MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently spoke with Timo Krahl, Creative Director at Reakktor Media Gmbh, the company making the sci-fi MMORPG, Black Prophecy.

MMORPG.com:	Can you give us some insight into how the game's development is going? What stage are you at now?
Timo Krahl:	Most of the game mechanics are finished - now it's mostly about polishing, balancing, and thinking about improvements. That's what the first closed beta test is for. We are very pleased, though, about the overall progress right now, especially since we had several obstacles along the way in the past, like the bankruptcy of our previous mother company, which slowed down the game's development.

Read the Update Interview.

I hope they give EVE some real competition. Looks promising though

sweet

Can't wait for this game, Looks very good,

lemme in already!

It's nice to see games coming out looking to compete directly with EVE.  It's good for everybody involved.  We need more sci fi mmo's, so I'm pretty excited about this one.  Especially the twitch based combat. 

Even though I usually turn away from F2P games and never look back; there isn't much out there for space sims and such, so I'm gonna have to check this one out.

Will you be able to pilot both Fighter-class vessels, as well as capitol ships, should you so desire? 

When I see my ideal space combat game, I think of the large battle at the end of Return of the Jedi...tons of capital ships going head to head and close range with fighters and bombers zipping about between them....I this scenario, I'd like for all vessels present to be controlled by actual players.

For me to look at this as a real competitor to EVE, it must have this degree of flexibility, as well as a robust economy system in place, and go ahead and add real exploration...If all you were able to do was dog-fight...that will get old fast, no matter how cool it is.

I am hopeful, but cautious in my anticipation of this game, and admittedly very ignorant of its expected features.

Originally posted by spankybus

Will you be able to pilot both Fighter-class vessels, as well as capitol ships, should you so desire? 

 

When I see my ideal space combat game, I think of the large battle at the end of Return of the Jedi...tons of capital ships going head to head and close range with fighters and bombers zipping about between them....I this scenario, I'd like for all vessels present to be controlled by actual players.

 

...If you could control capital ships, then everyone would want to, thus making them look like regular ships. 

"When everyone is super, nobody is."

Originally posted by Auzy

Originally posted by spankybus

Will you be able to pilot both Fighter-class vessels, as well as capitol ships, should you so desire? 

 

When I see my ideal space combat game, I think of the large battle at the end of Return of the Jedi...tons of capital ships going head to head and close range with fighters and bombers zipping about between them....I this scenario, I'd like for all vessels present to be controlled by actual players.

 

...If you could control capital ships, then everyone would want to, thus making them look like regular ships. 

"When everyone is super, nobody is."

lol if everyone wants to pilot a capital ship, then why make a fighter the only ship you can fly?

It's simply not true, man. Capital ships do not make you super, you just have a different role. After all, fighters and bombers decimated our fleet at Pear Harbor...the capital ships never even came close enough to the island to see it.

Some capital ships serve anti fighter roles, others try to destroy those anti-fighter boats, others try to kill the capital ships attacking the anti-fighter boats. Bombers are trying to kill all enemy capital ships, fighters are defending the bombers...this is how naval combat works...which is what all space combat seems to be based on.

That said, again, are players limited to fighter combat?

I have some serious doubts about that F2P model.

without money how can they upgrade the game in a future ?

slowly, or not at all.

In my optiimal game there would be capital ships and fighters etc, except the capital ships would have a hard time hitting the fighters because of their speed like how it works in EVE. Also I would really like to see a game where it takes a whole crew of players to fly a capital ship, like a player to man certain turrets and such, and players would have to be on board the capital ship so that they could launch in a fighter and battle. Pretty much the space battle from Battlestar Galactica need to be done by someone, they are very reminiscent of naval battles and seem to be very strategic.

I just hope its a real 3d style space combat.  No spiralling around to get to enemies above or below you.  I'm not an EvE player so I dont know how their combat  works, but Star Trek Online was so disapointing.  It has made me a little leary of all space battle MMO's in the future.

We could use these threads to make a new MMORPG.com drinking game. For every time EvE is mentioned in a BP or JG:E thread, drink a shot. I imagine, after the first page of replies, the posts will get a bit incomprehensible.. :P

All kidding aside, it's good to see news on this title and, being f2p, gives me one less excuse to not give it a go. Yay for more options.

Actually this is not that much in direct competition to EvE. This is twitch based combat as far as i know, so its more in direct competition to JG:E than EvE. Twitch based comabt usually appeals to another segment than the point'n'click combat of EvE.

And f2p gives me the shivers, tbh. The only f2p game that have worked for me is DDO, and that is be course it has a model that supports p2p as well as f2p, thus giving it completely different dynamics than other f2p games.

Such a shame about the f2p bit, was looking forward to seeing how this turned out after the delays of JG:E, now I just have to wait for it no matter how long it may take. What a dissappointment.

I wish it was P2P tho.. =D

Originally posted by mrw0lf

Such a shame about the f2p bit, was looking forward to seeing how this turned out after the delays of JG:E, now I just have to wait for it no matter how long it may take. What a dissappointment.

Were you not permitted to question them on their choice of payment model? Being one of the more contensious issues of the game it would have been nice to hear a reply on the poor decision, imo.

mmm quoted myself?

Well, it certainly looks interesting and the online gaming community could welcome anthor space simulation game. I can't help but wonder if this is an EvE clone?

To players of Neocron Reakktor is known as company that created rather nice and original game (at that time) and promissed tons of features + fixes after the launch.  Features rarely arrived, promisses were repeatadly broken. Because of incompetence and understuffing fixes, improvements and expanding were not happening fast enough to keep the population healthy and servers were bleeding players.

Bugs you learn to live with, but neverending lies and promisses leave ugly taste in your mouth.

As long it will be F2P it will never be a competition for EvE online. Never!

It will be like all previos f2p. The players with money got the win button by paying cash and that turns a lot of players off.

ROM works this way even DDO is slowly going aswell this way. Sad but true.