The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Ill keep an eye on it but i think there are other gaems i want to back on kickstarter before this..
The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Unless they fine-tune procedural generation for landscape, settlements and NPC's. It's a matter of scaling up and ironing out the rough edges (quite literally).
Once you have that in place, you can set up AI for NPC's and let them loose, which I guess is what they're planning to do, based on the description in kickstarter.
Its still a lofty goal. But essentially it's going to be Game of Life adapted to a 3D environment.
Better to be crazy, provided you know what sane is...
The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Ill keep an eye on it but i think there are other gaems i want to back on kickstarter before this..
the thing is according to them, the engine of the game builds the terrain and content itself
I wish them all the very best. I've watched CoS on and off for a few years now. If they can get even half way to their main goals, it will move the industry forwards. Lets hope the Assassins don't get them. ^^
It has a couple of videos that talk about how the world is generated. One of them is kinda eye-glassy tech stuff and the other one by Dutch is more nutshell.
It has a couple of videos that talk about how the world is generated. One of them is kinda eye-glassy tech stuff and the other one by Dutch is more nutshell.
The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Ill keep an eye on it but i think there are other gaems i want to back on kickstarter before this..
Hey Caldrin, I hear you, and understand your concern. In fact, this is one of several concerns players have voiced, and we would like to give you a real answer. I am going to post a new article on MMORPG shortly that will address this issue, and more. We hope to alleviate your concerns. I hope you will read it .
World and exploration: Our world is so massive that no player will ever see it all, it is the full size of earth. Twenty years after this game releases, there will still be places no person has ever seen. So get ready to go exploring!
This is what sold me.
I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt this is possible, if they do pull it off expect 90% of the game to be the same repeated textures and land formations. Honestly though if this is gonna end up just another wow clone, I think they should just stop now, because the market needs innovation not more of the same garbage being spewed out over and over.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
World and exploration: Our world is so massive that no player will ever see it all, it is the full size of earth. Twenty years after this game releases, there will still be places no person has ever seen. So get ready to go exploring!
This is what sold me.
I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt this is possible, if they do pull it off expect 90% of the game to be the same repeated textures and land formations. Honestly though if this is gonna end up just another wow clone, I think they should just stop now, because the market needs innovation not more of the same garbage being spewed out over and over.
You should really read up on this before comparing us to WoW or a clone of any MMORPG. We changed nearly everything about the MMORPG in Citadel of Sorcery. We're so far from a clone as hardly be in the same universe. I encourage you to read up on the game at our web site. Our whole objective was to be different, and offer new and better game play.
World and exploration: Our world is so massive that no player will ever see it all, it is the full size of earth. Twenty years after this game releases, there will still be places no person has ever seen. So get ready to go exploring!
This is what sold me.
I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt this is possible, if they do pull it off expect 90% of the game to be the same repeated textures and land formations. Honestly though if this is gonna end up just another wow clone, I think they should just stop now, because the market needs innovation not more of the same garbage being spewed out over and over.
You should really read up on this before comparing us to WoW or a clone of any MMORPG. We changed nearly everything about the MMORPG in Citadel of Sorcery. We're so far from a clone as hardly be in the same universe. I encourage you to read up on the game at our web site. Our whole objective was to be different, and offer new and better game play.
From what I see this is their problem, they are not a clone and break all the WoW rules making them kind of an anomoly to publishers. Hard to get someone to give you money if you are totally new in how you do things. Makes sense why they have to prove it if you look at it this way.
World and exploration: Our world is so massive that no player will ever see it all, it is the full size of earth. Twenty years after this game releases, there will still be places no person has ever seen. So get ready to go exploring!
This is what sold me.
I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt this is possible, if they do pull it off expect 90% of the game to be the same repeated textures and land formations. Honestly though if this is gonna end up just another wow clone, I think they should just stop now, because the market needs innovation not more of the same garbage being spewed out over and over.
You should really read up on this before comparing us to WoW or a clone of any MMORPG. We changed nearly everything about the MMORPG in Citadel of Sorcery. We're so far from a clone as hardly be in the same universe. I encourage you to read up on the game at our web site. Our whole objective was to be different, and offer new and better game play.
From what I see this is their problem, they are not a clone and break all the WoW rules making them kind of an anomoly to publishers. Hard to get someone to give you money if you are totally new in how you do things. Makes sense why they have to prove it if you look at it this way.
Exactly. Given that most investors (and some publishers, to a lesser extent) know rather little about games, the mystic phrase "its just like World of Warcraft" tends to light up dollar signs in their eyes, and they then throw truck loads of money at you. ^^
A game that takes a new approach, especially in light of the current economic times we live in, is going to have a much more difficult time. Which is why all of you that have been moaning about "WoW clones" should check this out. ^^
I have recently discovered this project. It is something I would like to play. I like exploring, and this game could give us the most exciting exploring experience in a videogame.
I hope they can finish succesfully their game. And we could enjoy it in the future.
I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.
When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.
The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Ill keep an eye on it but i think there are other gaems i want to back on kickstarter before this..
the thing is according to them, the engine of the game builds the terrain and content itself
The world is done; Just one vast jigsaw. They are populating a number of teritories for the first chapter; Other areas are truly Wild with generated ruins and content sadly the Wild Lands mean death travel how far you believe you canbut ultimately death awaits.
The territories and key storyline area are portalled to from the Citadel , so you will be within a number of kilometers of your objective ; With a mystery to uncover......
If I remember the keep/ruin set has a couple of hundred pieces that the game engine can generate a location from , it then populates an area and each NPC be it person/monster gets on with it's life. The game engine then adds your story into the lives of these objects and away you go.
Lots of info at the official site ; The code they have written is pretty impressive. They customise the key areas and the rest of the world is living and managed by the game. And that includes the players in it.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.
When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.
The design is complete, so not sure where you get your info but rather than spend maybe a year on Design they have spent 8 and also written all the tools to acheive the design. They don't believe they have any show stoppers now other than time.
No other MMO can do what their engine does which is why it's hard to believe ; So unless they are lying to peoples faces I think they are a good bet. And like many of us here who have played most MMOs they have created something very special.
Worth investing in as the genre is nearly dead on it's back with respect to innovation.
It is like "Rogue" in a real size Pen and Paper World and that is worth investing in.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.
When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.
The design is complete, so not sure where you get your info but rather than spend maybe a year on Design they have spent 8 and also written all the tools to acheive the design. They don't believe they have any show stoppers now other than time.
No other MMO can do what their engine does which is why it's hard to believe ; So unless they are lying to peoples faces I think they are a good bet. And like many of us here who have played most MMOs they have created something very special.
Worth investing in as the genre is nearly dead on it's back with respect to innovation.
It is like "Rogue" in a real size Pen and Paper World and that is worth investing in.
No other game period can do what their engine does. THAT is why it's hard to believe. The only thing that even comes vaguely close to it is Dwarf Fortress - a game that absolutely murders a computer's CPU with even 200 entities wandering around, without anything even close to the complexity of what this game claims to offer.
If you'd been keeping up with their dev blogs, you'd have noticed that they've been approaching publishers for over a year and a half now - and so far they "haven't found the right fit" which is IndustriSpeek for "no one's buying our pitch". Again, the game SOUNDS like it's amazing and revolutionary, it SOUNDS like it's what many of us have been wanting. What it doesn't sound like is something that's both technically and financially feasible. The former, maybe - I'm sure you could figure out a clustering scheme that would allow you to throw enough hardware at what they're trying to do to make it run without hitting that lovely threshhold where so much of your resources are consumed with intrasystem sync and communication that you start getting a loss for every new machine added to the cluster. Making it profitable is another matter entirely.
I do agree that the industry is nearly dead with respect to innovation. I just have a really, really hard time buying this particular pitch. Knowing the history, and having followed the game, the move to a KickStarter feels less like "We want to go it alone and we're looking for more funding to boost development into alpha" and more like "We're running out of money because what we're proposing sounds so unfeasible that no one will invest in us".
I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.
When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.
The design is complete, so not sure where you get your info but rather than spend maybe a year on Design they have spent 8 and also written all the tools to acheive the design. They don't believe they have any show stoppers now other than time.
No other MMO can do what their engine does which is why it's hard to believe ; So unless they are lying to peoples faces I think they are a good bet. And like many of us here who have played most MMOs they have created something very special.
Worth investing in as the genre is nearly dead on it's back with respect to innovation.
It is like "Rogue" in a real size Pen and Paper World and that is worth investing in.
No other game period can do what their engine does. THAT is why it's hard to believe. The only thing that even comes vaguely close to it is Dwarf Fortress - a game that absolutely murders a computer's CPU with even 200 entities wandering around, without anything even close to the complexity of what this game claims to offer.
If you'd been keeping up with their dev blogs, you'd have noticed that they've been approaching publishers for over a year and a half now - and so far they "haven't found the right fit" which is IndustriSpeek for "no one's buying our pitch". Again, the game SOUNDS like it's amazing and revolutionary, it SOUNDS like it's what many of us have been wanting. What it doesn't sound like is something that's both technically and financially feasible. The former, maybe - I'm sure you could figure out a clustering scheme that would allow you to throw enough hardware at what they're trying to do to make it run without hitting that lovely threshhold where so much of your resources are consumed with intrasystem sync and communication that you start getting a loss for every new machine added to the cluster. Making it profitable is another matter entirely.
I do agree that the industry is nearly dead with respect to innovation. I just have a really, really hard time buying this particular pitch. Knowing the history, and having followed the game, the move to a KickStarter feels less like "We want to go it alone and we're looking for more funding to boost development into alpha" and more like "We're running out of money because what we're proposing sounds so unfeasible that no one will invest in us".
Skeptics are the reason why the MMO genre is stuck in the mud. As long as players complain about clones and then don' t back the games that attempt to push the genre forward, all you will get are clones. And just so you know, we have only approached three publishers, one wanted it, but also wanted to see a couple more things, in the end they really didn't have the bandwidth in funds, one wanted to see more and the third wanted the game. We spent several months working with that publisher, and then the bottom fell out of Europe, and since this was a European publisher, they had no bank support. We have not gone to more publishers since that first round when we found that some of them wanted to see certain things that were still in development, so we decided to get those parts to Alpha before going to more publishers.
Now, as to the technology not working, I'm sorry, but you just don't know our engine. In your example, you stated that even 200 entities walking around would 'murder' the frame rate, perhaps you are right, in their engine. In ours, we currently have over 700 in a small test area. Running the client on a mid range home style system, with a GF285 in it, we are maintaining 55 fps, and we haven't even bothered to optimize the code completely yet since things are still in development. I'm not sure why people are such skeptics, we have done every single thing we said we would so far, but I guess people feel a need to blame us for what other companies have done.
You may not want to back our game, but until you actually have proof it doesn't work, why tell people about things you don't actually know? May I ask, how many game engines have you coded?
As usual every single game some ppl first thing they say is new or old does not matter is always "WoW Clone" even games came b4 still "WoW Clones" i guess even some will say Tetris is "WoW Clone" lol
Either way ive been following this game as well like some of these ppl said and all i can say is i wish u guys good luck with the kickstarter and the project it self and hopefully we will see u guys launching this game in the near future
Skeptics are the reason why the MMO genre is stuck in the mud. As long as players complain about clones and then don' t back the games that attempt to push the genre forward, all you will get are clones. And just so you know, we have only approached three publishers, one wanted it, but also wanted to see a couple more things, in the end they really didn't have the bandwidth in funds, one wanted to see more and the third wanted the game. We spent several months working with that publisher, and then the bottom fell out of Europe, and since this was a European publisher, they had no bank support. We have not gone to more publishers since that first round when we found that some of them wanted to see certain things that were still in development, so we decided to get those parts to Alpha before going to more publishers.
Now, as to the technology not working, I'm sorry, but you just don't know our engine. In your example, you stated that even 200 entities walking around would 'murder' the frame rate, perhaps you are right, in their engine. In ours, we currently have over 700 in a small test area. Running the client on a mid range home style system, with a GF285 in it, we are maintaining 55 fps, and we haven't even bothered to optimize the code completely yet since things are still in development. I'm not sure why people are such skeptics, we have done every single thing we said we would so far, but I guess people feel a need to blame us for what other companies have done.
You may not want to back our game, but until you actually have proof it doesn't work, why tell people about things you don't actually know? May I ask, how many game engines have you coded?
No. The reason the MMO genre is stuck in the MUD isn't due to skepticism. It's due to publishers and development houses having a known formula that works. It's the same reason the FPS genre hasn't evolved significantly since Gears of War introduced cover based shooting. It's the same reason the RTS genre hasn't evolved significantly since Warcraft III introduced hero units. It's the same reason that the 4X scene hasn't evolved significantly since Master of Orion 2.
The reason, sadly, that we are stuck with clones, is that every time someone tries to "push the genre forward", they do it by doing one of two things:
Introducing a gimmick, without making substantial change. ToR did it, Rift did it, TSW did it, AoC did it, even GW2 did it although they managed to conceal that fact better than most.
or
Trying to change things so drastically that the game flat out fails because there's virtually no frame of reference and the game appeals to, at most, an extremely small niche.
And no, I don't know your engine. So far no one knows your engine except you. What I do know is that you, assuming what you're promising is true, have managed to create an engine that utilizes actual artificial intelligence, supports a constantly evolving world that involves emergent gameplay down to the level of flora and fauna at the biome level, individually tailors quests to every unique character, and involves character progression that's classless with 1800-something planned unique skills but that somehow won't require combat to be the most generic, bland combat ever as a result of the total inability to balance encounters. That last one alone sets off the BS meter of anyone who's ever been involved in MMO development, unless, of course, you're also going to claim that your engine can redesign NPCs adaptively on the fly to be appropriate challenges for the players.
And I said DF murders the CPU, not the framerate. Technically it does the latter, but only because the game is waiting on CPU cycles to render all the changes. My point was that, while DF is not a magnificent example of design, it involves significant pathfinding, AI, and a constantly changing world - and it hammers the crap out of most any desktop system you can build once you get a large enough population. And it's nowhere near as complex as what you're designing. And my concern there is not desktop systems - if your game is rendering and processing everything client side you've already failed horribly, because your game will be absolutely rife with client side hacking. My assumption is that you're going to be managing all of this through clustering on the server side.
How many have I coded? None. I have worked with Unreal Engine 2.5 and 3 pretty extensively, with Unity, with ForgeLight, and very briefly with that trainwreck known as Gamebryo. What you're trying to do is ambitious on a scale that will scare off virtually any large-scale investors you might approach without significantly more than you've said you have available to show right now.
I fully believe that the engine you're building is theoretically viable in a full scale production MMO environment - and as I said, I'm entirely willing to pitch in significantly to funding. But certainly not until you've got a lot more to show than you do right now, sorry. You mentioned you've approached three - apologies, your dev blogs give the impression you've talked to quite a few more. Even at three, your reception has been exactly what I'd expect with what you've put on offer so far. Two "show us more", and one that wanted it but wasn't financially solvent enough to handle the European economic issues, which means they'd likely have failed you as a publisher in any case.
So I guess what I'm saying here is - you need more material up and viewable. You need more specifics regarding your game structure and plans. I realize part of the reason you're doing a kickstarter is to try and get enough funding to get to that point, but even videos of actual, unedited in-game play would go a lot to bolster the confidence of a lot of us that actually have MMO industry experience.
Edit - And I understand you probably don't like reading this, but this should be a sort of a reality check for you. You're ten days into your Kickstarter and haven't even hit 1/10th of your goal. You NEED to release more info than what you have now if you want to come anywhere near $700k.
Comments
You stay sassy!
humm sounds pretty good but..
The world is the actualy size of earth? Now i have messed around with the outerra engnie that has a full model of earth running and there is no way in hell they would be able to fill somthing like that up with content..
Ill keep an eye on it but i think there are other gaems i want to back on kickstarter before this..
Unless they fine-tune procedural generation for landscape, settlements and NPC's. It's a matter of scaling up and ironing out the rough edges (quite literally).
Once you have that in place, you can set up AI for NPC's and let them loose, which I guess is what they're planning to do, based on the description in kickstarter.
Its still a lofty goal. But essentially it's going to be Game of Life adapted to a 3D environment.
Better to be crazy, provided you know what sane is...
the thing is according to them, the engine of the game builds the terrain and content itself
It looks like they put up a YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/thecitadelofsorcery?feature=results_main
It has a couple of videos that talk about how the world is generated. One of them is kinda eye-glassy tech stuff and the other one by Dutch is more nutshell.
http://www.youtube.com/user/thecitadelofsorcery?feature=results_main
It will be interesting to see what happens next. If they can get funded, it will no doubt help their development.
Hey Caldrin, I hear you, and understand your concern. In fact, this is one of several concerns players have voiced, and we would like to give you a real answer. I am going to post a new article on MMORPG shortly that will address this issue, and more. We hope to alleviate your concerns. I hope you will read it .
I'll believe it when I see it, I doubt this is possible, if they do pull it off expect 90% of the game to be the same repeated textures and land formations. Honestly though if this is gonna end up just another wow clone, I think they should just stop now, because the market needs innovation not more of the same garbage being spewed out over and over.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
You should really read up on this before comparing us to WoW or a clone of any MMORPG. We changed nearly everything about the MMORPG in Citadel of Sorcery. We're so far from a clone as hardly be in the same universe. I encourage you to read up on the game at our web site. Our whole objective was to be different, and offer new and better game play.
From what I see this is their problem, they are not a clone and break all the WoW rules making them kind of an anomoly to publishers. Hard to get someone to give you money if you are totally new in how you do things. Makes sense why they have to prove it if you look at it this way.
Exactly. Given that most investors (and some publishers, to a lesser extent) know rather little about games, the mystic phrase "its just like World of Warcraft" tends to light up dollar signs in their eyes, and they then throw truck loads of money at you. ^^
A game that takes a new approach, especially in light of the current economic times we live in, is going to have a much more difficult time. Which is why all of you that have been moaning about "WoW clones" should check this out. ^^
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmomagic/citadel-of-sorcery-mmorpg
http://http://www.youtube.com/user/thecitadelofsorcery?feature=results_main
bump
I have recently discovered this project. It is something I would like to play. I like exploring, and this game could give us the most exciting exploring experience in a videogame.
I hope they can finish succesfully their game. And we could enjoy it in the future.
Good luck!!!
I've been watching this game for a long time. The pitch is great, the concept is wonderful, and the ambition of the project is to be applauded.
It's unfortunate that a lot of people, like myself, will have serious difficulty convincing themselves to invest in it. The reason for this is because the feature set reads like scope creep and unrealistic design got together and had a baby. The last MMO project that even approached being this ambitious was Dragon Empires - which crashed and burned when they discovered that available server technology couldn't actually handle the game with anywhere near as many players as the game was projected to draw.
When you guys have some more technical details available, and when you've fully fleshed out how a lot of the mechanics are going to work, and when you have a product that has enough substance, I'll be right there. Until then, the level of ambition of this project screams STAY AWAY.
The world is done; Just one vast jigsaw. They are populating a number of teritories for the first chapter; Other areas are truly Wild with generated ruins and content sadly the Wild Lands mean death travel how far you believe you canbut ultimately death awaits.
The territories and key storyline area are portalled to from the Citadel , so you will be within a number of kilometers of your objective ; With a mystery to uncover......
If I remember the keep/ruin set has a couple of hundred pieces that the game engine can generate a location from , it then populates an area and each NPC be it person/monster gets on with it's life. The game engine then adds your story into the lives of these objects and away you go.
Lots of info at the official site ; The code they have written is pretty impressive. They customise the key areas and the rest of the world is living and managed by the game. And that includes the players in it.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
The design is complete, so not sure where you get your info but rather than spend maybe a year on Design they have spent 8 and also written all the tools to acheive the design. They don't believe they have any show stoppers now other than time.
No other MMO can do what their engine does which is why it's hard to believe ; So unless they are lying to peoples faces I think they are a good bet. And like many of us here who have played most MMOs they have created something very special.
Worth investing in as the genre is nearly dead on it's back with respect to innovation.
It is like "Rogue" in a real size Pen and Paper World and that is worth investing in.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I won't part with hard earned money till I see game play, not just dev shot and editted video showing scenery and NPCs walking around.
True of any game, from major pub or indie.
No other game period can do what their engine does. THAT is why it's hard to believe. The only thing that even comes vaguely close to it is Dwarf Fortress - a game that absolutely murders a computer's CPU with even 200 entities wandering around, without anything even close to the complexity of what this game claims to offer.
If you'd been keeping up with their dev blogs, you'd have noticed that they've been approaching publishers for over a year and a half now - and so far they "haven't found the right fit" which is IndustriSpeek for "no one's buying our pitch". Again, the game SOUNDS like it's amazing and revolutionary, it SOUNDS like it's what many of us have been wanting. What it doesn't sound like is something that's both technically and financially feasible. The former, maybe - I'm sure you could figure out a clustering scheme that would allow you to throw enough hardware at what they're trying to do to make it run without hitting that lovely threshhold where so much of your resources are consumed with intrasystem sync and communication that you start getting a loss for every new machine added to the cluster. Making it profitable is another matter entirely.
I do agree that the industry is nearly dead with respect to innovation. I just have a really, really hard time buying this particular pitch. Knowing the history, and having followed the game, the move to a KickStarter feels less like "We want to go it alone and we're looking for more funding to boost development into alpha" and more like "We're running out of money because what we're proposing sounds so unfeasible that no one will invest in us".
Skeptics are the reason why the MMO genre is stuck in the mud. As long as players complain about clones and then don' t back the games that attempt to push the genre forward, all you will get are clones. And just so you know, we have only approached three publishers, one wanted it, but also wanted to see a couple more things, in the end they really didn't have the bandwidth in funds, one wanted to see more and the third wanted the game. We spent several months working with that publisher, and then the bottom fell out of Europe, and since this was a European publisher, they had no bank support. We have not gone to more publishers since that first round when we found that some of them wanted to see certain things that were still in development, so we decided to get those parts to Alpha before going to more publishers.
Now, as to the technology not working, I'm sorry, but you just don't know our engine. In your example, you stated that even 200 entities walking around would 'murder' the frame rate, perhaps you are right, in their engine. In ours, we currently have over 700 in a small test area. Running the client on a mid range home style system, with a GF285 in it, we are maintaining 55 fps, and we haven't even bothered to optimize the code completely yet since things are still in development. I'm not sure why people are such skeptics, we have done every single thing we said we would so far, but I guess people feel a need to blame us for what other companies have done.
You may not want to back our game, but until you actually have proof it doesn't work, why tell people about things you don't actually know? May I ask, how many game engines have you coded?
As usual every single game some ppl first thing they say is new or old does not matter is always "WoW Clone" even games came b4 still "WoW Clones" i guess even some will say Tetris is "WoW Clone" lol
Either way ive been following this game as well like some of these ppl said and all i can say is i wish u guys good luck with the kickstarter and the project it self and hopefully we will see u guys launching this game in the near future
No. The reason the MMO genre is stuck in the MUD isn't due to skepticism. It's due to publishers and development houses having a known formula that works. It's the same reason the FPS genre hasn't evolved significantly since Gears of War introduced cover based shooting. It's the same reason the RTS genre hasn't evolved significantly since Warcraft III introduced hero units. It's the same reason that the 4X scene hasn't evolved significantly since Master of Orion 2.
The reason, sadly, that we are stuck with clones, is that every time someone tries to "push the genre forward", they do it by doing one of two things:
Introducing a gimmick, without making substantial change. ToR did it, Rift did it, TSW did it, AoC did it, even GW2 did it although they managed to conceal that fact better than most.
or
Trying to change things so drastically that the game flat out fails because there's virtually no frame of reference and the game appeals to, at most, an extremely small niche.
And no, I don't know your engine. So far no one knows your engine except you. What I do know is that you, assuming what you're promising is true, have managed to create an engine that utilizes actual artificial intelligence, supports a constantly evolving world that involves emergent gameplay down to the level of flora and fauna at the biome level, individually tailors quests to every unique character, and involves character progression that's classless with 1800-something planned unique skills but that somehow won't require combat to be the most generic, bland combat ever as a result of the total inability to balance encounters. That last one alone sets off the BS meter of anyone who's ever been involved in MMO development, unless, of course, you're also going to claim that your engine can redesign NPCs adaptively on the fly to be appropriate challenges for the players.
And I said DF murders the CPU, not the framerate. Technically it does the latter, but only because the game is waiting on CPU cycles to render all the changes. My point was that, while DF is not a magnificent example of design, it involves significant pathfinding, AI, and a constantly changing world - and it hammers the crap out of most any desktop system you can build once you get a large enough population. And it's nowhere near as complex as what you're designing. And my concern there is not desktop systems - if your game is rendering and processing everything client side you've already failed horribly, because your game will be absolutely rife with client side hacking. My assumption is that you're going to be managing all of this through clustering on the server side.
How many have I coded? None. I have worked with Unreal Engine 2.5 and 3 pretty extensively, with Unity, with ForgeLight, and very briefly with that trainwreck known as Gamebryo. What you're trying to do is ambitious on a scale that will scare off virtually any large-scale investors you might approach without significantly more than you've said you have available to show right now.
I fully believe that the engine you're building is theoretically viable in a full scale production MMO environment - and as I said, I'm entirely willing to pitch in significantly to funding. But certainly not until you've got a lot more to show than you do right now, sorry. You mentioned you've approached three - apologies, your dev blogs give the impression you've talked to quite a few more. Even at three, your reception has been exactly what I'd expect with what you've put on offer so far. Two "show us more", and one that wanted it but wasn't financially solvent enough to handle the European economic issues, which means they'd likely have failed you as a publisher in any case.
So I guess what I'm saying here is - you need more material up and viewable. You need more specifics regarding your game structure and plans. I realize part of the reason you're doing a kickstarter is to try and get enough funding to get to that point, but even videos of actual, unedited in-game play would go a lot to bolster the confidence of a lot of us that actually have MMO industry experience.
Edit - And I understand you probably don't like reading this, but this should be a sort of a reality check for you. You're ten days into your Kickstarter and haven't even hit 1/10th of your goal. You NEED to release more info than what you have now if you want to come anywhere near $700k.