A Timeline of SOE and Daybreak Games

We are entering a new era for the games of Daybreak which made me think it might be a good time to review the story so far.  We’re around the 25 year mark for when the seeds of the company were planted and, with the Enad Global 7 purchase, the time seems ripe.

• The House that EverQuest Built

First there was EverQuest.

Firiona and friends at launch, 1999

At some point around 1996 John Smedley, working at Sony, managed to get Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, Bill Trost, and a host of others together to create a 3D online multiplayer fantasy game loosely (or not so loosely in places) based off of Sojourn MUD / TorilMUD.

Launched on March 16, 1999, a variety of Sony organizational names were connected to the game at different times including Sony Interactive Studios America, Verant Interactive, 989 Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Pictures, and Sony Online Entertainment.  My original disk and manual both display the 989 Studios logo prominently and names a couple others in the fine print.  As I mentioned in my 20 year anniversary reflections post about EverQuest, one magazine referred to the company running the game as Sony, Verant, and 989 in different parts of the same issue.  It was a confusing time.

Clarity came eventually though when EverQuest exceeded all expectations for success.  That was a bit of a surprise.  March of 1999 pre-dates the age of influencers and social media.  The internet wasn’t seen as a serious news source, though Matt Drudge breaking the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal had at least made a few start paying attention.  But a lot of us were still getting our gaming news via glossy monthly magazines where full page ads at the covers were the best way to gain attention.

I don’t recall any such ads for the game back in early 1999.  I only knew about the game because almost everybody then active on TorilMUD got invited to beta, usually by Brad McQuaid’s Aradune character in game.  I declined the beta invite, but came for the opening.

Not only were ads scarce, there wasn’t a lot of background to draw attention to the game.  Compare that to what most see as its direct competitor of the era, Ultima Online.  The Ultima franchise had been rolling along for more that 15 years when UO launched in late 1997.  The series spawned a studio, Origin Systems, that created other well known games.  And then there was Lord British, who ended up living in a castle and going into space on the proceeds of his Ultima empire.  UO had the fame, reputation, and lineage that EQ lacked.

And yet, at their respective peaks, EQ would have more than double UO’s subscribers.

EQ seemed to spread by word of mouth.  After buying it at Fry’s on my way home from work on launch day, I came into the office and told a bunch of people about it.  They all went out and bought copies and we ended up playing together.  And they told people and I told more people and others who played told people and soon the people I was telling already knew about it and there was a song “Has anybody seem my corpse?” being passed around and the whole thing had become something of a minor social phenomena.

And its success cemented the idea of online gaming at Sony so that the plethora of names was eventually pared down to Sony Online Entertainment.  25 years down the road from Smed collecting a team to get the ball rolling, this is all still the house that EverQuest built.

• A Timeline of Events

This is not an exhaustive list, and I am not going to try to piece together things that came before March 16, 1999 or betas for various games.  Early access though, that is another story. I am also going to try not to editorialize, which won’t be easy for me.  If I have missed anything important, drop me a note or a comment and I’ll update the post.

• 1999
  • Mar 16 – EverQuest launches with a base monthly subscription is $9.89 a month; servers are quickly overloaded and a long series of new servers kicks off
  • Jul 28 – MMORTS Sovereign announced
• 2000
  • Apr 24 – The Ruins of Kunark, the first EverQuest expansion, launches
  • Oct 5 – SOE acquires Infantry
  • Dec 5 – The Scars of Velious, EQ expansion #2
• 2001
  • Apr 17 – Cosmic Rift launches
  • Dec 4 – The Shadows of Luclin, EQ expansion #3
• 2002
  • Apr 25 -The subscription rate for EverQuest increased to $12.95
  • Oct 29 – The Planes of Power, EQ expansion #4
• 2003
  • Feb 11 – Sovereign MMORTS officially cancelled
  • Feb 11 – EverQuest Online Adventures launches on PlayStation 2
  • Feb 25 – The Legacy of Ykesha, EQ expansion #5
  • May 20 – PlanetSide launches
  • Jun 24 – EverQuest Macintosh Edition launches
  • Jun 26 – Star Wars Galaxies launches
  • Sep 9 – Lost Dungeons of Norrath, EQ expansion #6
  • Nov – Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga launches
  • Nov 17 – EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers expansion launches
  • Dec 1 – Lords of EverQuest, a single player Windows RTS, launches
• 2004
  • Feb 10 – Gates of Discord, EQ expansion #7
  • Feb 10 – Champions of Norrath launches on PlayStation 2
  • Mar – EverQuest subscribers hit a peak of 550K
  • Sep 14 – Omens of War, EQ expansion #8
  • Oct 27 – SWG Jump to Lightspeed expansion
  • Nov 8 – EverQuest II launches
  • Nov 12 – A second round of EQII servers are launched to absorb the surge of new players
  • Nov – SOE introduces the Station Access plan that gives players a combined subscription to EQ, EQII, and Planetside for $22 a month
  • Nov – EQII subscribers who opt for Station Access get two extra character slots on their account and access to the EQII Players stats page
  • Dec – EQII is down for almost two days as an update breaks the live servers
• 2005
  • Jan – SOE Announces SWG is being added to Station Access
  • Feb 7 – Champions: Return to Arms is launched on PlayStation 2
  • Feb 8 – EQ server consolidation starts with the four PvP servers being combined into the single Zek server
  • Feb 15 – Dragons of Norrath, EQ expansion #9
  • Feb 17 – SOE temporarily adds the /pizza command to EverQuest II as a cross promotion with Pizza Hut allowing players to order a pizza from within the game
  • Mar 21 – The Bloodline Chronicles, the first EQII adventure pack launches
  • Mar 22 – Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, a PSP title, launches
  • Apr – SOE begins a series of EQ server merges to bolster the populations, which runs on until the end of June
  • Apr – EverQuest II – East, developed for China, Taiwan, and South Korea, launches
  • May 5 – SWG Rage of the Wookies expansion launches
  • Jun 28 – The Splitpaw Saga, the second EQII adventure pack launches
  • Jul 20 – EQII gets new servers, Shadowhaven, The Bazaar, and The Vox PvP under the Station Exchange program, which allows players to sell in-game items for real world money; players are allowed to transfer characters there from other live servers
  • Aug 15 – SOE takes over operation of The Matrix Online
  • Sep 13 – Depths of Darkhollow, EQ expansion #10
  • Sep 13 – Desert of Flames, the first EQII expansion
  • Nov 1 – SWG Trials of Obi-wan expansion launches
  • Nov 8 – SWG New Game Enhancements update lands, changing character progression
  • Nov 9 – The “SOGA” character models from EverQuest II – East become an available option in EverQuest II
• 2006
  • Jan – SOE announces they will be merging 10 low population EQII servers into 10 medium population servers because players are “too spread out” on the low population servers.
  • Feb 17 – Shadowhaven Station Exchange server is merged into The Bazaar server
  • Feb 21 – Prophecy of Ro, EQ expansion #11
  • Feb 21 – Kingdom of Sky, EQII expansion #2
  • Mar 28 – Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code, a PSP title, launches
  • Mar 29 – EverQuest II – East is shut down, with all Chinese accounts transferred to the Mistmoore server, all Taiwanese accounts to the Najena server, and all Korean accounts to the Unrest server
  • Jun – EQ launches the first progression servers for the game, The Combine and The Sleeper, which let players play though all of the game expansions in order
  • Jun 14 – The Fallen Dynasty, the third EQII adventure pack launches
  • Sep 19, The Serpent’s Spine, EQ expansion #12
  • Nov 13 – Echoes of Faydwer, EQII expansion #3
  • Nov 15 – Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, a PSP title, launches
• 2007
  • Jan 30 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes launches with SOE as publisher
  • Feb 13 – The Buried Sea, EQ expansion #13
  • May 9 – Legends of Norrath collectible card game is launched, running within EQ and EQII
  • May 15 – SOE takes over operations for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
  • Mar 21 – The Sleeper EQ progression server is merged into The Combine server
  • Apr 30 – The EQII Darathar– UK PvP, Gorenaire– FR PvP, and Talendor– DE PvP servers are merged into the Venekor – RP PvP server
  • Jul 11 – The Agency is announced
  • Jul 19 – EQuinox, the official print magazine of EverQuest II is announced with issue #1 featuring Rise of Kunark information and beta access
  • Oct – Station Access pricing peaks at $30 a month for subscription access to all SOE titles including The Matrix Online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
  • Nov 13 – Secrets of Faydwer, EQ expansion #14
  • Nov 13 – Rise of Kunark – EQII expansion #4
  • Dec – SOE is caught after moving the level 60 Unholy Trinity guild off of the test server to a live server, an action against stated company policy and not something ever made available to the average player, causing a fierce reaction from players
  • Dec – A false rumor spreads that Zapak Digital Entertainment is planning to purchase SOE and its games for $300 million, an amount close to what the company will sell for in December of 2020
• 2008
  • Jan 22 – Pirates of the Burning Sea launches with SOE as publisher
  • Feb 14 – EQuinox issue #2 is announced, featuring Legends of Norrath cards
  • Apr 16 – LiveGamer is brought in to run financial transaction for the Station Exchange RMT servers The Bazaar and The Vox PvP
    
  • ~Sep – EQuinox issue #3 is cancelled and the magazine idea is scrapped
  • Oct 21 – Seeds of Destruction, EQ expansion #15
  • Oct 24 – The EQII Venekor– RP PvP is merged into the Nagefen, the final remaining PvP server
  • Nov 18 – The Shadow Odyssey, EQII expansion #5
  • Dec – SOE introduces Station Cash, a virtual currency, and an in-game cash shop in EQ and EQII
• 2009
  • Jan 23 – SOE games become available on Steam starting with EverQuest and EverQuest II
  • Apr 28 – Free Realms launches
  • Jul 31 – The Matrix Online is shut down
  • Dec 15 – Underfoot, EQ expansion #16
• 2010
  • Feb 16 – Sentinal’s Fate, EQII expansion #6
  • Mar 4 – The Combine EQ progression server is merged into the Druzzil Ro live server, ending the first retro server run for the company
  • Apr – SOE tries a new EQII Passport subscription plan where for just $5.00 a month you can play for three consecutive days during a single month
  • May 5 – SOE announces The Agency: Covert Ops, a free to play title on Facebook
  • Jun 10 – Tanarus, a title that predated EverQuest was shut down
  • Jun 22 – EQ server merges come again, paring down the server count by ten as low population servers are merged into more populated ones
  • Jul – EverQuest II Extended, a free to play version of EQII launches
  • Aug – Plans for EverQuest Next announced at FanFest
  • Sep 15 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures launches
  • Oct 12 – House of Thule, EQ expansion #17
• 2011
  • Jan 11 – DC Universe Online launches on Windows and PlayStation 3
  • Feb 15 – The Fippy Darkpaw EQ time locked progression server launches, with the Vulak’Aerr server being added soon thereafter to handle the crush of players (I have a whole timeline for those servers)
  • Feb 22 – Destiny of Velious, EQII expansion #7
  • Mar 31 – The Agency is officially cancelled
  • Apr – Flying mounts introduced into EQII
  • May – SOE games are down for almost two weeks as part of the PlayStation Network security breach in which personal data from a reported 24.6 million accounts were compromised
  • Jun – At E3 SOE announced that pricing for Station Access, now called SOE All Access, would drop from $30 to $20 a month, but extra character slots for EQ, EQII, and Vanguard would no longer be part of the plan
  • Aug – SOE finally gets a unified server status page
  • Nov 1 – DC Universe Online goes free to play
  • Nov 15 – Veil of Alaris, EQ expansion #18
  • Dec 6 – Age of Discovery, EQII expansion #8, which also ushers in the free to play era of the game as EverQuest II Extended is folded into the live server list
  • Dec 15 – Star Wars Galaxies is shut down
  • Dec 18 – The Vox PvP Station Exchange server for EQII is merged into the Nagefen server
  • Dec 21 – The Bazaar Station Exchange server for EQII is merged into the Freeport server ending the Station Exchange program
• 2012
  • Feb – SOE announces it is selling its EU customer accounts to a German media company, ProSiebenSat.1
  • Mar 16 – EverQuest goes free to play
  • Mar 29 – EverQuest Online Adventures shuts down on PlayStation 2
  • Mar 29 – Infantry is shut down
  • Mar 29 – Cosmic Rift is shut down
  • Mar 29 – Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga is shut down
  • Aug 7 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes goes free to play (a week earlier than planned)
  • Aug 7 – SOEmote is introduced to EverQuest II
  • Sep – SOE introduces Player Studio for EQII, which allows players to create cosmetic items to sell in the in-game cash shop, for which they will be paid a cut of the sale
  • Nov – SOE introduces Krono for EQ and EQII, an in-game item that can be redeemed for 30 days of subscription time, which users can purchase for real world cash and sell at the broker to other players for in-game currency
  • Nov 13 – Chains of Eternity, EQII expansion #9
  • Nov 20 – PlanetSide 2 launches
  • Nov 28 – Rain of Fear, EQ expansion #19
• 2013
  • Jan 30 – SOE publishes the import Wizardry Online as a F2P title
  • Jan 31 – Pirates of the Burning Sea ceases to be published by SOE
  • Aug – A new vision/plan for EverQuest Next is announced at FanFest, which includes the involvement of Storybricks
  • Aug – The FanFest presentation mentions a dev tool EverQuest Next called Landmark
  • Sep 23 – SOE publishes the import Dragon’s Prophet as a F2P title
  • Oct 8 – Call of the Forsaken, EQ expansion #20
  • Nov 12 – Tears of Veeshan, EQII expansion #10
  • Nov 13 – SOE starts selling early access packs to EverQuest Next Landmark
  • Nov 15 – DC Universe Online launches on PlayStation 4
  • Nov 18 – EverQuest Macintosh Edition is shut down
• 2014
  • Jan – Station Access/SOE All Access pricing drops to $15 a month, the price of a single game subscription, but keeps the 500 Station Case stipend after the forums erupt when Smed suggests they may remove that benefit
  • Jan 24 – SOE announced they will be shutting down Free Realms, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures, Wizardry Online, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which is seen as the reason they have cut the price of SOE All Access
  • Mar – EverQuest Next Landmark becomes just Landmark
  • Mar 31 – Free Realms is shut down
  • Mar 31 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures is shut down
  • Apr 10 – H1Z1 is announced, a zombie horror title oddly dedicated to SWG players
  • Jun 18 – The ProSiebenSat.1 experiment ends and all EU accounts are transitioned back to SOE
  • Jul 31 – Wizardry Online is shut down
  • Jul 31 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is shut down
  • Oct 28 – The Darkened Sea, EQ expansion #21
  • Nov 11 – Altar of Malice, EQII expansion #11
• 2015
  • Jan 15 – H1Z1 releases as early access
  • Jan 22 – The class action suit for the PlayStation/SOE security breach of May 2011 is resolved, awarding the lawyers $2.75 million and each affected player 450 station cash… but only for US players and only if you filled out a form and could prove you were affected
  • Feb 2 – Sony announces it has sold SOE to Columbus Nova and the organization will be known as Daybreak Game Company going forward
  • Apr 28 – The Rum Cellar, the fourth EQII adventure pack launches
  • Apr 30 – Daybreak acknowledged and blessed the existence of the Project 1999 EQ retro server being developed by a private group, with the P1999 team and the Daybreak EQ team coordinating updates so as not to overlap each other
  • May 22 – EQ opens the Ragefire progression server, the start of a regular run of special servers that help boost the game’s popularity by pulling back many lapsed players
  • Jul 24 – Daybreak announces that long time studio head John Smedley is leaving the company, Russel Shanks steps up to take over his role
  • Jul 24 – EQII launches the Stormhold progression server and Deathtoll PvP server, the first retro servers for the game
  • Aug 21 – EQII announces the Drunder server, where rule breakers will be sent to play and no customer support will be available
  • Oct – Nine of the lower population EQII servers, including the final PvP server Nagefen, are merged down to three PvE servers, all with new names (Maj’dul, Halls of Fate, and Skyfire), while the Antonia Bayle server remains unto itself
  • Nov 16 – Dragon’s Prophet is shut down
  • Nov 17 – Terrors of Thalumbra, EQII expansion #12
  • Nov 18 – The Broken Mirror, EQ expansion #22
• 2016
  • Feb 8 – H1Z1 King of the Kill the battle royale game and H1Z1 Just Survive, the co-op zombie horror game, are split into two products, both remain in early access
  • Mar 8 – The EQII Deathtoll PvP retro server is shut down
  • Mar 11 – EverQuest Next officially cancelled, leaving Landmark the remaining active part of that project.
  • Apr 29 – DC Universe Online launches on XBox One
  • Jun 10 – Landmark leaves early access and goes live
  • Jul 1 – PlanetSide is shut down
  • Aug 17 – Legends of Norrath is shut down
  • Nov 15 – Kunark Ascending, EQII expansion #13
  • Nov 16 – Empires of Kunark, EQ expansion #23
  • Dec 19 – Daybreak acquires Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeon & Dragons Online from Warner, setting them up under the name Standing Stone Games, never mentioning in public that they are the actual owners
• 2017
  • Feb 21 – Landmark is shut down
  • Jul 31 – LOTRO launches the Mordor expansion
  • Sep 22 – The Vulak’Aerr EQ time locked progression server is merged into the Fippy Darkpaw server
  • Oct – H1Z1 King of the Kill renamed H1Z1 again due to a desire to release the game in China, where having “kill” in a game name is frowned upon by government censors
  • Nov 28 – Planes of Prophecy, EQII expansion #14
  • Dec 12 – Ring of Scale, EQ expansion #24
• 2018
  • Feb 28 – H1Z1 leaves early access and goes live
  • Apr 24 – In response to a question about Russian sanctions Daybreak issues a statement declaring it was never owned by Columbus Nova, in open contradiction to three years of information, and was always solely owned by Jason Epstein
  • Apr 24 – Daybreak removes all references to Columbus Nova from its web site and attempts to edit the Wikipedia page about the company to hide any Columbus Nova connection
  • Aug 7 – H1Z1 launches on PlayStation 4
  • Sep 4 – The EQII progression server Stormhold is merged into the Antonia Bayle server, ending its run
  • Sep 6 – Daybreak announces a deal with NantWorks to create NantMobile G which will take over H1Z1 on PC with a plan to revitalize it, starting by rebranding it as Z1 Battle Royale
  • Sep 6 – NantMobile G project also proposes mobile versions of Z1 Battle Royale and EverQuest
  • Oct 24 – H1Z1 Just Survive is shut down
  • Nov 13 – Chaos Descending, EQII expansion #15
  • Dec 11 – The Burning Lands, EQ expansion #25
  • Dec 14 – Planetside Arena is announced, an attempt to bring battle royale to PlanetSide 2, with pre-orders for early access for sale
  • Dec 18 – Daybreak offers 4,000 lifetime subscriptions for sale at $299 each
  • Dec 24 – Daybreak announces that they have sold out the 4,000 lifetime subscriptions
  • Dec 28 – Daybreak puts 6,000 more life time subscriptions up for sale through Dec. 31st
• 2019
  • Feb 18 – PlanetSide Arena launch is delayed until summer, allegedly to have a simultaneous launch on PlayStation 4, all pre-orders are refunded
  • Jul 11 – After over a year being offline, Daybreak announces that Player Studio for EQII has been shut down
  • Apr 6 – NantMobile G hands Z1 Battle Royale back to Daybreak having failed to revitalize the game, after which little is heard about the PC version
  • Aug 6 – DC Universe Online launches on Nintendo Switch
  • Aug 30 – A PlanetSide Arena roadmap is released with plans for early access soon, with an official launch in 2020, PC only
  • Sep 19 – PlanetSide Arena arrives in early access just barely making the declared “summer” launch plan
  • Oct 21 – A PlanetSide producer’s letter states that PlanetSide Arena is a stepping stone towards PlanetSide 3
  • Nov 5 – LOTRO launches the Minas Morgul expansion
  • Dec 14 – Daybreak announces that PlanetSide Arena will be shut down in January
  • Dec 17 – Blood of Luclin, EQII expansion #16
  • Dec 18 – Torment of Velious, EQ expansion #26
• 2020
  • Jan 10 – PlanetSide Arena is shut down
  • Jan 21 – Daybreak announces a series of sub-studios, with Darkpaw Games responsible for EverQuest and EverQuest II, Dimensional Ink handling DC Universe Online, and Rogue Planet Games handling PlanetSide 2
  • May 20 – The Fippy Darkpaw EQ time locked progression server ends its nine year run as it is merged into the Vox live server
  • Oct 20 – LOTRO launches the War of Three Peaks expansion
  • Dec 1 – Enad Global 7 (EG7) announces plans to acquire Daybreak
  • Dec 2 – EG7 presents an unprecedented array of previously private information about Daybreak to its board, shareholders, and the general public proving, if nothing else, that the company made money
  • Dec 8 – Claws of Veeshan, EQ expansion #27
  • Dec 15 – Reign of Shadows, EQII expansion #17
  • Dec 23 – EG7 completes the acquisition of Daybreak Game Company

And that brings us up into the new year.  We shall see what 2021 and beyond holds for the company

• Sources

The joy of me blogging the way I do is that I have a blog post that corresponds to most every item on the above list that happened in the last decade.  I considered linking to each and every one, but decided against it.  You can use the search box at the top of the page if you want to find posts here about things like EQII Passport.

Before 2010 I was more chaotic in my blogging and, of course, before September 2006 there was no blog, so nothing to reference.  Fortunately, I had done a post about SOE and its MMORPGs back in 2016 where I had recorded the status of their games, and had researched a bunch of other items in the past.  This blog isn’t all just about Blackrock Depths and World War Bee.

And, where that failed, Wikipedia remains a wonderful source.  There are well maintained pages about most of the games and lists of all the expansions for both EverQuest and EverQuest II that helped me quite a bit.  And over at Daybreak there is even a server merge page for EverQuest and another for EverQuest II servers deep in their site.  There are some errors, but the dates seem solid.

As for what to include, I am obviously biased towards the games I play or played.  I did try to include every paid expansion for games, as those were generally pretty easy to find.  Game content updates are more obscure, though somebody has charted all of the episode drops for DC Universe Online on that Wikipedia page.  I just wasn’t that dedicated to the post.  I started getting into special servers, but decided once they became an annual thing in 2015, I declared them as such and moved on.

New Servers and Server Merges and More with the EverQuest Anniversary

Aside from the habit of writing a post about the EverQuest anniversary in advance, as I did with yesterday’s post, I also seem to have to follow up with a reaction post to things announced with the coming of the anniversary.  And so it is today.

An image I can really only use this year

The EverQuest team put up a post with all sort of news yesterday.  There was, of course, the heroic character for all subscribers and Overseer feature that was introduced into the game last week and the usual special anniversary events.

But on top of that they added in a 50% bonus exp event that will run through until April 1st.

They also announced the two new special servers that will be coming for EverQuest.  The names will be Aradune and Rizlona.

Aradune of course honors the late Brad McQuaid whose in-game persona was Aradune Mithara and whose memorial I visited in East Karana not so long ago.

Rizlona, once a mighty bard, is a demigoddess and a guardian of the tower of Solusek Ro, and the name was at one point thought to be a possibility as an overflow server for the Mangler server that rolled out with the 20th anniversary last year.  But that was not needed, so we get the name now.

Full details are yet to come for both servers, but they are said to be variations of the Mangler server (the FAQ for which you can find here) with some special variations.

But before that happens there will be a few server merges.

The Lockjaw progression server will be merged into the Ragefire server.  Lockjaw was the overflow server, launched back in May of 2015, when the population of the Ragfire server exceeded capacity.

Back in 2015 things were crowded

That was the start of a lot of updates for the EverQuest server architecture in order to accommodate the initial rush of players these servers tend to see.  I do not know where either of these servers stand when in comes to expansion unlocks, but it seems natural enough to merge them together.

The Trakanon server will be merged into the Vox server.  The Trakanon and Vox servers were launched back in 2012, when the game became a teenager and the conversion of EverQuest to its current semi-F2P, cash shop, but subscription too revenue model took place.  Like a lot of people, I chose the Vox server to roll anew on for that event.  Vox has remained somewhat more populated than its sibling, so it is natural enough to merge Trakanon into Vox.

The Brekt server will be rolled into the Firiona Vie server.  Both are “free trade” servers, which means you can sell heirloom drops that would otherwise be bind on pick up, or so I seem to recall.  Anyway, I had to look up the Brekt server, with everybody knows Firiona Vie is where the cool kids hang out, so the merge direction seems natural enough.

And finally, the end of days has come for the Fippy Dakrpaw server.  Launched back in Feburary 2011, when SOE still wasn’t sure that retro servers were worth the effort, it was where Skonk and I spent some time wallowing in 1999 nostalgia.  At least we did up until the great Sony/SOE hacking and outage.

Anyway, the nine year old Fippy Darkpaw server, which I last wrote a post about back in 2017, when it was merged with the Vulak server, which was the nostalgia overflow server back in 2011, will finally be subsumed into a mainline live server.  It will be merged with the Vox server.

This is a double special event for me.  Ages ago I promised (to myself at least, since I am not sure that you care) that I would write a final post about the Fippy Darkpaw server when its end finally came AND, unlike other mergers, my characters on Fippy Darkpaw will land on a server where I already have some characters.

There is no word on when these merges will happen, though my guess is before the new server launches.

In the mean time, I have to figure out what to do with my level 85 heroic character boost.  As I have complained, level 85 isn’t a huge inducement in a game where the level cap is now at 115, but it is something.  And it would give me another character to play around with the overseer feature.  Maybe my cleric from last year’s adventures.  I got him up to level 50.  I could boost him to 85 and perhaps use some of that bonus xp time to get him a little further along.  We shall see.

Pilgrimage

From a notebook found in the Qeynos library, author unknown:

I set out from the north gates of the city.  I had sailed there when I had heard the news.  I chose to walk, to see the lands, to feel the vast spread of the Karanas, and even after so much time had passed it still felt both familiar and new.

I followed the same path that spawned so many adventures and saw so many travelers over the years, passing small settlements and camps.

The spires still stood, and the bridges were in good repair and guarded still.  Qeynos may be a backwater now, but its power is not completely spent.

Across the bridge and into the eastern range of Karana I went, and to a small settlement where I found what I sought.

The marker sat there, just as I had been told, his flaming sword now permanently sheathed in the rock that marks his passing.  And I sat a while and thought of all of his works and deeds and adventures we had shared in realms now forgotten.

Aradune Mithara – Outrider of Karana

Perhaps I wept a bit, lost in thought there in a quiet corner of Norrath.  Time passed and day turned into night and back into day as I sat.  There are so many memories and his labors were great.  But now he is at rest.

And he will be forever part of his creation, the land he toiled to bring to life for so many.

End of a Vision

I was shocked tonight to see the announcement that Brad McQuaid passed away.  I first saw the news from the Pantheon MMO account on Twitter and wondered if it was real, it seemed so out of the blue.

It is with deep regret we share that Brad McQuaid passed away last night. He will be deeply missed and forever remembered by gamers worldwide.

Thank you for bringing us together through your worlds. Rest in peace @Aradune.

VR offers our deepest condolences to Brad’s family.

But it appears to be true.  There are reactions all over the MMO space, including some words from the EverQuest team.

From the EverQuest Teams,

We are devastated to hear of the passing of Brad McQuaid and are eternally grateful for the EverQuest Universe he was instrumental in creating. His effect on all of us, the gaming industry overall, and fans of EverQuest and RPGs is immeasurable, and been life-changing for so many.

Continue your great quest, Aradune. May your next adventure be even more grand than this one.

I am kind of in shock.  I’ve been dismissive of his vision and pretty hard on how Vanguard turned out, but without him there would have been no EverQuest and the landscape of the MMORPG genre would have been very different.

Always the guy with the flaming sword

I played with him on TorilMUD back in the day.  It is hard to believe that was more than 20 years ago, that EverQuest is now past 20, and that he is gone.  He even dropped by here to comment a few times, always in his long winded way. He had an impact on the industry that will carry on.

Other reactions:

• Massively OP
• The MMOist
• PC Gamer
• MMORPG.com
• Reddit Thread
• Games Industry Biz
• MMO Fallout
• Inventory Full
• The Nosy Gamer
• Ars Technica
• NY Video Games Critics Circle

 

Vanguard – All Sagas Must End

Decades from now it seems likely that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will be little more than a footnote in the history of the genre.  Facing at best lukewarm reviews and launching into the teeth of World of Warcraft’s expansion The Burning Crusade, some future investigator might not even feel the need to look into the myriad technical problems the game had or the daunting system requirements it took to run it.  As for SOE buying the game at the point when it would have otherwise shut down, I suspect that will be dismissed, along with the purchase of The Matrix Online, as a vain attempt to stay in the big leagues by trying to bulk up its offerings in the face of Blizzard’s Azerothian juggernaut.

Play Vanguard – Ride a Dragon?

My theoretical future researcher, reviewing what passes for the Internet Archive in 2080, will probably conclude that the game should have closed down in 2007 because it could not have made enough money for SOE to be worth the diversion of resources from other projects. (Assuming said researcher doesn’t run across references to SOEmote, that EQ voice command thing, or the unified launcher and discover what SOE has a history of doing with its extra development cycles.)

And a more casual investigator might just look at the timeline of the genre and see a game that ran for seven years.  It must have been okay, good but not great, as it outlasted many other titles. While not as good as that Anarchy Online game, it certainly must have been much better than any of those NCsoft offerings that only lasted a couple of years, or even it stablemate Wizardry Online, which didn’t even make it to the two year mark.

Time and distance from events will do that.  Far down the road the timeline from Ultima Online or Meridian 59 out to whatever will be another decade hence will merge into a series of very close dates, which will wring out much of the emotion of the time from the equation.

But back in 2005 and 2006 things were different; they were different than there are now… quite palpably so… and will be practically Bizarro World alien fifty years down the road.

2006 especially was a turning point in the genre.  Before 2006, there was a series of successes, Ultima Online, which was then trumped by EverQuest, which was in turn trumped by World of Warcraft, that seemed to define a pattern.  It seemed like any MMO could make it, even if it suffered from a bad launch, and that subscription growth was a long term organic thing.  The idea of a “three monther” would have been completely foreign.

There also were not that many games.  I bemoan the long slumber of the VirginWorlds MMO podcast, but in a way it feels like perhaps its time has passed.  During its heyday, from early 2006 into late 2008, the MMORPG market what from what I would call a “knowable thing,” where you could keep track of, and develop opinions about, the majority of the titles in the genre.  WoW was big, but it didn’t seem insurmountable, and the idea of a game suffering for not being WoW would have been odd.

The genre was also evolving, in a very Darwinian, natural selection sort of way as it turns out.  Not that we saw it that was at the time.

While the genre seemed to be moving towards WoW at the time, there was a theory that was widely held in certain parts of the fanbase that WoW was but a stepping stone and that all those WoW players would, one day, desire a deeper, more fulfilling, and necessarily more hardcore MMORPG.  WoW was merely the training ground for a mass of “real” players.  If you dig around blogs and forums from the time frame, you will find that theme recurring over and over.

And in the midst of all of that strode Brad McQuaid.  I called his a “name to conjure with” back when he was kicking off Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.  Back then he was a force to be reckoned with, the keeper of the secret flame, the spirit of what made EverQuest great, and the hope for the salvation of the genre.  Having left SOE in alleged disgust over the direction the company was going with EverQuest and EverQuest II, he struck out with a few like-minded individuals in order to re-imagine the MMORPG genre, steering it back to its more satisfying and hardcore roots.

That sounds like a lot of smoke, but I recall night after night being on Teamspeak with my Knights of the Cataclysm guild mates, a group made up mostly of people from EverQuest or TorilMUD… both training grounds for hardcore purists… and hearing them go on and on with Dorfman-like “this is going to be great!” enthusiasm as to how Brad McQuaid… Brad, who understood us and who rejected easy death penalties and instancing… and his game, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, was going drain players from all of these other pretend, pre-school MMOs.

I had not even heard of Vanguard up until then.  In my post-EverQuest “can’t get broadband in the middle of Silicon Valley” era, I had lost touch with the genre, so that first year in EverQuest II included a lot of catching up on what had happened.

Vanguard was going to be it.  The antidote.  The next coming.  The savior.

Of course, all of that talk was based on forum chatter and rosy statements from Sigil about their vision.

Later, when the game was in closed beta, and then in open beta, feelings started to change.

Not that there wasn’t hope.  Not that the vision was seen as wrong or that Sigil had deviated from it.  But it did start to seem like the company might not have the capital to cash all the checks written by their vision.

I first got into Telon, the world of Vanguard, back in open beta, and things were a mess.  Or a relative mess at least.  The 16GB download, quite a chore in early 2007, was just the start.

If it had been 1997… or even 2002… people might have stuck with the game and its myriad of technical problems and huge system requirements.  But by the time it launched at the end of January 2007, the world was proving to be a different place with many options for those who wanted to swing a virtual sword.

Sigil was working hard fixing and polishing the game well into January.  That helped some, but it wasn’t enough.  At the same time SOE decided to jack up the price of its all-you-can-eat Station Access subscription plan, effectively making it more expensive than subscribing to two SOE MMOs directly, which couldn’t have helped.

What looked like a respectable start, with something like 200K players buying a box and joining the game, quickly turned into a route as game issues large and small soured people.  By April Brad was issuing updates about the problems and how they were going to address them and how 2008 Vanguard would be much better than the 2007 version.  But you were still going to need a bigger processor as well as a current graphics card to play the game very well.

The big problem that remains is that you still pretty much need a new system as opposed to, say, simply a new graphics card…

The game is simply not CPU bound, nor just graphics card bound, but rather mostly bound by the data that it needs to constantly move from the CPU to main memory to the graphics card, and then all the way back again.  It’s all about the various bus speeds and caches – moving data around efficiently is arguably more important than processing that data on the CPU or GPU…

-Brad McQuaid, SOE Vanguard forums

Things were clearly not going well.  As April 2007 came to a close, there were rumors and speculation as to what might happen as subscription numbers sagged while technical issues persisted.  SOE started to get mentioned as possibly taking a bigger role with the game.

I came up with my own list of possible future avenues for Vanguard, at least two of which eventually came to pass.

Then came the parking lot layoffs as SOE officially announced it was taking over Sigil and Vanguard.

Then came the SOE years.  They were heroes initially at least, but hard work and hard choices remained.  Servers were merged shortly to try and make the most of Telons dwindling population.  The quiet years began, where SOE spent resources stabilizing the game, fixing the crashes, simplifying the character models, and generally making it run well.  And, as always happens, the march of time and improvements in computer performance washed away many of the woes of 2007.

There was the long, long neglect, as Vanguard sat, barely tended, home to a few dedicated players.  People like Karen at Journeys with Jaye kept the Vanguard spirit alive.  Her blog is home to a wealth of information and images related to the game.

Then, in late 2011, much to everybody’s surprise, SOE suddenly took an interest in Vanguard again.  This led to the game following its SOE stablemates in going free to play in 2012, leaving the original PlanetSide as the only subscription MMO at SOE.

The cash shop in Vanguard sold all sorts of things, especially equipment, that would had raised howls of protest in EverQuest II.  But there wasn’t much protest.  I couldn’t tell if Vanguard players didn’t care, or if there just were not enough of them left for their complaints to be audible.

Free lasted less than two years before the end was announced.  Smed said that the game had not been paying its own way for a few months by then, even after it was put back in benign neglect mode.  Vanguard, along with Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, and Wizardry Online were to be closed in 2014.  The kids games went faster, done by the end of March, while Vanguard and Wizardry Online were left to run until yesterday.

And so the end has come.  At 6pm Pacific Time last night the servers were shut down.  Vanguard has passed into history, joining many other titles in the genre.

In the end, for me, the ending doesn’t mean much.  I never played the game much.  I gave it a shot early on, I actually still have the retail box on my bookshelf, and then again when it went free to play.

Vanguard Box

I did not spend much time playing at either point.  I barely took any screen shots, which is odd for me.  In digging through them, I found a couple of characters.

Fomu from 2007

Teresten from 2013

Both look a bit awkward, as character models in Vanguard tended to.  Neither brought back any memories of adventure.

Instead of a game I played, like EverQuest or LOTRO or whatever, Vanguard is more like a signpost in the history of the genre for me.  Its creation was a sign of its times, and its demise a warning to all who would come later.  The dream that WoW players would evolve and seek greater challenges in games that were more hardcore was debunked, and the idea that WoW could be eclipsed started to slip.

Yes, it wasn’t until Star Wars: The Old Republic that the industry as a whole finally agreed that WoW was an outlier rather than the next hurdle to clear to claim success.  But Vanguard was a warning, a sign that in a world with popular choices that work, the “I’m different” card wasn’t enough.

And so it goes.  Vanguard, which was going to bring back the EverQuest vision, look good, and be all things to all people failed to materialize, ending up a small niche game with too much overhead to survive.  And now we’re looking at a series of lean, niche games pursuing the old school MMO feel; Camelot Unchained, Shroud of the Avatar, Project Gorgon, and of course Brad McQuaid’s own Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.  Small is back, and they are targeting audiences of a size that Blizzard gains or loses between the average quarterly report.

And, in its way, Vanguard was sort of the end of innocence in the genre.  As I said above, before Vanguard the genre seemed small and knowable by a single person.  Since then it has sprawled, with games coming and going at a rapid pace.  The world has changed since we were sitting on TeamSpeak telling ourselves how great the game was going to be.

What an aptly named game, if nothing else.  It was in the vanguard of the genre, in its own failing way, and its tale is certainly a saga.

Other posts remembering Vanguard around the blogesphere:

• Avatars of Steel – Goodbye Vanguard
• ECTMMO – Vanguard Sunsets this Week
• Inventory Full – Sailing into the Sunset
• MMO Quests – Goodbye Vanguard, From a Guide
• Random Waypoint – We’ll Always Have Aghram
• Random Waypoint – Five Things Other Games Should Copy From Vanguard
• StarShadow – Last Moments in Telon
• The Grouchy Gamer – Good Night, Vanguard
• Welshtroll – Lights Out
• I Has PC – Feelings of Missing Something
• Mobhunter – Into the Sunset: Eulogy and Tribute

Pantheon: Just Brad has Fallen

Money is always an issue.

This link was sent to me by Kaderre and I am starting to see it pop up in a few other places, so I will add it to the tale of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.  The central quote in the post:

The money- It’s widely agreed upon by all parties that this project took in roughly 145 thousand dollars. A large chunk of that money, 35k, came from a single individual who promised another couple hundred thousand once he cleared it with his trust. Brad was having personal problems at the time and needed to take a cash advance from the project. He took roughly three months pay in advance which equaled roughly 38% of the funds that were left. Brad thought the rest of the money would come in, but the trust supervisor declined without even looking into the project.

-Over in the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen forums on Rerolled.

Basically, the fear of donating to a failed Kickstarter that cannot make critical mass continues to bear itself out.  Well that and those who had a low opinion of Brad will feel vindicated in their belief.  This looks like a bullet in the head for the game at this point, what with Brad making sure he got paid first and apparently valuing himself as worth $220K a year in a company in start-up mode.

As the news cycle goes, one day up on a forum, next up on Reddit, and the next after that it will be on the gaming news sites.  Look for a fun comment thread over at Massively soon.

Pantheon: Mostly Fallen… for Now

A few weeks back I took a look at the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen and the state of affairs since it failed to meet its goal on Kickstarter.

I was particularly interested in how crowd funding would work in and environment where there was no critical mass to achieve.  My guess was that people would feel differently about just handing money over versus pledging money in a system where it would not be taken unless some minimum value was achieved.

The Kickstarter campaign was pledged $460,657 from 3,157 potential backers.  As of last night the post-Kickstarter campaign stood a this:

That is half as many people pledging, and they are pledging almost a third less per person than during the Kickstarter campaign.   And the numbers have not been growing substantially since shortly after the Kickstarter ended, which lead to this announcement on the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen site yesterday.

In the past few months we have seen some of the most passion bubble up from the Internet than we have in some time; all for an idea of a game we all want to see happen. It has been an exciting time for all of us.

Over the first month of development through crowdfunding, we’ve been able to achieve what was needed to be done in order to gain investor interest. That is, we’ve shown there is interest in a game like Pantheon, we’ve built the term sheets and business plan, and now have a prototype we can show to potential investors.The downside now is that our initial resources have depleted, which regrettably means that development is going to slow down until finances can be secured. It’s not something we want to do by any means, but as we cannot guarantee paychecks to the team, they each need to be able to spend time on other things to pay the bills.Once we’re able to get that level of funding we can then secure much-needed studio space and be able to pick up the pace of production dramatically. We are deeply thankful to this community for getting Pantheon to this critical point, where we have been able to put together an attractive package to present to potential investors.

In the interim, any donations made at this point until further notice will be going directly to maintaining the website during this phase, and not towards development.

So there it sits.  You can now donate to keep the web site functioning while they seek further financing, but work on the actual game has pretty much ceased.  I suppose one must commend them for honesty, but it does make it difficult to see how Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen will progress from here.  A failed Kickstarter campaign followed by an unsuccessful attempt to crowd fund directly cannot be helping their case.

Is this the end for the game?

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen a Month Past Kickstarter

It has been 30 days since the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Kickstarter campaign came to a close.

In its 40 day run, the campaign managed to drum up $460,657 in pledges from 3,157 potential backers.  While shy of the $800,000 target of the campaign, that is still a fair amount of cash to have been pledged.  We tend to hear about things like Torment or Project Eternity, which brought in millions of dollars, but Kickstarter is full of little campaigns for $10,000 or less.  According to Kickstarter, projects that raise $100,000 or more represent just 2% of successful campaigns.

Basically, raising close to half a million dollars is a pretty decent achievement.  If the target of the campaign had been $500,000, we might even now be speaking of a successful campaign and stretch goals and, if not Chris Robert’s levels of post campaign funding, then maybe at least Lord British levels.  Shroud of the Avatar has managed to rake in post campaign donations to the tune of nearly 50% of what they raised in that first 30 days.

But the campaign was not a success.  The 40 day run wound up with Brad McQuaid and his team getting no money from Kickstarter.  So the question quickly became, “Where do they go from here?”  There was talk of relaunching another Kickstarter campaign a bit further down the road.  That would address some of the errors made early on in the initial campaign, like the whole “Hey, surprise! We have a Kickstarter campaign without any real press build up!” aspect.

The choice that was eventually made was to self-fund raise.  You can head on over to the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen web site and pledge money to the project.  Well, give money to the project.  This isn’t Kickstarter any more.  You let go of your money the moment you click the final button.  There are no goals to meet or critical mass to achieve.

That last bit seemed like an important tidbit to me.  There is an aspect of “we’re all in this together” when it comes to Kickstarter, where success means a lump sum for the team and failure means nobody gets billed.  It protects the early enthusiast from handing over his money too soon, only to find out that the project isn’t popular enough.

So I was curious to see how well Pantheon would do once it lacked that aspect of the Kickstarter campaign.  As of this morning, donations to the project are:

That’s not… bad.  Those numbers would still put the project in the top 2% when it comes to Kickstarter.

But it is also less than half the supporters and roughly a third of the money pledged at the end of the Kickstarter campaign.

So what happened?

Is this a failure of communication?  I am not sure how Kickstarter works when your campaign does not fund.  Are you allowed to continue doing updates to the project, or is it closed down hard?  Because the last update was at the end of the project, 30 days back, and nothing since.  If you missed that terminal “you can now give us money at our site” update, you might think things are done.  And it is pretty much a reality of the universe that some percentage of a group won’t get the message no matter how directly you send it out.

Is it the missing Kickstarter aspect of the fundraising that is holding things back?  Does being on Kickstarter give not only more exposure but also an adding sense of legitimacy?

Did the fact that campaign failed to hit its goal turn a bunch of people away from the campaign?

Or is this a matter of reality striking home, where we are no longer being asked to pledge to a funding effort that may or may not come to pass but being asked to part with actual coin of the realm in pursuit of the stated project goals?

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Kickstarter Campaign Winds Down

The Kickstarter for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen finished up earlier today.

While there was a surge of pledges at the end, the final total came in at $460,657, well shy of the $800,000 goal. (But about where I predicted back on January 1st.)

The daily numbers ended up looking like this according to Kicktraq:

Daily figures for the campaign

With that result, Visionary Realms and Brad McQuaid are now moving into a new dimension of crowd funding, going it alone and asking for donations.  Their site is up and ready to take PayPal.

If you already pledged on KS for Pantheon, please go to http://t.co/JBDomRjjug and re-pledge. The site is open and ready to accept Paypal!

— Brad McQuaid (@Aradune) February 22, 2014

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, going that route really changes, to my mind, the whole funding dynamic.  There is no minimum threshold for funding.  You pledge and they have your cash.  And while that has worked well for other games, Star Citizen has gone insane in it post-Kickstarter financing and even Lord British has managed to come up with another million for Shroud of the Avatar, I am not sure how things will play out in the absence of successful Kickstarter campaign.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen – Kickstarter and Beyond

Well, here we are with about a day left to go and the Kickstarter campaign for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is well shy of its $800,000 funding goal.  At this late date I think we can all agree that the project would need a Kickstarter Christmas miracle to fund.

A look at Kicktraq this morning shows the last 24 hours of the campaign faces a hill… well, a mountain… representing 46% of the funding goal.

And so it goes.

The campaign has been a mixed bag.  On the downside, I think that the groundwork done by Brad McQuaid and his Visionary Realms team before they set off down the Kickstarter path was woefully inadequate.  One does not simply *something something* into Kickstarter.

I also think (based on my 2014 prediction) that they asked for too much money.   I know that the idea was to set the groundwork for other funding by showing that the project had legs, but asking for $500K and getting it (which I think they could have) would have been better than asking for $800K and not getting much beyond the half way point.  There is also a tipping point after you hit your goal where you can open things up to other funding sources.

And I remain concerned about the focus of the project.  A key statement early on was that this was not going to be an attempt to be all things to all people.  But seeming acquiescence by Brad, both in the project stretch goals and the Reddit AMAs, to a variety of things I would consider out of scope for an initial release made me wonder if they could keep things on a single track.  The problem in software development never involves with coming up with ideas.  The problem is always paring things down to essentials so that the team can deliver quality.

But all was not bad.

I think that the overall message is one that a select group of players wanted to hear.  I think there is room in the world for a niche MMORPG focused on grouping and group content in the TorilMUD and EverQuest tradition. (Though I had to walk away from forum discussions when the “EQ PvP, Best PvP” squad hunkered down to stay.  Absolutely the wrong group of players for this, in my opinion.)

I think Brad handled the Reddit AMA’s well, aside from a couple of “I don’t see why not” answers to things I felt were really out of scope. (I will not get off the focus wagon, will I?)  There were a lot of good answers to question about views and details about Pantheon.  But I think the whole thing was best served by his answers around Vanguard,  what happened there, and how things are being run differently with Pantheon.

And, finally, I think that the cross-promotion between Pantheon and Shroud of the Avatar that came at the halfway point of the campaign was brilliant.  That was a really slick idea to find the cross-over appeal between two different projects.

The Respective Crests

Of course, once that was in play, any number of people wanted to know if Brad could work a similar deal with Chris Roberts to maybe get a boost from his Star Citizen funding success.  I am not sure that would see the same sort of overlap of interests as Shroud of the Avatar and Patheon: Rise of the Fallen, and it did not seem likely to come about in any case.

In the end though, it wasn’t enough.

Aside from looking for an angel investor, what now?

Well, it looks like Visionary Realms is going to take on the funding effort themselves.  They have updated their web site and have announced their post-Kickstarter plans.

The New Campaign

And there are some advantages to going this route.  They are not beholden to Kickstarter and do not have to give them a cut.  They are not hemmed in by a time limit.  They can offer a wider variety of funding options.  Even now Visionary Realms has a subscription option listed with special benefits.

Will you subscribe to this theory?

So the funding effort goes on.

The question is, will it have the same impact?

Despite the occasional pedantic view on the subject, the goal of funding efforts like this are not to obtain 100% of the money required to complete the project.  The idea is to get enough initial funding to demonstrate that there is interest in your project so that you can get further investment.  Brad McQuaid has said as much about Pantheon.

So Kickstarter is a funding exercise in part, but even more a marketing exercise.  But if you fail the funding part of Kickstarter, how much is the marketing exercise constrained?  And even if a company can turn around and go do their own fundraising effort post-Kickstarter, will that have the same impact?

And, the biggest question for me, how long will it take Visionary Realms be able to catch up to where they left off with Kickstarter and will people be as willing to pledge?  Because they have lost a few valuable assets that Kickstarter provides.

The first is, of course, the Kickstarter name itself.  People have a range of opinions about Kickstarter and the wisdom of giving people money through it, but they know what Kickstarter is and as a service it seems reasonably well respected.  There will be no Kickstarter cachet to bring people to the table any more.

Then there is the time limit aspect of the campaign.  While Visionary Realms won’t make their goal in the time frame, I would be willing to bet that the mere fact that there was a time limit got people to pledge.  There is nothing like a deadline to get people to focus.  Campaigns that succeed, or which are close to success, often have a large surge of pledges at the last minute.

Now though, there is no time limit.  There is no boundary to make people get off the fence one way or another.  I suspect that will hurt funding in the short term.

And then there is what I will call, for lack of a better term, the “Kickstarter Deal.”  In the case of Brad McQuaid and Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, the deal was that if he could raise $800,000, he would make this game happen.  You can believe him or not, but that was what he was offering.  So I put up some money along with about 3,000 other people.  But the effort will fall shy of the mark, so none of us will end up paying out any money.  Our pledge cost us nothing because the threshold for funding… the threshold at which Brad said he could make it happen… was not met.

Now that threshold is gone.

If I go over to the Visionary Realms web site and pledge $100 they have it that day, and if nobody else pledges I have just wasted my money.  It is much easier to throw in some cash if you think you are part of a group that will meet the threshold for funding.  But in the absence of that, I am probably not going to rush out on day one to give them some cash.  I am much more likely to sit on my hands, to wait and see how things are going, before I think about donating.

While Kickstarter does not in anyway guarantee that a funded project will actually do what it says in the end, it does at least give the illusion of a concentration of pledges that, if a pre-determined threshold is met, will make the project possible.  Unless I am missing something here, going to self-funding removes that aspect of the campaign.

So there we stand.  The Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Kickstarter will run out the clock in less than a day and will not meet its goal.

Did you pledge any money to the Kickstarter and will you, in turn, donate to the self-run funding campaign for the project?

Is this the beginning of the end, or just the end of the beginning?