Citadel Studios have launched a Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming sandbox MMO Shards Online, the alpha testing is scheduled to begin by the end of this year, and also released a gameplay trailer along with some screenshots in this context.

Set in a vast multiverse of rival deities and demigods, Shards Online allows players to explore and create whole universes, each with their own rules, mechanics and stories, to look for hidden treasures and learn new skills and abilities from existing and lost civilisations.

"What Shards means to us is infinite possibilities - possibilities for us to give gamers, and for them to give themselves," said Derek Brinkmann, CEO and co-founder, Citadel Studios. "Ultimately, we aren't just creating game that fosters a single player community, instead, we are giving our players the tools to create their own in-game communities."

For launch, developers promise to provide players with a wide array of different official rulesets while also enabling them to create and share their own. Anything will be possible, from a shard where players can only farm to the ultimate hardcore PvP experience. The variety of available maps will range from sci-fi and high fantasy, to jungles, the wild west, dinosaurs and beyond.

The developing team plans on allowing players to run their own server to create live content for other players as gods, or visit other servers to experience nearly unlimited character development, customisable housing, tactical combat and more in living virtual worlds.

"The decision to go with crowdfunding was pretty simple, actually. We want to give players freedom. Big companies and publishers don't like player freedom," said Tim Cotten, creative director and co-founder, Citadel Studios. "So the only logical way to make Shards a reality is to stay independent. And the only way to achieve a massive scale independently is to bring our fans onboard up front."

Kickstarter incentives will grants backers exclusive early access opportunities, e.g. to the forums, the alpha, the admin program and the early builders program amongst others. They will also enjoy free premium subscriptions, special weapons and armour, their likeness in the game, featured cluster status, VIP parties with the development team, game boxes, maps and more.

Source of information: Citadel Studios press release.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2014 at 11:07 am and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.