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Divergence : Divergence Gets Listed
Posted Apr 16, 2008 by Keith Cross
Divergence, a sci-fi MMO from Stainglass Llama Studios that looks to become THE definitive sci-fi MMO has been added to the MMORPG.com Gamelist.
"Divergence is a science fiction game hoping to make it's mark in a genre bloated and dominated by fantasy-based mmorpgs, with dozens of innovative and controversial features.
"Stainglass Llama is a small software development company with a single mission;
"To create THE definitive go-to game for all scifi mmo enthusiasts, built around what the players want to see in their game. We believe it's about time a development company actually listen to the subscribers, and we come to see that the deed is done.
"At Stainglass Llama, our developers have a strong relationship with our potential customers and propose the question, "What features do you want to see in a new scifi mmorpg?" and go from there." - Official website.
Find out more about Divergence here.
Again, you mean... right?
Were you around the first time? I think you were...
Welcome back SGL!
Yeah I am sick of fantasy MMOs as well. The features I look for in MMOs are:
1. Meaningful PVP (a la UO and Eve).
2. PVP that is integrated into the game and not just tacked on at the end.
3. Skill based combat.
4. Good graphics.
5. High fun factor.
As consumer, if I find a game that has the potential of offering these items I am more than happy to throw down my $50.
Whew there are so many MMOs in development. This one sounds pretty good. Hopefully they can get a good product out. The more sci-fi choices out there the better.
They plan to make the "perfect" sci-fi mmo and yet among the first screens they release have a char with a sword..really nice start. And for a company without a serious background in mmo to claim they wanna make the "ultimate",without pin pointing any details, mmo usually means they have no ideea of what they are doing and just wanna get some money...no thank you
Link doesn't work for me
Huh? The link doesn't work for me either and I can't find anything through searching either.
Here is their website: http://www.divergence-online.com/IM/IM141/portal.php
You should also read this: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/269/view/forums/post/1331006#1331006
Which is over a year old, and despite what the poster implied, there is a game forming up nicely, so no, you shouldn't read that. lol
Traits I look for in a game:
You cannot build a game to be both PvE centric and PvP centric. They need to decide which they are after and announce it early so the 50% of the market that is not interested in the game style they are developing can move on to tracking other games.
Remember SWG?
Its not a game..... Its a great idea for a game though.
I will check back and see how thier take on character use (PvP,PvE) gives us more of a feel for the game.
I found the selection of races to be a bit shallow and not very creative for a sci-fi game. I look forward to how the other races shape up.
Will not happen. Just taking up forum space another game could be using.
My, my, my, still around...
"Divergence is a modular-based MMO using the C4 engine for most graphical work and front-end and PX Interactives MMO server middleware to handle multiplayer and network traffic. As I may have boasted in earlier threads, we use several groups for 3d content including Liquid Development; responsible for 3d assets for big name games such as Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Guild Wars and City of Heroes. Other groups include Rocketbox Libraries for our armor and clothing as well as animations for said characters and even 3DRT for the cheap stuff."
Also add in FaceGen for the character generator.
Nothing to see here, just purchased or borrowed assets thrown together.
As Keogh mentioned before of posting a link.
Read those messages of mine and compare with what they have now. A game that is supposely all done, but just lacks the money...
Its all spin.
Does anybody remember when they first came out they were going to liscense BigWorld and within the first few months announced they had all the coding done, they were just waiting for the funding?
In November I got a chance to talk with Ethan on the phone actually, at the time he was looking at Hero.
Now it appears they're using C4 + PX.
lol nice link.
Why is the links always borked on this site? Cold fusion to complex? Hehehe Come'on! It's a link!
Huray another sub-standard mmo!
Oh, I think people should read it.
You'll really like this blast from the past: www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/92392
We're not going to have to have the same discussion two years later, are we?
Oh, and here's a recent one where they tried to get money by charging people for the privilege of seeing patch notes lol: www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/269/view/forums/thread/169867
Qoute/ "The contributor-only area will be getting a dose of new content. This will include a regular update on where exactly we're at with the game from a user friendly standpoint. Think of it as early access to patch notes. Also Contributor status has been hard-coded to the $50 it should have been. Occasionally an error was reported where paying only 10$ got you in. Anyone who paid $10 and got in has been grandfathered in (meaning you don't have to pay more)." /end quote.
Seriously dude, I don't know what investment you have in Divergence, but it ain't paying off any time soon. These people were removed in the first place because they kept trying to pass of other peoples artwork and such as their own. I doubt anything has changed since then, especially in light of the aforementioned money attempt.
In fact here's the link to the entire old forum here, so people can see the whole thing themselves: www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/269/view/forums/forum/800
Mabye they can try to bribe their players into giving them money! Woo sounds fun..
I'm a developer and I know things...PAY ME MONEY! (yeah, their that poor)
I use to think that VG is the worst possible story of a game during production and beta. I do not want to go to the SWG debacle. Too much fuel already burning there.
VG hurt my faith in games. I have been playing games from EQ to SWG DAoC to CoX GW WoW ... Not all are perfect but they all delivered. VG is the first one that failed to deliver, totally, during the beta days and launch. So much talking about it here, and it flopped hard upon launch.
Then comes GnH, that was a fiasco. Accidentally I walked into the DF forum and here. Suddenly I feel alarmed. What is wrong with the game industries? Or, was I once too gullible and just plain lucky not running into these developing games all over the decades.
Now I have to think thrice before buying any games.
No investment at all.
I simply want to play the game they're putting together. Maybe that fact blinds me to all these negative 'facts' that people find.
To be brutally honest, I wish a big-name company would take the ideas that SGL have and develop the game. SOE would be my choice. However, since that isn't a likely outcome, I'll carry on levelling the playing field and encourage the people newly discovering this game to decide for themselves with current information.
Very little chance a big company will come up with a full list of features like that. That is b/c they usually start with feasibility studies as well as profit-cost analysis. Either way, they will not try to put up a list so staggering that they will not be able to deliver at reasonable cost, within a decade of production.
No point putting up such a proposal, it will cost you your job.
From their own site from 2006:
http://www.divergence-online.com/IM/IM141/viewtopic.php?p=3468
MMORPG.com delisted the game due to taking screenshots from a program costing hundreds of thousands used in major motion pictures. EnVue5 or something like that... the reasoning behind it was "In order to get listed so I don't have to wait 2-3 years", claiming they had dozens of screens and videos in the BigWorld Engine.
Sorry Ethan, you have alot to prove.
I encourage this also. Good thing the "money for patch notes" stupidity was merely last month.
They, SGL, deceived the community and then lay blame to the staff here for the problems that arose.
And even if my posts were a year ago, it is still valid to this day.
Although I like sticking up for Indies, not this group.
Past history cannot be dismissed.
Just to prove what i said yesterday, that this game is going to be crap and they don't about what actually people want from a sci-fi mmo, jut look at their investment pdf ( www.divergence-online.com/SGL_Executive_Summary_2007.pdf )
Look at the middle of the 2nd page:
"Project revenue will be generated by:
1. The initial $34.95 cost of the game.
2. A standard $14.95 subscription fee per month per account.
3. Ingame currency sales.
4. Ingame billboard advertisement from investing companies and residuals."
Seem that they wont be happy if people only pay the monthly fee....
So basically this is another "pay me money now and I might deliver something later" game?
It seems to be a popular concept these days, Vanguard had it, POTBS still has it and Divergence seems to want it.
Too bad I am one of the dinosaurs that purchases only a reasonably working product.
or something.
Just go to their website and see what's what - don't put your faith in the naysayers and their fancy colours :)
Oh, yeah. I can see the mounds of success awaiting these guys. No wonder they can't find investors, even the dumbest investor not even in the industry would see "FAIL" written all over that subscription plan.
Let me bring up some old items and let us see how they apply today shall we?
Remember this statement from Ethan?
"Well we have dozens of ingame screenshots and several videos in fact, but are locked into an NDA with Microforte, developer of Bigworld until as they say "the check clears." The probem is that we have as of yet no idea how long that is going to take. It could be 5 minutes from now, it could be months."
- EthanC Aug, 2006
So the "check" never cleared did it? Or perhaps there was no "check" to begin with, just the right to use BigWorld for development evaulation purposes only. Do please answer that one.
And where are all of those screenshots and videos, eh? Oh right, the NDA is still in effect...
Next, how about those so-called ingame screenshots or concept art?
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/91868
"The posted screens are from another engine that we're evaluating which happens to allow public displays however I am not at liberty to discuss anything further.
I think they look damn good but realize that in order to get that level of photorealism, one would need around two thousands dollars worth of PC, and the graphics cranked to what we like to call "Holy Hell".
Clip plane maxed.
Everything Maxed for that matter.
However, they do look damn good, and at the time [given there were no player character models] the computer taking them with a 256 radeon x1600 was getting a nice framerate."
- EthanC Aug, 2006
"Concept Art"
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/082006/8339.jpg
"Original Art"
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/solutions/images/cerro_sha_lnk.jpg
(original picture not available, but this thumbnail still shows the original. Just a mirror flip...)
"In order to qualify for an mmorpg.com listing you have to jump through several hoops, and one of those is provide 5 ingame screenshots.
...
And therefore, we got together with the few licensed programs we have such as Vue5 and 3ds Max and used the only engine that we had on hand which we were dabbling with in phase 1 before anyone had introduced Bigworld to us. It was extremely primitive being a mostly homemade conglomeration but held alot of promise, which is why phase1 people are still sworn to silence and will remain that way until further notice."
- EthanC Aug, 2006
So instead other people's artwork were used to provide screenshots, oh wait, they got caught, they meant concept art that they rendered...
Now for those screenshots that are currently on MMORPG.Com, they are from the Multiverse Engine.
So just a brief recap,
- They claimed to have the money to purchase BigWorld, but that deal never went through...
- They had an investor, but still searching for investors, using either Multiverse ($0) or C4 ($200) as their engine of choice...
- They provided screenshots/concept art of their own, but wasn't their own...
A dozen or so big-name industry moguls flew from across the US and some across the world for no other purpose than to stand in front of a room full of broke guys and girls in their 20s and say, "Please get out there and develop because you're the only hope for mmorpgs in the future." They call it IMGDC.
I think a lot of people are forgetting that SGL is the definition of Indie, which is a handful of young no-name guys trying to make something out of literally nothing and any progress so far towards that goal, ANY, should merit a modicum of respect or at least encouragement, don't you think?
That's just my opinion.
When it's done by any less-than-honest means? No.
Being an "Indie developer" does not qualify you for instant respect or kudos.
FYI: Mourning and DnL were both "Indie" games.
DNL... yeah I remember DNL.
In truth the only thing that I see them as "guilty" of would be saying how they had this big great game and it's 14km by 14km and so on and so forth.
From what I can recall the game was just bug city but if you think DnL made one red cent off of the money people paid to play it you're dreaming. I doubt they ever made back what it cost to develop.
But then again certain death awaits anyone stupid enough to try and make a fantasy game right now. indie or major developer alike. Yes even WAR will fall prey you mark my words to the girth of WOW.
But I digress.
I can definately see your point about "less than honest" approaches. The problem is that who knows if that's the case. The media manager at sgl hasn't worked there since, oh, since he was fired over the ordeal over a year and a half ago and the guy at mmorpg.com who recieved them isn't with mmorpg.com anymore either.
/shrug
I'm sure if the game ever gets to the point where there are a few thousand people playing and complaining on the forums every day about this being overpowered or that crashing to desktop like with any mmo that these will be much bigger problems than any screenshot mishap.
At least those are the problems that I look forward to hearing about.