ESO and SWTOR "apparently" manage to have pretty high sub stats, though.
If they managed as well as they wanted, they wouldn't have dropped the required sub to play.
This is the thing about subs, after the game releases the number of players decays over time, instead of growing. Gets to the point they will take a decision on the business model.
The conclusion is simple, it's getting rid of sub to get more people playing the game, F2P with optional subs/cash shops proven itself as the most successful business model to date for MMO's.
I would go as far as say that MMO's like ESO, SWTOR, Aion and so forth possibly wouldn't be here today if they had not dropped the required subscription to play model. They were facing a constant decay of player population under the sub model.
When it comes to make your MMO attractive to the consumer, you as Sub-based can't compete with how well the B2P and F2P do perform, hence it's extremely harder for you to keep your player base from decay over time.
I wouldn't list this as a pro. The company already needs to fulfill all of its obligations, including delivering either the game or refund, as long as it doesn't go to bankrupt.
That could be a tricky thing. Pathfinder Online technically delivered something.
Now I am in no way saying that Ashes or Steven is a Ryan Dancey. I'm just saying some companies have pushed out utter trash to fulfill that obligation.
Wait. Now people are agreeing with me about the lack of experience in MMORPG game design?! LOL
I think that the game design is sound. Based on the interviews done to date it sounds like they have some manner of design doc, so they aren't just shooting from the hip. Also, they apparently have a whiteboard where they are mapping stuff out. So there is some manner of planning going on which says they've made a game before.
Also, the programmers they DO have right now appear to have a great deal of experience in programming (like 10 years or so), so that's above average for the industry, plus they worked on MMORPGs which is more than what most game developers have, experience-wise. So I would hope that they have an idea of how to architect a base framework that isn't going to create massive inter-dependencies that are going to ultimately cripple development and could send the project back to square one. I'd HOPE that with a decade of experience they've at least SEEN competent people do that and have an understanding of how those base layers need to be constructed to create something that is flexible and resilient to change.
So, no, I don't think they have a lack of experience. However, I don't know what experience they do or don't have.
Wait. Now people are agreeing with me about the lack of experience in MMORPG game design?! LOL
I simply go by what they're saying....
"We have 14 people total, across a wide range of disciplines. Our Technical Director, Jason Crawford was deeply involved in the backends of EverQuest II, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next, and was a principal coder on KillSwitch over at SCEA (again working on network and server architecture). He’s got over ten years of experience working on MMO frameworks, and he’s one of a handful of people in this world that has his particular set of skills.
Our Lead Designer, Jeffrey Bard really is a bard of sorts, a full package guy, and has been involved in nearly every aspect of MMO production. Beyond design, he’s done customer support, QA, international operations and has been part of startups previously. He got into the MMO industry in 2003 at SOE and quickly rose through the ranks of leadership – that means he’s been knee deep in MMOs for over 14 years! Because of the breadth of his experience I don’t think there are too many people who have his perspective and understanding of all the pieces that make up an MMO. His contribution to this team has been priceless.
And Michael Bacon! This guy has been in games forever (since the ’90s) but regardless of his experience, his stuff looks amazing. He’s worked on the first two Saints Rows, some of the Duke Nukem games way back in the Playstation and Playstation 2 era, among so many others. He worked on nearly every EverQuest 2 expansion, which is a lot of them. He’s one of our rocks, extraordinarily experienced, and is one of the reasons why our game looks the way it does.
And that’s just three of our guys. I could go into it with the rest of the group, but suffice it to say, the team has been around the block, and I think what we’ve shown to our players continues to prove that out."
They seem to have the important parts covered, even the big one for an MMO, server and network architecture experience.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"We have 14 people total, across a wide range of disciplines
Only this alone is already the huge problem.
Indies shouldn't be the ones developing this type of MMO's, they are by default long, hard and expensive to make. It's the not something that a studio with a dozen people can handle.
For me, it's a matter of time until the reality check of what it takes to make an MMO like that and the reality of delays and/or the need for more money sinks in.
Wait. Now people are agreeing with me about the lack of experience in MMORPG game design?! LOL
I simply go by what they're saying....
"We have 14 people total, across a wide range of disciplines. Our Technical Director, Jason Crawford was deeply involved in the backends of EverQuest II, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next, and was a principal coder on KillSwitch over at SCEA (again working on network and server architecture). He’s got over ten years of experience working on MMO frameworks, and he’s one of a handful of people in this world that has his particular set of skills.
Our Lead Designer, Jeffrey Bard really is a bard of sorts, a full package guy, and has been involved in nearly every aspect of MMO production. Beyond design, he’s done customer support, QA, international operations and has been part of startups previously. He got into the MMO industry in 2003 at SOE and quickly rose through the ranks of leadership – that means he’s been knee deep in MMOs for over 14 years! Because of the breadth of his experience I don’t think there are too many people who have his perspective and understanding of all the pieces that make up an MMO. His contribution to this team has been priceless.
And Michael Bacon! This guy has been in games forever (since the ’90s) but regardless of his experience, his stuff looks amazing. He’s worked on the first two Saints Rows, some of the Duke Nukem games way back in the Playstation and Playstation 2 era, among so many others. He worked on nearly every EverQuest 2 expansion, which is a lot of them. He’s one of our rocks, extraordinarily experienced, and is one of the reasons why our game looks the way it does.
And that’s just three of our guys. I could go into it with the rest of the group, but suffice it to say, the team has been around the block, and I think what we’ve shown to our players continues to prove that out."
They seem to have the important parts covered, even the big one for an MMO, server and network architecture experience.
What they are upset about is the CEO has no prior MMORPG development experience yet. If EA was building another MMORPG they wouldnt say a god dam thing. The CEO is a Business guy first and an MMORPG hobbyist. 2 very good aspects to have in a CEO even if he cannot write the code, at least he can take business decisions and manage that aspects of the business.
The problem with the negative crowd is no matter what they would just come up with some other pile of shit to support their negative outlook instead of leaving the forums alone and letting people make up their own minds.
The funny thing is they can take Richard Garroit who created UO and other MMORPGS. He created SOTA and it is in terrible shape. This is an experienced developer and the game ended up like utter crap.
Unless we use kickstarters today we will not get another MMORPG for a long time. No AAA studio or hell a mid level studio is going to take a chance on creating another MMORPG game when today MOBAs are the way to go when it comes to Profit Margins. Today's businesses especially MMORPG Businesses are Publicy traded companies which put the stockholders making money before any one of us MMORPG Gamers/Customers being happy. So we will continue with a stagnate genera unless we attach ourselves and take a little risk with games like Ashes. For me who makes ok money $80 is not a lot to throw at a game and if there are enough people that help out 2 or 3 of these MMORPGS that are kickstarter based can be successful.
O and BTW Ashes has a lot more than a TECH DEMO. They have a Alpha client that a small select group can play. They have the same setup as Pantheon which is another crowdfuned MMORPG that is worth people taking a Risk on. No one is asking you to take a Risk on.
ESO and SWTOR "apparently" manage to have pretty high sub stats, though.
If they managed as well as they wanted, they wouldn't have dropped the required sub to play.
This is the thing about subs, after the game releases the number of players decays over time, instead of growing. Gets to the point they will take a decision on the business model.
The conclusion is simple, it's getting rid of sub to get more people playing the game, F2P with optional subs/cash shops proven itself as the most successful business model to date for MMO's.
I would go as far as say that MMO's like ESO, SWTOR, Aion and so forth possibly wouldn't be here today if they had not dropped the required subscription to play model. They were facing a constant decay of player population under the sub model.
When it comes to make your MMO attractive to the consumer, you as Sub-based can't compete with how well the B2P and F2P do perform, hence it's extremely harder for you to keep your player base from decay over time.
They already said this game is staying P2P. SO keep wishing. F2P and B2P are bad models and only done because the investments on WOW clones do not make any money. So they have to use P2W tactics and get you to spend money in a cash shop for the stuff you want. No its a shitty model.
Wait. Now people are agreeing with me about the lack of experience in MMORPG game design?! LOL
I simply go by what they're saying....
"We have 14 people total, across a wide range of disciplines. Our Technical Director, Jason Crawford was deeply involved in the backends of EverQuest II, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next, and was a principal coder on KillSwitch over at SCEA (again working on network and server architecture). He’s got over ten years of experience working on MMO frameworks, and he’s one of a handful of people in this world that has his particular set of skills.
Our Lead Designer, Jeffrey Bard really is a bard of sorts, a full package guy, and has been involved in nearly every aspect of MMO production. Beyond design, he’s done customer support, QA, international operations and has been part of startups previously. He got into the MMO industry in 2003 at SOE and quickly rose through the ranks of leadership – that means he’s been knee deep in MMOs for over 14 years! Because of the breadth of his experience I don’t think there are too many people who have his perspective and understanding of all the pieces that make up an MMO. His contribution to this team has been priceless.
And Michael Bacon! This guy has been in games forever (since the ’90s) but regardless of his experience, his stuff looks amazing. He’s worked on the first two Saints Rows, some of the Duke Nukem games way back in the Playstation and Playstation 2 era, among so many others. He worked on nearly every EverQuest 2 expansion, which is a lot of them. He’s one of our rocks, extraordinarily experienced, and is one of the reasons why our game looks the way it does.
And that’s just three of our guys. I could go into it with the rest of the group, but suffice it to say, the team has been around the block, and I think what we’ve shown to our players continues to prove that out."
They seem to have the important parts covered, even the big one for an MMO, server and network architecture experience.
What they are upset about is the CEO has no prior MMORPG development experience yet. If EA was building another MMORPG they wouldnt say a god dam thing. The CEO is a Business guy first and an MMORPG hobbyist. 2 very good aspects to have in a CEO even if he cannot write the code, at least he can take business decisions and manage that aspects of the business.
The problem with the negative crowd is no matter what they would just come up with some other pile of shit to support their negative outlook instead of leaving the forums alone and letting people make up their own minds.
The funny thing is they can take Richard Garroit who created UO and other MMORPGS. He created SOTA and it is in terrible shape. This is an experienced developer and the game ended up like utter crap.
Unless we use kickstarters today we will not get another MMORPG for a long time. No AAA studio or hell a mid level studio is going to take a chance on creating another MMORPG game when today MOBAs are the way to go when it comes to Profit Margins. Today's businesses especially MMORPG Businesses are Publicy traded companies which put the stockholders making money before any one of us MMORPG Gamers/Customers being happy. So we will continue with a stagnate genera unless we attach ourselves and take a little risk with games like Ashes. For me who makes ok money $80 is not a lot to throw at a game and if there are enough people that help out 2 or 3 of these MMORPGS that are kickstarter based can be successful.
O and BTW Ashes has a lot more than a TECH DEMO. They have a Alpha client that a small select group can play. They have the same setup as Pantheon which is another crowdfuned MMORPG that is worth people taking a Risk on. No one is asking you to take a Risk on.
Speaking of Pantheon, I don't think that their CEO has a game background, either.
EA as a company has obviously proven it can ship games so the experience of the CEO is less relevant. EA also doesn't ask for crowdfunding.
Intrepid studios has produced a wordpress website and a video with UE4 store assets. The experience of the top executive is therefore much more relevant especially if he is asking the general public to fund his idea.
The SOTA example shows that even an experienced top exec can have a very difficult time building a crowdfunded MMO. The rational response to this is that someone with way less experience will have an even harder time.
The SOE experience they cite is dubious at best. EQ2 is ancient, EQN was a big failure, and PS2 is not an MMORPG and has not been very successful.
2 Guys with 10 years working on average to bad games for a failed studio should not inspire much confidence.
Its not like these guys left good companies to work with Steven Sharif, they were just people looking for a new job and he happened to be hiring. I have a very hard time believing that Sharif will be able to recruit top talent due to his lack of experience and MLM background.
They already said this game is staying P2P. SO keep wishing. F2P and B2P are bad models and only done because the investments on WOW clones do not make any money. So they have to use P2W tactics and get you to spend money in a cash shop for the stuff you want. No its a shitty model.
You can call B2P and F2P of bad models because your opinion is as such. You can't can't call them bad business models, being those the most successful models for MMO's.
The facts are those really. And the fact we can't deny is the majority of the SUB MMO's couldn't manage to keep their sub business model and had to go B2P/F2P.
As far as experience, remember, it is harder to teach an old dog new tricks. Many of us are looking for new tricks. DAOC and EQ devs had little MMO experience before they built great products.
As far as experience, remember, it is harder to teach an old dog new tricks. Many of us are looking for new tricks. DAOC and EQ devs had little MMO experience before they built great products.
They also never asked the general public to assume risk on their projects.
Yes a small company can have a success, but there are also tons of small companies who tried to make an MMO and failed big time. When a KS project fails or releases garbage it actually makes the entire genre look bad since tons of people lose faith and money. Its not like an investor making a bet on a new company in order to profit.
Yes a small company can have a success, but there are also tons of small companies who tried to make an MMO and failed big time.
Even for big publishers that have studios with hundreds of employees working on the MMO, go through years and years and many dozens of millions (if not +100) to pull off MMO's as this...
How can people expect a team of 14 people to do the same?
And then people get salty at the result like they ever stood a chance to do that much, with a fraction of the resources, and in less time!
Yes a small company can have a success, but there are also tons of small companies who tried to make an MMO and failed big time.
Even for big publishers that have studios with hundreds of employees working on the MMO, go through years and years and many dozens of millions (if not +100) to pull off MMO's as this...
How can people expect a team of 14 people to do the same?
And then people get salty at the result like they ever stood a chance to do that much, with a fraction of the resources, and in less time!
Like... Seriously?!
This is the biggest problem I see with most kickstarter MMOs at present, they almost all have small teams. WHich doesn't mean they can't put out a game with decent gameplay. It means to me they're going to struggle on the quantity/quality of content. Adding a sub to that dilemma just adds to the problem. Granted this is probably why most of them focus on PVP
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Yep, for example Conan Exiles had 13 months and a budget of 4.5 million with a highly experienced studio. AoC is like 100x the scope with way less experience and not much more time.
The 30M budget was stated but it is not confirmed raised or in the bank. How many investors will actually make a bet on Mr. Sharif and is he willing or even able to fund the entire thing himself?
It's simply the biggest reason I did not back neither Ashes of Creation, neither Chronicles of Elyria.
It's simply not realistic. Small teams, low budgets, wanting to do more and better than MMO's on the industry, yet with a small fraction of the resources (and time!) that those took to make on the first place.
This is all set to be yet another bumpy ride through another Indie developer on a constant struggle trying to create one MMO.
Only area i need to see and doesn't matter if labeled a pro or Con and that is a game developer wants a free ticket with no risk using our money.
That sends up a red flag ,so it sends me off in a different direction,i don't pay people i don't know to build their games.
I think it's pretty obvious he's put in his own money so far and a couple of million certainly isn't enough to make something. I have major problems with the overall project, but I don't think saying no risk using our money is right or fair... at all really.
This is the same reason why I'm actually looking at Pantheon lately. They are doing something done before, but not in the exact same way. Known variables are a lot easier to solve for than unknown ones.
I mean their biggest issue is going to be able to handle all those players in the same area fighting each other. I mean they show buildings blowing up and siege equipment. Have we seen anyone be able to make something that can handle a few hundred people all in the same area with buildings blowing up, effects, etc without it becoming a slideshow or crashing the server?
I heard from the last stream that they are going to do background coding to solve that issue, but what does that mean exactly? Who's we? I mean they might have someone that is revolutionary and can solve something that AAA titles haven't been able to with 100s of devs working on it. But there's a lot for people to be skeptical about and looking at what they want to accomplish, well - they have a hell of a challenge before them.
And of course people already think this is a big success because it funded so quickly even through the threshold was incredibly low and only accounts for ~3% of the necessary budget as stated by the top executive himself.
In these development discussion threads complicated scenarios get distilled down and oversimplified missing points and resulting in erroneous conclusions.
You mean like comparing a voxel game that was basically minecraft when it started to a game that doesn't exist yet that is promising things we have yet to see possible in an MMORPG?
And of course people already think this is a big success because it funded so quickly even through the threshold was incredibly low and only accounts for ~3% of the necessary budget as stated by the top executive himself.
I think he said somewhere that the Kickstarter is really just a give back to the fans to let them 'buy in' to the game. He is going to self fund the project with the help of investor friends I believe for the majority of the development cost.
I think he said somewhere that the Kickstarter is really just a give back to the fans to let them 'buy in' to the game. He is going to self fund the project with the help of investor friends I believe for the majority of the development cost.
And if that were true you would think he would have secured that funding before going to the public.
I highly doubt that these 'friends' would invest millions in him without the KS. He absolutely needs to show public support for the project since he has zero experience in games/software management.
This is where the MLM experience comes in. Make something that doesn't exist look amazing. We will see if marketing alone is enough to secure funding and make an MMO.
Yes a small company can have a success, but there are also tons of small companies who tried to make an MMO and failed big time.
Even for big publishers that have studios with hundreds of employees working on the MMO, go through years and years and many dozens of millions (if not +100) to pull off MMO's as this...
How can people expect a team of 14 people to do the same?
And then people get salty at the result like they ever stood a chance to do that much, with a fraction of the resources, and in less time!
Like... Seriously?!
Ascent: The Space game are a MMORPG made by ONE guy, sure It dosent have top notch graphics but It has crapload of features and very much playable.
Comments
This is the thing about subs, after the game releases the number of players decays over time, instead of growing. Gets to the point they will take a decision on the business model.
The conclusion is simple, it's getting rid of sub to get more people playing the game, F2P with optional subs/cash shops proven itself as the most successful business model to date for MMO's.
I would go as far as say that MMO's like ESO, SWTOR, Aion and so forth possibly wouldn't be here today if they had not dropped the required subscription to play model. They were facing a constant decay of player population under the sub model.
When it comes to make your MMO attractive to the consumer, you as Sub-based can't compete with how well the B2P and F2P do perform, hence it's extremely harder for you to keep your player base from decay over time.
That could be a tricky thing. Pathfinder Online technically delivered something.
Now I am in no way saying that Ashes or Steven is a Ryan Dancey. I'm just saying some companies have pushed out utter trash to fulfill that obligation.
I think that the game design is sound. Based on the interviews done to date it sounds like they have some manner of design doc, so they aren't just shooting from the hip. Also, they apparently have a whiteboard where they are mapping stuff out. So there is some manner of planning going on which says they've made a game before.
Also, the programmers they DO have right now appear to have a great deal of experience in programming (like 10 years or so), so that's above average for the industry, plus they worked on MMORPGs which is more than what most game developers have, experience-wise. So I would hope that they have an idea of how to architect a base framework that isn't going to create massive inter-dependencies that are going to ultimately cripple development and could send the project back to square one. I'd HOPE that with a decade of experience they've at least SEEN competent people do that and have an understanding of how those base layers need to be constructed to create something that is flexible and resilient to change.
So, no, I don't think they have a lack of experience. However, I don't know what experience they do or don't have.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
I simply go by what they're saying....
"We have 14 people total, across a wide range of disciplines. Our Technical Director, Jason Crawford was deeply involved in the backends of EverQuest II, Planetside 2, and EverQuest Next, and was a principal coder on KillSwitch over at SCEA (again working on network and server architecture). He’s got over ten years of experience working on MMO frameworks, and he’s one of a handful of people in this world that has his particular set of skills.
Our Lead Designer, Jeffrey Bard really is a bard of sorts, a full package guy, and has been involved in nearly every aspect of MMO production. Beyond design, he’s done customer support, QA, international operations and has been part of startups previously. He got into the MMO industry in 2003 at SOE and quickly rose through the ranks of leadership – that means he’s been knee deep in MMOs for over 14 years! Because of the breadth of his experience I don’t think there are too many people who have his perspective and understanding of all the pieces that make up an MMO. His contribution to this team has been priceless.
And Michael Bacon! This guy has been in games forever (since the ’90s) but regardless of his experience, his stuff looks amazing. He’s worked on the first two Saints Rows, some of the Duke Nukem games way back in the Playstation and Playstation 2 era, among so many others. He worked on nearly every EverQuest 2 expansion, which is a lot of them. He’s one of our rocks, extraordinarily experienced, and is one of the reasons why our game looks the way it does.
And that’s just three of our guys. I could go into it with the rest of the group, but suffice it to say, the team has been around the block, and I think what we’ve shown to our players continues to prove that out."
They seem to have the important parts covered, even the big one for an MMO, server and network architecture experience.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Indies shouldn't be the ones developing this type of MMO's, they are by default long, hard and expensive to make. It's the not something that a studio with a dozen people can handle.
For me, it's a matter of time until the reality check of what it takes to make an MMO like that and the reality of delays and/or the need for more money sinks in.
And it is why I didn't back it.
What they are upset about is the CEO has no prior MMORPG development experience yet. If EA was building another MMORPG they wouldnt say a god dam thing. The CEO is a Business guy first and an MMORPG hobbyist. 2 very good aspects to have in a CEO even if he cannot write the code, at least he can take business decisions and manage that aspects of the business.
The problem with the negative crowd is no matter what they would just come up with some other pile of shit to support their negative outlook instead of leaving the forums alone and letting people make up their own minds.
The funny thing is they can take Richard Garroit who created UO and other MMORPGS. He created SOTA and it is in terrible shape. This is an experienced developer and the game ended up like utter crap.
Unless we use kickstarters today we will not get another MMORPG for a long time. No AAA studio or hell a mid level studio is going to take a chance on creating another MMORPG game when today MOBAs are the way to go when it comes to Profit Margins. Today's businesses especially MMORPG Businesses are Publicy traded companies which put the stockholders making money before any one of us MMORPG Gamers/Customers being happy. So we will continue with a stagnate genera unless we attach ourselves and take a little risk with games like Ashes. For me who makes ok money $80 is not a lot to throw at a game and if there are enough people that help out 2 or 3 of these MMORPGS that are kickstarter based can be successful.
O and BTW Ashes has a lot more than a TECH DEMO. They have a Alpha client that a small select group can play. They have the same setup as Pantheon which is another crowdfuned MMORPG that is worth people taking a Risk on. No one is asking you to take a Risk on.
They already said this game is staying P2P. SO keep wishing. F2P and B2P are bad models and only done because the investments on WOW clones do not make any money. So they have to use P2W tactics and get you to spend money in a cash shop for the stuff you want. No its a shitty model.
Speaking of Pantheon, I don't think that their CEO has a game background, either.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
Intrepid studios has produced a wordpress website and a video with UE4 store assets. The experience of the top executive is therefore much more relevant especially if he is asking the general public to fund his idea.
The SOTA example shows that even an experienced top exec can have a very difficult time building a crowdfunded MMO. The rational response to this is that someone with way less experience will have an even harder time.
The SOE experience they cite is dubious at best. EQ2 is ancient, EQN was a big failure, and PS2 is not an MMORPG and has not been very successful.
2 Guys with 10 years working on average to bad games for a failed studio should not inspire much confidence.
Its not like these guys left good companies to work with Steven Sharif, they were just people looking for a new job and he happened to be hiring. I have a very hard time believing that Sharif will be able to recruit top talent due to his lack of experience and MLM background.
You can't can't call them bad business models, being those the most successful models for MMO's.
The facts are those really. And the fact we can't deny is the majority of the SUB MMO's couldn't manage to keep their sub business model and had to go B2P/F2P.
Nanulak
Yes a small company can have a success, but there are also tons of small companies who tried to make an MMO and failed big time. When a KS project fails or releases garbage it actually makes the entire genre look bad since tons of people lose faith and money. Its not like an investor making a bet on a new company in order to profit.
How can people expect a team of 14 people to do the same?
And then people get salty at the result like they ever stood a chance to do that much, with a fraction of the resources, and in less time!
Like... Seriously?!
This is the biggest problem I see with most kickstarter MMOs at present, they almost all have small teams. WHich doesn't mean they can't put out a game with decent gameplay. It means to me they're going to struggle on the quantity/quality of content. Adding a sub to that dilemma just adds to the problem. Granted this is probably why most of them focus on PVP
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The 30M budget was stated but it is not confirmed raised or in the bank. How many investors will actually make a bet on Mr. Sharif and is he willing or even able to fund the entire thing himself?
That sends up a red flag ,so it sends me off in a different direction,i don't pay people i don't know to build their games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
It's simply the biggest reason I did not back neither Ashes of Creation, neither Chronicles of Elyria.
It's simply not realistic. Small teams, low budgets, wanting to do more and better than MMO's on the industry, yet with a small fraction of the resources (and time!) that those took to make on the first place.
This is all set to be yet another bumpy ride through another Indie developer on a constant struggle trying to create one MMO.
I think it's pretty obvious he's put in his own money so far and a couple of million certainly isn't enough to make something. I have major problems with the overall project, but I don't think saying no risk using our money is right or fair... at all really.
This is the same reason why I'm actually looking at Pantheon lately. They are doing something done before, but not in the exact same way. Known variables are a lot easier to solve for than unknown ones.
I mean their biggest issue is going to be able to handle all those players in the same area fighting each other. I mean they show buildings blowing up and siege equipment. Have we seen anyone be able to make something that can handle a few hundred people all in the same area with buildings blowing up, effects, etc without it becoming a slideshow or crashing the server?
I heard from the last stream that they are going to do background coding to solve that issue, but what does that mean exactly? Who's we? I mean they might have someone that is revolutionary and can solve something that AAA titles haven't been able to with 100s of devs working on it. But there's a lot for people to be skeptical about and looking at what they want to accomplish, well - they have a hell of a challenge before them.
You mean like comparing a voxel game that was basically minecraft when it started to a game that doesn't exist yet that is promising things we have yet to see possible in an MMORPG?
I think he said somewhere that the Kickstarter is really just a give back to the fans to let them 'buy in' to the game. He is going to self fund the project with the help of investor friends I believe for the majority of the development cost.
I highly doubt that these 'friends' would invest millions in him without the KS. He absolutely needs to show public support for the project since he has zero experience in games/software management.
This is where the MLM experience comes in. Make something that doesn't exist look amazing. We will see if marketing alone is enough to secure funding and make an MMO.
Ascent: The Space game are a MMORPG made by ONE guy, sure It dosent have top notch graphics but It has crapload of features and very much playable.
http://www.thespacegame.com/