Crowfall

[Morreion]

Crowfall (official site)

WHAT IS CROWFALL?

Crowfall is a new type of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) brought to you by Gordon Walton (Executive Producer of Ultima Online, Star Wars: Galaxies and Star Wars: the Old Republic) and J. Todd Coleman (Creative Director of Shadowbane, Wizard101 and Pirate101). The Worlds of Crowfall feature unique maps, rules, and victory conditions. Every World is different, and players join teams (Factions, Guilds or Noble Houses) to vie for control of each World. We call it a Throne War Simulator, and it’s different in three fundamental ways: Time, Destruction and Power...

Crowfall (Wikipedia)

The game will play similarly to most MMOs, with the camera in a third person view with the player allowed to go anywhere. Where it differs is in the game's world system. There will be five systems of worlds, also known as campaigns. The systems will be "Eternal Kingdoms," "God's Reach," "The Infected," "The Shadow," and "Dregs," each with a different set of rules dictating them. Each world will also be procedurally generated, and will go through a cycle of life and death, starting with spring to summer, fall, and ending with winter. At the end of winter, the campaign ends, and the world is gone forever, though the players will remain, allowed to travel to other worlds. The only worlds that don't die are the Eternal Kingdoms, where player housing is.

At the start of a campaign, players will spawn in the newly created world during spring, filled with villages, mines, gather-able resources, and ruins. The world map is clouded by fog, meaning players will have to explore to discover its geography. With the resources they gather, players will be able to craft weapons and build castles and fortresses for defense against the other players and wildlife. As summer begins, resources become more scarce, and the world's monsters become more and more powerful. This continues with each season, the force doing this being called 'The Hunger' in the game's lore.

Depending on the world, there will be a different set of campaign victory conditions, along with the rules of the world itself changing depending on the campaign. After the campaign is over, players may go back to their homes in the Eternal Kingdoms, where there are its own set of rules as well.

...There’s no mistaking that Crowfall is first and foremost a PvP game, but that doesn’t mean you will be forced to PvP all of the time — or even ever, if you so wish.

The option to stick to PvE is aided by the Eternal Kingdoms: the persistent home worlds that the players will own. Think of them as moderately sized island worlds that not only includes player housing but PvE hunting grounds. Players can create their own rules for their world, perhaps turning it into a free market or a small PvP arena of their own.

Crowfall: The ultimate union of MMOs and strategy (Massively OP)

The pitch for Crowfall became blending an MMO and a strategy game in ways that complemented each other rather than worked at cross purposes. Players will take on the role of one of several archetypes (classes) to embark on PvP campaigns on temporary worlds but will enjoy persistent character growth as well as a home on a non-destructable home world.

Coleman summed it up as, “Eternal heroes, dying worlds.” Expect to be hearing that phrase a lot from this crew.

These “inner” worlds will all have a limited lifespan, destructing either after a set period of time or when a campaign comes to a successful conclusion, and after that it will be reset with new, procedurally generated landscape. Currently, the team is experimenting with four categories of PvP worlds: God’s Reach (three-faction PvP where balance wins only if it can keep both order and chaos from dominating), The Infected (12-faction PvP), The Shadow (guild vs. guild, most similar to Shadowbane), and Dregs (free-for-all PvP). The more difficult a campaign undertaken by a player, the greater the potential rewards.

Within these four rulesets, additional settings can be tweaked by the devs. Perhaps one world might feature a one-life-only permadeath rule this time around. Maybe in one version you’ll arrive without any imported gear at all (the “Terminator” setting, Coleman said). Or what about an Elf vs. Dwarf world?

When players stream into the campaign worlds, they will have many options in front of them. Banding together for survival will be key, of course, but so will be building up fortresses and siege engines.

Coleman said to think of it like the MMO version of Risk or Civilization, where each game can operate under a different set of rules and be wiped clean afterward for a new yet familiar experience. He predicts that campaigns could last anywhere between one and six months, giving plenty of time for grand sagas and epic struggles to take place before resetting the board.

Crowfund: Crowfall easily passes its fundrasing goal (Massively OP)

Call it Crowfund. In only a few short days, Crowfall has passed its $800,000 crowdfunding goal — and there looks to be no end in sight for how far this scrappy PvP title could go.

After a couple of months of build-up to the campaign, Crowfall shot out of the gate in its first day of seeking player donations. Within 10 hours, it had already cleared the halfway mark and began to sell out of the early bird (read: discounted) tiers.

[Morreion]

Crowfall will be powered by Unity 5 (MOP)

The team said that it’s been working with Unity 5’s beta and was pleased with the tech’s “impressive collection” of modules: “From their new PhysX 3.3 integration for physics simulation (extremely important to Crowfall’s unique flavor of physically based combat) to their usage of Mono and the .NET platform, the developers at Unity have been kind enough to assemble a veritable dream team of game development middleware.”

Crowfall explains what you can take out of a dying world (MOP)

During a campaign, players will make deposits of gear and goods in an account bank. Those items will be untouchable until the campaign is over, at which point the player will receive a portion of his or her loot based on how the player’s faction did. The longer the campaign, the larger the vault; the more difficult the campaign, the greater the potential payout.

Crowfall is raking in the big bucks (MOP)

Crowfall’s Kickstarter campaign is little more than a week old, but that hasn’t stopped the PvP MMO from racking up 10,000-plus backers and over $1 million in crowdfunding. The milestones will enable the hiring of an FX artist and the addition of female centaurs to the game.

Crowfall will allow offline skill training (MOP)

In a dev update posted today, the team explained that players can pick up to three skills to learn while they are logged out of the game. The lore excuse here is that priests are praying for your hero to remember skills from a previous life. Offline training will be the main method of advancing your character’s abilities, although you can advance skills through active use as well. The team said that a skill slotted for primary training will rise to 100% in a month’s time, while a tertiary trained skill will take three times that.

Crowfall details mount mechanics as it clears $1.2 million (MOP)

The project needs less than $100,000 to hit its next major stretch goal, unlocking mounts and caravans. With the goal so close, the team has decided to post an FAQ on mount mechanics a little early, detailing how your noble steed will work in the game and how Kickstarter backers can get a little edge.

Mounts in the game are creatures in the world, and mount figurines can be used to summon the mounts repeatedly, but those figurines can be lost, damaged, or otherwise made useless. Kickstarter backers will be able to reclaim the appearance of the special backer mounts, but that’s purely a cosmetic effect. As with all else in the game, nothing lasts forever.

Crowfall eyes artifacts and relics as a new stretch goal (MOP)

A new dev blog attempts to explain why artifacts and relics are a worthy addition to the PvP title. These are items that are lootable in campaigns that can be brought back to a player’s permanent home and installed to bestow special benefits on that character and home world.

Eternal Kingdoms (Crowfall official site)

How do I get a Kingdom?

Every account is granted a Kingdom. They start as mini-worlds that players can use to build and explore, which can be expanded to become much larger.

What is the purpose of a Kingdom and why do I want one?

Kingdoms are smaller versions of the Campaign worlds – not just social lobbies. You are the Monarch of this world! You can explore, craft, build structures and even fight monsters… but a Kingdom is limited in terms of difficulty and power.

All accounts are granted a kingdom at the beginning of the game, but using it is not required (…beyond maybe a tutorial? We haven’t decided yet.)

We fully expect that some players will prefer to spend the vast majority of their time participating in the Campaign Worlds, and we intend to let them do so without maintaining a Kingdom.

How do Kingdoms compare to Campaign Worlds?

Kingdoms, while potentially quite large, are limited in size compared to the Campaign worlds. They are also limited in functionality and content. They start with a relatively small amount of land and no buildings. If you want to upgrade them, it will take time and effort (and materials, which come from Campaign Worlds.)

Kingdoms must be upgraded (and developed) to increase their functionality. They start as single-player realms, and must be upgraded to allow more players to join.

How are Kingdoms laid out, and how big are they? Is it like a housing instance?

The map of every Kingdom is divided into a square grid. Each square in the grid is called a “cell.”

Kingdoms begin as a 3 cells by 3 cells square. We’re still building this system, so the cell sizing will probably change a bit… but in the current prototype, this equates to roughly half a mile square of virtual territory.

The Kingdom can grow to be many, many times larger than this starting size.

Crowfall passes $1.4 million in fundraising, eyes Minotaurs (MOP)

This new milestone reached, Crowfall will make good on its pledge to include the three-faction ruleset as well as the artifacts and relics system into the core game. The team added a $1.5M stretch goal of a Minotaur archetype plus a 12-faction campaign ruleset.

Crowfall’s Kickstarter tops $1.5 million (MOP)

Crowfall topped $1.5 million in crowdfunding today, which unlocked the infected ruleset and the minotaur archetype. Creative director J. Todd Coleman and design lead Thomas Blair are featured in a new video that discusses the latest milestone as well as the guild tournament system that will unlock at $1.6 million.

Crowfall expounds on the service of Thralls (MOP)

Have you ever wanted to be a grim reaper? In Crowfall, you can. And for once it is a mutually beneficial proposition! A new FAQ enlightens players on the nature and use of Thralls, which are the souls of fallen warriors and craftsmen trapped in the world and unable to move on. Though they serve players in such roles as vendors, craftsmen, trainers, and guards, these souls aren’t slaves; they are earning their redemption by serving players for a period of time. How many of these temporary minions players can utilize is limited only by the number of soul-capturing gems they have in their inventories.

Crowfall devs: ‘We see crafters as a full-time playstyle’ (MOP)

The studio also updated its crafting FAQ to expain how crafting skills are acquired, how decay will benefit the economy, how “junk” crafted items will be disposed of in a vendorless world, and how alting will be discouraged. “We see crafters as a full-time playstyle,” write the devs. “They fill a valuable role as much as a tank or damage dealer does. In addition to being able to enjoy the “meta-game” of inter-World trading between Worlds, Crafters also have a specific niche role — every faction/guild will need to recruit them to turn resources into valuable equipment within the Campaigns.”

How Crowfall will be built for around $6M (MOP)

“We’re doing a much smaller than normal MMO by choosing to be PvP-focused, doing algorithmic world generation, tight (but effective!) constraints on character customization and heavily reliance on off-the-shelf technologies,” Walton said. “Our cost for the core game will be in the $6 million range.”

The funding for Crowfall will be a combination of early investors, Kickstarter monies, continued donations on the website, licensing foreign rights, and securing additional investments. The game’s current stretch goal is aiming to hire an additional graphics programmer and localize for six additional languages.

[Morreion]

With $20 million raised, makers of ‘Crowfall’ want to give demanding gamers what they’ve been missing (512Tech)

What Coleman and Walton came up with was the idea for a game called “Crowfall,” which would be a dark, treacherous fantasy game with survival elements, less “Lord of the Rings” and more “Game of Thrones.” It would return gamers to some of the ideas that made pre-”World of Warcraft” MMOs such as “Ultima Online” and “Shadowbane,” games that Coleman and Walton helped lead, so fondly remembered. And it would be crowdfunded...

Coleman explains that unlike a lot of game development that happens away from the public, “Crowfall” developers have put no restrictions on players live-streaming their experiences or speaking about what they’ve seen in unfinished parts of the game.

“As a result of that, we can’t really fool ourselves into thinking something is better than it is,” Coleman said. “If we put out something crappy, we hear about it immediately and loudly. The brutal honesty helps.”

Crowfall: Game feature video extravaganza and plans for future games (MOP)

Speaking of coming at the game from a fresh perspective, 512 Tech interviewed the team at ArtCraft to learn about Crowfall and its history. It toted out some interesting numbers along the way: $20 million raised to date, 45 employees working on the project, $50K to $100K per month arriving in new pledges, only $25K spent to date on marketing, and 40,000 current testers. The studio said that the “brutal honesty” of these testers has helped shaped the game tremendously.