Well...I liked the music. Aside from that, after approximately 7 years of development and all that they've shown is a flyby of environments that could have been created less than 6 months in their darkest hour to drum up excitement, I am very sad to say that this seems doomed to fail. Sorry guys.
Copernicus
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The second project from 38 Studios was a massively-multiplayer online game set in their Amalur universe, established in the singleplayer RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. After 38's collapse, it is unlikely to ever see release.
38 Studios Unveils its First Look at Project Copernicus
Very pretty art style, but I just don't think I'll ever be able to get into an MMO again like I did with WoW.
I'm of the feeling that this video was pushed out because they're in dire strates financially and need some money, maybe I'm wrong but I can't help thinking that the game will be released in a broken condition.
I usually don't mind same type of games coming out constantly, but ugh...yet another MMO? Looks nice (graphically, otherwise nothing special really...), but not for me, unless it'll have something really special in it. Like a chance to play as something else than a human knight in shining armor. I was really bummed out that The Secret World only had humans as a playable race. Give me monsters, skeletons, whathaveyou! That'd already be a very positive option for me.
That and no monthly payment...
I figured developers realized the "hey let's release our own WOW and rake in the dollars" idea was stupid by now. Guess not.
If they need money then why not strip the MMO stuff out and release this game as a single player RPG.
Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning did well and i'm really enjoying it, hope this does too.
I sort of feel the same way about this game as I do about the Penny Arcade games. There is no denying that Gabe, Tycho and Curt are all passionate about games. But loving games and making games are two different things. The guys from PA seemed to either get this a bit more and reeled in the scope of the game or were just limited by the budget and what the developer could do for them. 38 on the other hand has basically had Curt and Rhode Island saying do whatever! Make a WoW killer. And that's fine at the start of a project. But we're going on six years. One hopes that there's enough producers in there to keep them on track, but these recent issues say otherwise. It certainly doesn't take 300 dudes to model all that, so one can hope there are some amazing engineers and programmers making it amazing.
I'll be interested to see how it does but in honesty: Between Diablo 3, BF3, and maybe Guild Wars 2? I'm good for online content. If SWTOR couldn't keep me interested, I don't see how this can. Which is a bummer since I've had some great MMO experiences. It's just not what I dig now.
Go Sox, though. =/
The window for fantasy MMOs making a profit has long since been closed. Last couple had a nice initial rush of buyers but then after a couple months, your down to a few. Hell, MMOs of any style are really hurting now with so much competition among the MMO crowd and also from normal games.
I believe some of the higher ups in 38 studios had this grand dream that they would grow as large as blizzard from their MMO. TIme for them to cut their loses and regroup or die.
It's hard to throw criticism at stuff that people have worked hard on designing and modeling, but so far none of the areas shown in the video elicit any excitement from me. I know it's a fantasy setting, but "fantasy MMO" doesn't need to translate to "looks like a more shiny WoW". That being said, until we see more on the other systems in the game, no one can really make any fair judgments on it.
The enviroment looks interesting but I want a look at lore, which I hope Reckoning will do when I get around to it, and most importantly the gameplay. I really hope they working on a sample of the gameplay just now to show people. If they truly have some interesting and unuiqe, lets hope so, they might be able to set up pre-order/beta access to try and stem the hemorrhaging of money.
I'm willing to bet that this video was previously available only to investors, or was only meant to be, and now they are showing it off because they pretty much have no choice.
Really though, this shouldn't give any more hope to anyone about what it was or is. I don't understand how they think they can keep the cards so close to the chest at this point. They're going to need to drive some serious hype on this game over the next year+ to get even close the the number of people they are going to need to pay their loans off, and survive.
What were they thinking? Their first announced project was a fantasy MMO in one of the hardest markets to penetrate in video games? The art design is totally fine, but that doesn't matter because frankly it looks like shit. And let's be honest - it's probably going to offer the same dated MMORPG combat system that's been around for years. Project Copernicus was an absolutely horrible idea. Don't they have market analysts there to tell them these things?
Looks good, but we need to see gameplay. They are obviously going for a comic book vibe, and I think they achieved it pretty well. Unfortunately, I can also see lots of people saying this is just a WoW clone; and honestly, they are very similar in appearance. It will all come down to gameplay, it seems.
If the combat system is anything like what was in Amalur, I'm already sold. Amalur was a strong game, which a beautiful world. It seemed destined to be an MMO when I was playing it. I hope they get to release this game, especially since they have been working on it for seven years.
If this is anything like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning or anything like other fantasy MMOs than I could not care any less about it.
Those were some jagged looking environments.
Seven years in development and not even a second of gameplay. Yeah, I get it, dazzle my eyes with "prettiness" but cut to the chase and show me what makes your game possibly any different to the dozens upon dozens of other cookiecutter MMOs.
Seven years.
Oh boy, a MMO that was being developed while WoW was at its peak. I WONDER HOW THE COMBAT IS GOING TO BE LIKE!
Really like the look of it. I felt the same way about Reckoning. Hope 38 Studios can finish it. Looks really interesting.
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