Crowfall

The latest ACE Q&A for January has been published called "Eyes on Design". In it Thomas Blair and Mark Halash talk to fans about all things design including topics such as methodology for class design, how progress in combat design is going, whether or not min-maxing will affect Races & Classes and what in the heck are "linked accounts" on the official site.

If you listen to the Crowfall developer streams, they reference Shadowbane regularly. That’s where Crowfall’s inception began. Looking at what Shadowbane was and what Crowfall plans to be, there are striking similarities between the two.

The Crowfall site has been updated with the second part of a two part series called "A Murder of Crows". In it, J. Todd Coleman chats about why his work on Shadowbane had "a tremendous vision I was very proud of".

The Crowfall site has been updated with a new article to introduce fans and the community to something called the Divine Sacrifice System that allows players to progress "without reliance on either quests or monsters". To do this, players will head out to collect "resources, items and relics" to sacrifice to the Gods for divine favor. "This idea dovetails perfectly into our lore".

Crowfall’s latest big patch released last week so I’ve had the chance to test the newly revamped harvesting mechanic that the devs so refer to as action harvesting. Vamped it is. Action harvesting adds two new, very unique additions to typical MMO harvest. By typical, I mostly refer to WoW, SWToR, and even MMO-lite games such as Ark: Survival Evolved.

Crowfall tantalizes us this week with their next major patch a day after they drop the most recent one. Pre-Alpha patch 5.3 went live Tuesday and Wednesday’s Q&A was about patch 5.4. In a move that surprised exactly no one, Crowfall has adopted the industry’s rotten golden goose: microtransaction. Yea, I said it and yea it tasted as bad as it sounds.

The latest Founders' Update has been published on the Crowfall site to provide folks with a bit more information about the forthcoming introduction of the game's premium currency. Called "Crowns", the currency will be available starting at $5 for 500 Crowns and discounts for larger purchases. These funds can be used in the in-game shop, with no item costing over $200. All items currently at the $200+ mark will be retired at the end of 2017.

I believe ArtCraft may have cracked how to bring a crowdfunded game to market. The Crowfall team’s knowledge of the business side of the development has led to an additional $6 million investment, which according to their funding tracker was roughly an additional 60% in funds. And while expanding the Crowfall team is great news, their announcement to use those funds for marketing is equally excellent.

The Crowfall Founder's Update for the week has been published that takes a look back at all that has been accomplished in 2017 as well as takes a peek ahead at what's in store in the future. In addition, ArtCraft announced that it has secured another round of investment funding to bring an additional $6M to the company to "expand our game content, cover all launch expenses and to have enough funds to drive a respectable marketing campaign at launch."

Last week’s Crowfall Q&A had Gordon Walton on and he talked about transitioning Crowfall from its crowdfunding stage to the next: marketing it for its release. Today, a week after that Q&A, ArtCraft released a founder’s update. This update lays down the details about the upcoming transition from crowdfunding the game to selling its preorders.

This week’s live Q&A had special guest Gordon Walton, co-founder of ArtCraft, on the stream to answer questions about the business side of Crowfall’s development. I’ll paraphrase the more interesting notes from the live stream since most questions aren’t all that interesting. But if you’re interested in jokes about EA loot boxes and a behind the scenes look at bug fixing, you can watch the video below.

It can’t be all good news all the time in the mire of MMO development. Crowfall is no different, especially given its crowdfunding roots. Yesterday, J. Todd Coleman and Gordon Walton announced to no one’s surprise that Crowfall would not release on their sort-of deadline at the end of this year. They instead moved that date back another year, hoping for a “soft launch” in 2018.

The Crowfall site has been updated with a note to Founders to inform them that the anticipated "soft launch" of the game, originally set for the end of 2017, is not going to happen. The letter speaks about how this has been a fantastic year of progress for Crowfall and that much has been accomplished. However, it is important to note that "progress isn't the same as done". With that in mind, the promise is to soft launch Crowfall as early in 2108 as possible.

The Crowfall test server has been updated with the inclusion of the Race / Class selection features including the newly added Elken Cleric -- "your murdeer can now pick up a hammer and shield and chuck it".

Crowfall’s biweekly updates are starting to show development towards it becoming a fulfilled, even if it is slow to those of us outside of development teams. Small details like UI visuals and character sheets are often overlooked quality of life improvements that make huge differences for players.