Shards Online - This is now on my Radar.

[tr1age]

Ultima Online meets Neverwinter Nights in this subscription-free online PC game where the community can change all the rules.

From former lead engineer (Derek 'Supreem' Brinkmann) and lead designer (Tim 'Draconi' Cotten) of Ultima Online comes Shards Online.

"Citadel Studios has the right team to give the sandbox genre what it’s been missing" - Rob Denton, co-creator of Dark Age of Camelot
Experience limitless content. It's a game that lets you experience hundreds of different worlds with just one client! You can play on official Citadel Studios servers or join any of the hundreds of community run servers. Each server has different rules and content, allowing you to find a game universe that fits your exact play style.

Become a creator of worlds. It's the first game that legitimately allows you to host and moderate not just a single game world, but an entire universe of connected game worlds with the potential to support thousands of users at one time. Customize every aspect of your servers' gameplay experience from character development, to combat, to items and equipment, to monsters and AI.

Award Winning: Shards Online was voted "Best Indie MMO" by mmorpg.com at PAX East 2014. This same award was given to Shroud of the Avatar at E3 this year!

Since the primary goal of this campaign is to get Shards Online to Alpha, it would be disingenuous for us to promise you a bunch of extra features at release. Instead, all of these stretch goals are for additional features that will be delivered when we reach Alpha.

We will cram lots of awesome social "emote" animations into the Alpha One build. Here is just a small sample of the emotes we will get in for you: /applause, /bow, /cheer, /cry, /greet, /salute, /ponder, /taunt.
Role-players rejoice! We will also make sure you can sit in chairs and lay down on beds.

I wonder what sort of fish are swimming around in Lake Tethys? Only one way to find out... Help us get to 70k! And of course what good is fishing if you can't cook what you catch?

We will add an extra official rule-set to Alpha One with increased skill gains and permanent death! Not only will we have this rule-set running on some of our official servers, but players will be able to run these rules on their own community servers.

This toolkit will allow you to use a simple user interface to create custom interactions with NPCs for your own shards without having to write a single line of script. With branching dialogs and goal oriented reward triggers, not only will you be able to add your own stories, but you can add new playable content that is completely unique to your shard!

As we approach this goal, we will put up a poll which will allow you, our backers, to select an additional shard map to be released at Alpha One. This also means we will allow travel between shards at Alpha One instead of when it was originally planned in Alpha Two.

Explore the Multiverse: Out of the box, it's a complete game experience with an immersive storyline. It’s about vengeful gods that fight for supremacy in a multiverse of worlds that span many genres.

Want to learn more about these game worlds? Click here
Blaze your path: Your fate is not predetermined by class selection or levels. Your skills and abilities naturally evolve as you use them. With a virtually unlimited number of skill combinations, no two characters are the same.

Recruit the local talent: Your hirelings and tamed companions have their own lives, but they will develop their unique skills and abilities as they fight and work for you.

Build your home: No instances here. Build your house or guild hall in the actual game world on one of the 'home' shards and decorate it with the spoils of your adventures.

Experience live content: Server admins have the tools to generate content on the fly like the ability to possess creatures and spawn items. Citadel Studios official servers will have regular live events where your interactions will change the course of history.

Play by your rules: Play on Citadel Studios servers with our official rules and content or find a modded player run server with custom rules and content that suits your play style.

Create your world: With our powerful world editor, you will create completely original game worlds. Use the built-in assets we provide or import your own. New built-in assets become available with each expansion pack.

Never log off: With the Shards Online mobile companion app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, you will manage your hirelings and receive notifications of important in-game events. Imagine the possibilities... Is your guild hall being attacked? You can send your hirelings to defend without ever logging in.

What our fans are saying:
“The sound, graphics, mechanics, and play all functioned very well for a pre-alpha build. It was very impressive overall!” – Playtester
“Finally, gamers will be able to return to the old and real Role-Play as we did on the Ultima shards.” – Fan
“Awesome work on the environment, the nature really has a good feel to it... Well done to the team at Citadel Studios.” – Playtester
For more details visit: shardsonline.com

Whatcha think?

http://shardsonline.com/

 

[Crake]

I'm willing to check this out

Sent from Moto X using Tapatalk.

 

[tr1age]

AltTabMe Shard

 

[Crake]

How we do

Sent from Moto X using Tapatalk.

 

[dainjre]

I could be persuaded... Been itching for achaea recently so this may staunch it

 

[tr1age]

Looks way better than shroud of the avatar. I like stylized versus realism Plus if you can design shards it would be amazing if we could literally make a town for tabbers. Plus sandbox means everyone can play the way they like. Perfect for a community like us.

 

[Euchale]

subscription-free online PC game

ehh...

 

[Zakis]

ill check it out

 

[PsionicFox]

Created shards sound like a really good method for digital masturbation. And not in a good way.

 

[tr1age]

When the hell did everyone turn into twitter feeds.
We used to have discussions on games, lol

"yes"

"no"

"i see your link & clicked"

What is your thoughts overall on what you can watch so far? Does the idea of the clusters for a persistent world turn you off? Do you like the idea of setting your own "rules"? Graphics?

Personally I love the viewing angle, I love games with that angle plain and simple. And the housing.

 

[Euchale]

I´ve played Neverwinter Nights before and around 80% of maps where crap. But after a while you knew who makes really good adventures and stick with them. It´s a mixed back.

 

[tr1age]

Gyoin

 

[ToxicAsF]

I saw this a few days ago somewhere on the interwebs (I think it was being toted as a "modern iteration of runescape"). I really have a hard time enjoying sandbox creation MMO's.

 

[tr1age]

I saw this a few days ago somewhere on the interwebs (I think it was being toted as a "modern iteration of runescape"). I really have a hard time enjoying sandbox creation MMO's.

"Ultima Online meets Neverwinter Nights in this subscription-free online PC game where the community can change all the rules."

Anyway I figured you would like the crafting video

 

[ToxicAsF]

Ultima Online meets Neverwinter Nights

That's the line.

I'll watch it when I get home from work.

 

[Jiggyyo]

I’ll hop in on this one with my thoughts. Prepare for long post which probably doesn’t make much sense at all.

First of all, free to play? Alright, this puts me off a bit and I think everyone knows why. I have played my fair bit of free to play games, and I’m so tired of it. The main reason is of course that free to play means the developers need some other way to make money. How do they usually do this? Yes, Items. I haven’t looked much around the web for the game, I’ve only read this thread and a bit on their website. And it doesn’t say anywhere if we’ll have to buy the key or box and then it will be free, if this is the case I’m happy.

Now that I’m done with my opinion on subscriptions, which is the hot topic with all new mmos, I’m going to say what I think of the game itself. I think it’s a cool concept because everyone can make their own world and story, but I am quite confused about the whole server thing. Everyone will be able to make their own server, with their own rules and adventures… Are the characters then stored in the cluster and transfer over between servers with similar rules?

Community servers doesn’t really tickle my fancy for some reason, yes some games can have them, but a mmo with community servers? This sounds weird. I honestly don’t know my opinion on this yet, but I do know that I don’t like when anyone can be an admin on a game server and do whatever they please. Most of the time, people get upset and they do silly things to people who criticize their work. And I think that will be the case in this game, if a person works on their own world for weeks on ends only to have a person come in and say “oh my this blows”. Said admin will not be happy, and will have his human emotions hurt. Nobody likes that. But again, I don’t know how they have this system planned out, might turn out very good and I might be thinking completely wrong about it.

I do like that the developers let people make their own story if they want to, and it seems almost like a miniature game development kind of deal, allowing people to make their own maps and even code some things? I love this idea. I have always liked to get nude silly mods for games, and perhaps change the properties of items. And that they seem to make it easy to do this, I love it very much yes.

I’m not a very big fan of the camera angle though, I prefer 3rd/1st-person camera for these kind of games. Not much more to say about that, sorry.

Housing is the new thing in mmos. Even WoW has this feature now, which means it’s a ‘standard’, and I know they weren’t first with it but they usually set the guidelines for mmos, kind of. Those who played Wildstar during my time there knows what I think of housing in games. I love to just sit in an area by myself and tinker around with customization, and I’m glad we get to see the housing feature more often now. And from what I can gather from the housing in this game, it gives me a The Sims vibe. And I mean that in a good way, since it seems you’ll be able to make a completely customized house from scratch, using the world editor? It would be cool.

To summarize I’d say that the game seems to have a nice concept which takes us away a bit further from the traditional mmo. It doesn’t seem to be a pvp game at all, I don’t see anything mentioned about that. But if you like to play through good stories and perhaps meet new people, this game will probably be good. I don’t think it’ll be the next big thing, but instead it will probably be a smaller game with a community that feels more like a family. Perhaps I’ll at least try it, if the controls are like the ones in Diablo the chance is small I’ll stick around. I would like to try the editor though! I’ve always wanted to make my own maps and adventures, but I’m too dumb to learn those stuff!

There, I gave my opinions about this game. I hope you’re happy now, you made me come out of my cave! I’m going to go cry in the shower now…

 

[tr1age]

Jiggly I agree there are a lot of questions regarding servers being run by admins. They explain it slightly in other videos but I still don't get it. I think of Garrys mod though or mine craft and those games have done ok in that regard. As for the game being free it will be a pay up front system play for free system. No mention of micro transactions.

There is actually pvp and it looks to be fun I might be testing it on Saturday.

Some people love the angle some hate it. I've always loved the Diablo/UO angle. I always feel it makes me more immersed than first person oddly enough. Probably nostalgia.

Housing is important to this game because your stuff is persistent everywhere. Including your home. But not just an instanced home. The ability to actually make neighborhoods which I miss greatly from the UO days. Something arch age did well actually.
Agree with the sims vibe and also the fact that the crafting in this game has purpose and isn't just beat level 1 to get to level 2.

Glad you came out and gave your opinions. Should def watch more of their videos and twitch streams too to gather more info. Maybe you will understand it more than me.

 

[Keleynal]

I'm mildly interested because it's free to play. It will be all about the community, so if TAB gets a good admin running the server we are on (like people in the guild that like doing that?) then it could be a ton of fun. Since the experience will be completely customizable, it will probably be easier to do fun things with less people. A bunch of us had a good time with a D&D group awhile back. I think this could be more of the same, but in a game instead of dice. TAB was known for doing creative stuff in GW@ when I joined up. This could be a chance to get that back.

 

[tr1age]

I'm mildly interested because it's free to play. It will be all about the community, so if TAB gets a good admin running the server we are on (like people in the guild that like doing that?) then it could be a ton of fun. Since the experience will be completely customizable, it will probably be easier to do fun things with less people. A bunch of us had a good time with a D&D group awhile back. I think this could be more of the same, but in a game instead of dice. TAB was known for doing creative stuff in GW@ when I joined up. This could be a chance to get that back.

HE LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Euchale]

good admin

Nope

running the server we are on

I can do that.