Embers of Caerus - "Please fund our demo to get investors to create our dreams"

[UnSub]

A Kickstarter project aiming to raise $25k to buy middleware licenses so that a team of 50 volunteer developers can attract investors to spend the money so they can work full-time and create the sandbox MMO they want.

Here's their vision.

The game is scheduled to release in 2016.

God, read that features list. It's like a wish list every MMO armchair designer has about the "perfect" MMO. Plus they are promising a live events team too!

Whatever I thought of Pathfinder going down this route goes double for these guys. If you've got 50 people working on a 'dream' project and can't find $25k to turn it serious, then shut it down now.

[Merusk]

But but but.. $500 each is a lot of money!  I could go DRINKING with that!

Or, based on the Staff photos, buy the 'rods the CTO needs to look like his bros!

[JWIV]

Fuck you Pathfinder for opening this pandora's box.

[Shatter]

ROFLCOPTERZORS!!!!   

[Riggswolfe]

Open Sandbox pvp? Looks like some PKs are missing the "glory days" of UO. *yawns* I'll pass.

[Merusk]

More likely some PVPers in WOW are pissed they can't gank anyone they'd like.

At this point, the hardcore PKs from UO all are married w/ kids and/or bigger things on their minds.  It's been 15 years, even the youngest one would be late 20's now.   The mindset is in a new generation who sees "Sandbox PVP" as a solution to a problem.

[Modern Angel]

Fuck you Pathfinder for opening this pandora's box.

There's a cogent argument to be made that Kickstarter's initial purpose was *exactly* this sort of investment, rather than the "we're set to go/finished already, preorder now" thing that it turned into. Which doesn't change what Kickstarter ended up being to the general public now, of course. What something was isn't always what it will be.

[JWIV]

Fuck you Pathfinder for opening this pandora's box.

There's a cogent argument to be made that Kickstarter's initial purpose was *exactly* this sort of investment, rather than the "we're set to go/finished already, preorder now" thing that it turned into. Which doesn't change what Kickstarter ended up being to the general public now, of course. What something was isn't always what it will be.

You're not incorrect. My vast annoyance at this is probably not dissimilar to people's annoyance of established companies using this to launch new products/funding.  Though again, this feels like it's just a hairs breadth of  violating guideline #1

1. Funding for projects only.
A project has a clear goal, like making an album, a book, or a work of art. A project will eventually be completed, and something will be produced by it. A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project.

In my head, funding for a demo is a bit closer to kickstarting the business as opposed to funding a master disc for a band or the like.  Especially when their kickstarter awards are all finished game based while they're still years and hundred of thousands of investment dollars away from that.

[Draegan]

I think I saw that website back in 1999.

[Hutch]

A Kickstarter project aiming to raise $25k to buy middleware licenses so that a team of 50 volunteer developers can attract investors to spend the money so they can work full-time and create the sandbox MMO they want.

Here's their vision.

The game is scheduled to release in 2016.

God, read that features list. It's like a wish list every MMO armchair designer has about the "perfect" MMO. Plus they are promising a live events team too!

Whatever I thought of Pathfinder going down this route goes double for these guys. If you've got 50 people working on a 'dream' project and can't find $25k to turn it serious, then shut it down now.

If that guy has been invested in MMO play for as long as he claims, how is it that his pitch is giving me giddy, glorious nostalgia for the original Horizons? By now, even armchair designers should know better than to claim that their game will fix everything.

Money aside. If your pitch reminds me of Horizons, shut it down now. Take that glorious world and start a D&D campaign with your 50 friends.

[Stormwaltz]

Here are the current MMORPG projects I'm aware of on Kickstarter:

Storybricks
Pathfinder Online
Realm Explorer
Embers of Caerus

Failed:

Squad Wars

[Paelos]

This is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while. They want your money to create a prototype so they can shop it to REAL investors?

You know what I want for my investment? My money back plus a percentage cut. Assholes.

[Hawkbit]

Next up:  Calling a plumber to fix a leak, but he shows up and tells you to buy him tools to do the job.  Oh, and he gets to keep them afterwards. 

[Stormwaltz]

Next up:  Calling a plumber to fix a leak, but he shows up and tells you to buy him tools to do the job.  Oh, and he gets to keep them afterwards.

But you get a lovely coffee cup.

[UnSub]

The plumber also promises that if you pay enough he'll give you priority if you ever need him again... should he remain in town.

[K9]

Here are the current MMORPG projects I'm aware of on Kickstarter:

Storybricks
Pathfinder Online
Realm Explorer
Embers of Caerus

Failed:

Squad Wars

You forgot "Your World" 

Also, they should rename this game to "Tropes Online"

[Dav3e3]

Well they reached their target....panty twisting can resume.

[UnSub]

They also added a $1 pledge level so that "sandbox fans" can show their support and prove to investors that there is a market for sandbox games.

I'm not sure that many investors will be swayed by 1000 - 2000 backers as a potential market.

[Stormwaltz]

I'm not sure that many investors will be swayed by 1000 - 2000 backers as a potential market.

I'm sure they'll present it as a representative number. Not everyone know of their game, not everyone follows Kickstarter, and of those who do, not everyone contributes.

[Ingmar]

I think step 1 in making an MMO should be naming it something that everyone will be able to pronounce correctly on the first try.

[Rendakor]

Maybe they realize that all anyone will call this is "EoC".

[Koyasha]

If that guy has been invested in MMO play for as long as he claims, how is it that his pitch is giving me giddy, glorious nostalgia for the original Horizons? By now, even armchair designers should know better than to claim that their game will fix everything.

Money aside. If your pitch reminds me of Horizons, shut it down now. Take that glorious world and start a D&D campaign with your 50 friends.

Well if someone took the original Horizons idea and scaled it down to a manageable level, plus had appropriate management and funding, it could be a pretty successful game (also, don't shoot for WoW numbers; shoot for EQ1 numbers and hope you wind up wildly successful).  Not to say that this particular pitch sounds good, but you can definitely do worse with an idea than basing it off of Horizons.

[Hutch]

Are those stars in your eyes, Koyasha? Or am I looking in the mirror ;)

"The original Horizons scaled down to a manageable level" is a synonym for "generic fantasy MMO". Every fantasy MMO that's launched in the past ten years (and is still running) matches this description in one way or another.

Horizons failed ... well, Horizons failed because David Allen was running it. That aside, it failed because it had something like 24 PC races, including angels, devils, vampires and DRAGONS. There were going to be in-game diplomacy systems. Awesome, mind-blowing crafting. And a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember anymore, but would probably dismiss as tl;dr, like I did with this pants-on-head EoC nonsense. Kitchen sink game design. Even if you had the money and personnel to make such a game, the sheer scale would have defied any game dev team that wasn't named Blizzard. And maybe even them. Vanilla WoW wasn't as ambitious as Vanilla Horizons.

[Koyasha]

While I suppose you're right in that every game can be said to somewhat resemble a scaled-down Horizons concept, the factions/diplomacy system and territorial control through that system, along with semi-open pvp (as I recall, they were going to have EVE-style decreasing safety the further away from solidly held terrain you got) are what I'd consider to be the core of that original concept.  I don't know of any game in recent memory that's tried a faction-based system rather than strictly defined 'sides' anytime recently, nor any fantasy game that's tried to use a territorial control system where things get more dangerous the further away from civilization you get.  Cut that down to say, 4-6 races and a much smaller area of terrain, but build those important systems well and design the entire thing to be expanded, and you'd have a project that actually has a chance to be completed, and brings some interesting stuff to the table.  The key to such an idea would be building a solid foundation to release expansions on.  That's why I say you can do worse than to base your idea off the concept, but then I suppose with an idea that expansive, it's easy for different people to focus on different parts as 'the concept'.

[Hutch]

OK well, to be fair, my memory of Horizons doesn't include the territorial control system. I was more focused in on the PvE side of things, in general.

One could say that a lot of the systems from that game could have been incorporated into interesting games, in the hands of a competent game company. So, this is fun to talk about but ultimately moot o.O

[Lantyssa]

The original concept of Horizons was amazing.  It was also nigh impossible to implement.

[Hutch]

Wow, they made it.

They were well over-pledged, i.e. 46k (their goal was 25k).

Time for a new bowl of popcorn, as this plucky band of volunteer developers continue on their epic coding task.

Will the sheer proposed scope of the game world defeat them?
Or will they begin, reluctantly at first, to pull back on some of the promised features?
Will Embers of Caerus stride proudly forth, as the new prince of MMOGpia?
Or will its limp form be dragged across the finish line, a mere shadow remaining of its once glorious vision?

Tune in next year, when they run another kickstarter to buy a server farm start making meth.