Shards Online

[Morreion]

Shards Online official site

Ultima, WAR, DaoC vets form Citadel Studios, announce player-driven Shards title (Massively)

The project is codenamed Shards, and it draws on the dev trio's experiences building Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, UO, and classic Elder Scrolls RPGs.

"We left our soul-crushing, corporate jobs to make the games we'd actually play," says Brinkmann, founder and CEO of Citadel Studios. "Ultimately the community will dictate what Shards becomes, because we're not just providing a game but also a platform for players to express their creativity."

Shards Online: Q&A With Citadel Studios (Stratics)

· What made you decide to create a new studio?

Tim: It all began back at the “UO Frat House” in San Francisco where a bunch of us Ultima Online developers roomed together. We had a lot of late night game design discussions, and okay, sure… some nights we’d debate the merits of setting cheaters’ houses on fire, but mostly we talked about how lucky we were with UO – we could do things that other games just couldn’t do.

We could burn entire cities to the ground and let players loot the rubble in real time. At one point, we created an alternate dimension where players could even freeze time. The feeling of power was absolutely unreal – and we loved every minute of it.

We promised ourselves back then that, no matter what, we would eventually build a game ourselves that captured the same feeling UO gave us.

When Derek and I moved cross-country to Virginia to join the Mythic team, we met our rockstar artist Chris. It wasn’t long before we knew we were all on the same wavelength. The three of us got together and hit on the big idea for Shards Online: give players the power that we had with UO.

The PAX East 2014 Awards (MMORPG.com)

Best Indie MMO – Shards

UItima Online, Warhammer Online, and DAOC vets make up Citadel Studios, the independent MMO developer working on Shards. Take the sandbox fantasy world of Ultima, the 3D visuals of Titan Quest (complete with the ¾ view) and modding capabilities that go as far as your imagination, and you have Shards. The Citadel team showed us an early demo of their in house client, and gave us the rundown on just what will be possible with their game. That is to say… anything. There will be official ruleset servers, but the limit of what will be added to the game is only limited by what its players can create. Steampunk, sci-fi, fantasy, real life, horror, survival, and on and on. Portalarium may be making one hell of an RPG on their own with Shroud of the Avatar, but something tells me he’d be mighty proud of his former Mythic and Origin systems coworkers working on Shards. It’s taking the power of user generated content to the next level, and we can’t wait to see how the final product looks.

Shards Online Puts Design in Hands of the Players (Curse)

Not only will Shards Online feature Lua to enable an extensive modding system, but in-game menus allow admins complete freedom to design their own worlds and content with no prior scripting knowledge as well. We were lucky enough to watch the development team play, and were treated to amusing delights like fire-breathing bears, placeable buildings, and more all made possible by the intricate yet simple-to-use framework laid down in the game's current build.

Former Ultima Online developers working on MMO that offers 'unparalleled freedom' (Polygon)

"Shards Online is truly the first player-run MMO in the sense that we give the players the ability to run their own servers," Brinmann said. "They're no longer bound to the ideas that the game developers have about the game. When the game launches, you will have access to running your own server and you'll be able to customize that server on many different levels.

"This allows communities to really customize their experience the way they wish to play the game."

The game is set in a multiverse, where players can travel through different worlds. While all the worlds are unified by the same rule-set, Cotten told Polygon that they are each themed differently, and these themes will offer players a different experience. There's a world inspired by high fantasy. There's a world that is coming out of a steampunk industrial revolution. There's a world that consists of a colosseum in which players can fight each other in player-versus-player battles.

"All these worlds have their own stories," Cotten said. "It's a role-playing game, so it's a lot about character development. We have an open-ended system with lots of different skills you can learn, and what worlds you travel to determines what skills you have access to."

Cotten said the desire to create a highly customizable world that allows players to experience it the way they want was inspired by the team's time working on Ultima Online.

Massively's first look at sandbox Shards Online

These shards can be individual because every one is an alternate reality. The shard itself is a relatively small area...the plan is to have shards that can support 64 players...

The massively multiplayer part of this MMO is found in the fact that shards can be connected to one another through clusters. Players then can travel between all shards in a cluster through gates. Clusters, which can have thousands of players, run standard rulesets (PvP, RP, etc.) and even custom ones. Although a single player can control a cluster composed of many personal shards or shards belonging to others, Brinkmann said the devs see clusters as something run more often by gaming communities. Perhaps a guild wants to make their perfect fantasy setting and makes its own system for members to enjoy. Or perhaps a multigaming community wants to make a large world open to anyone. There are many possibilities, especially when you take into account modding!

The game itself is fixed isometric, so all those who are comfortable with games like Diablo and Marvel Heroes will be pretty fluent with the controls....During the demonstration, Brinkmann showed off many of Shards Online's sandbox features. If you want to see what a merchant has for sale, you don't pull up an interface; you look at his cart and in his boxes! And by look, I mean rummage through visually because again there is no interface, just the container or shelf. The inventory pack is currently the same, but Brinkmann admitted that it gets hard to find things when they are all piled on top, so the devs are looking to change at least the inventory space to a slotted interface that can be organized.

One of the best perks of the game is the ability to participate in player-generated content. Not only is there housing that players can place anywhere and decorate any way they like, but players can be a part of a dynamic storyline. How? Well, server administrators are the gods of their respective servers. Shard owners can play in player mode along with everyone else or in god-mode, where they can run around invisible at fast speeds, appear as different things (from a ball of light to a giant elemental), spawn items in the world (even giving them a decay timer so they disappear if not picked up), and take control of NPCs to give players a uniquely personal experience. If you've been itching to try your hand at virtual world DMing, it looks as if your time is coming.

[Regolyth]

I'm very intrigued. This could be really awesome, or really bad. I see lots of potential for abuse here. Then, I suppose people could just up and go to another shard if that were the case. I think the devs have something awesome here, they just need to be careful on their implementation. They need to think about how players will really use the tools, not how they're supposed to.

I don't know about limiting shards to 64 players. That seems low. Then again, maybe not, considering the thousands of shards that will probably be available at any given time. I suppose a player running a server could have multiple of the same shard if it's popular enough. I could see myself running a shard, and not playing the game. I loved DMing the few times I did back when I played D&D. I like to create and build worlds, as I have done at work before (game simulators for learning purposes).

I think I would rather see a first or typical MMO view of the game rather than a fixed isometric view. I like games with an isometric view; they have a certain feel to them that I find enjoyable, but I prefer the first person view. Especially during PvP. I hate PvP in isometric view. Perhaps they will allow some camera manipulation.

I would like to see more about the game. I guess this one's a few years out. I wonder if they'll use Kickstarter to fund the game? I hope so.

[Regolyth]

Shards has released their Kickstarter campaign now. I must say, reading through their Kickstarter stuff, I've come to really want to play the game. It seems like a great idea.

Emergent behavior, chaos theory (butterfly effect), dynamical systems - these are all core pillars of how we approach creating gameplay. Rather than attempt to script out huge, structured storylines, we prefer to provide our world’s inhabitants with small, interrelated bits of functionality that all build on top of each other to cause complex and, in many cases, unexpected behaviors.

Coupling these behavioral systems with real players and gods gives us incredibly rich opportunities for cause and effect. The egg you steal from a dragon today may be the reason she’s attacking a town you left behind tomorrow. Giving the beggar some gold on the street may make all the difference between him starving to death or having the strength to resume his secret criminal past.

I'm still not sure how you can play "any genre" on their servers. It seems to be mostly fantasy-based. I am very interested in a steam punk server though. That's going to be fun.

Among the many skills you can learn in Shards Online are the crafting skills. These skills will allow you to create new items, weapons and armor from raw materials. Since each ‘shard’ has their own stories and their own cultures, the crafting skills available to learn will also be different. Learn to craft platemail on a fantasy 'shard', or learn to craft bombs on a steampunk 'shard'.

...Some items like armor and weapons will be initially very crude and need to be refined and enhanced in order to contain special properties.

Another unique aspect of Shards Online is the ability to hire NPCs (non-player characters) to assist you in day to day tasks. Do you lack the mining skill to obtain some ore you need? Or maybe you just don’t enjoy mining? That would be a perfect opportunity to find someone else to perform the task for you… at a price. If you are rich enough, you can even run an entire trade empire without lifting a finger.

The DMing section sounds really cool too, as does the modding section. Check it out.

I've pitched in some to help them out. I hope they reach their goal.

[Morreion]

Awesome! I might be joining you in supporting this, I like the idea a lot!

Edit: Contributed to their Kickstarter.

[Regolyth]

So I'm receiving the newsletter for this now, and something caught my eye in the last one...

Starting today: for every new backer you recruit ($20 Sapphire level or higher), we’ll increase your pledge reward amount by $10 and both of you will receive special in-game rewards for being so awesome. In order to participate, you’ll need to be a Sapphire level or higher backer first. Here’s how it works:

• When your friend, guildmate, dad, trained monkey, dog with opposable thumbs (or whoever) pledges on Kickstarter, they just have to send an email to [e-mail] with NEW RECRUIT in the subject line. The body should include your email address (the one you used for Kickstarter) and their email address. No email, no deal.
• You can get as many recruitment bonuses as you can refer. Each will increase your pledge by $10. Pledge increases will take effect when the campaign is successfully funded.
• You and your recruits will receive 2 exclusive in-game rewards when the game goes live: a custom recruit familiar - DUCKLINGS and a special “Of A Feather” title, exclusive to recruits and recruiters.

So anyone thinking of signing up, use myself or Gack as a referral.

Speaking of Gack... check your PMs bro.

This will be the first time anyone outside Citadel Studios and game testers will play the exclusive pre-alpha build of Shards Online. We have developed a mod specifically for this event called “Battle of the Backers”. In this custom rule-set you need to fight to be the last Backer standing. If the remaining contestants are not fighting, we will implement sudden death.

The last Backer standing will not only play in the next round, but will also be able to choose from a pre-selected list of higher tier rewards. All contestants will receive a special "Tribute" title in the final game and special recognition from the populace on our Colosseum shard.

There was also this little nugget of info.

[Morreion]

Very cool- referred you, Rego!

[Oatik]

Free pre-alpha preview available this weekend if you wanted to check it out.

/

[Regolyth]

I was really excited about this project, but it appears it's going to fall very short of it's goal.

[Morreion]

I know

Is it just me, or does it seem that a lot of interesting Kickstarter games are failing? Maybe people are burning out on donating?

[Regolyth]

I haven't noticed, but then I don't visit often.