Shards Online: New Trailer, New Kickstarter Campaign
http://youtu.be/knYdbwO8Wuc
Citadel Studios have launched a new Kickstarter campaign for Shards Online, with a new tagline for the game: “Play by your rules.” The campaign has a more modest goal: $50,000; as of this writing, it has raked in just over $10,000 and has thirty days left to go.
The description of the game has been tightened somewhat:
Ultima Online meets Neverwinter Nights in this subscription-free online PC game where the community can change all the rules.
And as several of the screenshots indicate, the game’s look and feel have received a fair bit of polish since the last time it was up on Kickstarter:
The core features of Shards Online are all still there: the game will boast a series of official servers, but will also allow members of the community to roll their own shards and set up custom rulesets for these:
It’s the first game that legitimately allows you to host and moderate not just a single game world, but an entire universe of connected game worlds with the potential to support thousands of users at one time. Customize every aspect of your servers’ gameplay experience from character development, to combat, to items and equipment, to monsters and AI.
The game still offers a classless progression system, will still include companions, still include persistent player housing, and will still allow for a multitude of in-game events to be run. The world creation tools also sound like they’ll be pretty robust; they certainly look like they are:
Oh, and this is new (I think):
With the Shards Online mobile companion app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, you will manage your hirelings and receive notifications of important in-game events. Imagine the possibilities… Is your guild hall being attacked? You can send your hirelings to defend without ever logging in.
The goal of the Kickstarter campaign this time around is to give Shards the extra little push it needs to reach alpha; Citadel Studios have published a development roadmap to show what their plans and timelines are for bringing the game to both its alpha and beta tests.
The minimum spend is $20; that’ll get you a Steam copy of Shards when it launches, along with a few digital goodies and some in-game bonuses. Spending $30 will get you in to the alpha, in addition to all that.
So, if you had previously backed Shards Online, consider doing so again!
The First Age of Update: Minor correction to the above; the minimum spend is $20, not $10 as I had previously written.
Is it a little sad that I prefer the cartoony, stylized look of this over SotA right now?
I’m not sure I will have time for an online game beyond SotA and Star Citizen but I might just throw a few bucks at this to help it get funded. Last time I checked, this was fully open PvP with full loot. I don’t care for environments like that because I feel like they incentivize griefing. But I like to support indie RPG projects. Variety is a good thing.
Is it a little sad that I prefer the cartoony, stylized look of this over SotA right now?
Not at all! I’m a fan of it too…it reminds of Reckoning.
The open PVP? Not as much of a fan of that. But I gather that’s something that can be tweaked in the shard rules, so one could conceivably roll a custom shard that had more restricted PVP.
Good point. I just backed the project. I’m curious what kind of mod tools we’ll get and how they will handle crowd sourcing. Will players be able to make their own weapon model for their private modded shard? Can they in turn submit that sword to be included in the main game?
That soubds like…a great question to ask Citadel Studios.
Unfortunately the art style for me is awful. Reminds me of Soudeki and is not a compliment.
And I’m mad because this might turn out a very interesting MMORPG, maybe really close to the initial design of Ultima Online, and this is a compliment.