KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Jaesun]

I wonder what Gariott's "Investors" think of this Kickstarter lack of overwhelming success or interest? And Toment heads it's way to 3 Million...

It's going to pretty easily break 1 million. Hard to be upset with a free million dollars.

Here's my question. How is Gariott going to make an MMO for 8 million dollars? 38 Studios couldn't make one with 75 million, and Bioware spent an estimated 200-400 million on TOR.

I guess there's a lot of money to be saved by having it look terrible, but can he really do it with 1/10 of the budget.

It's because only 11,315 people will be playing it.

 

[Stabwound]

I never got to experience UO in its prime, and while it sounds like a really cool concept, it's unfortunately understandable that it was killing their subscriber base. New players would start and just get slaughtered repeatedly by level 100 neckbeards giving them no chance to ever get past the beginning of the game. Now, what they should have done, in my opinion, is make the beginning of the game a newbie training area.

I feel that this game is going to suck because he's trying to appease two crowds that don't even want to interact with each other. He's adding all of this LARPing stuff and I just don't see how it's going to work with such a server model. He should have just committed to one type of game or the other, because as far as I'm concerned, they just aren't compatible. You can either have a great single player game or a great multiplayer game, but combining them like this doesn't work.

 

[Excidium]

Now, what they should have done, in my opinion, is make the beginning of the game a newbie training area.

That's what they did, and that's what killed the game.

 

[Akarnir]

I wonder what Gariott's "Investors" think of this Kickstarter lack of overwhelming success or interest? And Toment heads it's way to 3 Million...

It's going to pretty easily break 1 million. Hard to be upset with a free million dollars.

Here's my question. How is Gariott going to make an MMO for 8 million dollars? 38 Studios couldn't make one with 75 million, and Bioware spent an estimated 200-400 million on TOR.

I guess there's a lot of money to be saved by having it look terrible, but can he really do it with 1/10 of the budget.

200-400 million is marketing expanses, useless CGI cutscenes and bad production management. If A decent studio were to make an MMO, it wouldn't cost more than 10 Million.

Of course Gariott and his team won't probably not best best example of a decent studio. But it's doable.

 

[IDtenT]

Open PvP and griefing is fine and actually welcome. The problem is incentive when it comes to policing. Give incentive for an occupation and the market will flock.

 

[taxalot]

I remember getting back to Ultima Online a couple of years ago, for a month, and everybody was speaking in japanese.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I remember getting back to Ultima Online a couple of years ago, for a month, and everybody was speaking in japanese.

That's like returning to the Codex after years of absence and finding out everybody is posting in Polish... oh wait.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[random_encounter]

I wonder what Gariott's "Investors" think of this Kickstarter lack of overwhelming success or interest? And Toment heads it's way to 3 Million...

It's going to pretty easily break 1 million. Hard to be upset with a free million dollars.

Here's my question. How is Gariott going to make an MMO for 8 million dollars? 38 Studios couldn't make one with 75 million, and Bioware spent an estimated 200-400 million on TOR.

I guess there's a lot of money to be saved by having it look terrible, but can he really do it with 1/10 of the budget.

TOR's vast, fully voiced, MMORPG with tons of associated overhead. Essentially, they wanted it to take the place of a third Old Republic single player game and wanted an alternative source of revenue to shore up their online presence and thew buckets of it into a blitzkrieg to do just that. MMO money, yo!

As for 38 Studios, all indications that I've read was that the project bit off way more than it could chew. They wanted to make an MMO, Copernicus, and a single player "AAA" RPG at the same time.

Keep in mind that this was a fresh faced, untested studio with no titles under its belt headed by a WoW playing ballplayer with zero experience on how to run one surrounded by enough yes men who apparently took advantage of his "OMG, I can make games!" pogo stick of excitement. And he was betting their future on new IP, the kind of thing that indies have wet dreams over but which larger companies with the same budgets are often loath to bet anything on. Based on the hype around him, he also received a sweetheart loan from Rhode Island in millions that they'll probably never get back.

Can Garriott do it with only a few million? I honestly have no idea. I'm still not even sure whether to call what he's doing a single-player RPG with MMO elements or the other way around. Chris Roberts thinks he can with what he earned, though.

 

[IDtenT]

Open PvP and griefing is fine and actually welcome. The problem is incentive when it comes to policing. Give incentive for an occupation and the market will flock.

Now that I think about it, how about a subscription based game where you can earn real world currency in game to spend on subs through doing police/detective work? Make being a detective interesting too adding stuff like wound sizes, witnesses, etcetera. Make all (non black market) goods require serial numbers from the producers and so on. Instant police work force.

 

[Stabwound]

Does griefing even exist in modern MMORPGs? I don't think such a game with open PVP and permanent loss on death will ever exist again on a large/successful scale. People that want to be a carebear will simply just not play the game and go play WoW, and my guess is that by now the vast majority of MMORPG players are grinders/carebears/loot whores/carrot on a stick chasers and would just not put up with the fact that their l00t is always at risk.

I remember playing a MUD a few years back that was split into 2 continents: a good (no PVP) and an evil (open PVP) one. When you started the game you had to pick your home continent and each had their own races. The game was just dying because every new player picked the carebear continent. I don't know if open PVP was ever the most popular format but it sure as fuck isn't today. Sad, really.

I remember getting back to Ultima Online a couple of years ago, for a month, and everybody was speaking in japanese.

I remember on one of the recent streams Garriott said a huge percentage of the UO playerbase today is from Japan. I don't remember specifics but it might have even been the majority.

 

[Saxon1974]

You guys are still laboring under the delusion that he gives a shit? He's making a WoW clone plain and simple. Nothing's going to change. He's got eight million dollars from some publisher who is dictating terms (not that he'd disagree). There is no 'vision' here, it's just a thinly veiled marketing campaign and means to milk some preorder and charity money from suckers. This guy has been making shitty MMOs and social games the last decade. That's all your going to get from him. It's over.

Yet he changes his mind on offline mode (so either the hypothetical publisher is flexible on this and isn't really dictating terms or there isn't one). And if he wants to make a UO2 or UOWoW why all this effort to appeal to the offline gaming crowd? Surely he knows he has a wide enough UO fanbase to successfully announce a UO reboot.

I think his problem is that he wants to revolutionize for the sake of revolutionizing (and not just build for the sake of building as I stated previously). He repeatedly says he's done it several times before and wants to do it again. I don't think greed has anything to do with this (the greedy clone proven products) but an ego trip is potentially even more damaging than greed.

Spot on Charles, I think you nailed it. He figures since he is was a revolutionary in the genre back in the day that he wants to revolutionize again. He is not happy with just making a modernized RPG in the style of the old single player classics, I honestly believe he thinks he is above that. Or at the least, he is not inspired by that anymore and is inspired by doing someting different and revolutionary. The odds of him doing something revolutionary now are pretty small.

Garriot used to be my hero, but I think my hero now is Fargo. I think Fargo is much more down to earth and realizes the value in the old school RPG design and wants to get back to that. Garriot on the other hand wants to "revolutionize the industry" whatever that means.

I will keep watching this but dont think I will back it.

 

[IDtenT]

The only reason why open PvP is looked on with disdain is because of a lack of in game peacekeeping. Nobody will commit crime when they know they are 80% certain of getting caught and imprisoned/killed.

 

[Infinitron]

Does griefing even exist in modern MMORPGs?

Depends. Do you consider EVE Online "modern"?

 

[IDtenT]

Does griefing even exist in modern MMORPGs?

Depends. Do you consider EVE Online "modern"?

I hate the fact that EVE is considered as the bastion of openness - when it isn't. It suffers from a lack of policing and it suffers from NPC policing. It suffers from not having the tools to effectively run a corporation or faction, even though it's the only one of its type. There is so much shit in EVE it's unbelievable - yet people still flock to shit like flies.

 

[Delterius]

Does griefing even exist in modern MMORPGs?

Depends. Do you consider EVE Online "modern"?

I hate the fact that EVE is considered as the bastion of openness - when it isn't.

But.... is it good for what it is <TM>?

I don't doubt that EVE isn't as open as the older MMOs, but its certainly more open than pretty much everyone one else.

 

[Excommunicator]

Now that I think about it, how about a subscription based game where you can earn real world currency in game to spend on subs through doing police/detective work? Make being a detective interesting too adding stuff like wound sizes, witnesses, etcetera. Make all (non black market) goods require serial numbers from the producers and so on. Instant police work force.

There's no way that could go wrong.

 

[Stabwound]

Spot on Charles, I think you nailed it. He figures since he is was a revolutionary in the genre back in the day that he wants to revolutionize again. He is not happy with just making a modernized RPG in the style of the old single player classics, I honestly believe he thinks he is above that. Or at the least, he is not inspired by that anymore and is inspired by doing someting different and revolutionary. The odds of him doing something revolutionary now are pretty small.

Garriot used to be my hero, but I think my hero now is Fargo. I think Fargo is much more down to earth and realizes the value in the old school RPG design and wants to get back to that. Garriot on the other hand wants to "revolutionize the industry" whatever that means.

I will keep watching this but dont think I will back it.

Exactly what is revolutionary about this game, though? It looks thoroughly uninspired and there's really nothing here that's a unique idea. It all seems like he's very out of touch with today's gaming market.

It's shocking that someone like Garriott, who virtually has limitless funds to create his dream game came up with something like this. I would have thought that his dream game would have been something like Ultima Online on steroids: an MMORPG where you can do anything you want. But instead it's basically Neverwinter Nights.

It's also weird that we still know almost nothing about the game. Garriott has done a bunch of interviews, talked for hours on live streams and virtually all we know is that you can own a house and LARP on a piano and add your facebook account to play with your friends and that you'll be jew'd every 6 months for expansions and new character classes.

Yeah, unfortunately it seems like Garriott's true huckster personality is shining through here. He's a salesman through and through. Fortunately, like you said, Brian Fargo at least seems to much more in tune with what people want.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, unfortunately it seems like Garriott's true huckster personality is shining through here. He's a salesman through and through. Fortunately, like you said, Brian Fargo at least seems to much more in tune with what people want.

I've said this before, but it's funny how the track and field jock Brian Fargo ended up being more of a hardcore gamer than the nerdy LARPer astronaut's son Richard Garriott.

 

[Gozma]

There is a whole financial venture capital push that is investing in the idea that the future of money from games is gonna be mostly in phones and more generally in people clicking "accept" on shit that has their credit card # without thinking too much about it. They want to make gaming into smoking. Even consoles and AAA and "immersion" are too big, too interesting, and too narrative for those guys. That mental soup is what Garriot is swimming in. Then he went on Kickstarter and people give him money to do it and I grind my teeth

 

[Mother Russia]

Yeah, unfortunately it seems like Garriott's true huckster personality is shining through here. He's a salesman through and through. Fortunately, like you said, Brian Fargo at least seems to much more in tune with what people want.

I've said this before, but it's funny how the track and field jock Brian Fargo ended up being more of a hardcore gamer than the nerdy LARPer astronaut's son Richard Garriott.

Wait, wait wiat....MCA owned Universal Studios?

MCA as in Chris Avellone?

 

[Delterius]

Infinitron

So Fargo is your Josh Sawyer, eh?

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron

So Fargo is your Josh Sawyer, eh?

Nope. Facebook Graph Search is absurdly powerful. It took me all of ten seconds to find those.

 

[Delterius]

Thank God. Imagine how the newsposts would turn out if they were written by a Stalker Extraordinaire.

 

[Maelflux]

Should be interesting to see what's included in the 90% (and even more so, what's not..)

Creator Portalarium, Inc. about 3 hours ago
"Several big posts coming today that will clear up about 90% of the questions."