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Player-Run MMORPG By Former Ultima Online Devs Finding Kickstarter Success
An anonymous reader writes: Shards Online has returned to Kickstarter with a refocused plan and a promise to match pledges dollar-for-dollar up to their goal. With just a week gone by, they have already reached 75% of their goal. Project Lead Derek Brinkmann says, "If Ultima Online and Neverwinter Nights had a love child, Shards Online would be the result. By combining the persistent virtual world of Ultima Online with the freedom of community run servers and the ability to act as a dungeonmaster in Neverwinter Nights, we are creating a paradise for roleplayers where you are no longer constrained by the rules handed to you by the development team." The team now has their sights set on their stretch goals like more animations for roleplayers and an extra game world to be released at Alpha.
Our NWN Persistent World, Avlis is really showing its age, but unfortunately there really hasn't been a spiritual successor to Neverwinter Nights' PW system. Once this thing is up, it will hopefully bring us into this decade.
--Orleron
Game companies and developers are there own worst enemies these days. It's hard to find anything that doesn't have horrible flaws put in so the game company can charge you to avoid them. At least with player run worlds the people playing will have a connection and ownership interest in seeing that their experience stays a good one.
It looks cool... but so did the last 20 kickstarter games I thought looked cool and either never got finished, or the developers totally changed what the game was about or removed the feature I thought would be cool just weeks before it was released.
I'm sorry, but I don't think a single game I've doled out money for on kickstarter has turned out in a such a way that I was later glad I'd spent it. I really hope this game lives up to what they're promising but I have a feeling that what we'll really end up with is another neverwinter clone.
Everything is a boring clone of some other game. so lacking the ability to raise capital through the usual investment channels this one has decided to fleece the kickstarter crowd.
But how will this game solve the issues of breasts in public creating milk for the ice cream lines at Burning Man?
Help me frequent contributor Bennett Haselton. You're my only hope!
this should be okay.
Many people have had this idea before, so it is just the execution that matters.
If I'm correct, this is Little Big Planet meets MMORPGs on player run servers. This idea generally always starts with,"Imagine if everyone could make their own levels and people could go from server to server with the same character." But then the realization that hackers could do what they want with your player data when you entered the server makes a game designer then go,"Okay, so let everyone design the rules on their own server then since hackers will do it if we don't". The cool part is if you allow monetization of player made Objects which sell in a global store across all servers. The owner of the object created and the game company would split revenue. There's some details about how things could be hacked to spawn free items, but a little thought could quell the hackers on this front.
The coolest part is that you could have games which are like Skyrim, but there would be live gamemaster(s) there. They could then have you interact with NPCs with live dialogue or do things a computer game alone wouldn't be able to reason. People could be in serious demand of a game where they are playing with a live game master because there might be continual end game after being capped with equipment.
Between charging for objects people made in Blender and uploaded to the game development team to be put on the market, and people charging for monthly access to their server, the creative minds could make enough for rent on this game. And once creative minds developing new worlds are making revenue, there's no stopping how in depth the games get. This in turn draws more players and developers in too.
For the past year I've been saying the future of video games is video games with quality map makers like Little Big Planet, but sharing revenue with the creators of the new content.
God spoke to me
Though I've seen too many burnings from Kickstarter to put anything towards this until there's a solid product ready to be distributed and people outside the PR channels saying it's good. It'd be nice to see a more modernized NWN 1 type game get released.
When are we going to have action-focussed mmo's?
That you for posting this story! I was unaware of this project.
The fact that this MMO will have in-world non-instanced Player Housing, ala SWG but even better, PLUS realistic non-restricted skill development are enough for me to get excited about this and invest in it. Being able to run my own server without waiting years for a community emulated one cinches it!
I would love it if they could eventually also add the capability for relatively unlimited underground adventuring, perhaps in layers? And Digging, ala Minecraft.
I would also love it if they could find a way to allow non-Steam use, at least for private servers. Otherwise I will have to always have my separate Steam-box running in order to play the game, which uses the same monitor as my main system, limiting my ability for normal use as MMO's are something I usually run in addition to other things at the same time and on the same system. I also run my non-steam games from within VMware VMs which Steam will NOT allow... I will Never install Steam or any Extreme DRM on my main system as I do development and business work on it too and won't tolerate the kernel hacking and virtual device restricting behavior they are known for as well as random destructive behavior that could cause me to have to reinstall the OS and rebuild the whole environment again, causing me unacceptable down-time.
Otherwise, best of luck on this project! I can see people using this MMO software for many years to come. :)
Few hours in the headline and one of the game devs is already modded up to talk about how great his game is.
Don't take is personal, but last time I checked /. was still about "news that matters". The whole post here stink free advertising.
Elok
Just remember, the same devs that made Ultima Online did a good job help ruining it too.