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Shards lead dev talks skill caps, pickpocketing, and more
Citadel Studios CEO Derek Brinkmann was interviewed by Worlds Factory this week, and the subject of course was indie sandbox Shards Online. The piece explains Shards' debt to both Neverwinter Nights and Ultima Online, the latter of which Brinkmann helped develop. He explains Shards' current skill cap (each skill tops out at 50 while the total cap is 250) as well as everything from hirelings and tamed companions to housing, pickpocketing, and guild wars!
Shards Online adds permadeath ruleset
Shards Online's Kickstarter campaign is on fire, having blown past its $50K fundraising goal and now plowing through stretch goals. With eight days to go on the campaign, who knows how far it'll get, but there's one thing for certain: Thanks to passing the $80,000 mark, the fantasy sandbox will incorporate permadeath into some of its server rulesets. For the stretch goal, the developers wrote, "We will add an extra official ruleset to Alpha One with increased skill gains and permanent death! Not only will we have this ruleset running on some of our official servers, but players will be able to run these rules on their own community servers."
Shards Online's Kickstarter has already reached its $50k goal
Sandbox MMO hopeful Shards Online has met its Kickstarter goal of $50,000 with 23 days still to go. Citadel Studios' first Kickstarter for the ambitious game reached only $73,401 of its $320,000 goal last June. Project lead Derek Brinkmann dropped by the Massively comments last week to reassure potential donors and explain the thinking behind the new campaign: I'd like to personally address the concerns about our new goal. After our previous campaign winded down, we put our heads together and created a refocused plan to get to alpha. The minimum amount we could get to alpha with was 100k. It doesn't seem like much, but we have been in active development for over a year and have already personally invested quite a bit of money into the project. We reached out to our friends and family and found we were able to raise 50k from small investments. That gets us half of the way there. We decided that reaching out to our fans would be the best way to get the rest of the funds. The alternative was to approach angel investors which would have forced us to change the spirit of the project. Stretch goals begin at the $60,000 mark and include emote animations, new craft skills, and a permadeath ruleset.
Here is the current Shards Online dev roadmap
Shards Online's Kickstarter may be over, but Citadel Studios looks to be even more determined to finish building its player-driven MMORPG sandbox. The firm has posted a new development roadmap on the game's official website, and Citadel co-founder Derek Brinkmann explains how the team is tightening its dev plan "to get to an alpha state as soon as possible." Brinkmann also mentions that one of Citadel's goals is to "have enough replayable content on our first map to keep players engaged while we continue development." Click past the cut to view the full roadmap.
Shards is a full MMO and a private server platform
Shards Online released a video update to its Kickstarter project over the weekend, along with a huge wall-o'-text focused on lore. Citadel Studios boss Derek Brinkmann stars in the clip, which addresses one of the most common questions about Shards so far. "Is Shards a game, or is it a platform? The answer is it's both," Brinkmann explains. "First and foremost it's a full game. It's built from the ground up with its own rulesets, live content, real-time events, moderation, updates, developer support, PvP, PvE, crafting, housing, the whole kit and kaboodle." In terms of the title's platform aspects, Brinkmann says that you don't have to be a programmer or a modder to run your own Shards server. He also explains how private servers are simply one of the game's many options, since the official Shards servers will offer full MMO functionality. You can view the video after the cut.
Massively's first look at sandbox Shards Online
How many games have you played only to find yourself uttering the phrase, "If only I could run my own server"? Chances are, there at least one or two titles you''d love to make into a private playground for select friends using your own personal ruleset. Lucky for you, in Shards Online, you'll be able to do precisely that! Announced last month, this upcoming sandbox by former Mythic Entertainment devs is built on the premise that players will run the majority of the virtual worlds how they want to. Do you want a fantasy world where you can boot those who ruin immersion? You got it! What about the ability to take over mobs and fight the players while spouting personalized comments? Yup, that too. What if you want a hardcore world where survival is for the fittest? Mm-hmm, starving to death is an option, as is permadeath. And how about a world where gameplay unfolds around players as they explore rather than offers questing on rails? That's the theory behind the game. But how do these ideas hold up in practice? Last week I sat down with Citadel Studios co-founder Derek Brinkmann to witness a demonstration of Shards Online and talk all about the plans for the game. And what I saw certainly looks promising! So if this idea tantalizes your gaming taste buds, keep reading to get the scoop. I've even added a teaser video.
Shards Online developers plan for a player-run MMO
More or less every MMO starts up its advertising with some trace of the idea that you can play however you want. Not every MMO talks about the idea of letting players run the servers at the top level, however. But that's what Shards Online is aiming to provide. A recent interview with the developers discusses the idea, with studio co-founder Derek Brinkmann explaining that it's one of the first steps to dismantling the idea that the designers have to tell you how to enjoy yourself. Citadel Studios is a team made up of former Ultima Online developers who wondered why more games haven't embraced the idea of taking live events to their logical conclusion with modern technology. Shards Online is set in a multiverse, with several different worlds featuring slightly different rules, while players can tweak the overall structure to their individual preferences by running their own servers. The game is in development for Windows, Linux, and Mac, with an alpha expected later this year.
Ultima, WAR, DaoC vets form Citadel Studios, announce player-driven Shards title
What do you get when you combine the dev talents of Derek Brinkmann, Chris Ondrus and Tim Cotten? Apparently you get a new firm called Citadel Studios which is building an Ultima Online-inspired "game that will enable players to customize their experience and change the face of player collaboration forever." 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." Citadel's press release is light on game-specific details, but it states that the company is "ignoring the modern online gaming imperative to squeeze every last cent from every player." Shards will "give players more power than ever before, without constantly asking them to take out their wallets." The firm has released a brief teaser trailer which you can watch by clicking past the cut. [Source: Citadel press release]
