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Crowfall - Focused on Eternal Kingdoms - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Crowfall - Focused on Eternal Kingdoms - MMORPG.com
While taking a break from PAX South, Red Thomas met with Crowfall lead men Gordon Walton and Todd Coleman to find out what the team’s focus will be over the next month or so. Read on to learn more about how players can expect to see the Eternal Kingdoms implemented and rolled out over the next several weeks.
Comments
It seems that players with pre-alpha access are already testing EKs!?
I don't think I agree with that. Even if they're not your cup of tea, plenty of other crowdfunded games have made significant progress or released. The Shadowrun games are the obvious example of ones that made it out of the gate, and Shroud of the Avatar has reached persistence. Divinity: Original Sin II has made a lot of progress and should be very playable by the end of the year, and BATTLETECH is starting their early access in strong position within the next month.
As far as development... It's always been that way, you just didn't notice it as much because the companies hid it from you. You didn't get to play games as early as you do now, and major updates were saved for holidays or timed for marketing campaigns, rather than rolling out as they were completed.
You can't get into something that's early access and then complain that you're stuck in development. That's like riding in a car and bitching that it's moving. Early Access == Development. That's the whole point.
Now that said, a crap load of games these days (especially the survival genre) are pretty much perpetual early access. Folks get into an unpolished game, and then devs have to keep pace as they devour content, which leaves no time for additional polish. It's what the consumer has demanded, so that's what you're getting.
The examples you mention are single player games though, and obviously we are talking about mmo's on this site. In the single player game realm there are some shining examples of crowd funded games that are genre defining successes, after all you just need a good concept to create the next "tetris", but in the MMO realm its so much harder and we haven't seen anything near the quality of "divinity original sin" when it comes to crowdfunded mmos.
Shroud of the avatar you mention looks terrible and reading the early access reviews on steam doesn't give you any hope it can be turned around. Crowfall could be the first mmo to finally "prove" crowdfunded mmo's are viable. I also have some hopes for Camelot.
Sins has SP elements, but it's also an MP game, and so is BATTLETECH, but that's really irrelevant. The point responded to wasn't MMOs, or even MP games in general, but the comment was about crowdfunded games in general. And that point would be incorrect. There are a number of games that have been successfully crowdfunded and that their fans are very happy with. Oh, Subnautica for another, now that is a damn fine game if you haven't tried it out yet.
Will Crowfall be one of the better examples of success? Absolutely. That doesn't mean others weren't successful, as well.
And lasting w/r to SotA. Read the reviews. Nearly everyone of them were expecting something other than what the game was intended to be from the start. Still valid points, but there's context there. Of those who backed it early on, my impression is that they're mostly happy with the result. Frankly, that's the important part. Doesn't matter if people on steam like it or not. The backers do. Steam players, when they come, are just bonus.