Originally posted by tmr819

I have been watching this Kickstarter phenomenon with great interest (and plenty o' skepticism), and a few of these games are definitely on my radar, including Wasteland and Project: Eternity. Not these three games, though.

 

What I might actually contribute money to would be the development of a game along the lines of a GW1/WoW hybrid: a persistent-world MMO with instanced group content that was playable using EITHER players, heroes, or various combinations of both, i.e., 1 player + 4 heroes, 2 players + 3 heroes, 3 players + 2 heroes, or 4 players + 1 hero.

 

My biggest peeve with traditional/standard MMOs is that they pick an arbitrary number -- usually 5 -- and then insist that your player group MUST be this size to complete any and all dungeons in the game.

 

GW1 said "No, you can have player groups composed of however many players you want and without any class restrictions and then bring whatever NPCs you want to round out your group".

 

No more spamming LFG, no more begging for/bribing a healer or tank to join your party. You just play. Man, did I love that system. GW2, while a great game, took a big step BACKWARDS in this regard, unfortunately, in the way it opted for traditional LFG-only dungeons. :(

 

DDO offers something like this, but that game's NPC AI is TERRIBAD and the game itself is mediocre, imo. Whether Neverwinter can pull off this feature as successfully as GW1 did remains to be seen, but I do wish more MMOs would offer options like this for solo players and all player groups smaller than the sacrosanct FIVE. As I said, that would be an MMO Kickstarter I would be interested in investing in.

Project Eternity sounds like it's right up your street. I am not sure if you can do co-op in it though.

Also this seems timely:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/6754/On-MMOs-Going-Solo.html

Tbh, with dungeons in mmorpgs, I hope other players are needed to defeat the AI. other players are diverse enough to have the peculiar skills and options needed for a type of dungeon. Back in the days of PnP, it was awesome going into a dungeon with friends, especially when one of them stepped on a pit trap eg!

I had to take a second look at the Astronaut video, and yes, it does say the MMO is for the iPad. Are these guys for real?

It's hard to think of a worse format for an MMO when you think of all of the features we come to take for granted when playing MMOs on our PCs. I started to make a bulleted list of why it is such an awful idea to do an MMO on an iPad that it became clear that there was no need to do so. It is so self evident that it is hard to believe it didn't get laughed out of NASA.

lol

Suddenly had several memorable lines from the movie Aliens spring to mind. Pick your best. :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/quotes

I don't know why this site doesn't have an Illyriad review.Its free to play with layers of complexities and robably the best community you will encounter in a MMO.The game is connstantly evolving with a new release every 2 months or so.I 've been playing this game for 18 months and believe me its the best.

Finally, i nwould be happy if you sign up with my referral link :) 

http://illyriad.com/?58252

pathfinder has the best chance out of those three imo.  pathfinder is being made by some ex eve online devs.  they are backed by paizo publishing and have a plan to start the game small and work up alot like eve online has done.  the game is going to be completely run by the players as far as game systems.  I will definitely be supporting the game when it gets released and hopefully it will live up to the potential eventually. 

there may never be a sandbox game that is mainstream like wow, but i am so sick of the wow model  I dont care, just make a good game that is fun and allows us to have a world we can live in and I will play it.

Originally posted by sumo0

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

Report back later on how good of an investment those were.

 

Here's the problem with MMOs, they are very expensive to make and take a lot of time to build. Yet, everyone thinks they can make one.

 

I'd rather see a company start small, with some little single player iPhone games and build themselves up with progressively bigger and more ambitious projects until they have the experience, the capital, and the infrastructure to build an MMO.

One could also say that these small indie MMO's are a breath of fresh air in this jungle of AAA themepark MMO's that can't deliver.

For the price of very little money yoiu casn support developers , I like this a lot and to the naysayers games can be well designed on very little budget. Some great oldschool games being developed via kickstarter. I for one will enjoy playing these and the indie releases more than the triple A trash out at the moment.

Originally posted by hardicon

pathfinder has the best chance out of those three imo.  pathfinder is being made by some ex eve online devs.  they are backed by paizo publishing and have a plan to start the game small and work up alot like eve online has done.  the game is going to be completely run by the players as far as game systems.  I will definitely be supporting the game when it gets released and hopefully it will live up to the potential eventually. 

I'm actually dubious on pathfinder mainly because I don't think they're indie enough - they certainly got enough money from kickstarter to make an indie MMO, but I think they want to make a mainstream MMO on indie money.

Now as for an actual indie MMO on kickstarter (and I posted this on the previous indie thread because I didn't see this one (so apologies for the duplicate post)) look at Project Gorgon

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1045484633/project-gorgon-an-indie-mmo-by-industry-veterans

1. Old school graphics (derived from Unity artshop)

2. EQ1 zones (no screwing around with a seemless world for an indie)

3. AC1 derived skill system (with some class-like options).

4. Both werewolf and cow polymorph possibilities.

5. Off the rails gameplay/shared dungeons/etc.

These guys are going for much less money than PO and I think are more likely to deliver because they're trying to make a true indie.

All that said, I wish PO the best - I think more smaller MMOs are better.  We'll see what happens.

Side note: Speaking of Indie games here's another cool one-> an MMORTS with robots who survived the apocalypse.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/psr/recyx-will-they-find-the-energy-needed?ref=live

Edit:  And more to the point - Pathfinder is a Tech Demo Kickstarter, not a playable game - so again I think Project Gorgon and Midguard are far, far more likely to see the light of day.

Originally posted by shadowmage

As a backer of the Astronaut MMO, I am regretting it. They are worse at communicating then most Developers. Still have not had word one on any of the extras they promised, just a lot of “I have something big to tell you guys next week!” and then no post for 2 Month+.

I agree. It seems like an interesting concept, but the kickstarter creator is terrible at communication, does exactly what you describe. And when he does send updates, all too often it's a bizarre, confusing, overly long ramble on space news completely unrelated to the game.

Originally posted by Uronksur

Originally posted by shadowmage

As a backer of the Astronaut MMO, I am regretting it. They are worse at communicating then most Developers. Still have not had word one on any of the extras they promised, just a lot of “I have something big to tell you guys next week!” and then no post for 2 Month+.

I agree. It seems like an interesting concept, but the kickstarter creator is terrible at communication, does exactly what you describe. And when he does send updates, all too often it's a bizarre, confusing, overly long ramble on space news completely unrelated to the game.

Please could you explain why as a backer you thought the iPad was the ideal format for this MMO (or any other MMO)?

Originally posted by adam_nox
Why no love for shadowrun online?  I don't know if the 3 mentioned are going to be true mmo's, and neither will Shadowrun, but surely it was more prominently funded than them and has a bigger IP.

Yes, that's the only one I backed. I thought of backing Pathfinder, even did for $1, but I pulled out because I couldn't bring myself to fund a demo.

My concern is that the massive success of the Double Fine Adventure on Kickstarter has attracted the wrong kind of attention.

I would suggest you read this article:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/316172,are-game-publishers-sneakily-trying-to-use-kickstarter.aspx?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Atomic+MPC+All+Articles+feed

From Australia's ATOMIC mag.

I have checked the quotes in the story myself (but you can follow the links)

What is says is this

One of the most stunning revelations comes in response to a question about whether publishers are looking at Kickstarter. Obsidian’s response (apparently written by Feargus Urquhart) is as follows (unfortunately the nature of Kickstarter's comments make specific post links impossible, but the thread can be found here)

We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter. I said to them "So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits" They said, "Yes"

If this is true, then Kickstarter could now be being used (and abused) by publishers in violation of Kickstarters own 'rules' and against the spirit of the idea.

I hope not.  But if MMOs have taught me one thing it would be that where something can be exploited... it will be.