Soft Launch Pushed to 2019, Russian Distributor Found & Engine Licensed to Another Company - Crowfal

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Soft Launch Pushed to 2019, Russian Distributor Found & Engine Licensed to Another Company - Crowfall - MMORPG.com

Crowfall News - The Crowfall Founders' Update for mid-2018 has been published. In it, backers and fans learn that the soft launch has been pushed back to 2019; that a Russian distributor has been found similar to that for EU with Travian; and that the game's MMO engine (as opposed to a rendering engine) has been licensed to another company "to give them a jump-start on their next big title".

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Scorchien

Meh , felt this was coming when they announced the Soft Launch a while back .. .. No sense in hurrying at this point .. it will only lead to mixed results .. Mostly bad .. Take your time...

Shaigh

Artcraft has spoken of soft launching since mid 2016 and its always 6-12 months away like that elusive squadron 42 release.

Xingbairong

I think that this is great because probably around the time they launch, WoW will be between content patches, so a lot of WoW players will hop and try this game out. Not sure if intentional or just a coincidence, but great news for me at least.

Hatefull

Shaigh said:

Artcraft has spoken of soft launching since mid 2016 and its always 6-12 months away like that elusive squadron 42 release.

While you are obviously not wrong, (your SQ42 comment made me LOL for real) I feel that if any other company than Roberts Industries had the financial backing that his game (Star Citizen) does, they could have and most likely would have been a lot closer to a complete game. Compared to SC, Crowfall is on a shoe string budget. I feel if they had the resources we would be seeing a game far closer to completion.

I base this off the fact that Artcraft speaks directly to hiring more people as a result of more income (leasing their Engine). Playing Devils advocate and arguing against myself here, they (Artcraft) might also have been bitten by the "buy stupid shit for the office/Hire family members" bug and been slowed as well. I cannot say for sure either way, but my gut says other game companies would have been a lot further along in production than Star Citizen is at this point with that amount of financial backing.

Deathtognomes

Not sure if this a good thing or not. This could open a new can of worms.

slowz2secret

Cash grab campaign

sycogenesis

that's twice

Shaigh

Hatefull said:

Shaigh said:

Artcraft has spoken of soft launching since mid 2016 and its always 6-12 months away like that elusive squadron 42 release.

While you are obviously not wrong, (your SQ42 comment made me LOL for real) I feel that if any other company than Roberts Industries had the financial backing that his game (Star Citizen) does, they could have and most likely would have been a lot closer to a complete game. Compared to SC, Crowfall is on a shoe string budget. I feel if they had the resources we would be seeing a game far closer to completion.

I base this off the fact that Artcraft speaks directly to hiring more people as a result of more income (leasing their Engine). Playing Devils advocate and arguing against myself here, they (Artcraft) might also have been bitten by the "buy stupid shit for the office/Hire family members" bug and been slowed as well. I cannot say for sure either way, but my gut says other game companies would have been a lot further along in production than Star Citizen is at this point with that amount of financial backing.

The only bug that Artcraft suffers from is bringing up impossible dates. I'm not really worried about the game failing because to me it always sounded like a project that would take them somewhere around five years to complete.

xion12121

If they take longer to make a game they are bad developers, if they release too early they are terrible and cash grabbers. Which is it? the community whines either way lol

Blackboa

I hope that with this increased time for development they take a look at their entire progression system and throw it away and start over. The time based "eve" progression model is not addicting at all, hence why I have not played the Alpha tests cause there is nothing to keep you hooked.

Rhoms

I'm disappointed but not surprised.  I think we might be seeing a pattern emerge with these crowdfunded games: even if you take Star Citizen out of the mix, they're taking much longer to develop and polish, with the likelihood of needing more funding, than what was originally anticipated.  Additionally, neither CU nor Crowfall are being run by game developer noobs, and yet they are still having difficulty reaching their targets.  That should give pause when anticipating the next round of crowdfunded games like CoE and Ashes.

Scot

After seeing what happened with the SotA EA, let them take as long as they want to get to that stage.

Albatroes

Xingbairong said:

I think that this is great because probably around the time they launch, WoW will be between content patches, so a lot of WoW players will hop and try this game out. Not sure if intentional or just a coincidence, but great news for me at least.

I'd say incorrect since many wow players tend to go to FFXIV when there's dry spells and XIV is smart enough to plan stuff around those times. If you look at it, both games' expansions release a year after each other. This year's FFXIV fanfest will 95% unveil their expansion which will be released in summer (again 95% probability). The only real good times for other games to release something is around april or october since both of those months have been recorded to be dead-ish periods for both titles.

Slapshot1188

xion12121 said:

If they take longer to make a game they are bad developers, if they release too early they are terrible and cash grabbers. Which is it? the community whines either way lol

Or you could actually do what you say you will do in the timeframe you say it will be done. I know that’s a revolutionary concept for some folks but nobody forced developers to post unachievable dates. People should be expected to do what they say, whether it’s Artcraft, CIG, SBS or CSE or anyone.

Now that said, they are mostly getting funding from external sources and not squeezing every last drop from the players. That’s good. Also, having recently logged in, I think it’s definitely good to push it to next year.

Wellspring

Hopefully this means they can scrap the "soft launch" approach, and just do a full launch when it's ready.

Thane

yea, i stop careing about games once they start to care bout russians gl to you.

ceratop001

I'm telling you guys the Russian mafia has their hands in games now.

Vrika

Mars_Orbital said:

This game has officially died (for me) with two words "Russian Distribution". Age of Conan was the last time I ever game with Russian and Eastern europeans, their culture of hacks and exploitation is one of the largest in the world.

It's beyond ridiculous that people still are willing to sacrifice the good of a game, for quick cash.

F crowfall.

I thought the Russian distributor was only for Russia. They're self-distributing in North America, and have Travian distributing in Europe, Middle-East and Brazil.

Xingbairong

DMKano said:

Xingbairong said:

I think that this is great because probably around the time they launch, WoW will be between content patches, so a lot of WoW players will hop and try this game out. Not sure if intentional or just a coincidence, but great news for me at least.

A lot of WoW players? What?

Vast majority of WoW players have zero interest in any other game - let alone Crowfall which they have never heard of.

On top of that Crowfall is not a WoW competitor.

Never really said it's a WoW competitor, but anyone that wants a new MMORPG would be interested in Crowfall and that includes quite a bit of the WoW players. By "a lot of WoW players" I mean exactly what I wrote "a lot" and not "every WoW player will go to this game, just like by "vast majority" that you wrote you mean "vast majority" and not every player right? Just curious for let's say 2 million players what would you consider vast majority and would you consider a 20k-30k-50k WoW players trying out Crowfall "a lot" or that's nothing? I for one think that's a lot, but then again I might be wrong... been to concerts/fests with 30-40k people and felt like a lot, but might be just me.

I personally would play Crowfall if it's not in the middle of a WoW patch, so yeah they will get at least 1 player more if they time their release properly. I've asked the few friends that still play WoW(which are only 5 now) and they have all said the same thing. Would try it if it's not during a patch.

@Albatroes I'd say incorrect as well. Neither I, nor my friends play FF and again a new game is different then an existing game. Any player that likes MMORPG will be tempted to try out a new MMORPG if it's not during a patch season for the game they play. Look at Bless. It got quite a big interest despite all the negative publicity the game had, sadly it didn't deliver. Crowfall however have a lot better reputations, so I'm certain that A LOT more players would be interested in trying it out given they don't have to give up on progressing on the game they main and that's why I mentioned WoW since it has a big player-base and even if it's just 20k people that jump from WoW it would be a big boost for Crowfall, but I'm confident that the number will be a lot higher than just 20k.

Octagon7711

Rhoms said:

I'm disappointed but not surprised.  I think we might be seeing a pattern emerge with these crowdfunded games: even if you take Star Citizen out of the mix, they're taking much longer to develop and polish, with the likelihood of needing more funding, than what was originally anticipated.  Additionally, neither CU nor Crowfall are being run by game developer noobs, and yet they are still having difficulty reaching their targets.  That should give pause when anticipating the next round of crowdfunded games like CoE and Ashes.

When you look at the history of crowdfunding and read about what goes on it's a wonder that any are successful. People are told the odds are against their game succeeding, still they hope for the best.


“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ― Mark Twain

SBFord

Vrika said:

Mars_Orbital said:

This game has officially died (for me) with two words "Russian Distribution". Age of Conan was the last time I ever game with Russian and Eastern europeans, their culture of hacks and exploitation is one of the largest in the world.

It's beyond ridiculous that people still are willing to sacrifice the good of a game, for quick cash.

F crowfall.

I thought the Russian distributor was only for Russia. They're self-distributing in North America, and have Travian distributing in Europe, Middle-East and Brazil.

Exactly. Once again rampant nationalism raises its ugly head.

Rhoms

Octagon7711 said:

Rhoms said:

I'm disappointed but not surprised.  I think we might be seeing a pattern emerge with these crowdfunded games: even if you take Star Citizen out of the mix, they're taking much longer to develop and polish, with the likelihood of needing more funding, than what was originally anticipated.  Additionally, neither CU nor Crowfall are being run by game developer noobs, and yet they are still having difficulty reaching their targets.  That should give pause when anticipating the next round of crowdfunded games like CoE and Ashes.

When you look at the history of crowdfunding and read about what goes on it's a wonder that any are successful. People are told the odds are against their game succeeding, still they hope for the best.


“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ― Mark Twain

I think it is yet to be seen how crowdfunding will end up affecting the MMORPG genre.  Overall, I hope it is positive, but I also feel that we will definitely see some failures.  I'm worried about those failures because I feel it will make folks like us even more cynical than we already are about this hobby.

If anything, I hope that the crowdfunders (i.e., us) are a little more wise and wary with more tempered expectations.  I'm not even a barely skilled investor by a long shot, but we've seen that it takes more than a great concept to push out a great product.

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FlyByKnight

Don't get why it's bad for Russia to get their own server. I mean most of you folks start pooping bricks when you see other languages in general chat, and others are always having issues with ping to NA servers.

As far as Artcraft, they get until mid 2019, after that I'm going in my skeptical gamer comedy bag. No exceptions.

rojoArcueid

Its funny how many people blame all Russians (it used to be brazilians) for X,Y,Z in gaming for what SOME of them do while they are totally OK when their own country's players do the same thing.

Pathetic really. Or do you think SOME muricans and non-russian europeans don't do the same crap?

People really need to stop generalizing.