The Project: Gorgon Kickstarter campaign carries on successfully.
While modest in its goals, something to which Eric Heimberg attributes its success so far, it has done better in total pledges than either of the previous two campaigns. It managed to hit its $20,000 goal in just over a week and here, at the halfway point, it is beyond $35,000 and has the first three stretch goals covered. A custom mount for backers and Dwarves are now in along with one of the new stretch goals.
After the first two were in the bag, two new stretch goals were announced for the $35,000 and $40,000 levels. The first is, at $35K, is an expansion of the player instrument system.
We have 6 instruments planned, each with six short music loops that can be combined in any order. But if we hit this stretch goal, we’ll add a second “song” that’s completely different from the first, consisting of six new music loops for every instrument. We’ll also add a seventh unique instrument, and we will work on allowing animal forms to participate in the fun!
That sounds interesting, though my deep and abiding wish is that they would copy the LOTRO ability to play music in game through locally stored .abc files. Still, we look to have that one now.
And at the $40K level there is the Bard player ability.
The Bard is part psychologist, part performer, and all charisma. Bards can inspire allies to momentary bursts of outrageous heroism, use their improvisational skills to change the tide of the battle, and use song to soothe wounded souls. It works great with other skills: combine the Bard skill with the already-existing Mentalism skill to create a classic EQ1-style “buffing bard”, or combine with Psychology to create an exceptional crowd-controller.
Invoking the EverQuest bards, weaving their songs to buff parties, is clearly striking at a target of opportunity. They were a special class back in old Norrath and have never really been duplicated in feel for me since.
Meanwhile, having passed the halfway point and met the initial funding goal, the campaign is in what is traditionally a bit of a lull. While it is harder to see on sites like Kicktraq due to the smaller dollar amounts in play, the daily pledges do seem to be slowing down a bit.
Still, the game itself is getting more press attention this time around as well, which is getting more people to play the pre-release version of the game.
200 players on at once doesn’t sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but that is a record for this little project.
There is a nice interview with Eric Heimburg over at Massively OP about the development and plans around Project: Gorgon that you should check out if you are interested in the game.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 