Crowdfunding MMOs is growing more and more popular lately, allowing even small studios to gather the funds required to compete AAA titles. The following is a list of the most anticipated MMOs that have gone through, or are still live on, the Kickstarter platform.Rokh
Developed by Nvizzio Creations,
Rokh is presented as a futuristic survival game taking place on the surface of Mars. The game boasts a multiplayer experience in a persistent universe and bases its gameplay on the interactions between players and a simulation system rather than on scripted content. According to the developer, players will have to cooperate to increase their chances of survival and overcome various threats such as radiation risks, lack of breathable air or starvation.
The developer intends to greatly encourage real social and economic ties between the colonists of Mars, including reliance on a robust crafting system (housing, chemistry, programming, robotics), specifically designed so that solo players will be unable to be self-sustaining, and thus be forced to seek out other players. Put simply, to design vehicles or advanced weaponry, for example, one would need to find a way to obtain the assistance of players with the required skills mastered.
Rokh’s Kickstarter campaign, with a goal of €100,000, was launched 5 days ago, on May 5, 2016, and is still ongoing. So far, 339 backers have pledged €14,550 to the project and there are 26 days left until the end of the campaign.
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AdventureQuest 3D
Artix Entertainment, active since 2002 with the release of Adventure Quest, has released all kinds of browser games, mostly Free To Play. With titles such as DragonFable, MechQuest or AdventureQuest Worlds, Artix Entertainment became known in the world of browser game, thanks to their rich and humorous universe. Specializing in flash game since their debut, they now turn to Unity, a more powerful and modern engine, which allows them to revisit the game that made their success with
AdventureQuest 3D, playable on any machine as well as browsers that support the 3D engine Unity Technologies.
With a pledge goal of $200,000, the cross-platform fantasy MMO AdventureQuest 3D ended its Kickstarter campaign with $368,503 from 4,856 backers. The game offers players a persistent world with real-time combat, group activities, PVP, in addition to their offbeat features. The first version of the game is already playable for anyone who purchased any of the games previously released by Artix Entertainment, or those that took part in their kickstarter campaign. Others can still gain access to the game through the early access program.
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Project: Gorgon Project: Gorgon is by far the most conservative project on this list. The campaign was launched back in July 2015, with a pledge goal of only $20,000. The money raised would be used to improve the visuals of the game, with stretch goals including mounts, additional races and skills, as well as the introduction of a permanent Vampire curse in the game, all of which have been reached when the campaign ended with $74,781 raised from 1318 backers.
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Project: Gorgon is a MMO developed by a handful of people from Elder Game, and is currently playable in Alpha for free. The game seems to take its inspiration from the old-timer MMOs EverQuest and Asheron's Call, while including its own modern ideas. In a fantasy world, the player is a human, an elf or rakshaka (half human, half feline) that will start an adventure from the very bottom of the food chain, killing rats and skeletons, eventually taking on powerful manticores.
In Project: Gorgon, you can learn to speak with mushrooms, read books written by other players, learn the language of goblins, thrive on the death of others as a necromancer, practice autopsies on the corpses of your enemies and even turn into animals or other creatures as a result of curses. Moreover, rather that leveling their characters and picking a class, players level different skills they can switch between at any given time.
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Crowfall
Developed by familiar faces of the MMO scene,
Crowfall is an ambitious Kickstarter project that ended with a total of $1,766,204 from 16,936 backers. At the helm of the project, J. Todd Coleman, creative director of Shadowbane, Wizard101 and Pirate101, as well as Gordon Walton, executive producer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Crowfall might just be the title on this list with the most uncertain future. Intent on taking risks, the developers decided offer something truly different on the quite stagnant MMO industry, innovating in multiple areas. Indeed, Crowfall is a MMO where there is an end. No endlessly grinding end-game content until the community dies or you grow bored. Rather, the game will propose campaigns with precise purposes. Each campaign features a world that is generated procedurally, a world that is doomed to disappear at the end. While there is no doubt that this sounds truly interesting, we have to consider the effects this may have on the community (a soft wipe every few months may discourage some).
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These various campaigns will each have different victories conditions The server goes through four phases: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. The more time passes, the more the world gets dangerous and hostile. Once winter is over, The Hunger will start destroying the world and a winner will be declared. Each campaign will offer its own rules and its own implications. Some servers may even establish rules of permanent deaths or full corpse looting.
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Chronicles of Elyria Chronicles of Elyria aims to be a particular dynamic and immersive MMORPG: the characters evolve as solo characters or families having more or less influence in the world, slowly age and eventually die, encouraging players to embrace a wider world and think beyond their character.
In Chronicles of Elyria, every action can affect the game world as well as the other players. The world is thus based on a closed economy, with limited resources, non-repeatable quests, a
world completely destructible at different levels (local, regional or national), with one of the main focuses being in terms of alliances and conflicts between players.
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Players can live as a humble adventurer, an artisan or merchant, or even evolve within noble families intent on creating their own dynasties. Chronicles of Elyria does not include any class or level system, but instead possesses a number of skills for players to master and determine their area of expertise. It should also be noted that truly mastering a skill or a craft requires players to die and reincarnate multiple times.
Chronicles of Elyria recently launched its Kickstarter campaign, with a total of $711,967 raised from 6,306 backers so far.
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Special Mention: Star Citizen
While its campaign is rather dated, this MVP of the crowdfunding scene deserves some praise.
Star Citizen is a "Space Simulator MMO" developed entirely in participatory financing (crowdfunding) by Chris Roberts, the mind behind the Wing Commander series, Privateer and Freelancer. Put simply, the game aims to be a mix between Freelancer and Wing Commander in a multiplayer persistent universe, and with a big FPS component.
Players will be dropped into the galaxy where they will be allowed to take part in the activities they choose, including commerce, smuggling, exploration, mining , piracy, bodyguarding, and so on.
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The game is
currently in development phase. While the amount already collected is more than sufficient to complete the development of the title, Cloud Imperium Games continues to collect donations in order to continue to upgrade the quality of Star Citizen and its planned features. Furthermore, any additional donations also serve to perpetuate the game development after its release and continue its evolution.
Their main source of income are donations from players who buy "pledge" packages that allow them to pre-order the game or purchase new or rare vessels. These range from $45 to $15,000 and offer, in addition to the game and different spaceships, a variety of rewards including cosmetics, ingame currency, soundtracks, and so on. CIG regularly releases new Pledge packages, sometimes temporary, with rewards of rarer or larger spaceships. By March 2016, the total funding for the game had surpassed $110 million, making it the most successfully crowdfunding projects in history.
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