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December Updates: Parcels Doubled, April goals, Cloud servers, 2nd Kickstarter
waffleyone
Member Posts: 29
in Greed Monger
Discussion on this site seems to have died down thoroughly since the end of the november kickstarter campaign, though the lead developer has given a substantial announcement on current plans and progress. The two relevant posts are Land Parcels Doubled and Progress So Far and Our Goal For April.
There are 6 main points brought out.
- Player ownable land parcels will be doubled (from 3000 to 6000). The new parcels to likely be released likely after April's alpha.
- Goal for April is to have a fully functional "Alpha", with some systems as placeholders (certainly crafting, potentially others) to expedite completion.
- Housing for one climate is complete, the second is nearly done. Once complete, focus will shift to implementation of housing and land-owning related systems.
- Combat system is essentially complete, as one designer had been building one prior to joining the project.
- Cloud Servers will host the game, rather than dedicated servers as previously planned, and the switch is to be made once development reaches an unstated milestone.
- Second Kickstarter to be held, likely after Alpha release, as preparation for Beta. This will distribute the additional 3000 parcels, with additional options for backers. This is intended to provide funds for about six months until revenue streams are understood better.
The following is commentary, not statements by ElectricCrow or anyone involved with the development of Greed Monger.
The third through fifth points are all pretty self explanatory so I will add no further commentary.
The player purchasable parcels doubling contradicts the initial statement of the kickstarter, that there wouldn't be an increase in land provided for quite some time, although this move was predicted by critics. Developers later clarified that the plan had been to sell about half of the land parcels during the kickstarter, and so the move to increase available land follows initial intent.
Apparently the goal for April is to have a feature-incomplete release-quality game available. The post also suggests that the plan is for the funds raised so far to carry the game through alpha, when the second kickstarter will provide a second round of revenue to carry the game into beta. When that money runs out, the monetization will be evaluated. So far the revenue strategy is the video game version of a Ponzi scheme, supporting older players with money from new ones. The stated goal monetization method is to fund the game from the sales of land between players, and hopefully they'll figure that out soon.
I had hoped that with the booming success of the first kickstarter, developers would have a sufficient budget to complete the game, and they would avoid milking their community for money. Instead, the plan seems to be to entice additional spending via perks, a la Pay2Win.
It looks like while development of Greed Monger is well on track, the game seems to be named after the philosophy of the developers.
Comments
Like I stated on the forum Games take ALOT of money to develop. Even going with Cloud Hosting we are looking at thousands of dollars per month for the required Bandwidth to run the game. The 2nd KickStarter is needed in order to get us through beta testing and the first few months of release. For those who supported us in the first round there will be nothing forcing them to help fund us again in this 2nd round. The only way they will help us again is if they WANT to help us succeed, want more land parcels, or like one of the other rewards we offer this time around.
I can assure you there will not be any pay to win elements of this game... I don't support pay to win games with my money much less my time and energy to develop it.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
James, I can see your perspective as someone who is seriously invested in the game. However, there are some problems with what you're saying.
The "Games are Expensive" statement is true, but the argument is faulty. The original kickstarter was advertised as to be to create the entire game, and that there wouldn't be any further land sold until well after release. Having another kickstarter to sell more land is first of all dishonest to those who participated in the original kickstarter. Additionally, if 3x the original amount of money was only enough to get the game into alpha, then what reason is there to believe that the next kickstarter will raise enough to last until the game can stand on its own? I think there is any, unless it raises far more than the first. And in order for the second kickstarter to raise far more than the first, it would have to allocate even more additional land, which would be dishonest to the participants of both the original and the second kickstarters.
The things you said on the GM forums, namely that 1) Greed Monger already has $50k worth of servers, that 2) EVE online uses the largest supercomputer in the world, that 3) WoW uses hundreds of servers, and that 4) Blade servers cost $2k-$5k are, respectively: irrelevant, false, irrelevant, and misleading. I've worked with the type of server that Jason was talking about, Dell Poweredge 1850s. Probably when he bought them 4 years ago he spent $50k on 20-40 of them. Today you can buy them for $90. EVE uses, as of 1-2 years ago, the largest supercomputer in the gaming industry to manage it's single universe. EVE's servers use no more than 400 processor cores, whereas the largest supercomputers in the world run more than 400,000 cores, making your statement off by more than 1000:1. That WoW uses hundreds of servers is irrelevant because they also support ten million subscribers and about one million consecutive players. Greed Monger near launch will optimistically have less than 1% that many players, and by similar metrics would require several servers instead of hundreds. Blade servers are a luxury - they cost 3x as much as a similar economical rack server.
Greed Monger also allows you to spend dollars to gain an advantage, specifically an advantage that you cannot gain any other way. This is how most people define pay to win - the part that's missing is the ability to spend up to unlimited dollars for an insurmountable advantage, though buying lots of land in the kickstarters looks similar to that. The driving point behind the entire project is a pay-to-win element. There is also a significant likelihood of a non-real-estate RMT auction house, another pay to win element. You cannot assure us there won't be any P2W elements because there already is one.
Also, your kickstarter backers who have already contributed are coerced to help donate again: after all, if the money runs dry they don't get to have the game that they already paid you to make. They've already given an average of ~$150 each, that's a lot of sunk cost.
I have nothing against you, James. That said, I'm pretty sure the only valid things you've said between the 2 posts are the cost of the hosting and that there are other costs too. Its definitely true that MMOS are expensive, I agree. I've been making fairly notable people who say nonsense look like fools for years, so you probably want to be really careful what you say to me: I will point out the irregularities, because somebody needs to watch gamers' backs.
Here we go. A lot of slanted speculation in your thread Waffle. I'll answer your thread in detail and leave it at that.
www.greedmonger.com
Did you like Ultima Online? Then you'll LOVE Greed Monger!
I don't know why you're wasting your time responding to my posts with Ad Hominem. Notice the lack of attacks upon your motives to follow. [Edited from 'personal attacks']
Let me start by saying that I speculated in the part of the post that I first related as "The following is commentary, not statements by ElectricCrow or anyone involved with the development of Greed Monger." and that everything that you had a problem with was my own personal commentary which I clearly labeled as such. Why you argued with my clearly labeled personal commentary is beyond me.
The first thing I'll say is that I'm personally upset by your lying and trying to cover up your lies, and my being banned was an act of trying to cover up your lies, so there's some truth to your statement that I'm frustrated at that. I'm also a little frustrated that you offered to unban everyone in a thread, including myself, and then declined to do so, making your offer a hollow lie to sound like an amiable guy. You also asked me to remove the post I made on this forum publicly exposing your threat to use money from the first kickstarter to sue people on the internet who hurt your feelings by exposing truth about you that you didn't want people to know. The second is that I have not misunderstood a single word you have said, rather I haven't interpreted them the way you would like me to. On to analysis, and I'll try to be concise.
1) If the intent was always to double the amount of land available after development nears beta, then you intentionally lied to all the backers of your initial kickstarter when you answered the "so what is stopping you from releasing more land to make more money?" question by saying that you wouldn't be immediately releasing more land. You've covered that up now by removing that part of the FAQ from the kickstarter (to be fair most of the FAQ is gone).
2) I explained exactly what I meant by feature incomplete, which is exactly the same as what you then clarified it to be: Placeholder systems. You called me wrong and then explained by agreeing with me. This is genuinely funny.
3) You justify your decision to increase the parcelable landmass with 'adding more parcels will increase the demand for parcels'. That statement may very well be true, but you still decieved your original kickstarters. I don't know what the best call for the game is: I just know that when people lie and cover it up it's probably because they're doing something underhanded.
4) Regarding the ponzi scheme statement. The essense of a ponzi scheme is taking money from investors, then taking money from more investors to pay earlier investors, without making any real investments. Should you/GreedMonger continue to ask more money for a product which does not yet functionally exist (players can't play it yet, which is what I mean), then you are doing something similar. Other games are selling an existing product to players, and using those funds to continue to develop the product. Your game is like that, minus the existing product part, which is fairly important.
5) The only 'insult' that I've used toward your game is P2W, and your game has clear P2W elements. If you didn't want your game getting P2W labels, then you shouldn't have made the primary focus a P2W element. [Notice: One attack upon motive follows]. As for milking your community for money: If you had any respect for the current supporters who gave you an average of $150, rather than seeing them as money faucets, you would give them perks from the second kickstarter for free, and leave the new kickstarter to raise interest from new players - which is what you have described as a large portion of the goal of your second kickstarter. [End Notice].
If you don't do and say deceptive things I will not criticize you. Also,seriously: Most of the things that I reported in the post you decided to criticize were relevant and pertinent information about your game that prople from MMORPG.com could benefit from knowing.
Seriously. Stop wasting your time talking to me and go manage your project or make 3d models or play UO or something.
P.S.: Perhaps I should just shut up because a company is at steak!
Very nice post Waffleyone,
I am a huge sandbox player, heck I just got into a game called Wurm and now sadly feel bad I actually payed some money to play it. Point being here is , I pretty much give any sandbox game (Darkfall to Wurm) a chance , if anything can be said about these games they do exist and you can actually be interactive in their worlds.
When I seen this title on kickstarter I kept going back to it as I was invested into other games like Godus and WOTR. But I did keep checking this title out while it was still open and the few things that hit me are exactly what you are stating, in fact I hate to say it , but i actually seen this one coming. Funny thing is it reminds me of another MMO with an actual company that is know called Pathfinder Online that is looking for it's next round of kickstarter investment. The first thing that came to my mind when I read their "kickstarter part 2" start was..."Without this kickstarter we won't be able to continue to the next phase" , so basically what they are saying is , if we don't get this next kickstarter to pay our salaries, the team is leaving and those in the first kickstarter are out of luck until "when" or "if" we find new development funds. Talk about a knee to the nads.
They are almost there btw , but if you see what they are doing to sell there game it's basically giving tons of digital incentives, I wonder what will happen when the investors in kickstarter 1 & 2 see kickstarter #3!, I have no doubt it will happen again. Everything about that kickstarter along with this one made me stay away. Point to it all is, kickstarter in the end says...
-------------------------------------------------------
"If I am unable to complete my project as promised, what should I do?
If you realize that you will be unable to follow through on your project before funding has ended, you are expected to cancel it. If your project is successfully funded, you are required to fulfill all rewards or refund any backer whose reward you do not or cannot fulfill. A failure to do so could result in damage to your reputation or even legal action by your backers.
To avoid problems, don't over-promise when creating your project. If issues arise, communicate immediately, openly, and honestly with your backers"
-------------------------------------------------------
Point being, this title had allot of promises, I read the following on the original kickstarter under their "risks and challenges"
=======================================
The biggest risk is finishing the project and nobody is interested. We have seen on some forums, comments on the potential for failure based on previous MMORPG's on Kickstarter and their lack of success. There are a lot of differences between Greed Monger and other efforts that give us the confidence that we will not only complete the game but deliver something that surpasses the expectations of our supporters.
#1. Big gaming studios need significantly larger budgets to complete a title because like in any other business, name and reputation may increase demand for developers but with it, increases the cost to hire the individual. We are a team of people who have decades of experience in 3D Modeling, Animation, AI Programming, Network Programming, Design, Business Management, Marketing and the like. Our team members may not have been part of the biggest titles on the market, but they are just as talented and ambitious and without the high price tag of those "veterans".
#2. It's not a question of whether we will finish Greed Monger into a launch-able state, it's a question of what all will be included when we do. Our funding efforts here aren't just about obtaining the funds necessary to develop the game, as Appleton has already committed to providing the financial resources for the project, however, this campaign is more of a gauge of interest in what we consider a niche title. It will help us plan the scale and necessary sizes of the individual Climates etc.
#3. The technology available today far surpasses that of even 5 years ago that ultimately removes the ceiling of limitations on what is possible without having to either license a half a million dollar engine or code one entirely from scratch, not to mention the availability of the infrastructure options available. We are developing Greed Monger using the Unity 3D Engine and the UnityPark Suite including uLink, uGameDB, uStream and uZone as well as PikkoServer. All of these tools combined are empowering us to deliver a title utilizing AAA technology with an Indie license resulting in a zone-less, load balanced experience.
In summary, we will of course experience many ups and downs in our developmental process but are very confident in the experience of our growing team and our ability to complete a title that will inspire and impress our player base.
=======================================
Finally no where does it mention need for further investment, heck the kickstarter is sold as "you do this, we will get this done", obviously this is not the case, but it supports your stance they are actually not sure what they are doing at this point. If they need more funds to continue or are calling this a way to "gauge" their game, I call it bad management period. Sorry James, but you are type of business person investors stay away from. You came up with idea, got some funds and people togather to do this idea and then over-spent in my eyes. According to your original kickstarter that was it, if it is proven that you indeed have no game developed and cannot come threw with your promises, you best be ready to refund that $90,102 invesment, because collectors will come a knock'n. Funny thing, as a developer myself and knowing the average salary is around 80k a year, I thought that number to be low. Then I thought, maybe you got a bunch of friends togather that all agreed to live on 2k a month just to pay the bills. Needless to say my thoughts go on and on about this, but there is nothing that says "you know what your doing".
If you ask me Waffle, this game is an emulation of Wurm and it has a feeling of Pathfinder, promises and continual request for investments. At least with Pathfinder this time around they did initially openly admit that there probably will be a 3rd kickstarter. Thou that kind of went "POOF" off their kickstarter video when no pledges where being made.
Personally this is something everyone should be aware of, kickstarter is an investment there in no guaranty of anything other then what was offered. In the end if it can be proven said company cannot provide the goods promised they must deliver a refund or be held accountable. This is why kickstarter is only available in those countries that would lawfully back a lawsuit if it came down to it. In any case, everything you have stated is pretty obvious for anyone that can think rationally well said.
"The monster created isn't by the company that makes the game, it's by the fans that make it something it never was"
The big difference is, we won't be initiating a follow up campaign until we are in a playable alpha test phase.
When our follow up campaign launches, we will be near a launchable stage in Greed Mongers development. The follow up campaign isn't something we NEED, but it will make a lot of things easier.
Waffle, I'd go rounds with you about all of the inaccuracies in your follow up post but I realy just dont have the time. Read what I said again in my original reply. You either misunderstood a lot or are intentionally misinterpreting my words to suit your agenda. Either way, I simply don't have time for it.
Be well.
www.greedmonger.com
Did you like Ultima Online? Then you'll LOVE Greed Monger!
Hi and thanks for all the info on this game. I read the entire forum thread in the WURM forums, it was simply amazing. Brash did his/her homework and I as a consumer appreciate his/her efforts.
How is selling 60 plots and a Castle for $3500.00 not pay to win.
I am sure that the players that have contributed money to this project will defend it vigorously, because they are already invested in it.
The rest of us that have not appreciate your informative posts.
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
I would like to state everything on the wurm forum is unedited and out of Appletons control so he cannot ban his fellow backers or sensor their opinion. Its sad we have to resort to some random forum ElectricCrow(Jason Appleton) decided to randomly threaten to sue but oh well. Things happen. I would like to point out this thread.
http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/69845-greed-monger/
It shows quitte alot of information about the true nature of this "developer". Please read all of it, I have a few posts in there aswell stating what needed to be stated as I cannot get edited or banned there.
I would also like to state that all actions and ability to stop the next greed monger scam should be done. We cannot allow this uneducated fool to keep wasting peoples money. It gives a bad name for kickstarter and it fuels a maniacal lunatics delusion.
We need to get as many people as we can to read this wurm online forum post, everyone that is a backer if possible. Not only is he gone to the lowest of lows by lying and using shady tactics but he is now banning kickstarter backers that hate on him for his horrible decision making. People that have paid the revenue of the entire game. (That he has completely wasted already, due to his uneducated decisions and inability to do any research.) So not only is he trying to sensor everything about the game to look good or something that could be something, but he is going to the lowest of lows by banning people that BACKED him. Yes Kickstarter backers.
Not only this, but in an interview with markee dragon. He was asked why he didnt use cloud servers. He had no idea what a cloud server was, I knew then that I had an opportunity working with mmo concepts and servers for the past 9 months now. This guy didnt even know what a cloud server was and was probably wasting thousands of dollars.}
So I educated him about cloud servers but at that current time. The modders (that have far less then 9 years of experience I should mention, just another lie by greed monger) decided that I wasnt worthy of the righteousness spot in development. I proposed a simple MMO network AOI system that saves bandwidth by sacrifcing about 5% of CPU usage (Which isnt much in an EC2 cloud) but then jason didnt know what a cloud was. So then came the discussion about a cloud. Both jason and there two "network developers" James and Matt did not understand what a simple AOI system was to decrease bandwidth, they assumed I was developing for an FPS because I used CSS as an example. (Because you should learn from valve prediction wiki..) and I was again shot down.
So after two months after spending all of the money off of wasted bandwidth and blade servers he doesnt even need. Assuming he had ANY experience in modern day server technology. After two months he understands that he needs cloud servers and what do you know? Hes never programmed, he has hired arrogant modders and he has already wasted your kickstarters money. Not only that but he assumes kickstarters that want some sort of validation are infact trolls and must be banned. So now after wasting money that is not his, On server technology that was questioned before he bought it (Not counting the 6 blades you had before kickstarter) with just a stoned idea using techniques from EQ 1 days and he has no idea how much of at rainwreck his development team is.
Because he has absolutely no previous experience in any modding, any programming, or any serious managment of technical people. Its easy to impress someone like that even if you have no experience at all in mmo development.
MMO development is quite hard, you must manage an asycnrhonous database, you must manage both secure and unreliable messages. You literally are playing the game on the server and have the client be windows into this massive distributed game(assuming you know what your doing, if you do not do it this way you let in massive potential for hacking).
I should also mention the server software they are using is about 600 bucks and it is 20% revenue for the distrubted server setup called Upikko. He has directly lied stating it is 900,000 dollars. Over exaggerating on yet another thing. (Developer experience anyone? But wait.. jason appleton has 20 years experience..)
Heres the website. You guys can check for yourself, and please do so
http://muchdifferent.com/?page=game-unitypark-products-upikko
The more people that know how much of a scammer this guy is the better. He may not be a scammer, if he is actualyl spending 90 grand on almost nothing. Then you do not give money to someone that has already failed in using there budget. Especially on such low technology standpoint. You bought god damn blade servers after you got kickstarter money and after being questioned about cloud servers. You JUST NOW realize its a bad idea to buy blade servers and your going BACK to KICKSTARTER for more money after failing horribly.
I really hope your next kickstarter doesnt succeed, I feel really bad for kickstarter because people like this destroy it. People still payed money to this guy even though all he did was walk around a world that he bought for around 1700(1500 unity and 200 for 3d models he showed off) and state his pipedream with absolutely no path to get there other then to throw money at random things and hope it works.
I again really hope there are some sensible people here to understand that you cant give someone with literally no experience a job managing people with experience. He literally does not understand any of what he is hiring people to do so he has no idea if what they are doing is a hackjob or not. Thats like pretending to be an architect when your building a house and managing the people building it. You have no idea what you are doing, sure you have money. If you throw enough money at it, it will eventually work. It may still collapse on itself a few times but itll work with 10-15 times the money.
I told appleton when his devs decided to cast me out, With the ammount of servers he is using it could cost around 35 grand plus bandwidth and this is for a year contract. If they went three year (which you should do as a promising mmo.. if your promising) is around 45 thousand dollars including estimated bandwidth and upkeep fees. You can cut this in half by using high availability servers on the fly. This is not including spindown and spin up of dynamic server processes with lower ammounts or higher ammounts of population (Assuming greed monger has this, but talking to the devs I dont really see this happening. The closest thing they have is automatic riak db startup after a crash assuming they are using the plug and play of uLink. They dont know shit so Im putting my money on it. They will probably have a static world with static server boundaries.) Ive already told jason appleton these numbers and he told me "He didnt care, He didnt need them." Now two months later hes back begging for more money to bring out cloud servers that he didnt even know existed three months ago.
Please kickstarters I highly encourage you not to back this kickstarter. There is enough evidence to support that he is either scamming for more money or has wasted his money (This is my bet) on physical servers. Realizing that this is EQ1 technology he now knows he wasted a good portion of his money, but its not his money now is it? So he can just go get more!
Please stop this at all cost. Kickstarter is a community movement, and we need to shutdown projects like this. We cannot allow kickstarter to be flooded with everyone that downloaded unity3d and randomly decided to dedicate there life to game development. It would be fine, if he didnt do his kickstarter less then a month after posting how amazing it was to edit a level for the first time in his "career". Oh yeah, theres some proof on this subject aswell. Just look at the Wurm Online forums. Someone gave a really good greed monger history, it started about 3 weeks before his kickstarter when he learned to import models to the unity3d engine for the first time in his life using an engine. He set out on a new life adventure. Not caring about wasting peoples money, which he has obviously done with horrible planning.
He doesnt know anything about game design, development or even the costs or tradeoffs associated with it. Let alone an MMO that has ten times the complications and ten times the tradeoffs.
Again, please think of kickstarter guys. You cannot let this happen or kickstarter will be doomed with scammers thinking its okay.
EDIT FOR MODS
Please for the love of god let this post just stay here. People need to know this and decide for themselves. I made sure I did not personally insult this guy to much other then on his decision making about development and server design. This is a good sign for a project, you need both the bad mouthed critics and the fanboys to be called a great game. You cant just go banning one side sensoring one side in hopes to convince the masses. It brings in a worse game and an even worse community. So please, MMORPG mods do not sensor me. This needs to be said.
I am sorry for the people that have been scammed. I truly am but please look past the biasedness of spending your money on this game. Just look at the facts, the posts and do the math. This guy is a scammer or a plain idiot, either way hes massively wasting your money.
Final edit.
While jasons undeniable evidence of pathetic and horrid administration along with shady tactics and horrible use of money and patience. There is still a community and a game, along with developers underneath this horrible PR that want this game to happen. Ive said all I can, and I dont think that many people will even read this but still if you back this project encourage a different PR.
Ok I'm going to be nice here... First and foremost I'm really sorry we offended you by not letting you join the team. None of us blocked you on Skype until YOU kept on putting us down and making fun of us. Who in their right mind wouldn't ignore someone on skype if the person was treating them the way you were treating us?
Next after the KickStarter ended we haven't bought ANY Server hardware. All server hardware we currently have running is hardware Jason had prior to the KickStarter Campaign. It came from Money out of Jason's own Pocket NOT Kickstarter Backer money!
Next you call me a Modder... Umm... I haven't worked on ANY modding tools or software in my life. I'm a Programmer not a Modder. I've stayed up MANY nights in the past 8 years learning how to program. I personally know C#, C++, Java, Python, and a Crap load of other web based languages.
And Finally NEXT I am fully aware of Interest Management systems. I designed my own custom Interest Management System that we were using. What you were describing on the other hand wasn't a proper Interest Management system for a MMO. Now could it be that you just were not describing it in the right terms certainly it is possible but instead of trying to explain it better you resorted to putting us down and calling us names which NEVER works out to your advantage!
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
I wasnt personally pissed a bunch of idiots didnt hire me, I was personally pissed a bunch of idiots got 90 grand. Now Im just hoping kickstarter will stop this nonesense.
So your saying, You havent bought any servers. Yet you still need another kickstarter to fund you? even though you havent spent any mony on servers which is the majoirty of an MMO cost?
Not only that, I wont point to much out from skype but I was blatently told otherwise. I dont really want to go around with a whiole your word against mine, but this needs to be said.
I also pride my self in calling out bullshit when I see it. It was obvious you are a single player developer trying to learn the basics of an mmo architecture.
Thats all Im going to say. I really dont want to turn this into a personal argument. What was said was needed to be said. The kickstarters can do the math and there own decisions by themselves.
I just want to state one more time.
There is absolutely no god damn reason to need a new kickstarter. Unless you are massively wasting money on uneducated decisions and poor decisions, or on personal property.
There is absolutely no reason a server cluster that can run that server would cost more then 40 grand for THREE years. These guys are scammers. This math was done for 9 HIGH CPU servers for three years. Overkill for an mmo, especially when they were designing it around 6 cores. It will work just fine even with absolutely horrid programming. This is far less then 90 grand, and you dont have a big enough staff to need another kickstarter. Just go buy more assets.
Edit. Also one last thing.
Ustream doesnt count as your own AOI system.
Also one more edit Just to get the personal shit out of the way.
You yourself told me that you do not need cloud servers. SO did jason and so did matt, now your coming back to kickstarter begging for money for cloud servers and bandwidth? Not only that, even markee dragon asked you. Explain please?
Thank you for the post. The link from the WURM forums is the one I read. I also watched the ytube interview.
I also read this entire thread.
http://www.greedmonger.com/forum/showthread.php?1105-Major-Concern-I-d-like-your-feedback
Seems as it they are now using the Hero Engine and are contemplating adding a Subscription to the game.
I love sandbox games, but unfortunately many of us that love this genere tend to throw money at indie companies who promise us the world and deliver very little. We are now just fund raising targets.
Three years ago I got burned purchasing the Limited Edition of Mortal Online from Star Vault. Since then I have never Preordered, paid for a beta, donated, crowed funded etc:
When a game is completed, released and has a few reviews, if I am interested I will buy/pay for it.
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
I got burned in the same way on the same game. I even stated it in that Wurm thread.
We just need to make sure kickstarters take note of how horrible this is so they cant scam anymore money. I will also be watching it very closely to see if he breaks the kickstarter terms of use. I believe there was speculation he backed his own project on the first time. There will be many people watching the second.
Scammers need to be dealt with or we get people that just want to quit there jobs and decide to "make a game" with absolutely no prior experience. Imagine all the people working normal jobs that had dreams of a game design deciding to go to kickstarter and using the same ammount of experience as jason.
Frightening right? Lets save kickstarter and not support this lunatic
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
The new unity EULA. I didnt know about this, god damnit I JUST made a server that balanced rigidbodies using erlang.
Well I really have no internest in greed monger anymore, what was needed to be said was said. I gotta go figure out what the fuck to do now. Heroengine blows though dude, dont use that shit. Very limiting in HSL, its the first language I learned and I regret it extremely
It's true I don't have much experience with Cloud Servers. Cloud hosting is a Fairly new technology with in the last 3 or 4 years really. It's gaining momentum and is starting to be used in Gaming more but it's still not really completely main stream yet. I've ALWAYS done Multiplayer programming. I started learning how to program when I was 20 because I had an idea for a MMO and I've been working my butt off to learn since then. One thing that ALWAYS put a hault to my attempts have been Money. I've never had the money to rent or buy own servers so I'm not completely up to date on all of it.
When I joined the GM team Jason and I discussed our Options. I suggested Cloud Hosting and we looked into it. Jason wanted to be assured that he wouldn't end up with a massive bill at the end of the month and where I had no experience with Cloudhosting I was unable to give him that assurance so we dropped the idea and instead decided to use the Blades that Jason had purchased back in 2008. As our team organized and increased we brought on more and more people that had experience with Cloud hosting and each time we brought some one on board the discussion reopend internally. Finally last month we got to a place we were comfortable enough in deciding to make the switch.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Honestly, you should just be the PR of the company.
Also most of what I said about experience goes out the window with Heroengine. Its like starting from scratch other then programming concepts.
I still dont approve of jason appletons obvious scammy tactics, (Facebook likes anyone?) or his pathetic trolling on some random mmos forum but when you go with heroengine its a whole new game except for artists. Good luck to all the bullshit that will arise, I honestly feel sorry for you now having to use heroengine.
My biggest tip is rememeber nothing deletes in heroengine, that fucked my first project.
I have ALOT of experience with HeroEngine. I think if you had stuck with it HSL is a whole lot more powerful then you realize. For MMOs it's really the way to go. The whole foundation is done for you and is more then capable to handle the loads of a MMO. It allows you to just focus on your game play instead of having to figure out and develop the underlying network framework. Also with Hero2.0 you have DirectX 11, Speedtree 6, Custom Shaders, and a whole lot of other stuff.
But if we can talk on Skype and remain civil I'd be interested in talking with you again... and if not then I really wish you luck with your framework!
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
The problem I have with it is physics and rendering ability. The people that made the engine are massive for the amazing framework (even though you cant really tell how much resources your using, they give you leneance) The only massive problem I have with it is its shitty physics, it uses a physics server that is just one instance and last time I used it it didnt even work, when it did the update rate was horrible and it was very glitchy. You cant even simulate client side physics without the server which I find rediculous. Not only that you dont have very much control over packet size at all. Its designed for an mmo with EQ 2 combat and thats it. Anything more is rediculously hard, even there FPS simulator was sad.
I actually think the reason I dont use it is because you have more control over the servers not using it, but if you have an EQ2/WoW combat system and need persistence as such then heroengine is for you but I like my mmos (ideally) to have clientside ragdoll physics and authenticative server vehicles with true physics. (well as true as you can get with 90-3 update rate a second)
I honestly never really had a problem with you james, it was jasons obviousness that got me pretty personally pissed and then on top of matts arrogance but you were always level headed the whole time. Thats why I believe you should be PR, it would probably settle alot of shit.
Ill add you again but Im working on my own thing now, I finally got a C# to erlang interface using google buffers after switching from json and now Unity changed there EULA. I have no idea what Im going to do.. maybe XNA but I dont want to be microsofts bitch. Anyway I have no interest anymore with what happens. Good luck if you actually do use heroengine
If ever they decide to change the name, Rune Conquest would be a great substitute.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
You may or may not be fine with Unity. They have added some stuff in the EULA that they say is not intended for MMOs however COULD be used at any time if they wanted to in the future. They Say it's geared for services like onLive where the game is 100% streamed from the net and the player's application is just a viewer into the game while the game is run on the cloud... We aren't comfortable in taking that risk so we decided to change and I had been advocating Hero since I joined the team so we took a look at it, asked our Community what they thought and at the time we officially switched the vast majority agreed with the switch. After that time though things got interesting and more people started speaking out against it but the majority are still in favour of the change.
As for the second KickStarter campaign internally we haven't discussed it much and haven't discussed it at all since the switch to Hero. Right now we are more focused on getting established with Hero and getting to a point that we can have the Alpha test hopefully still before April. Things are progressing and all of you can be assured we will continue to do what's best for the future success of Greed Monger.
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Yeah I guess I retract my statement but not completely about it being a scam, the creator as you know isnt experienced. If it was up to me, youd be doing the second kickstarter and youd be co owners.
I again retract my statement on the scamming sine most of my evidence was missing money (except for his obvious bad PR reputation) but now I know that 75,000 grand is going to Heroengine it makes much more sense.
While jason may be the one putting it together, someone that understands what the hell they are doing should be the one doing the interviews/PR.
I understand the migration to heroengine but I do not gain the benefits of heroengine as I am one person and the biggest thing about hero is the ability to work together in real time. Heroengine is fantastic for a team though I just hope they up there renderer. its directx11 but still looks like EQ 1 in some ways.. I havent seen it in six months though since saphire.
Good luck I probably wont post again, so sorry jason I will probably be ignoring your huge post with bullshit spewed in it.
I have a couple of questions for you Sir.
1. Will you be now adding a subscription to the game.
2. Will you have an Auction House? From reading the Kick Starter page I got the impression there would not be one.
3. Will you be adding a Cash Shop?
4. Will we be seeing new planets in the future? I got the impression we would. (Space Ships)?
5. Will there be land available to players that have not been a part of the early fund raising at release?
6. Do you plan to support other RMT besides the selling/purchasing of land or do you plan to police RMTs?
7. Are you making an online casino disguised as a game ?
Thanks in advance.
This post has been edited to include question 7.
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
Other than ShortyBible this all got out of hand.
Interesting how JA's response to criticism and technical discussion is "That guy looks like a little kid banging on the keyboard and screaming" and his response to clear evidence of his lying is "You have some agenda and are misinterpreting me".
I'll be popping in once every few weeks to see some developments. All this is ridiculously silly (except Shorty and the technical talk).
Ok these are all very valid questions. Some of them can be answered some can't for different reasons.
1. At this time we don't know. We will be discussing it and are hoping to work something out with the Developers of Hero once we are further along in development. We really want to stick to our stated design goals though if at all possible.
2. There will be no Auction house in game like you find in WoW and other Games.
3. This is being discussed so we aren't ruling it out but nothing is final yet. Again we really want to keep to our original goals as much as possible.
4. Can't say anything concerning this. You will just have to play the game and uncover the story like everyone else!
5. We will be launching with the said 6,000 parcels of player owned land. Out of which 3,000 is already accounted for. Information on how we will be releasing the other 3,000 will be released in the future.
6. This is really unknown at this time. Most options for generating revenue in order to comply with Hero's terms are being left on the table. Will it include RMT that's still to be decided (Personally hopefully not).
7. NO we are not creating a Casino disguised as a Online game. Personally I feel Casinos do much more negative then good!
Company Owner
MMO Interactive
Thank you for the kind comments.
I am just a gamer that read the game concepts and became interested. As stated in my earlier posts I have no agenda.
It is a plus here for us that the CEO/Developer has an mmorpg account and actually uses it.
It is unfortunate that he is using it to flame/troll.
I doubt that the questions I posed will ever get answered due to the fact that he might have violated mmorpg rules of conduct.
I have no idea if he did.
If this game is ever made and becomes a true sandbox with , no cash shop, no auction house, no worldwide chat etc:, but with a lot of tools to enhance the game, then It would be my permanent home for a long time.
Good Luck
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415