Divergence: Online is a hardcore sci-fi MMORPG with a maximum emphasis on player freedom.
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Thanks for checking us out! Welcome to the IndieGoGo home of Divergence: Online; A hardcore sandbox mmorpg that brings back the glory years of truly massive online games where player freedom wasn't just a tag-line, it was the whole experience.
Divergence is a project I started in 2006 with the idea of bringing back what I considered to be "real MMORPGs" to the ailing genre, bloated with disposable throwaway installments. In the midst of a recession, the project has suffered from an almost total lack of reliable funding until now. It wasn't until noticing the success other projects were seeing with much less shown and available to backers that I decided it would be criminal not to charge full-steam at an IndieGogo crowdsourcing campaign.
Online is a hardcore sci-fi MMORPG
Online is a hardcore sci-fi
Online is a hardcore
hardcore
so he started a game in 2006 ,
then payed from his paycheck in 2007 2 people over another year to help him finish it
and
then in 2008 he scraped the project
now in 2013 he wants money to revive this mmo
15k for what , ending development of a mmo
the thing is what about Server Rent and Bandwidth rent ?
Nice videos. The universe sounds especially interesting. The game could work really well. I hope he manages to get it on its feet and I would like to try it if he does so. As far as this moment goes, I wish him the best, as I'm in no position to throw money at anything really.
Nope apart from the forum there is nor real discussion about the mechanics. Tho he started a devblog to Adress it further.
The 15k also got me a bit boggled. (seems it used to be 50k before) Surely they need more, or maybe he's just hoping to finish a workable beta to try and get some investors in after all.
Was just really interested after seeing the vids, yet I'm also not throwing money into it. Only crowd funding I did was Star Citizen. Very picky where to throw my money at and knowing me, Star Citizen will prolly be the only one I'll fund like that.
But yeh I notice I'm a lot more interested in things that want to do it different or go back to some roots that have been dropped for no improvement to the games.
New video, showing a player island (Funding perk).
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Ethan Casner posted an announcement 7 hours ago
After much anticipation our first player-island is more or less ready. We’ll still be making a few tweaks here and there but it’s in good enough shape (I think) to at least show a few minute preview of it. Perks like these are a direct result of the financing coming into the campaign, so thanks a ton guys for helping us develop this beast and lending us your support!
20K Milestone Crossed!
In the wake of Divergence crossing over the 20K contributions milestone I thought it prudent to take a few minutes away from development and spread a little news across the collective community bread so to speak.
Where is development at right now?
Right now we're focused solely on the features that form the core of the Divergence experience; The streaming, totally modifiable world. Fortunately, we aren't just starting this task and in fact we began it over a year ago, however completely flat broke at the time it was impossible to devote the time we wanted to it and progress ground to a halt. This was the sole reason why I restarted the project with our first crowdsourcing campaign so that I personally could hire some full-time help to finish up what we started previously.
I've been blessed at cursed both as a result. A lot of people have emailed myself with programming skill available and we've made great progress. The flip side of that is, Divergence still does not have a Lead Programmer, it has several contributing individuals making considerable progress, but for all intents and purposes, we're still looking for a department lead who can devote at least 40 hours per week to organizing our individual contributors.
It isn't something I can do. I have a full team of artists, 2D and 3D and even two new animators to train and supervise every day, in addition to trying to get caught up on islands that people have ordered. It's 16-20 hour days for me just to keep my head above the water.
The good news is that every single day it's closer to being in a playable state than it was yesterday. The contributors coming in are a major major help in bolstering morale of the group. Everyone wants to be a part of something that is actually successful and moving.
Enough of this technical crap, what do you really mean about this progress? What is really going on right now?
Here is my best explanation of where Divergence is at right now, feature-wise.
The single biggest undertaking with this project, the one thing that sets it aside from all other mmorpgs is it's completely streamed and modifiable world.
But the videos of the world and islands already look great! What do you still have to do to it?
Well the world is awesome, don't get me wrong, but that world you see in the videos isn't directly modifiable by players yet, and that's the current push. Only areas created inside the game are modifiable and that isn't good enough. There are two game worlds... The first is the world you see in the videos; What I call "The Hard World" that is created from scratch. The second is "The Streamed World" which is what you get when you're actually playing the game. Once the world itself is updated/created on our end, it must be converted and compressed into a format that can be streamed over the internet as changes are made to it in real-time.
Nobody else that i'm aware of has this, which is why it's such a big deal.
How far along are we with it? Extremely.. ridiculously close. In fact the game already has the capability to create new area with all of those capabilities in real-time as-is. The work right now is to convert what we already have into that same format so that world artists such as myself can continue to build world in our advanced editors as opposed to "inside the game" which is much slower.
Will there be another crowdsourcing campaign?
Oh yes. There will most likely be a few more, each with their own new and unique perks as well as a few previous ones. I don't think we can pump out $50K to get this finished in just one push in under 30 days, so instead I'd like to do several of 10-20K each. It's must safer that way.
When will the next begin?
The next campaign will begin when we're able to show the progress we've made with proceeds from the first campaign. I'd love to be able to start the new one hot on the heels of the last, but more important than that is being able to show the work, and I can't start the new one without being able to demonstrate that in most likely a new really cool video. I'm hoping to begin the new campaign within a few weeks of the last, but again that's me saying "the major features will be ready to show in just a few weeks" which is a hard claim to make when I don't control how quickly those things are done (without tons of money of course).
You reached your $20K goal, what's up with this big secret feature?
You'll find that out in the video The more financing the project pulls in, the more pull I have with game programmers in being able to prove it's worth their time to call in sick days, use up vacation and leave to get it done sooner rather than later.
What about the Factions video?!
I'll get to it when i damn well get to it! Honestly the truth is there is a good amount of new artwork involving that very subject as well as concepts for new armor and so on that I'd like to include in the presentation, so I guess it's more accurate to say, "I'll get to it when that stuff can be included in it for maximum effect".
Divergence Kickstarter Campaign Announced For August 1st 2013!
At long last we're finally ready to announce our new campaign's start date and details!
There are a lot of things that are important to a lot of people, but in the end the feature that seemed the most important to the most people were player housing and player cities, and so that's what we devoted our energy to developing this time around.
And not just any old kind of player housing and cities. People made it very clear to us that they know when they're being duped, and that none such half-assed measures would be tolerated such as the abysmal attempts of games like Age of Conan and even worse, Everquest 2.
Nobody wants a home that exists in the exact same configuration with the exact same shapes and the exact same location as everyone else. They want to be able to point to the top of a hill and say, "See that? That's mine..."
As you all can imagine, this is a big big job for even a "real" studio. SOE spent millions developing their system years ago with a team of dozens of highly paid professionals. What makes SGL think we can compete with something like that, when no other professional studio has been able to match it since?
Because I believe a wanton amount of waste, inefficiency and plain-old-fashioned "not-give-a-damn" goes on in the game industry today. There should be nothing you're able to do in this little mmo that you can't do in Star Wars: Old Republic for an example; a multi-hundred-million-dollar "you must buy it because..Bioware... Shiny... Star Wars... more of...".
My intention is to continually build and improve this franchise and this particular game until it's the best out there, and I think that once this campaign starts people will see "what is possible" and hopefully back it to greatness.
Why August 1st?
Because in truth, the compulsion is simply to keep on saying, "Just one more fix..! Just one more thing...!" and to be honest, that could go on forever. At some point, you have to draw the line and say "it's happening at this place on this time one way or another" and set the wheels in motion. Our deposit has been put down on our simultaneous advertising campaign for MMORPG.com and it can't be refunded, so this is happening.
What all can we expect in the new campaign?
Like I mentioned earlier, player housing will be the primary focus, however we're also going to be showing off our framework for player cities as well. I know this is a big claim and assured to arouse some "PuhSHAH!"s from the community. I urge all to simply curb their suspicions until they see it in action
How complete are those features?
Not. Obviously. The basis for being able to do the things we're doing in the new video is the harvesting, gathering and basic crafting systems which is... why we're trying to get money to go further with this. And so what you're seeing in the new footage is essentially those prerequisites stripped away just to show the "ability" that you have to do these things. Once we get another round of funding, it will be my pleasure to expand this to crafting and harvesting. I'll be expanding on this a lot in the commentary and press release.
Any new races, breeds or species that we'll see?
You'll just have to wait and see
About the new movie(s) coming out... What will be the setting?
The hope was I'd be able to host them on one of our player islands in a different climate than our last video. So far we've shown Coniferous and Mediterranean climates. I'd love to host it somewhere else this time but one stubborn bug is cropping up that might prevent that. I have people on it so hopefully we'll know something in the next week as the new footage will be shot towards the middle of next week.
Does this campaign have a focus as to an individual faction?
It didn't intend to but when you're hiring a lot of people and working with them every day, things work out differently than you often anticipate. For example I had consignments for my designs for all three Terran factions to be included in the new campaign but only the fellow helping me with VRTek actually completed his work, so i've been playing catchup with OSI and DC for the last several weeks. Because of this reason and this reason alone (that there are actually assets for VR) that you'll see them more prominent in the new campaign, but we'll be filling OSI and DC out with the proceeds of this campaign to a much greater degree, even during the campaign.
What about perks? What will they be and how many?
I'd love to outline this ahead of time, but it would be impossible to list them without at the same time giving away "the surprise". I will say this though that several of the perks will have to do with aiding you in setting up your homestead. These perks will be an excellent way for both individual lone-wolves and also groups of friends to start off with enough materials to immediately begin staking their claim to an amazing piece of real-estate as the foundation for their own homes, settlements, trade outposts and even metropolises.
Ooooooh "surprise". Does that have something to do with the "super secret" stuff you mentioned in the last campaign? that if we chipped in enough money that we'd have it for this campaign?
Yes And you'll be really surprised. I hope so anyway because if you see it in action and aren't surprised you're one jaded sumbitch my friend!
Will you be honoring any previous contributors by "grandfathering them into" the new perks system?
Yes, to a certain degree. This isn't going to happen without more money and so i can't lose my shirt on this, but at the bare minimum some people will be elevated based on their contributions: For example, all player-island purchasers will inherit our top-end property defense package to help prevent someone snatching their claim on the first day of release simply because they had a day job and couldn't be there. In addition, all players who purchased a vindicator or Verrator (the separate perk, not the perk where you got both) will be elevated from a Tier 1 to a Tier 2 suit at no charge. This suit likely won't appear in the new campaign simply because i'm very picky about what artists I bring on to help me out and i'm still in the market for an alien-technology-only artist to help me flesh it out. Players who bought both a Vindicator and Verrator will get something different from that but in a species war with two sides vying for survival, players who can "play both sides of the table" are in a much greater position to grief their own people than those who play individual sides."
Will Vindicator and Verrator still be available in the new campaign?
Yes but to a much lesser degree. We're pretty much at the limit of how many we want in the world. They're gods of death and our game world is in no position to survive a Ragnarok just yet, so they will be present in very limited supply and to a much greater expense. Essentially, they're only for fanatics now, which is the way I intended for it to be.
I want the characters that people already purchased to be rare and coveted.
I missed the last campaign so i didn't have a chance to get them when they were cheaper! Is there any way i could still lock in that price?
Under normal circumstances I would say no. But in truth, if I had the ability to include even one new thing into the upcoming campaign, I would be doing the project a disservice if i didn't at least try to come up with the money for it. I had a blessed response from players when UPS delivered my PC to me in pieces upon re-opening sales for a brief period last time and therefore for the next week I'll be taking email requests for these characters (individually - no packages for both sides anymore unless you want to pay double as in two orders) if anyone is still interested in getting in while they're cheaper. As an added bonus, I'll be grandfathering in any of these characters into Tier 2 suits if they buy before the new campaign starts as all new Vindicator sales after August 1st will begin in Tier 1 suits.
This also opens up a unique investment opportunity for players who maybe want to "buy in" now to a rare species in the game for the purposes of re-selling them to other players at a later date for profit. Anyone who recalls how much money a player Jedi (for instance) was going for on ebay in pre-cu SWG will understand what I mean.
Any sales requests can go straight to my email but please be compassionate - I still get over 15 emails a day and it's brutal to try and respond to every single one and still work on the game.
ethan (at) divergence-online.com
Well I've said enough for right now. If anyone is still reading, I want to say thanks again for the opportunity to service the mmo community with something I believe it desperately needs and I'm looking forward to showing off "What we did with your money" very soon
Well any campaign 'succeeds' since he doesn't need to reach the goal to get the funds.
But yup, they screwed around with the funds to make it look like there were more supporters for it.
Bet there's going to be at least another 5 campaigns seeing how he keeps on getting away with it.
wow. as someone whos been following the repopulation for a while(Its shaping up nicely). There cant be enough swg clones.. but this omg lol.. they take the clone part very literal, dat UI lol. basicly stormtrooper armor at 6:20 omg this is a mess
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This also opens up a unique investment opportunity for players who maybe want to "buy in" now to a rare species in the game for the purposes of re-selling them to other players at a later date for profit. Anyone who recalls how much money a player Jedi (for instance) was going for on ebay in pre-cu SWG will understand what I mean.
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The more financing the project pulls in, the more pull I have with game programmers in being able to prove it's worth their time to call in sick days, use up vacation and leave to get it done sooner rather than later.
