Crowfall Is Shutting Down Already


Temporarily. Wink.

Continue reading “Crowfall Is Shutting Down Already”

ArtCraft Entertainment Sold Crowfall


Operations to change hands immediately and without interruption.

Continue reading “ArtCraft Entertainment Sold Crowfall”

Crowfall Ships July 6


Like some kind of poet.

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Crowfall’s Backer Stretch Goals Thus Far


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With about 70 hours left to go in the Crowfall Kickstarter, more than fourteen thousand have pledged their support. The latest stretch goal is the Guinea Beast pack animal. The next stretch goal, at 14.5 thousand backers, will offer bonus tax-free land parcels to backers at varying tiers.

  • Female Centaur characters and enhanced particle effects.
  • All-father statue for all backers.
  • 1 free month VIP for everyone.
  • Character mounts and caravans plus bonuses for higher tier backers.
  • Guinea Beast pack animal for everyone.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Crowfall Details Training/Skills


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Artcraft Entertainment has posted a new update to its Kickstarter backers detailing the game’s skill/training mechanics. While active training will be available to gain proficiency, passive training will be the primary way of advancing your character’s skills.

Similar to Eve Online, passive training means your character is advancing whether or not you are logged in. Three skills can be leveled at different rates at any given time, with an estimated one month for the quickest skill to reach maximum.

VIP members will be able to train three characters simultaneously, and additional skills can be queued in case one hits the maximum level but the player is unable to get online for some reason.

(Source: Kickstarter email)

Crowfall Upgrades To UNITY 5


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ArtCraft Entertainment has announced that Crowfall has been upgraded to run on the latest version of UNITY. The engine upgrade brings in new physics integration as well as the .NET platform along with a whole host of middleware.

UNITY 5 was released this week as a fully featured free engine.

(Source: Backer email)

Crowfall Begins Phase 2: Kickstarter Now Available


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The timer on Crowfall’s website hits zero today and it may not surprise many of you that it lead to a Kickstarter campaign. The self-described Throne War Simulator is asking for eight hundred grand over the next month, with an estimated delivery of December 2016.

In Crowfall, players battle it out over multiple worlds for control of the land. The game promises meaningful season changes, limited campaigns on procedurally generated maps, player control over maps, and a lot of destruction.

You can grab a digital copy of the game for as low as $30 during the Kickstarter campaign.

(Source: Kickstarter)

Play Crowfall To Destroy, Not Create


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If you hadn’t heard, Crowfall is set to be developed using the Voxel Farm engine, the same technology powering Everquest Next and Landmark’s destructible terrain. The benefit of this tech is that it allows for procedural generation and for the world to be destructible on a very detailed level.

Blast holes in walls. Collapse towers on your opponent. Dig a tunnel beneath a castle wall, so that you can dig your way up into the courtyard and siege from within.

While the technology will be available in all worlds, it will really shine in the Campaign worlds where players can literally bring down civilization. After all, it’s going to be destroyed anyway.

On the creation side, if you’re into that sort of thing, the voxel tech allows cities to be built with great detail, from castles to shops, and allows for them to grow organically. Everything in the game can be procedurally generated using complicated algorithms.

Check out more details at the link below. Crowfall is set to launch as a buy to play game with an optional subscription.

(Source: Crowfall)

Crowfall: Buy Once, Play Forever


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Artcraft Entertainment has revealed their pricing system for Crowfall, announcing via FAQ that the game will be available for a single purchase.

Crowfall is a “buy once, play forever” game. That means that you buy the game once (estimated retail price of USD $50.) and you can play for the life of the game, without ever paying us again!

Players will also be able to buy cosmetic items, account services, and VIP membership tickets.

(Source: Crowfall)

Ultima Online: Rampant PvP Drove Away 70% Of New Players


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Ultima Online’s second expansion, and its new continent Trammel, has been debated nonstop since its introduction way back in the year 2000. Gordon Walton, currently working on the upcoming MMO Crowfall, is responsible for Trammel and posted a lengthy piece explaining why the update came to be.

In his post, Walton explains that Ultima Online was losing 70+% of its new players within 60 days of subscribing due to the intense nature of the game’s PvP. Trammel was introduced in a time when Electronic Arts had planned on shutting down Ultima Online to push players towards the then in-development Ultima Online 2, noting that the executives at the time didn’t fully understand the idea of an MMO (supporting a game long after release as opposed to launching a new title). The good news is that Trammel doubled the subscriber base, the bad news?

The bad: Without the “sheep to shear” the hard core PvP’ers were disenfranchised. They didn’t like preying on each other (hard targets versus soft targets), and they became a smaller minority in the overall game. The real bad though was that the intensity and “realness” of the game for all players was diminished. This was the major unintended consequence.

Walton admits that Trammel was unsuccessful in bringing back the disenfranchised players, only 5% of whom returned of which few stayed. As for Crowfall, that game is being developed with the mistakes of Ultima Online in mind.

We are specifically making our game for players who will like the kind of experience we will create, not trying to cast a wide net to get a mass market audience. We want the folks who will appreciate an intense gaming experience with real risk, winning and losing. While we want as many players who are engaged in our game as possible, we won’t need millions of players to make our game work.

(Source: Reddit)