Gamescom 2016 with J. Todd Coleman & Jess Mulligan

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Gamescom 2016 with J. Todd Coleman & Jess Mulligan

Early Friday morning at Gamescom we sat down with Jess Mulligan from Travian to talk about Crowfall while we waited for J Todd Coleman to find his way to us. It was a lovely informal chat. Jess on the other hand? She's been in the industry a long time. Quite possibly she has more experience in the industry than I do at playing the products of the games industry. With that, we had our rambled on...

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Wizardry

Most awesome team?debatable but definitely been around since we have Shadowbane and Ultima represented here.However pretty much everything their team has worked on is ancient tech gaming.

I feel too many are thinking this a rpg when it seems to merely be trying to cash in on the game of thrones era.Similar to when Blizzard's timing on the Panda's looked too obvious.

One thing i did not know was the game will be using destructive surfaces,although voxel based ,so that is up in the air as to quality and usefulness.None the less a good idea on paper.

I feel this game or team has done a poor job of really defining this game,i believe that is because they are afraid of narrowing their fan base.This site/writers in all of it's pampering have yet to aid the game's defining design.
To me it looks like a very simple build of "let's kill other players" with some spells or weapons.The added catch is you get to have keeps or Castles,however yet to be determined is the P2W factor.

Seems from what i have read,there is no P2W but of course that is in THEIR opinion not mine.We have seen this claim made in the past and is often far from the truth.If game assets can be bought outright,it ruins the integrity of the game completely,so we will see.

Seems crafting will be very important,i sure hope they have a plan to stop cheating because in every game i have ever played "most of the them"there will be bot crafters flooding the market and rmt usage to buy and sell desirable items to craft,the entire market will be ruined by rmt.


One final note because i read that part about servers and kingdoms.I hope because it sure sounds like an EXACT server structure as Wiz 101 and that is a horrible setup.I hope i am wrong,feel free to tell me if i am.

Kinring

Am I reading her comments correct when she says they expect to launch next August?

JamesGoblin

Kinring said:

Am I reading her comments correct when she says they expect to launch next August?

@Kinring That would be quite big (and surprising) news, where do you see that?

Kinring

"MMORPG: Most of our usual questions are the simple ones. When's it going to launch? How's it going?

Jess: Bear in mind this is still in development, we promise no dates. That's the only way you can be honest about this. We hope to be in closed beta by the end of the year, as well as feature and content complete. So that means open beta will occur sometime early 2017 and then it launches soon thereafter as it makes sense to launch. Testing changes everything.

MMORPG: And you're planning to be back here next year with a booth.

Jess: Yes! Because one way or another it'll be out, just about or soon. Will there be any other events you plan to do before the launch?

You know maybe. We're looking at maybe having a launch about this time next year, so it may make sense to hold events until launch."

@JamesGoblin That last sentence in my quote. It sounds like, unofficially, open beta will happen early 2017 (Q1 or Q2) and launch around this time next year, which would be August. I think who ever transcribed the interview may have mixed a question in with the answers, so it is confusing, but she does say "We're looking at maybe having a launch about this time next year".

I'm not trying to spread a false rumor, I am genuinely confused by what she meant by 'launch'.

JamesGoblin

@Kinring I missed that, thanks! I don't believe even she is taking her own words too seriously.

The reason I didn't detect the date is rather simple - over time, I learned to just skip over these, especially if given as distant estimates. Sometimes I do it on auto-pilot.

When reading such updates, I am interested in real meat (often, there's none) and some reading between the lines.

Kinring

It was a bit of a disappointment finding out it would be another year before launch. I thought this game was farther along than that. But, I would rather wait and get a good game then get an unfinished piece of crap that is plaguing today's MMO market.

I'm still holding on to a hope that CU will stay on schedule moving forward.

JamesGoblin

I'd say August 2017 would be good launch time - for both games. That is to say, I am not sure any of these will make it by then.