Shards Online Interview - Ultima Meets NWN

If you stumbled into a discussion between a couple of veteran MMORPG players, it wouldn’t be surprising for you to hear Ultima Online and Neverwinter Nights cited. Both of these games were highly influential in their own way: there’s an increasingly large and vocal niche that demands a return to the sandbox gameplay initially introduced in the MMORPG genre by Ultima Online, and Neverwinter Nights, although not a MMORPG, was loved by many because it allowed the creation of user made servers where Dungeon Masters could effectively run the persistent world much like in a Pen-and-Paper game.

Shards Online clearly draws inspirations from both titles. The title itself is a hint to a multiverse of worlds where players will be able to create their characters, and some of them will be player-run; what’s more, players will be able to host a cluster of servers with multiple linked game worlds.

We’ve reached out to developer Citadel Studios, currently on the last hours of their second Kickstarter campaign (the first one failed, but this one is well on track to get all stretch goals), and particularly with Founder & CEO Derek Brinkmann (who previously worked at Mythic on Ultima Online) to know more about the game. Enjoy!

 

• Can you explain what changed exactly from the last Kickstarter campaign in June, where you asked a minimum of $320,000, and the one that’s ongoing where the minimum (already surpassed) was $50,000? Did you receive additional funding through other means, or perhaps you’re restricting the original scope of Shards Online in some way?
• After our previous campaign winded down, we put our heads together and created a refocused plan to get to alpha. The minimum amount we could get to alpha with was 100k. It doesn’t seem like much, but we have been in active development for over a year and have already personally invested quite a bit of money into the project. We reached out to our friends and family and found we were able to raise 50k from some small investments. That gets us half of the way there. We decided that reaching out to our fans would be the best way to get the rest of the funds. The alternative was to approach angel investors which would have forced us to change the spirit of the project.

 

• Will there be many dungeons on the official servers of Shards Online, and will players be able to create their own dungeons on their servers?
• Yes in fact our initial shard map, Celador, has a small dungeon behind the waterfall. Tower of Babel is a shard map coming later in development that has basically a different dungeon on each level of the tower. Players will be able to create their own dungeons in Beta once we release the custom maps feature.

 

• Do you have a current estimate for the skillcap?
• None of this is set in stone, right now each skill caps at 50 and the total cap is 250. One interesting point is that skills that have nothing to do with combat (like crafting skills) do not apply to your total skill cap.

 

• In the overview on the Kickstarter main page, you mentioned an “immersive storyline”. Is that something only available on official servers? Also, how long do you think it will be once the game launches? Will players be able to tackle this in solo or will they need to group up?
• No, any player run server running will have our default rules and content. The story is not a traditional campaign with a simple quest line. Rather it is a series of events that will take place on the shards in real time. For example, the city of Petra is protected by a ball of energy emanating from Tethys, the water god’s, prison. To drop the shield, players will have to work together to complete a series of goals. You might not be there when the shield finally drops but everyone will participate in the process that makes it happen.

 

• Shards Online will also have “hirelings and tamed companions with their own lives & unique skills”. How many hirelings and/or tamed companions can a single character have? Will they be useful in combat?
• This system is still in very early design. We are not sure what the limit will be but it will cost you actual in game money to keep NPCs under your employ. We don’t currently plan to have NPC adventurers for hire, but you will eventually be able to hire them as guards.

 

• Player housing will be in the game world. Will there be any chance for malicious players to damage/destroy the house, or even just break in and steal stuff?
• For our default rules, attempting to breaking into a house in an area that is under the protection of guards would result in swift punishment. However, if you house is beyond their reach, you will need to hire your own guards to protect it!

 

• Following on the previous question, will it be possible to pickpocket players? In that case, is there a system in place for bounty hunting?
• Yes! stealing is already in our pre-alpha build (in experimental form). Our lead designer feels very strongly about this feature. He’s even talked about cutting peoples fingers off if they get caught! (He’s a little crazy)

 

• What about wars between guilds? Will there be anything like that in Shards Online and if so, how will they work?
• We haven’t designed it yet, but guild wars will most certainly be a part of the final game. We’ve even talked about being able to attack guild halls. This would be one of the places where hireling guards would be useful.

 

• Do you plan to have an Open Beta phase before release?
• We will have an open beta, but not in the sense that anyone can try it for free. That is because with an indie style crowdfunded game, you are charging for access to the game at all stages of development. It’s a great way to get a game developed without signing away your soul to a big publisher.

 

• Thank you for your time!