Even activities like rerouting a river to irrigate a field is possible.

Players have full autonomy here. The economy is solely player-generated, with no prescribed route through Stars Reach. Players can choose any profession they prefer whether it be a miner or engage in ground or space warfare.

The game’s plan is undoubtedly audacious and seems to encapsulate the “No Man’s Sky in an MMO” aesthetic. Despite my intrigue, skepticism remains.

The pre-alpha phase is currently in progress, with no date or timeframe for release announced yet. Testing session involving friends and family will begin this summer. To get updates, sign up on the official Stars Reach website. Please note that Google account is necessary to sign up.

Beneath this, I have incorporated a sneak peek at the pre-alpha gameplay, a conversation with Raph Koster highlighting his vision for the MMO, and a brief Q&A video by the team.