Shards; the new NWN?

[Wild Card]

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/8358/Shards-Shards-Giving-Power-to-the-Player.html
This looks like a dream come true

[Mortui]

Are there any screenshots of it?

Sounds promising.

[Wild Card]

Live demo will be shown at PAX

[Vlaid]

Sounds promising, but I'll keep my expectations grounded. Unless you can control every detail of individual shards (DM client essentially) it will fall far short of expectations. But it is something I'll keep an eye on for the future.

If you can basically run your own shard of the game without oversight/restrictions of the game developers it might work. If not, meh.

[Siren]

Good news, but I'm a bit skeptical. I wonder if they'll allow you to moderate your "shards"... such as banning players and the sort. Even if does allow the use of a toolset and DMing, then there'll be the matter of whether the gameplay's actually good and conducive to RP...

[Witchcraft]

Just want to register my extreme scepticism about this and also how I look forward to my brain flooding with ecstasies of schadenfreud if/when this turns out to be a disappointment like every other "next NWN".

I can remember when NWN2 was supposed to be the next NWN.

[Howlando]

FYI when EFU was being developed people thought we were crazy because everyone was getting ready for NWN to die off as NWN 2 was about to be released.

[Wild Card]

It did say you could modify the game's code and write your own ruleset which sounds promising.

[goate]

Wild Card, way to keep your eyes on the future of multiplayer RPGs.

However, I'm also extremely skeptical.  Much of my reasoning echoes what is said above.  Something I'll add is that a game with thousands or millions of subscribers is unlikely to maintain the quality standards of a small and dedicated following on a server of hundreds.  The quality of the DMs (including programmers and level designers) and players on EFU is what really makes it shine.  If you took the EFU DM and player base and threw it into a crow of thousands who gave less of a fuck, you'd lose the density of quality.  Mark me elitist ;)

What I would love to see (or do) is a Kickstarter to buy the source code of NWN and make it GPL (or some other open-source license).  Huge performance improvements could be made, basic programming data structures could be added to NWScript (fucking, where are my arrays?), mechanics changes could be easily implemented, upgrades to graphics, bug fixes for new Operating Systems, you name it.

[Wild Card]

Some more interviews from other sites with the developers

http://stratics.com/interviews/shards-online-qa-with-citadel-studios/
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/29/5559608/shards-citadel-studios
http://shoost.co/2014/03/14/what-is-shards-online-an-interview-with-ceo-derek-brinkmann/

Looks pretty darn promising. As soon as forums get set up over there I reccomend we establish a presence so that hopefully we will be able to have  a say in how it develops having lots of experience as a community of being a player run shard.

[Wild Card]

Good news, but I'm a bit skeptical. I wonder if they'll allow you to moderate your "shards"... such as banning players and the sort. Even if does allow the use of a toolset and DMing, then there'll be the matter of whether the gameplay's actually good and conducive to RP...

Yes, got this answer from a developer himself yesterday

[Wild Card]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QshQ-_pKq0w PAX East  highlights; glad they mentioned Neverwinter shows that they were definitely inspired by it

[PanamaLane]

Would EFU ever consider moving to a new platform under the right circumstances? I know it seems like a waste given the enormous number of man hours put into scripting and development to run on nwn, but the engine certainly has its problems and continues to show more of its age every year.

As for "the next nwn" I won't hold my breath until I see it. Ultimately what nwn did was awesome for the consumer and not very profitable for the investors. Such price models are mostly extinct.

[Wild Card]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1468280928/shards-online-a-customizable-sandbox-mmorpg
Official Kickstarter Campaign up with screenshots and a shit ton of info. Would definitely check it out and consider supporting this since it has a lot of potential

[efuincarnate]

This actually looks like it could be quite good, if it lives up to the spirit of the video.