Earlier this week, Crowfall’s 'new' development studio Monumental posted some information about a new Dregs experience headed down the pipe. It has been clear that Crowfall has been fighting an uphill battle for a while now, but under Monumental, the fans expected to see some growth. With a new Dregs campaign announced last week, lets take a quick look back at what Crowfall has been up to since the acquisition.
Back in December, news broke that Monumental acquired, not only the ArtCraft team behind Crowfall, but the entire intellectual property as well. The President of ArtCraft Gordon Walton went on to praise Monumental CEO Monty Kerr, as he professed that the new development team aims to help Crowfall reach its full potential. Obviously, making tremendous changes to a live game takes time, and in the Year End Review that posted only days after the acquisition, the team pointed to an upcoming roadmap, and an expansion of the development team.
Nearly two months passed before the Executive Producer Update hit, which detailed some COVID related delays in communication, and also explained a willingness to shut the game down to further their development and then relaunch the game at a later time, but within that same breath, they also touted over 110,000 players that have “ongoing access” and they urge newcomers to check out the 10-day free trial if they are interested in the game.
“We appreciate those of you who play Crowfall and give us feedback on the new publishes tremendously. It would be easier on the team to close the game for several months and relaunch it later, but we take our commitment to provide the game to you seriously and absolutely want your feedback as we make additions and changes to the game. Well over 110,000 people have ongoing access to Crowfall, and anyone can do a 10-day free trial, so if you want to be part of the evolution of Crowfall we greatly appreciate your participation.”
-Gordon Walton, Executive Producer, Crowfall
The Dregs campaign, and several changes to it, were also teased during update, and now, just a few short weeks later, the team has released some details on the new Dregs experience, which is “coming soon”. The expansive post details what players can expect for the 7.7 campaign along with both upcoming campaigns in versions 7.8 and 7.9 as well. The long list of changes is meant to make the campaigns a little shorter and more exciting for players. Whether this will deliver on what players are looking for, is yet to be seen.
However, delivering on their promises appears to be the main focus of what Monumental has set out to do. Thomas Blair posted a lengthy list of changes planned for update 7.7, which aims to do what he claims ArtCraft had not done throughout their development – live up to their claims about Campaigns.
“As far back as the Kickstarter, a core brand aspect of Crowfall has always been “Campaigns you could win!”, and “Campaigns would always be different!” In fact, at one point we referred to the idea of Crowfall Campaigns as an “MMO experimentation machine”, where each Campaign would be vastly different from each other. Remember the claims of Campaigns with “No Elves”, “No metal”, or “Fresh Start”? Sadly, we haven’t lived up to any of those.”
-Thomas Blair, Lead Designer, Crowfall
The post proceeds to detail “knobs” that the team is tuning to make campaigns more enjoyable. While much of what we’ve seen in 2022 focus on the campaign aspects of Crowfall many are still awaiting a roadmap, which they hope will include other features on the docket the team plans to address. As a hardcore PvP, guild-vs-guild focused game, it makes sense that the end game Dregs campaign gets a lot of love, but the niche playstyle and difficulty to get into the campaigns for new players, is undoubtedly weighing on Monumental.
Last year, the topic of Crowfall’s population was a primary concern, and while the team denied that the population was dwindling, in the end the rumors appeared to be true, as the ArtCraft team was hit with layoffs and new player initiatives began right before Monumental acquired the game. After 3 months, not much has been seen from the post-Monumental acquisition Crowfall team - at least, not that we have seen yet. While it is highly unlikely the population has increased, as very little has been changed to the live game yet, the recent communication from the development team shows that they haven’t given up on Crowfall and hopefully these new changes headed down the pipe are able to live up to the expectations of the fans.
