If you back anything, remember you are only giving away money. There is zero guarantee you will receive any value close to the amount you give. If you're pleasantly surprised in the future, that would be a plus, but there are no obligations for the developers to deliver product.
I'll have to check it out tommorow night, working tommorow. How much do you have to pay to get in the early Alpha testing and everything? When is CU expected for release?
Before pledging anything, you must understand one thing - pledging for a game is not the same as buying access to a game. As many people correctly said, most crowd-funded projects don't make it. Personally, about 50% of the projects I backed either never got released, or screwed me over for one reason or another.
The way I see crowdfunding lately is paying to support someone's vision. I think if you look at it from that perspective, you will enjoy the process more. If you back a company because you love the people and love the vision, and the game never makes it, at least you tried to make it happen along with the team.
Like you, I am a big fantasy fan, happily enjoying GW2 and am a veteran EQ2 player. Let me give you a run down of the projects I've been watching.
Shroud of the Avatar is very much a trip back to the roots, focused on player roleplaying, text chat and an interesting combat that has elements of collectible card games. It is mid-alpha, with frequent wipes expected and a lot of features missing. Still I quite enjoy the setting.
Star Citizen is all about fidelity and freedom. They are making a huge sandbox with little hand holding, accurate physics and large economy. The game has an amazing scope and unlike most projects, with this one you know they have the finances to at least finish something. Two downsides for me. One, the community is largely funded by older SCI-FI fans that feel a sense of entitlement and are quite competetive. Two, the scope of the game means that it will take a few more years until you can really enjoy it fully. Nice thing is they are very dedicated to backer interaction, so you get plenty of stuff to watch/read and even play on a regular basis.
Repopulation builds on the spiritual foundation of Star Wars Galaxies. This game is mainly about taking a somewhat sandbox environment and letting people create cities, decorate houses and get social. They have made some nice progress and I have heard the game is quite nice to dabble around even at this stage. The downside is that to me, they do not have the impressive names some of the other projects do have. It more feels like a fan initiative to recreate a game style quite a few people loved back in the day.
EQ Landmark is quite far away from the older EQ games. Landmark is all about creation, voxel building tools and the ability to claim property. It is pretty much a "test server" for Everquest Next features. It has been evolving quite a bit over the year and has certainly become a lot more fun. They are adding quite a bit new features, though most are focused on the building element. Downside is the game is sort of meant to be a foundation for EQNext, but EQNext is so far away with most features still unannounced that it makes you wonder where it all is going. The company has been hit by heavy lay-offs this month. That said, it is fun to build stuff and get creative.
Crowfall seems to be aiming to combine those large-scale MMORPGs where multiple factions clash over the land, with voxel based games like EQ Landmark or Minecraft. The voxel technology is not there to let you build, but to let you destroy stuff. It has a nice twist to it where it blends persistent MMOs (your character stays) with lobby strategy games (game world is time limited). Next to that, you also have a home world that stays and that you decorate and enhance. The downside is it is only just funding itself and is partially investor funded, so they dont get to call all the shots. You also won't get to play it for a while and who knows what community content is going to be like.
My big advice is if you really want to crowd-fund, pick a game based on the develompent philosophy behind it. These projects have really nice things about them that are worth supporting in my opinion. Pick a cause that you are passionate about.
Do not expect to be able to fully play any of these at this stage, because ALL of them have wipes incoming. You can dabble in most and test the features, but this mainly gives you an impression of how the development is going.
Pantheon and Trials of Ascension are examples of how NOT to run a Kickstarter campaign. Brad McQuaid decided it would be good enough to jot down some ideas on a cocktail napkin and then launch a Kickstarter campaign based on those ideas and his street cred with EQ. The Trials of Ascension crew have shady reputability at best. Just do some Googleing on both of these projects and the descension will become clear. I recommend avoiding these projects for at least a year or two until they can come up with significant coding.
The projects I am currently backing are Star Citizen, Novus Aeterno, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Albion Online, The Repopulation, Camelot Unchained, and most recently Crowfall.
Star Citizen is your best bang for the buck in terms of immediate playability.
Camelot Unchained is my personal favorite. Mark Jacobs has been extremely transparent with the community and his reputation is second to none. DAoC was my first MMO love so this one has a soft spot in my heart.
Crowfall is the new kid on the block and they have some solid ideas. There are a number of people including myself that want to see more of the code that they've written. I'm a $30 backer for this one and I'm not going up until I see more. There are still plenty of $34 packages which I think is an excellent deal.
Originally posted by TheStryderHD So Camelot Unchained alpha starting soon correct? You can pay to get in on that? How much is that, and has anyone played it yet?
The lowest tier for Alpha access is $225. I'm at the $250 level. So far the limited pre-alpha tests have been very basic integrity tests. This month should feature a nice in depth look at what they have codded so far, which is a lot. CU is under NDA during alpha so don't expect any Youtube updates.
lmao that's a lot of money for basic integrity testing, I'm GOOD with that. Shards Online is $40 for Alpha and 32-64 player servers coming up pretty soon in it's Alpha.
Comments
I see where you are coming from a bit better now.
Before pledging anything, you must understand one thing - pledging for a game is not the same as buying access to a game. As many people correctly said, most crowd-funded projects don't make it. Personally, about 50% of the projects I backed either never got released, or screwed me over for one reason or another.
The way I see crowdfunding lately is paying to support someone's vision. I think if you look at it from that perspective, you will enjoy the process more. If you back a company because you love the people and love the vision, and the game never makes it, at least you tried to make it happen along with the team.
Like you, I am a big fantasy fan, happily enjoying GW2 and am a veteran EQ2 player. Let me give you a run down of the projects I've been watching.
Shroud of the Avatar is very much a trip back to the roots, focused on player roleplaying, text chat and an interesting combat that has elements of collectible card games. It is mid-alpha, with frequent wipes expected and a lot of features missing. Still I quite enjoy the setting.
Star Citizen is all about fidelity and freedom. They are making a huge sandbox with little hand holding, accurate physics and large economy. The game has an amazing scope and unlike most projects, with this one you know they have the finances to at least finish something. Two downsides for me. One, the community is largely funded by older SCI-FI fans that feel a sense of entitlement and are quite competetive. Two, the scope of the game means that it will take a few more years until you can really enjoy it fully. Nice thing is they are very dedicated to backer interaction, so you get plenty of stuff to watch/read and even play on a regular basis.
Repopulation builds on the spiritual foundation of Star Wars Galaxies. This game is mainly about taking a somewhat sandbox environment and letting people create cities, decorate houses and get social. They have made some nice progress and I have heard the game is quite nice to dabble around even at this stage. The downside is that to me, they do not have the impressive names some of the other projects do have. It more feels like a fan initiative to recreate a game style quite a few people loved back in the day.
EQ Landmark is quite far away from the older EQ games. Landmark is all about creation, voxel building tools and the ability to claim property. It is pretty much a "test server" for Everquest Next features. It has been evolving quite a bit over the year and has certainly become a lot more fun. They are adding quite a bit new features, though most are focused on the building element. Downside is the game is sort of meant to be a foundation for EQNext, but EQNext is so far away with most features still unannounced that it makes you wonder where it all is going. The company has been hit by heavy lay-offs this month. That said, it is fun to build stuff and get creative.
Crowfall seems to be aiming to combine those large-scale MMORPGs where multiple factions clash over the land, with voxel based games like EQ Landmark or Minecraft. The voxel technology is not there to let you build, but to let you destroy stuff. It has a nice twist to it where it blends persistent MMOs (your character stays) with lobby strategy games (game world is time limited). Next to that, you also have a home world that stays and that you decorate and enhance. The downside is it is only just funding itself and is partially investor funded, so they dont get to call all the shots. You also won't get to play it for a while and who knows what community content is going to be like.
My big advice is if you really want to crowd-fund, pick a game based on the develompent philosophy behind it. These projects have really nice things about them that are worth supporting in my opinion. Pick a cause that you are passionate about.
Do not expect to be able to fully play any of these at this stage, because ALL of them have wipes incoming. You can dabble in most and test the features, but this mainly gives you an impression of how the development is going.
If I should back something, it would be..
1. Shards Online because its such a extremely cool concept, and they are showing a real playable game and developing it fast.
2. Pantheon just because it is the kind of game with the spirit I prefer.
3. Camelot unchained if I were into pvp, they just got so many right things on their charter it is hard to imagine they can mess it all up.
And with all of them, I would want instant alpha access before throwing money at any of those.. quid pro quo.
That said, I am also kinda fed up with early access disapointments, the only game I never regretted backing was Path of Exile.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Pantheon and Trials of Ascension are examples of how NOT to run a Kickstarter campaign. Brad McQuaid decided it would be good enough to jot down some ideas on a cocktail napkin and then launch a Kickstarter campaign based on those ideas and his street cred with EQ. The Trials of Ascension crew have shady reputability at best. Just do some Googleing on both of these projects and the descension will become clear. I recommend avoiding these projects for at least a year or two until they can come up with significant coding.
The projects I am currently backing are Star Citizen, Novus Aeterno, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Albion Online, The Repopulation, Camelot Unchained, and most recently Crowfall.
Star Citizen is your best bang for the buck in terms of immediate playability.
Camelot Unchained is my personal favorite. Mark Jacobs has been extremely transparent with the community and his reputation is second to none. DAoC was my first MMO love so this one has a soft spot in my heart.
Crowfall is the new kid on the block and they have some solid ideas. There are a number of people including myself that want to see more of the code that they've written. I'm a $30 backer for this one and I'm not going up until I see more. There are still plenty of $34 packages which I think is an excellent deal.
lol, I put Kickstarter on my banned site list with Leechblock (firefox)
The lowest tier for Alpha access is $225. I'm at the $250 level. So far the limited pre-alpha tests have been very basic integrity tests. This month should feature a nice in depth look at what they have codded so far, which is a lot. CU is under NDA during alpha so don't expect any Youtube updates.