I can't wait to see what they will bring in these months to come, It's good they provided some screenshots to keep us all entertained :).

Lets see what these months show of CoS.

Originally posted by mike470

Okay, let's hope people read this thread before they post:

This is BEFORE the graphics revamp.  These graphics will look nothing alike in eight months, the devs of CoS just decided to work ont he gameplay before they worked on the graphics.  The graphics revamp will be completed in eight months (give or take a few).  These are just place holder graphics for while they work on the gameplay aspects....these will not be the permanent graphics.

The screens look nice now, just wait until after the graphics revamp

Remember Vanguard said the same thing in closed testing years before release. Didn't happen.

It does look like an interesting game though.

Originally posted by ZDPhoenix

Originally posted by mike470

Okay, let's hope people read this thread before they post:

This is BEFORE the graphics revamp.  These graphics will look nothing alike in eight months, the devs of CoS just decided to work ont he gameplay before they worked on the graphics.  The graphics revamp will be completed in eight months (give or take a few).  These are just place holder graphics for while they work on the gameplay aspects....these will not be the permanent graphics.

The screens look nice now, just wait until after the graphics revamp

 

Remember Vanguard said the same thing in closed testing years before release. Didn't happen.

It does look like an interesting game though.

Well the dev team just hugely expanded their art team (some interns, others not).  I honestly think they're serious about adding new grapgics - they have stated several times the current graphics are only placeholders.

In the next 8 or so months we'll see.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Old graphics...new graphics....If I had a dollar from everytime a developer promised they were going to work on something later.....I would be a very rich man.

Assume what you see is what you get.  Maybe they will surprise us and actually improve the graphics, but the chances of that happening are slim.

On that note, the devs are on the right track, gameplay is far more important than the graphic look.

Even if they  do not deliver the updated graphics, then at least we would get completed gameplay with all its features.  But It's not like they are going to release anytime soon so... 

The completed graphics probably won't be all that amazing, but hopefully they will be decent.

My complaint has nothing to do with the graphics but with the fact that their artists can't draw. I'm glad these are just teaser screens released well in advance of the game. That means they have plenty of time to hire artists capable of rendering human figures. Preferably one that knows what a female breast and an ass look like. Women get tired of playing hideously deformed avatars simply because some dweeb in a low budget art department has never had a date with a real female.

A few facts about these screenshots:

1) These are not new, in fact, they are the oldest shots around and we did not send them to MMORPG.

2) We had to release a few screenshots in order to get listed on MMORPG.com, it's their rule.  We wanted to get GAMEPLAY feedback during early development, this was the price we were willing to pay.

3) As we have stated, these are screenshots from the Prototype world, NOT the game.

4) The character you see in some of these shots (that we did NOT send to MMORPG) is a placeholder character and will NOT be in the game, trust me.  It was made by a game designer, not an artist.  For the first two years of work on the game there were no artists working on the game, just programmers and designers.  We are BARELY getting started on the art and have recently hired some actual artists who are starting to revamp art.

5) There is no official date on when the real art will be finished or shown.

6) We understand that some players will judge us early on based on looking at this prototype art without reading (posts like this).  However, we feel that if we make a game that is great to play, once we get to Beta and Release word will spread.  In order to make that great game play, we spent two years in the design phase, and are now releasing a lot of information on the game to get player feedback in order to make it even better. 

Jatar

Citadel of Sorcery Dev Team Member.

I'm tremendously reassured about the art. I still have concerns about the social lives of the poor developers but oh well. So long as they emerge from the basements every few days to clear away the pizza cartons, that should suffice. Now if they can find a few good Sims meshers someplace to make sure the toons have good hair days all will be well. Who worries about trivial issues like game mechanics?

Originally posted by Raingirl

I'm tremendously reassured about the art. I still have concerns about the social lives of the poor developers but oh well. So long as they emerge from the basements every few days to clear away the pizza cartons, that should suffice. Now if they can find a few good Sims meshers someplace to make sure the toons have good hair days all will be well. Who worries about trivial issues like game mechanics?

In the end you will not need to worry about the social lives of our team (many of which are married with kids), or what anyone on the team thinks a body should look like.  The reason is simple, we plan to let players adjust their entire character into the shape and look that they want (including hair style as much as possible).  So if you see some player running around in the game with a body you think is strange... well, that's their fault, not ours. 

However, this full character adjustment system is something that comes after Alpha in our schedule, so early on we developers will be stuck with a small set of hand made characters.  Players will not.