That I am - I’d like to get my kids through school in one school system, if possible.
Thanks for the thought, though. I’ll be watching CSE, as well.
Mark Jacobs did an interview talking about Camelot Unchained here.
My bulletpoints:
[ul]
[li]This isn’t DAOC 2
[/li][li]Not defined as strictly a sandbox or a themepark MMO
[/li][li]Will be niche, does not intend to compete with WoW
[/li][li]RVR Only, NO PVE
[/li][li]Competition over lands that each realm will be able to claim, PERSISTENT, NO resets
[/li][li]No hand-holding
[/li][li]Bringing the “risk” and “mystery” back
[/li][li]There will be winners and losers
[/li][li]GW2-like combat #1 priority
[/li][li]LOTS of randomness
[/li][/ul]
Jacobs is putting in $2 million of his own money into this and he said the kickstarter would be starting “soon”.
Getting excited about this.
Does “no PVE” mean, well, really no fighting except with other players? While very intriguing, I’m wondering how one handles getting players up to speed and geared/skilled to a RvR appropriate state. Will this involve gated or segmented (by level? skill? number of toes?) regions, or what? Curious about this, fer shure.
Sounds like a medieval Planetside, which sounds good to me.
Listening what Mark Jacobs has to say is usually the worst way to know what a game is about. But I guest the newest generation of pure and naive gamers has to make its own experience ;)
The kickstarter for this is now up:
Looks like the initial push is done, and it pumped it over 25% to goal. Not bad for a days work.
We need to get steve in here for some Kickstarter analysis. I wonder how likely it is to succeed with hitting 25% on the first day, since it seems most Kickstarters pretty much flat-line between the initial and final push (with spikes if a stretch goal is near)?
According to kicktraq, it’s trending at 9.7 million, so it appears they will hit their goal (I hope the projection accounts for the flatline in the middle part of the project). It’s at 630k right now so that’s a good two days’ work.
I’m not too sure about the details of how Kicktraq works, but wouldn’t only having data points from the initial push severely skew the trend? I’m not trying to pooh-pooh on anything (as I want this to succeed), I just am curious how good $600k is for the first two days when they’re trying to hit $2M.
EDIT: I guess I could stop being lazy and answer my own damn question by looking at the Kicktraq site:
I’m hoping this is pulling enough to get funded.
The “Trend” is just multiplication. The “Projection” is more sophisticated, but I don’t think it accounts for the shape of funding across a project’s lifetime. IIRC, he noted that those uneven funding distributions aren’t uniform across all different lengths or types of project being kickstarted.
My very naive guess is that 30% in the first couple days is decent, I’d guess they squeak by just over their goal.
With the trend line, its not the location but more of the angle as the project progresses. If it flattens out or turns upward in the first half of the project, that is a very good sign.
Regarding Camelot, I recall they had some siege engines way back when. These were very crude and semi-useless, but it was innovative for its time. Are they planning on having anything like that in this version?
I kind of stopped looking at the numbers, but the one bit that makes Camelot an odd duck is that it’s currently averaging $160/pledge; every other major game was $40-ish. They have a considerably smaller number of backers spending crazy money, which may not be sustainable.
The first day Camelot had 3,200 backers. Project Eternity had 16,000 backers on day 1, and Wasteland 2 had 8,000. If Camelot’s day 2 ends up lower in terms of backers, it may struggle to reach its goal.
Steve, I see it more in line with or stronger than Pathfinder, another MMO which struggled but raise $1M with an average of $125 per pledge with 8700+ pledges total. I think with Jacobs’ name behind it, the associated memories of DAOC fans, and Jacobs’ pledging the extra $2M might just be the right recipe for the soup. It will be interesting to see where it is in a week or so.
It is also unclear to me if the pledging DAOC fans recognize that this is a PvP only MMO. Lots of people reliving memories not really germane to pvp.
You’re looking at Pathfinder’s final results and extrapolating it across its entire campaign. A disproportionate amount of Pathfinder’s money came in the last couple of days. Camelot hasn’t struggled out of the gate by any normal measure, other than number of pledgers being disproportionately low compared to its total take. (Camelot is significantly higher, per pledge, than Pathfinder.)
Pathfinder is the only game I looked at that increased its total number of pledges (relative to its first two days) on its final day. The rest show the number of pledges on those final days being a subset of the initial rush. For those games, the average per pledge increases at the end, which is really what the “final push” is all about. Currently pledges upgrading to help fund or to meet stretch goals.
Steve was correct in my analysis comparison with Pathfinder…however, they have just hit the $1M mark with 3 weeks left - still averaging $159 per pledge with some 6.3K backers. It looks pretty strong on its own. At this point I would be surprised if it did not make.
Thanks for the update, mok. I’m looking at Shroud of the Avatar which ended up raising $2M with a total of 22,322 backers (~$90/pledge). Camelot is currently sitting at at 6,396 backers at ~$159/pledge, as you mention, which is significantly higher. Planetary Annihilation is another Kickstarter I looked at since it’s total was also around $2M and they have 44k backers (~$50/pledge).
From what steve has said, the bulk of the last minute surge comes from people upping their pledges, not new backers. That would make sense to me, as most people who were interested in the project probably would have backed it during the previous four weeks, but the current backers might want to push for stretch goals and the like. Assuming all of that is reasonably correct and holds true for this project, I hope CSE is able to pull in additional backers since the pledge-per-backer ratio is already unusually high. Will those people that have already pledged so much be able to up their contribution down the final stretch?
On the bright side it’s already 50% of it’s goal with 3 weeks left and the stretch goals aren’t announced yet, so hopefully this all works out! Does anyone know if adding stretch goals has a tendency to bring in new backers, or is it mainly current backers upping their pledges?
What is the significance of that name? Was he heavily involved with RvR in DAOC? DAOC had a lot of PvE too so I’m wondering if he was the main guy behind RvR. Didn’t they say ex-daoc developers are working on Elder Scrolls Online? So which game has more DAOC cred?
There is also a lot of negativity associated with the Jacobs name from Warhammer Online. I actually enjoyed WAR but I think I’m in the minority.
I think the significance is it associates the game/campaign with DAOC proper, which I believe is the real draw of backers to this campaign. In other words, the fond memories of the DAOC experience is a big draw for pledgers. The fact that there is no PvE seems to not factor into this, though you would think it might.
Did you guys see Part One of the crafting system? Minecraft-style building and resource mines are actually tunneled into the ground/mountains.
To understand how this is going to work, we have to start with the concept of cells. Cells are the building blocks of the world, similar to the blocks in Minecraft™ or pieces in Lego™ and other games. Our cells are different though not only size from Minecraft (they will be at least ½ the size) but in other ways as well. These cells can be placed down in the world in the same manner that blocks are placed down in other games, individually or in groups (Prefabs). Cells are perfect for the builder that wants a free-form building method of improvisation. However, instead of having to build the entire world one cell at a time, builders can also choose to use prefabs to help speed up their building time.
Prefabs are constructs made up of a group of cells that the players can also place down in the world. Unlike cells, prefabs
Are not solid and/or filled.
Can be made by combining cells.
Prefabs can be added to other prefab to create a new prefab.
Simple Rotations – Major cardinal directions only.
Mines are going to be one of the primary sources of materials for builders. They come in all shapes and sizes and they are filled with various raw materials. Players can enter these mines and gather the materials; they can also dig shafts looking for new veins. Unlike mines/nodes found in most MMORPGs, these mines are not meant to be mined out quickly by one or even a few players. Additionally, to help encourage realm pride, we will design these mines to be mined cooperatively by players. Think of the gold mining scene in the film “The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey” for reference.
Sounds pretty interesting to me if they pull it off.