Crowdfunding Fraudsters: League of Legends MMO


670de8ff4ec53dd692d0c4ce9c175c84_original

Fraudster:
2a:  a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor;

Dear potential content creators: Stop using unlicensed content as the basis of your projects. It is not only misleading from a consumer standpoint, it is illegal and will result in your campaign being shut down faster than you can say “cease and desist.”

Today’s crowdfunding frauster article is for the League of Legends MMO, a game not developed by Riot Games and not approved for development by Riot Games. It is, instead, in the works by the decidedly not-Riot Games studio…Kamron Nelson, a self-professed “lore enthusiast” from Salt Lake City. Nelson wants to raise $5 million to pitch a League of Legends MMO to Riot.

This project’s goal is to get Riot Games to work on this project with us, not to steal or infringe anything whatsoever. We love Riot and the game they’ve created; we just want an MMORPG based on the League engine that will allow us to explore the vast amounts of Lore we’ve been missing.

I assume that Nelson is using the term “us” in the royal sense, in the same vein that I use to reference to other, nonexistent staff here at MMO Fallout, because the Kickstarter page doesn’t indicate any real development team other than Nelson himself and a couple of Deviant Art users. If there is an actual studio that will work on the game, it has gone unnamed.

Like most pieces featured on Crowdfunding Kickstarters, the League of Legends MMO appears to be the creation of an “ideas guy,” someone with no apparent development background who decides he can create a game because he played a lot of them. Such mentality leads to financial disasters like Greed Monger, wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars in time and resources, and contributes to the already tainted reputation of crowdfunding.

So how does Kamron plan on investing the five million?

The money from this Kickstarter will go directly to Riot as an upfront ‘let’s make this game’ offer. If the project does not get fully funded, which is likely, no one is charged anything. It is RISK FREE unless fully funded.

Here’s the problem: Raising money to develop a game with rights that you haven’t secured and making promises that you can’t keep. It assumes that people are willing to fork over $5 million as a deposit in the hopes that waving said money under Riot’s nose will make them willing to work with an unknown entity to create a game with their own engine and characters.

By comparison, let’s look at other big crowdfunding efforts. Psychonauts 2 brought in $3.3 million as an established franchise with a big name attached (Tim Schafer). Shenmue 3 brought in over $6 million as an established franchise with big names attached and major corporate backing.

So the League of Legends MMO is funding hopes and dreams with the hope that everyone will get their money back should the campaign succeed but Riot says no anyway, handing their money to a guy that no one has ever heard of. Luckily the $5 million goal means that this project will fail long before Riot’s lawyers feel the need to get involved.

Fantasy Tales Online Available On Steam


20160419213959_1

Indie MMO Fantasy Tales Online is available in Early Access on Steam, if you missed its release last week. Developed by Cold Tea Studio, FTO is a retro-inspired MMO with accessible controls and a small community. I managed to take a look at the game and found it to be an immensely enjoyable experience, albeit one that is clearly early on in development.

Also available at launch is the Frontier Pack. For $20, the Frontier pack provides 1 month of subscription, bags, crate keys, costume tokens, respec tokens, and cash shop gems. The server on Steam is separate from the one on the official website.

Otherwise Fantasy Tales Online is free to play. Check it out on Steam at the link below.

(Source: Steam)

Video: Riders of Icarus Latest Trailer


Riders of Icarus

The latest trailer for Riders of Icarus is out, showing off some of the mounts and dragons that players can tame and fight alongside. Players eager for a game that provides mounted combat can rejoice, as Riders of Icarus provides hundreds of monsters with which to mount and fight with, from bears to dragons.

Riders of Icarus is currently in beta, with founders packs available at the official website. MMO Fallout partnered with Nexon last month to give away beta keys.

Paypal Will Not Protect Crowd-Funding Pledges


loadsamoney_2286530b

Paypal has announced that crowd funding ventures will no longer qualify for payment protection, meaning you’ll no longer have outside help if the wine condoms, cat panties, or that completely legitimate hardcore sandbox MMO run by an MMA manager whose love for video games trumps his complete lack of experience making them doesn’t end up producing a final product.

New terms of service on the Paypal website remove payment protection from activities that include an entry fee and a prize, payments to government services, and payments on crowdfunding platforms:

  • Payments on crowdfunding platforms

The new terms are due to the heavy risks and uncertainties of crowdfunding. Unlike a straight purchase, the user pays to fund a product that may or may not reach fruition. Presumably this change in policy comes following losses incurred by Paypal in reimbursing people who lost out due to unfulfilled crowd funding (and there are a lot).

Back in 2014, Gamerant.com reported that only 37% of video game Kickstarters have fully delivered. MMO Fallout itself has reported on numerous failed projects crowdfunded by thousands only to shut down due to a mixture of incompetence and suspicious behavior.  Earlier this year, development on Ant Simulator shut down amidst allegations by an ex-developer that the money was blown on alcohol and strippers.

Users have until June 25th when the new terms go into effect to shut down their Paypal account if they do not wish to be included.

Check out MMO Fallout’s (somewhat) weekly column Crowdfunding Fraudsters, where we look at bad crowdfunding campaigns to avoid.

(Source: Paypal)

Chronicles of Elyria: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly


4dd8fbd16525de244f0dd5be7ed922aa_original

Chronicles of Elyria is getting a huge amount of attention thanks to its Kickstarter campaign, currently at $673,000 out of $900,000 with 25 days to go in its campaign. A lot of the attention comes from the very unique concept that the game bases itself on, that your character actually grows up, lives, and eventually dies of old age. Characters age over the course of 10 to 14 months, with that exact life expectancy based on player actions during that time frame, and after death are reincarnated more powerful than before.

It also creates an interesting monetization strategy that is effectively an annual subscription. When your character dies, reincarnation costs one spark of life, which costs real money. Each death in-game takes away approximately two days off of your life, however the campaign has some murky explanation that more important players actually receive more severe penalties upon death. It isn’t completely clear, but it looks like the more influential your character, the more time that death takes off of your play schedule.

“…each in-game death reduces your overall lifespan (by approximately 2 days) and brings your character that much closer to permadeath. However, if you’re an influential player (the king perhaps), each in-game death is more impactful, leading to permadeath in just 4 or 5 times.”

Otherwise Chronicles of Elyria is gunning for the sandbox realism crowd. Your character stays online and continues to do things while you are offline, combat has more focus on your ability to dodge and parry than simply spam buttons, and there are no NPC quests or mini-map.

One thing that I’ve talked about in great lengths in the past is that hardcore sandbox MMOs tend to confuse hand-holding with providing important features, an important distinction that makes Eve Online a massive success while Mortal Online and Darkfall feed off of scraps in the dumpster out back. It looks like Soul Bound Studios is getting the picture, because the game is boasting several features you don’t normally see in MMOs of this genre.

ce3a73b96f54049a0b1a7a9ff0cb114d_original

First off, players will be able to give quests, using the example of an offline player character merchant being able to task players with bringing him needed reagents. To force honesty on both sides, the merchant can issue a contract which both sides must agree on and fulfill with the threat of consequences if they don’t hold up their end. It’s a very simple function, Player A provides resource and Player B pays him by this date otherwise someone will be penalized. It is so easy, in fact, you wonder why games like Mortal Online and Darkfall didn’t add it in.

Which doesn’t mean your ability to BS other players is being diminished. While the game doesn’t provide a mini-map, it will be possible for cartographers to and map makers to create maps to sell to other players. According to the Kickstarter campaign, it will also be possible to lie on the maps. It is also possible to change the name that NPCs use to refer to towns by how popularly the town is titled, meaning you’ll possibly be traveling from Dongton down to Dongville passing by Lake Dong and of course Butthole Creek.

Let’s be fair, the way the contract system is being advertised sounds ridiculously complicated on the developer’s end, but can potentially be the powerful tool that sets CoE apart from its failed brethren. According to the campaign page, you’ll be able to sign trade contracts, set up trade routes, create a shipping business, hire assassins, employ people to bring you resources, all kinds of stuff. I really want more details on this, though, because it can make or break the atmosphere especially when it comes to enforcing those contracts.

One bit I don’t entirely buy is the idea that the system will reduce griefing. Every sandbox developer thinks that they’ve found the cure for rampant griefing and Chronicles of Elyria will have to prove that it is different. You see, the problem with sandbox games is that the differences between griefing and playing as a bandit are very difficult to tell, especially when you’re building a computer system to identify and sort the two out. Banditry is a valid style and kinda popular in the sandbox community, it isn’t that players find the conduct acceptable as much as they don’t like the idea of developers restricting gameplay.

And it looks like Chronicles of Elyria thinks that they can curb griefing by simply punishing players for killing each other. It’s a bold move, one that could backfire horrendously by merely lowering the life expectancy for griefers who didn’t intend to stay long anyway before moving on to their next game, while alienating players who want a more fleshed out world in which to play bad guy. It sounds great on paper, but could seriously affect the long term viability of the game as the direct financial punishment of death makes the game feel more restricted.

“If you kill another character in-game, your face goes up on a wanted poster and a bounty token is created for you. This not only keeps you out of cities, but also means you can be taken to ‘jail’ which significantly reduces your lifespan, adding real financial repercussions to your in-game decisions.”

I expect to see a fair amount of buyer’s remorse from people who pledge at higher levels in return for pets/mounts/equipment only to find out (hopefully they read the pledge details) that items can be lost and pets/mounts can be killed by NPCs and presumably other players. There has been a fair amount of criticism over the fact that backers at the $120 level and above will receive three months of early access to the live game, not to mention the kind of rewards you get once your pledge starts hitting four digits.

Alternately, you can bet that the campaign is going to get roasted for perceived pay to win.

Overall, I want to see more of Chronicles of Elyria. There is a good long while until the game comes out, so we have plenty of time to get acquainted.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Warcraft Legacy Server Survey To Be Presented To Blizzard


draenor

Nostalrius isn’t the first, nor will it be the last World of Warcraft private server to meet the wrath of Blizzard’s legal team, but the shuttering of this service has undoubtedly opened a can of worms that I don’t think many people anticipated. Between a petition receiving over two hundred thousand signatures, a press that finally seems bent on supporting the user call for vanilla servers, and a ridiculous amount of coverage even outside the gaming press, Blizzard has effectively been forced to respond and take the Nostalrius effect seriously.

As it turns out, the Nostalrius team has been invited to Blizzard to become the ambassadors of the vanilla-demanding community. Nothing is being promised, but the team wants you to answer a poll on what kind of server you want. The poll asks some details, whether you are currently playing WoW (legitimately or otherwise), and why you decided to use private servers if you have. It also asks quite a few questions on your favorite eras of WoW, why they were your favorite, etc.

It’s a bit of a time investment, but well worth it. Hopefully we’ll hear more when the Nostalrius team returns from their meeting.

(Source: Survey)

Beta Perspective: I Can’t Heap Enough Praise On Overwatch


Overwatch 2016-05-06 05-39-24-40

I don’t think a lot of people had much faith in Overwatch when we first heard of it, after all consider the circumstances. Blizzard just got done telling us that their MMO Titan was being canned because it wasn’t fun, but that the remains of the title would be stitched together in a Frankenstein’s monster-like fashion to create a new game. It makes you wonder what exactly Titan was, and why it sucked.

Functionally, Overwatch is what would happen if Team Fortress 2 and a MOBA made love and had a child. It is a 6v6 first person shooter with a massive cast of unique characters on numerous themed maps over several game modes. Rather than Team Fortress 2’s nine classes, Overwatch currently provides 21, split into four groups (offense, defense, tank, and support).

A Team Fortress 2 player would find themselves much at home in Overwatch. You have Pharah as the soldier with her rocket launcher and rocket jump ability, Torbjorn as the engineer capable of building and upgrading an automatic turret, Widowmaker as the sniper, Mercy as the medic with her medigun, D.Va as the heavy, Tracer as the scout, Junkrat as the demoman, and probably Winston as the pyro. There isn’t really an equivalent of the spy, the TF2 character that can disguise and go invisible.

Even Call of Duty fans have a dedicated character in Soldier 76, a hero who carries an automatic rifle that alt-fires rockets.

Even within each category, the characters vary pretty wildly and have a number of uses. In support, for instance, Mercy isn’t just a follow-and-heal character. While useless in combat, her staff can heal and it can also boost damage, while her ultimate ability can be used to resurrect characters on the spot. Lucio, on the other hand, is capable of using his offensive weapon to damage enemies or to knock them around. His Crossfade ability can regenerate health or amplify movement speed. Symmetry has a weapon that builds damage the longer it connects, while her sentry turret slows enemy movement.

Overwatch 2016-05-06 05-46-34-65

But it still doesn’t reduce the versatility of characters. Even non-support characters have healing powers that vary from simply boosting oneself to providing area of effect healing and shield. They give every character the potential to just massacre the enemy team, regardless of their type. Roadhog, for instance, already being a tank with ridiculous defense and health, can bring enemies in close and then utilize an ability to heal himself. Widowmaker, with her sniper rifle and ability to scale to higher places, can be absolutely devastating in the hands of a sharpshooter.

The increase in characters allows for some devastating combinations. If you’ve looked up videos on Overwatch, you’ve probably seen the combo where Bastion (a giant robot) transforms into his stationary turret mode on the Payload objective and just mows down people while Reinhardt (a tank character) protects him with his shield.

There are three game modes planned for launch as well as a hybrid mode. Escort has one team escorting a payload while the other team runs down the clock. Assault has an attacking team trying to capture control points while the defending team tries to run down the clock. Control has both teams fight over control of capture points which control adds to a meter which, when full, ends the round. Hybrid starts out as assault and eventually becomes escort.

Overwatch 2016-05-06 05-43-23-72

More updates are planned after launch, obviously, including new heroes and new maps, as well as new game modes. If there’s one thing you can expect from Blizzard, it is that the Overwatch that exists a couple of years from now will be massive in comparison to what we get at launch.

The only real downside of the beta so far is the prevalence of matchmaking throwing you into a guaranteed loss about twenty seconds before the match ends. It’s an inevitability in any game that has matchmaking, and Blizzard has alleviated the frustration by making it so you do not gain a loss if you backfill a match, however you can score a win if your team is victorious. It’s relatively simple functions like these that Blizzard is known to put in their games to make them a bit more fair.

It is a testament to these games when you can do poorly without going full tilt, even though the nature of the game demands a balanced team and I’ve had a few moments of shouting obscenities at my computer because my team was attacking on an escort map and my team just would not stop camping in their own spawn area or those public games when your team throws the game away because three members just wanted to be snipers. The game gives suggestions based on your team, but it doesn’t force you to pick a balanced list of characters so if you have a team of tanks and the enemy team is balanced, you’re screwed.

I see massive eSports potential from Overwatch, just from the litany of gifs showing up online. There are already tournaments planned, and hopefully Blizzard adds spectating tools in the same with Valve has with Counter Strike: GO, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2. I can’t wait for the full launch of Overwatch. If you haven’t gotten into the game yet, the beta was extended until May 10th mid-afternoon EST. Even if you can only get a few games in, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s been a long time since I’ve come out of a game this positive.

The game will also make a killing out of the loot system. Basically you have an overall level that is functionally meaningless, but every time you level up from experience gained in each round you get a loot box that is full of random skins, victory poses, sprays, etc. When the game goes live, you’ll be able to buy them with credits as well. Longer play sessions can lead to better experience gains, since you get a boost from staying in a match through successive rounds. You’ll also apparently be able to toss away the stuff you don’t want for credits to eventually earn the stuff you do want.

I never tell my audience outright to spend money on a game just because I told you I liked it, so I really recommend getting into the beta while it is still live.

Wild Tera Update Adds In Woolen Cloaks


83ec4f3b-6e65-4701-a5b6-e227ad16f6ef

Massively multiplayer life simulator Wild Tera thinks you should wear a cloak when you go outside, to avoid catching a cold. Luckily the latest update has just what you need in order to craft such comfortable wear. Update 8.3, deployed this week, allows players to dye woolen cloaks in a variety of colors, by boiling them with certain ingredients.

Woolen cloak can be colored by boiling with the addition of various ingredients. The ingredients you have to figure out yourself.

In addition, the folks at Juvty Worlds have added a few updates to the pet system. It is now possible to find horses of various colors and breeds, including some that are rare and hard to find. If you don’t like the idea of losing your pet, it is also possible to buy permanent versions at the shop that cannot be lost. Available in the shop now are horses, deer, boar, wolf, brown bear, and also unique rare breed – a black and white bear.

Wild Tera can be played by buying one of several early access bundles. Check it out at the link below.

(Source: Wild Tera)

IPE Update: Motion To Dismiss Digital Homicide Lawsuit Presented


sued

Romine V Stanton refers to the ongoing lawsuit between James Romine (Digital Homicide) and James Stanton (Jim Sterling) over alleged defamation by the latter causing damage to the reputation and sales of the former. Last we heard, James Romine had filed a motion to amend his complaint and is now suing for over $15 million in damages, including $5 million in emotional distress. The defense, on April 5th, filed a motion to delay their response which was granted with the new deadline being May 5th.

Well the deadline is here and the response was filed yesterday, finally giving us a response from Stanton and his lawyers, of which he has two. James Romine is still being represented by himself, owing to the fact that he can’t get a lawyer to take his case. The brunt of the 31 page response aims to persuade the judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that Arizona does not have jurisdiction over the case, seeing as Stanton has no presence in the state, makes no sales in the state, nor is he aware if anyone does or does not watch his videos from Arizona. Humorously, he also notes that he has never even visited the state.

Stanton’s response is a motion to dismiss the case, defending his writing/videos as protected speech and that commentary on DHS is clearly opinion. I’ll let Stanton sum it up:

 I am appalled that my opinions and writings on the subject of DHS, its games, and its use of an alias on the Steam service to distribute its games can serve as a basis for a libel lawsuit. As a writer and entertainer, I am well within my legal right to express my opinions, disclose my discoveries, and be part of online commentary regarding video game companies like DHS and video game distribution services like Steam. The Article is clearly protected speech and use of words like “chicanery,” “the Wet Bandits,” “weirdness” and “weeeeird” to describe DHS is clearly opinion.

MMO Fallout will have an update hopefully early next week on how Judge Tuchi rules.

Crowdfunding Fraudsters: Sacrament From Kickstarter To Paytreon


1lg

Fraudster:
2a:  a person who is not what he or she pretends to be :impostor;

Today’s Crowdfunding Fraudsters come in the form of Sacrament, a game that describes itself as a sandbox for everyone, by a small team of people who have no idea how to build a game. Remember Greed Monger and how that project went? Jason Appleton was just a businessman who evidently got the idea that video games were like a vending machine that you just put money into and the game came out. If you look around the room you’ll see neither Appleton or Greed Monger, the latter was canned and the former ruined his reputation in the gaming community.

But let’s cut our teeth and dive into yet another independent “developer” made up of guys who don’t have any experience making games but played some games and are pretty sure they’ve got the gist of it down. Like an obese man who eats a lot of cake and decides to open a bakery, the folks at Ferocity Unbound are pretty certain that their years of experience raiding and presumably crossing their arms and harrumphing at how the current crop of MMOs and free to play suck, and how much better it would be to go back to a time when MMOs all had subscriptions and companies went bankrupt like it was going out of style.

Sacrament has already tried and failed to obtain crowd funding, via a Kickstarter campaign that raked in just a couple thousand out of $250 grand. Now the company is looking towards Patreon, demanding monthly payments for a game that doesn’t exist and may never launch, by people who might not have the know-how to deliver on their promises. On the other hand, the benefit of Patreon is that unlike Kickstarter which requires a real product, they aren’t actually obligated to return any of the money should the project go belly up. Gamers with too much expendable money can pledge upwards of $50 per month.

If you’re interested in donating more than fifty grand, you can go ahead and contact the developer directly.

So instead of making this cut and dry, I took a little look at Sacrament’s website only to be overwhelmed with a gigantic wall of text that says pretty much nothing. Donald Trump couldn’t make a wall out of empty promises this great. You really need to see the kind of stuff that this developer is promising.

Naturally, Sacrament will have no levels.

We chose, instead, to take out the levels and incorporate tiers, which work as a difficulty scale. Some players will live in tier 12 where their difficulty is at its cap, some will find that grouping up and taking on tier 16 is where they love to be, others will simply take on the game until they are bleeding at the fingertips. We wanted the players to be able to go back and forth between tiers seamlessly and feel as if they were still earning their fight rewards.

You might be asking yourself “what does any of this mean? How do tiers work if there are no levels? What do the tiers signify? How do you rise up in tiers and how is going from tier 1 to tier 12 any different from calling them levels? What are the difficulty differences between levels?” Sure, the description of one of the bigger mechanical changes doesn’t actually contain any information on how the system works, but that’s not important. What is important is that this system is for you, the player.

Tell me more!

PvE will consist of 20 tiers. The first 15 tiers will have three zones – or locations – dedicated to the player’s progression through each tier. The final 5 tiers will be raiding tiers (larger group overworld content and actual 24 and 36 player instanced raid content) where you will have to beat all of the raids in order to flag yourself and move on to the next tier. Let me be very clear here… You will have no character levels, only tiers to show your strength of character!

No character levels, only tiers, right. Makes perfect sense. Hey this isn’t one of those games where there are no “levels” but instead the game uses skill levels that are effectively the same thing, right?

If a skill maxes at 100 and you achieve it in PvE then step into the Arena for the very first time. Your Arena rank is 1 your skill is downgraded to the max for that rank, let’s say 5. As soon as you reach rank 2 your skill is now 10, hit rank 3 and it is automatically 15, so forth and so on.

Thought so.

Sacrament is not your typical theme park MMORPG where the player is led by the hand from start to finish on a leash. While it may be an easy way to ensure players go exactly where the developers want them to go so they can literally control content, Sacrament’s content design is strong enough not to force people to do any quests. From the moment of inception of this game, there were a few key elements that existed before even writing any concepts down, and this was one of them.

Absolutely no hand holding. You’ll be leashed through each tiered zone, but they will not hold your hand at any point through it. It’s completely different from current games, just like how the tier system is completely different from levels. It’s totally different guys! Nostalgia, Everquest, this new generation, am I right?

But let’s talk about grouping. Since your game has no levels, there shouldn’t be any problem with two players of varying experience getting together and knocking down a boss for some sweet loot, right? I mean, the whole new thing about MMOs is allowing players to group up with their friends without having to wait for the lower guy to level up.

Unfortunately, since you are not flagged for the tier, your items are not assigned to the primary loot table and so seeing them drop will be less likely. However, even when one does drop you cannot loot it off of the corpse and cannot hold the item until your tier. This is one of the incentives of flagging for each tier. You’re still getting a sufficient amount of experience and currency drop (equal to what monsters in your tier would drop plus 5-10% per tier above your own) to give you plenty of reason to take on the more difficult content.

Sacrament is very friendly to people who want to group with their friends, just don’t expect to get any loot without the game holding up a giant middle finger. Also hold the phone here, experience in what? Your game has no levels, so what is the experience going toward? And why does gear need a specific tier flagged to use? Once again, how are tiers any different from levels when you are locking away loot, areas, and the ability to not just loot but equip gear? In the end, what is the difference between “you need to be level 12 to equip these pauldrons” and “you need to be tier 12 to equip these pauldrons?” Other than the completely user-unfriendly mechanic of having the game deny loot because you’re not high level enough, an issue that every other MMO seems to have figured out.

It should also be noted that while the game does penalize you for taking on content above your level, there is no penalty for farming content below your level. No handholding garbage, you got that? This is a hardcore game for hardcore people, now stop farming things stronger than you and start farming things weaker than you. Alright, tell me about the raids.

Side note, I honestly didn’t expect the raids to be this ridiculous. I’ve included just a small snippet of how Sacrament has thought up its raid bosses, but just get a load of this example.

At 75% of the boss’s health he roars and a Yeti comes down into the fight. The Yeti boss cannot be directly damaged by players, but summons waves and waves of adds that must die within proximity to the Yeti causing fire damage that burns the Yeti’s flesh and fur until it is dead. Once the Yeti is dead the boss will then obtain a small shield that cannot be damaged by players directly and will summon a wave (or two) of adds that must die within proximity of the boss to drop the shield and allow for the raid to continue to DPS the boss (if enough of the enemies are not killed within proximity of the boss then another set of adds AND a mini boss spawns again); this will happen once every 30 seconds.

I’m not even playing the game and I’m already searching for the unsubscribe button. Do they expect people to put up with this? This is about a quarter of the boss fight description, and it is described as a “mild raid” to boot! It not only sounds convoluted but frustrating and just one gimmick played over and over and over again. The first raid you hit is a 12-player PUG dungeon at tier 5, which if you read above is when people actually start seeing each other. Yep, the game starts off your interactivity with a 12-man dungeon. These don’t sound like game pitches as much as the ramblings of a mad man who went insane while playing World of Warcraft Vanilla and now runs around town trying to put together a 40-man raid on Walmart.

But that’s not enough, I need some ridiculous concept shoe-horned in for the sake of “hardcore” street cred. Give me a boss that can murder everyone in a zone.

The PvE/Crafter raids, Blended Raids, are unique and designed for your Epic Quests for both PvE players and Crafters. These raids will force the PvE players to fight off hordes of NPCs to provide the Crafters opportunities to create items that will allow the raid to progress or speed it up. Sometimes the Crafters must craft an item that prevents all players from dying to a zone wide one shot or build a wall that can allow players to hide behind it while the boss goes on a rampage.

This is all I’m going to specifically talk about as far as game mechanics go, you can probably anticipate where the game is headed by what I have written above. You can find everything at the main website, but it’s all a bunch of the same convoluted, overly-complicated functions you find in similar games. I not only have to question the marketability of a game that forces players through these ridiculous, multi-tiered raids, but I question the abilities of the developers to implement such complicated systems.

So let’s look at the three founders and their bios. If they don’t immediately tell me about 90’s nostalgia, you can count my money withdrawn.

I started playing MMORPGs with the first EverQuest, though I missed the launch by about a year. I was an active duty Marine at the time with two deployments, so leveling up through the game wasn’t nearly as enjoyable for me as playing the game at any level. I kid you not… I spent two years between Orc Highway in GFay and Crushbone. Yep. It was a blast, too!

MMOs of the 90s were fun and enjoyable; they’re where I cut my teeth in MMO gaming. Creators of recent MMOs have missed something. Many are so caught up in recreating the success of one title or another that they miss the mark when creating a fun game to play.

Gaming is my passion. From the first time I picked up a SNES controller and popped in that Zelda cartridge, I’ve been fascinated by video games.

Alright, nostalgia is one thing. I’m going to need to see your credentials. Do any of you have development experience?

Nearing the end of our time with ESO we had begun to discuss the concepts of a new game with two of our friends, Kraive and Ahdora, and I quickly realized that between the four of us we had quite a bit of insight and information. I drew up some documents to see how much information about game systems we could come up with and a month and a half later we had an entire game hashed out. I’m talking from the ground on up.

To my surprise, shortly thereafter I was asked by one of those friends if Kraive and I would give input on an idea he and his brother had for an MMO. I was even more surprised to find that it matched so closely with my own idea about the direction in which a game should go. Thus began a whirlwind collaboration on concepts: the beginning of what was to become Sacrament. In just a few short months, we’d hammered out the vast majority of our core game concepts. Things went from a dream to very real, very fast.

Personally I’m a long term player. Many can look at the sheer number of titles I’ve played and assume I’m one of the locusts, travelling from game to game until the next one comes along. I played Everquest for 6-7 years, I met my wife during a short break but I had intended to return to EQ. I had tried the other titles of the time but EQ was where I always returned.

So we have a development team made up of the “idea guy.” Alright, so you don’t have any credentials. Can you sufficiently play to the 90’s kid gamer?

This game addresses concerns that have been expressed by the gaming masses for years. Concerns that have heretofore either gone unanswered, or have been given only lip service. Sacrament offers so much to so many different kinds of players. I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of this project, and I cannot wait to share this with everyone. Consider Sacrament nourishment for your starving gamer soul.

I could use some nourishment, because reading through the website was exhausting.

This is what happens when the gaming press pays attention to every indie dev with a failed crowdfunding campaign. What isn’t surprising is that the game has a very small following of players willing to throw a substantial amount of money into the void, people who will no doubt be yelling at the press for not properly scrutinizing the developers a couple of years down the road when they dissolve pre-alpha.

Sacrament’s Patreon hasn’t started yet, the developer is still fleshing out details. May the buyer beware.