Since the announcement that Ojom would be ceasing its services for Face of Mankind at the end of November, FoM players have been wonder what the future holds for their game.  Now, the Face of Mankind staff has posted a letter to the community saying that they will take on the responsibility of running the game, detailing the changes that are necessary to do this, and hinting at their plans for the future.

Dear FoM Community,

many of you are waiting to hear word from us about the future of Face of Mankind. Since we have been informed about the cease of service by Ojom at the end of november, we had to do a lot of thinking and planning. The main questions were whether we would be able to continue hosting the game by ourselves and if we would be willing to take the financial risks involved.

We have spent a lot of efforts, diligence, money and even health into the project, and we are not willing to give it up that easily. So we decided to go on, with a few changes, but at least go on.

In order to be able to host the game on our own, we need to simplify everything a lot. During the last weeks we've come up with a concept for this, which I'd like to present to you roughly. By simplification I mean the game, the server structure and the portal.

The Portal

The portal will be reduced to the minimum necessary to present the game to the public.

We will no longer host an official forum or irc channel. We want to give that into the hands of you, the community. As the developer we will present all necessary information through the portal or the game. Also, we are going to implement a biweekly development blog with all kinds of information that would be interesting to you, both official and internal. That is to give you an insight view of how hard it is to create and manage an MMORPG.

The Game

The changes to the game will be rather dramatic. But rest assured, these are necessary changes for FoM to survive and hopefully grow later on.

First of, the accounts. There will be two kinds of accounts, a free one and a premium account. Free accounts have no time limitation (so they can be used forever) but limited features. With such account your character can't evolve beyond a certain point. With premium accounts all limitations are lifted. They will cost a yet to be defined monthly fee. We are also considering the option to purchase premium game time to remove the necessity of having to "subscribe".

Next, there's the game mechanics. During the last years with FoM we could gather a lot of experience and let's say "maturity". We've tested a few very revolutionary features, if we remember the first versions of the mission system. After a few more iterations, we have to admit that some things just won't work, at least not yet. Some have worked out, others rather not. We took a very honest view at all of the features in FoM and decided to do the following changes. I'm going to list them here as notes only.

Read more here.

If this works out, it could be one of the biggest success stories in the MMO world so far. A developer stepping forward to continue a game rarely happens and I hope the developers push in the right direction. FoM was one of the best MMORPGs I've ever played in beta, however the changing of major game elements really pushed players away from the game. I hope Duplex learned a lesson from this and give us the old feel of the game back.

The changed are shocking to say the least, but interesting for sure. It actualy might work out fine and for the better of the game. However I have one big consern regarding the changes. The main aspect of the game is the socialising, politics and teamwork. 

However there is gonna be a LONG time between the release of Rebirth. As far as I know it is one man working on it and the release of Milestone two is not even finished right now and that was a year ago. HOWEVER, as he now has full control again he might actualy work faster, maybe even hire someone and ask for donations.

I have mixed feelings about these changes. There are needed though else he could not run the game....I hope for the best.

In other news, FoM is still around....

...

wow...

Then again so is Neocron 2..

interesting to note:

- The mission system as we know it will be no more, instead there are going to be tasks with waypoints that can be defined by clans on a world
- Other world AI (birds, rats, civilian NPC's, server controlled vehicles etc) has to be simplified, the chat AI will be removed and NPC responses will be streamlined

in other words the parts of an mmo that make it seem alive are the hardest parts to implement.  It's easy to make a game where players just run around killing each other, it's hard to make a Living World.

 Also, we are going to implement a biweekly development blog with all kinds of information that would be interesting to you, both official and internal. That is to give you an insight view of how hard it is to create and manage an MMORPG.

Maybe this should be required reading for any mmog dev team.

Originally posted by Sramota

In other news, FoM is still around....

...

wow...

Then again so is Neocron 2..

I was thinking the same thing....  

Just end the suffering already and pull the plug.