So the story begins

Zuljan

Wizardry said:

I am really bummed out,i just knew there had to be a catch just the same as COE.It is really BS that this site was in on it as well,pretending they just have some cool game they want to show us when they knew all along it was a partnership/agenda.
I really understand this site now,every game that shows up here has an agenda/partnership with this site based on advertising.

I was at IGN yesterday and the same bullshit,they had a couple guys come on telling us they have this cool idea about creating some kind of library or something for old games.Of course the whole agenda was that they partnered with IGN to promote their project to get funding from people.It was so blatantly obvious that even the developer was sort of laughing at the IGN guy as he was definitely putting on his salesmen act.


Watch at 6:20 minutes onwards and i am certain everyone can tell how blatant the guy in the beard is trying to sell this so called "non profit" idea..sigh.This is the sort of nonsense i hate.This is directly related to what this site is doing on a daily basis.Advertising belongs in the advertising section,heart felt gaming passion belongs in the articles.

Yeah, the site is heavily biased toward the bigger market/bigger CEO games. Both quality and quantity of the articles are greater in this regard. Suzie Ford (I reference this person because I see her articles most frequently) recycles a lot of the same "top 5 game mechanics" in various reviews, but in the aforementioned big name games with same  mechanics, you'd think she's writing an argumentative SAT essay to try to win us over lol. It's so blatant, too.

I haven't researched into Ashes after learning it might not be trinity and is very twich combat, but seeing as this is going to be Kickstarted, I honestly have no idea how they expect to get this off the ground. They made some flashy videos with amazing textures and rendering, but the cost to Kickstart an entire MMO world of that quality? They have their work cut out

Forgrimm

Wizardry said:

I am really bummed out,i just knew there had to be a catch just the same as COE.It is really BS that this site was in on it as well,pretending they just have some cool game they want to show us when they knew all along it was a partnership/agenda.
I really understand this site now,every game that shows up here has an agenda/partnership with this site based on advertising.

Watch at 6:20 minutes onwards and i am certain everyone can tell how blatant the guy in the beard is trying to sell this so called "non profit" idea..sigh.This is the sort of nonsense i hate.This is directly related to what this site is doing on a daily basis.Advertising belongs in the advertising section,heart felt gaming passion belongs in the articles.

Every game on this site has an agenda/partnership now? Tinfoil hat is on a bit too tight eh?

Keltazur

Slapshot1188 said:

Ashes_Steven said:

@Slapshot1188

Do you have any industry experience (making online games) outside of playing MMOs for decades?
Read more at

I have only played MMOs for over 25 years (Since the original Neverwinter Nights circa 1991), since I am not building this game alone,  I hired a team of industry veterans that developed the following games; Everquest 1 + 2 + Next, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, Planetside 1 + 2, XCOM, CoD and many more.  For more info on our team, you can visit https://www.ashesofcreation.com/the-team/

Does the CFO have any industry experience (making online games)? And a subset of that: is he actually related to you?  I don't actually care about relationships often, but a CEO/CFO being married and soliciting donations through Crowdfunding is a personal concern of mine (no checks and balances).

Our CFO has a background in accounting, and has my complete trust.  It is actually quite common for company founders to be married.  If it is concerning to you then I am sorry to hear it.

Did you make your money through MLM?

One of my backgrounds is the Multi-Level Marketing industry (Which is a great industry, though some companies have tarnished it's reputation, others such as Mary Kay, Avon and XanGo are great examples of what can be accomplished with MLM).  Though my primary sources of income are real-estate and investments.

Why are you Crowdfunding?  Is it because you need the money or is it because you want to leverage it for marketing?

Well to be fair, we have not started crowdfunding yet.  When we reach certain development milestones with the game, we will likely move to a crowdsourcing platform.  There are several reasons for this; First, crowdsourcing allows us to pull necessary capital to create the game without appealing to industry publishers who have led the MMORPG genre to it's current state. We are fully aware and agree that the downfall of many of the MMO’s that have come out recently are a result of flagrant pay2win strategies from their monetization process. We will not follow in those footsteps. Second, there is no more involved and dedicated community than those who arise from crowdsourcing.  It is a reciprocal relationship between our studios depending on the necessary testing and development of early backers, and being able to have that dialogue with people who are as invested as we are in the success of the project. Third, We want to be able to offer people who see our project early and decide to back it with unique in-game cosmetics and alpha/beta access.

 Will you pledge to return all funds raised if the game fails to deliver (See John Smeadly and Hero's Song). If so will you clearly state that in the Kickstarter?

Yes.

What is the budget for the game?  What are the planned sources (% self funded/crowdfunded/other investors)

Our budget is not yet determined. We plan to fund the project from Self-funding, Crowdsourcing, and private investors.

How much of that do you have in hand today?

Alot.

Using a scheme of 15% cash back (I think lifetime) to anyone that refers players seems very concerning.  As these links are already active.. can people not just spam everywhere and never even buy your game but make an income from getting others to buy it?  Does that not open up vast crevices for unscrupulous folks to hype and "market" their referral links?  Will this not in fact incentivise ACTUAL shilling (which many previously have been accused of, but this would actually be PAYING people to get other people to buy your game)

Well, first off it is not a "scheme".  I take offense to that, considering the word implies a negative connotation of deceit. 

Our referral program rewards players for what they already do.  So much of what an MMO is, revolves around social interaction, and players often when they find a game they think is promising want to spread the word of that game, aka "Hype".  I felt, that allowing players to be rewarded with actual money for something they already do, made sense.  Is there concern for people misusing the system and spamming these links, yes there is.  But I am not of the mindset, that those bad apples should ruin the reward for the rest of us.  Besides, those spammers tend to get banned/ignored pretty quick on sites such as these. 


Hope that answers some of your questions!

It did answer many. 

I especially liked your answer to #5 and if you go through with that and actually include that pledge on the crowdfunding site it will go a long way to satisfying concerns.

I did not especially like your answer to #8 (and scheme was used as a noun and not as a verb so I think it was appropriate).  Nothing you stated even slightly lessened my concern about your creating literal paid shills. It not just about spam.  It's about monetarily incentivising people to come to sites like this and post positive things about the game.  It's not illegal, but it's very concerning to me and will put a cloud of suspicion around every single positive article, review, or forum post.  Who knows if it's true or just actual paid shilling?

Your answer to #6 also concerns me.  It is one thing to say that info is not able to be publicly discussed before the crowdfunding, but to say you haven't even determined a budget yet (your words) seems... well don't take this the wrong way.. but incompetent or  not true.  How can you talk about all these features in a game if you do not know both roughly how much it will cost to create them and how much you expect to have to spend?

Also, can you please give an example of one other MMORPG company who's owner and CFO are married? Bonus if you can name one married AND Crowdfunding.  Since you claim it is "common" I am sure you can list a few...

Lastly-  I did throw a bonus edit #9 question in that you may have missed.  Just curious about that one...


Again, whether I think your answers are flaky or not, I do respect you coming on here to field the questions!

I'm glad there is someone on this board that digs a bit deeper to find out the facts.  Your post was helpful, insightful and informative, especially if this studio goes on a crowd funding campaign.  Investors need to be aware of what they are getting themselves into.

Zuljan

Kyleran said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Leiloni said:

You're reading into this too much. Every company that isn't NCSoft or Blizzard needs publisher money for their game...

How much do you think they are going to raise on Kickstarter?

My best guess is that they will need $20M+ to deliver on all the promises.  Maybe I'm wrong and if so the CEO can come back once he has a budget and explain why.   If they raise a million on KS it would be a success.  So are you trying to tell me that they somehow have the internal resources to get $20M but just can;t scrape up the last $1M? 

That's the red flag. If the KS / private investor goals were realistic they would ask for like $5M on the KS, which might trigger another $5-10M in private funding, and then I'd start believing in "the vision"

See how DF went if you want a real example of how underfunded development usually turns out, and I think even they had access to more funds than most indie devs claim. (not saying Ashes team doesn't have more, we have no idea at present)

You are right, 100. The only difference is Ashes would seemingly have access to a lot more money (based on their CEO and management in general). Just goes back to the whole thing not feeling right though; complete outsiders to the MMO industry with a load of money but are looking to Kickstart the entire thing. As someone in PR that's a another red flag when doing business or in this case donating to a Kickstart. When your CEO/CFOs have multi-million dollar networks, you simply don't have issues funding, whether private, angel, or otherwise unless there's an issue at some level. Regardless, however, some important people don't have complete confidence in the product or it would be funded; they have the means to do so and then some. That's the only thing that scares me. Maybe they'll come out and make a statement addressing this though. I'm hopeful for any good MMO at this point.

Kyleran

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:

That's the red flag. If the KS / private investor goals were realistic they would ask for like $5M on the KS, which might trigger another $5-10M in private funding, and then I'd start believing in "the vision"

See how much money you can get in, setup a budget and plan development accordingly.

What part is "red flag" about it? 

That they never seem to ask for enough funding.

As mentioned, what's another million in a budget of $20M plus?

Go big or go home.

Gdemami

Kyleran said:

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:

That's the red flag. If the KS / private investor goals were realistic they would ask for like $5M on the KS, which might trigger another $5-10M in private funding, and then I'd start believing in "the vision"

See how much money you can get in, setup a budget and plan development accordingly.

What part is "red flag" about it? 

That they never seem to ask for enough funding.

As mentioned, what's another million in a budget of $20M plus?

Go big or go home.

Do you even realize that you are pulling those numbers out of your nose, yet somehow they are supposed stand as a basis of your argument...?

Regardless, since there is enough money for anything?

Just above you talked about underfunded development but as soon as one is going to get as much money ad they can...it is a "red flag".

You people are really funny....

ScottB2J

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Slapshot1188

ScottB2J said:

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Presales at thousands of dollars a unit?  

ScottB2J

Most backers back at around a hundred don't they? And the rewards usually exceed that in value? Like playtime, early access etc?

thats my experience 

Leiloni

YashaX said:

Leiloni said:

YashaX said:

Leiloni said:

YashaX said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Leiloni said:

ConstantineMerus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Assuming everyone was as informed as we are that would be correct,  But Ithink it's safe to assume the vast majority of gamers are less informed,

Someone is not informed. They read someone lying about this game. They get fooled. They go to the website to buy the deceitful game. They see there is a promotion going on. They are now informed. 

The thing is, they are going to advertise this promotion heavily in order to gather their marketing army. It's not somewhere hidden between the lines. 

You know sometimes on some level as a consumer people have to think what are they doing with their money. I agree with a lot of your concerns when it comes down to Kickstarter and campaigns and I believe we should discuss them more. But thinking this sort of promotion is shady, while it is the exact opposite. Because right now ALL companies are doing this via 3rd-parties, but they are not telling people about it. That's shady--not being open about it. 

I think there are more important issues to discuss about crowdfunding campaigns and now is a great time, because I think this game is going to attract a lot of people. 

What questions are there about crowdfunding? He's already said they have a AAA game budget and are using Crowdfunding for other reasons - namely so they can self publish and not rely on game ruining publishers, and also so they can take advantage of early player testers giving good feedback who are really invested in the game. Seems ok to me? He also mentioned that if the game doesn't get made he'll return the crowdfunding money, but he also said with their current budget the game will be made regardless.

Honestly not sure why everyone is so upset about this game when they don't care about others. I don't see anything wrong with what they're doing here. My only concerns are regarding gameplay choices like combat design, but they're supposed to be revealing more details on that today or tomorrow anyway.

Actually you just said untrue things.  The CEO said they did not have a budget yet.  He said it right on these forums.

He said a couple of things: 
1) "the amount of resources at my disposal when making this MMO are large.  Comparable to other MMOs that have been made by AAA studios." (said in relation to suggestion of a shoestring budget).

and also:
2) Crowdfunding will allow us to "pull necessary capital to create the game without appealing to industry publishers"

Neither of those gives a budget, but the two statements are contradictory. 

No they're not. Games get made without publishers. They only find publishers once the game is nearing completion and they're ready to roll it out.

Sure, but the guy said he needs to crowdfund to "pull necessary capital to CREATE the game" and in virtually the same breath says he already has enough funds to make a AAA mmo: it can't be both. 

You're reading into this too much. Every company that isn't NCSoft or Blizzard needs publisher money for their game, and in turn the publisher's need developers to lease them their games so they can make money off of us. This is how the industry works. Ashes will need this money as well. They won't need it now, but eventually they will. Publishers cover a ton of costs from servers, to community management, payment systems, customer service. That's also a ton of employees to hire. That's point 1.

Typically there's some tension between developers and publishers who have differing interests. We've all seen some of our favorite games take a bad turn because of one or both parties. I've certainly felt frustrated plenty of times as a gamer about this, and clearly so has Steven, so he'd like to avoid having to go to publishers (something we've seen with other in development games recently). So that's point 2.

I think that should be pretty clear? There's no conspiracy here. His statement was quite clear. 

Edit: One thing that just occurred to me is they mentioned wanting to take advantage of the vocal feedback from an engaged testing community. Obviously this has been an advantage for other games, but to do that you need servers, community management, CS, etc. These are all things most games don't do publicly, and thus don't need until a game is ready for beta testing. When your pre-alpha, alpha, and initial beta testing is all done privately in house by employees and their friends and family, that's much cheaper to do at the cost of selling your soul to outside publishers later for launch.

So when you make the choice to take publishing in house via crowd-funding, you may need the money (and services) you'd otherwise get from a publisher earlier, because you're actually using those services earlier. Because you can't exactly get away with crowd funding and then keep all your backers in the dark until public beta tests a few years from now lol.

So it's a trade-off. Unless you're one of the big guys, you have tough decisions to make.

Your post highlights one of the key problems with crowdfunding: the lack of transparency. I appreciate that you took the time to explain your thoughts on the matter, but your assumptions about how much things will cost are too vague to justify the contradiction of management saying they have both a AAA budget and need to crowdfund.

But I don't think its that important atm to be honest: the pre-alpha footage looked great so if they can bring that vision to fruition it will be awesome. Plus the ideas about nodes and so forth sound really fresh; its the kind of thing I've wanted to see in games. I just hope the crowdfunding part doesn't end up as a massive p2w scam like in CoE and SC, and of course I hope it actually gets made and released!

I think Crowdfunding is far more transparent than games that don't do it. But I don't care how games get made, as long as they get made. I have no intention of throwing tons of money at this or any other game. Once they have something solid to show me, I'll hop in on a beta and make my decisions then.

CrazKanuk

Slapshot1188 said:

ScottB2J said:

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Presales at thousands of dollars a unit?  

You don't HAVE to buy that, do you? There are people who will buy it, so it exists. Also, let's just be completely clear, there is significant differentiation between an entry level and something costing thousands. Maybe some are crazy because of the risk, but these crazy prices do exist in AAA games as well.

Leiloni

Slapshot1188 said:

Leiloni said:

You're reading into this too much. Every company that isn't NCSoft or Blizzard needs publisher money for their game...

How much do you think they are going to raise on Kickstarter?

My best guess is that they will need $20M+ to deliver on all the promises.  Maybe I'm wrong and if so the CEO can come back once he has a budget and explain why.   If they raise a million on KS it would be a success.  So are you trying to tell me that they somehow have the internal resources to get $20M but just can;t scrape up the last $1M? 

You probably could but then you'd be beholden to investors for even more money with no real benefits. A kickstarter gives you a lot of marketing that gets you even more investor cash later (because now you have proof of concept), along with a solid playerbase and valuable tester feedback. Honestly as someone who works in marketing, it seems like a no brainer to me. In a time when it's a very acceptable way to do business, I don't know why you wouldn't if you aren't already a big company. Sure you don't need to do kickstarter at all, but there's so many benefits that it seems better to do it. The flipside is something like Bluehole Studios which is only a few years old but at this point has made a lot of games. They've also made some shitty decisions with those games because they constantly take tons of investor cash to fund their new projects.

Leiloni

Zuldan1 said:

Wizardry said:

I am really bummed out,i just knew there had to be a catch just the same as COE.It is really BS that this site was in on it as well,pretending they just have some cool game they want to show us when they knew all along it was a partnership/agenda.
I really understand this site now,every game that shows up here has an agenda/partnership with this site based on advertising.

I was at IGN yesterday and the same bullshit,they had a couple guys come on telling us they have this cool idea about creating some kind of library or something for old games.Of course the whole agenda was that they partnered with IGN to promote their project to get funding from people.It was so blatantly obvious that even the developer was sort of laughing at the IGN guy as he was definitely putting on his salesmen act.


Watch at 6:20 minutes onwards and i am certain everyone can tell how blatant the guy in the beard is trying to sell this so called "non profit" idea..sigh.This is the sort of nonsense i hate.This is directly related to what this site is doing on a daily basis.Advertising belongs in the advertising section,heart felt gaming passion belongs in the articles.

I haven't researched into Ashes after learning it might not be trinity and is very twich combat, but seeing as this is going to be Kickstarted, I honestly have no idea how they expect to get this off the ground. They made some flashy videos with amazing textures and rendering, but the cost to Kickstart an entire MMO world of that quality? They have their work cut out

It is trinity and it's not twitchy. Honestly where do you people get your information? This stuff is right on their website, along with the fact that from the start they mentioned a kickstarter down the line after reaching development goals. None of this stuff is hidden. You guys just keep making assumptions and making up rumors and then getting mad about it. Everything you want to know is easily Googleable in about 2 minutes. They're not hiding anything if you bother looking.

Zuljan

Leiloni said:

Zuldan1 said:

Wizardry said:

I am really bummed out,i just knew there had to be a catch just the same as COE.It is really BS that this site was in on it as well,pretending they just have some cool game they want to show us when they knew all along it was a partnership/agenda.
I really understand this site now,every game that shows up here has an agenda/partnership with this site based on advertising.

I was at IGN yesterday and the same bullshit,they had a couple guys come on telling us they have this cool idea about creating some kind of library or something for old games.Of course the whole agenda was that they partnered with IGN to promote their project to get funding from people.It was so blatantly obvious that even the developer was sort of laughing at the IGN guy as he was definitely putting on his salesmen act.


Watch at 6:20 minutes onwards and i am certain everyone can tell how blatant the guy in the beard is trying to sell this so called "non profit" idea..sigh.This is the sort of nonsense i hate.This is directly related to what this site is doing on a daily basis.Advertising belongs in the advertising section,heart felt gaming passion belongs in the articles.

I haven't researched into Ashes after learning it might not be trinity and is very twich combat, but seeing as this is going to be Kickstarted, I honestly have no idea how they expect to get this off the ground. They made some flashy videos with amazing textures and rendering, but the cost to Kickstart an entire MMO world of that quality? They have their work cut out

It is trinity and it's not twitchy. Honestly where do you people get your information? This stuff is right on their website, along with the fact that from the start they mentioned a kickstarter down the line after reaching development goals. None of this stuff is hidden. You guys just keep making assumptions and making up rumors and then getting mad about it. Everything you want to know is easily Googleable in about 2 minutes. They're not hiding anything if you bother looking.

A a google search brings up none of that information; I've tried it and you clearly haven't. The most recent forum discussions have no Dev commenting about anything Trinity related; people are simply going back and forth about what they want. There is nothing I've seen anywhere by a dev talking about combat other than it's "tab targetting, and everyone has specifically been saying otherwise in addition to the gameplay looking ridiculously fast. Mage one shotted a 3 pack with an AoE that had 1 sec cast time,  his other fireballs etc were the same (maybe there was a 2 sec in there), there's a backward roll command for all classes lol, and what looks like a small ability/spell bar akin to diablo. Mage gameplay reminded me of god of war for some reason; fun but yes TWITCHY. Then their FAQ has ~12 unspecific questions and combat section talks about Sieges and absolutely nothing about combat specifics, so please enlighten the community on this front page information that you/they have!

ScottB2J

This game was announced 8 weeks ago. Give them some time and put away the pitch forks. 

Zuljan

ScottB2J said:

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Logic is negativity in special minds and I don't know why. We want this game to succeed; pointing out public issues regarding logistics that eschew the norm is not negativity. Taking the financial risk for multi millionaire CEOs that aren't from the MMO industry while 9/10 kickstarted MMOs fail or don't release doesn't seem strange to you? Of course way more companies kickstart now when uninformed people blindly throw their money away, thinking these CEOs/devs know what they're doing. The result is a huge increase in garbage mmos that are skeletons at release (if they release), as opposed to these same CEOs banding together and creating a company with a real budget to make a real MMO like they used to. It's like a new strain of microeconomic virus, like P2W. Spreading knowledge to help our community make good investments is the only treatment to this cancer we have

Kyleran

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:

That's the red flag. If the KS / private investor goals were realistic they would ask for like $5M on the KS, which might trigger another $5-10M in private funding, and then I'd start believing in "the vision"

See how much money you can get in, setup a budget and plan development accordingly.

What part is "red flag" about it? 

That they never seem to ask for enough funding.

As mentioned, what's another million in a budget of $20M plus?

Go big or go home.

Do you even realize that you are pulling those numbers out of your nose, yet somehow they are supposed stand as a basis of your argument...?

Regardless, since there is enough money for anything?

Just above you talked about underfunded development but as soon as one is going to get as much money ad they can...it is a "red flag".

You people are really funny....

I would have no issue with someone attempting to raise a significant amount of money, these games are expensive to make, so it's a red flag when they don't ask for enough, not too much.

Doing the best they can doesn't cut it.

BTW as I manage software development budgets on a regular basis my numbers are grounded a bit more solidly than the cheap insults you typically toss around when you have no basis for your position.

Ah but you are a fun one...

Zuljan

SedrynTyros said:

Zuldan1 said:

ScottB2J said:

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Logic is negativity in special minds and I don't know why. We want this game to succeed; pointing out public issues regarding logistics that eschew the norm is not negativity. Taking the financial risk for multi millionaire CEOs that aren't from the MMO industry while 9/10 kickstarted MMOs fail or don't release doesn't seem strange to you? Of course way more companies kickstart now when uninformed people blindly throw their money away, thinking these CEOs/devs know what they're doing. The result is a huge increase in garbage mmos that are skeletons at release (if they release), as opposed to these same CEOs banding together and creating a company with a real budget to make a real MMO like they used to. It's like a new strain of microeconomic virus, like P2W. Spreading knowledge to help our community make good investments is the only treatment to this cancer we have

See, I have no problem with logic.  What I think is lame are these narratives like the one you describe, where people band together to tear down a project with their skepticism in the name of consumer advocacy.  If that is what you want your contribution to indie development to be, okay.  But I don't think it's helping much.

Again, you want to make what's public into negativity (even when I say I want this game to succeed lol) and additionally fail to understand their business model is not the same as every other kickstarter. And where do you get off assuming a low kickstarter for a multi million CEO backed game = dead game? Sorry if I strained your head with another paragraph narrative bud!

Gdemami

Kyleran said:

BTW as I manage software development budgets on a regular basis 

/thread

Kyleran

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:

BTW as I manage software development budgets on a regular basis 

/thread

Boom...headshot..

Gdemami

Kyleran said:
Boom...headshot..

Indeed, my head just exploded...

SpottyGekko

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:
Boom...headshot..

Indeed, my head just exploded...

Again ?

Zuljan

SedrynTyros said:

Zuldan1 said:

SedrynTyros said:

Zuldan1 said:

ScottB2J said:

These people like to be negative about nothing. They make up "red flags" then hypothesize about the made up red flag. Give it a break. 

KICKSTARTER is ultimately just "presales" for people to get perks by buying early. There is absolutely NO REASON a game today would NOT do a crowdsourcing. Whether they had the money to complete it or not. 

Logic is negativity in special minds and I don't know why. We want this game to succeed; pointing out public issues regarding logistics that eschew the norm is not negativity. Taking the financial risk for multi millionaire CEOs that aren't from the MMO industry while 9/10 kickstarted MMOs fail or don't release doesn't seem strange to you? Of course way more companies kickstart now when uninformed people blindly throw their money away, thinking these CEOs/devs know what they're doing. The result is a huge increase in garbage mmos that are skeletons at release (if they release), as opposed to these same CEOs banding together and creating a company with a real budget to make a real MMO like they used to. It's like a new strain of microeconomic virus, like P2W. Spreading knowledge to help our community make good investments is the only treatment to this cancer we have

See, I have no problem with logic.  What I think is lame are these narratives like the one you describe, where people band together to tear down a project with their skepticism in the name of consumer advocacy.  If that is what you want your contribution to indie development to be, okay.  But I don't think it's helping much.

Again, you want to make what's public into negativity (even when I say I want this game to succeed lol) and additionally fail to understand their business model is not the same as every other kickstarter. And where do you get off assuming a low kickstarter for a multi million CEO backed game = dead game? Sorry if I strained your head with another paragraph narrative bud!

No need to take it personally.  I was just offering my take on it.

Was hoping you'd articulate/counterpoint at least one of your thoughts to make this thing constructive. You tapped out early bud.

rodarin

Chronicles of Elyria flashbacks....

YashaX

rodarin said:

Chronicles of Elyria flashbacks....

Yes that is the scary thing, look how that turned out: one of the most blatant and extreme forms of p2w monetization I have ever seen, massively underestimating release dates, promising groundbreaking features on a shoe-string budget, unable to even get a website running properly, etc, etc ... and still very unclear whether it will even get finished while ramping up the $10,000 p2w donation scheme.